The general pattern I've seen with Microsoft is they mostly just copy other people's successes. Sometimes their copies do okay, or well enough. Sometimes they f

The general pattern I've seen with Microsoft is they mostly just copy other people's successes. Sometimes their copies do okay, or well enough. Sometimes they fail. But due to their huge install base and lock-in effects and user inertia and huge cash pile they have the ability to muddle onward. In some ways, Microsoft treats Apple as a sort of external UI R&D department, one with the wonderful quality that Microsoft doesn't have to pay the Apple folks anything, just copy whatever people seem to like. I do think they succeed enough, at the right things, that it keeps them shambling forward. But the same is true of a zombie.