That time never existed, there were plenty of subgroups inside Microsoft that wanted to make useful software. Plenty of people still in there that do. But it'

That time never existed, there were plenty of subgroups inside Microsoft that wanted to make useful software. Plenty of people still in there that do. But it's never been a general policicy of Microsoft that turned into actual culture and actions. Because that would require a general vision in that direction, which would imply we would never have one version out of two of Windows (Me, Vista, 8, 11...) that looks like a prototype. We would not have the mess of UI with thousands of toolkits, the infamous env var windows staying unusable for decades, the right click "more option" in W11 that changes theme mid-flight. We wouldn't have had the awful windows media player that couldn't read anything without a pack of spyware installed in the 90'. Or IE6 being frozen into obsolescence. Or ads in the start menu. Teams file sharing and chat would not suck. Word would not destroy your layout because you move an image on pixel on the left. Access wouldn't produce the most corruptible db ever. The File explorer would not start in 7 seconds randomly in some machines (see last twitter trend), and its search would actually be useful. The wizard to fix your internet issues would have solved a problem at least once. MS would not allow tons of crapware to be installed by 3rd party. Python in the windows store would not have been made non standard. We wouldn't have to wait 2020 to have an upgrade to the terminal. The registry would be self documenting. Skype wouldn't have been destroyed after being bought. You would be able to get to your user directory easily out of the box. Cortana would be useful. Surface wouldn't run to crawl because they would be optimized for their hardware. I can continue like that for hours. Because those are not subtle issues. There are other teams at Microsoft that would never let that happen. The priority of MS is to conquer the market. At some points it meant being a bully. Now it's to pretend to be FOSS BFF. It's always been about getting devs on the platforms, and business on the hook. But at no point in MS history has been ever been, when you at the actual results, making good software. Good software like .Net, AoE 2 or Excel were made by the few of their accidentally amazing team.