Everyone knows of the XBox, but almost no one thinks of it as the 'Microsoft XBox'. The only brand they're helping there is the XBox brand, not the Microsoft br

Everyone knows of the XBox, but almost no one thinks of it as the 'Microsoft XBox'. The only brand they're helping there is the XBox brand, not the Microsoft brand. Average families that don't want Office? Any of them with a Mac. iWork is cheaper, integrates better, and is generally easy to use, plus the templates are much nicer. For the 99% of people who use 1% of Office's features, iWork is more than 'good enough', it's 'much better'. Windows 7 was a success because Vista was junk and XP is ten years old and showing its age. It's a good OS, but people are buying it because XP just isn't good enough anymore and it's Windows 7 or Mac OS X. Microsoft's brand is hurting because they don't have a cohesive strategy for the things they do. They've launched two separate mobile phone platforms in the last few years; one of which was cancelled almost immediately after launch, and the other, while extremely promising, is floundering in the market so far. Microsoft needs serious top-down leadership, not middle-outwards leadership, and until they get that, their brand is going to continue to suffer.