The problem isn't that Microsoft can't create good products. The problem is that its priorities can be different from the priorities of many users. Microsoft

The problem isn't that Microsoft can't create good products. The problem is that its priorities can be different from the priorities of many users. Microsoft concerns itself with its ecosystem more than anything. Apple doesn't do this and Palm is splitting from their's with the Pre. Apple's attitude is, "we created something great and you should want to develop for it and if you're a user with legacy stuff, you should just migrate". That's fine most of the time with consumers. Likewise, their programmers have gotten used to making little tweaks when a new version of OS X comes out to make sure things work well. Microsoft, on the other hand, has tried to keep everything working even if the company that created an add-on is now defunct. It's chained them up. Something relied on a bad behavior of IE so that behavior must be kept even if it is sub-optimal for many things. The Pre looks cool and I'm getting one as soon as it comes out (Sprint customer who doesn't want to switch carriers). However, it's completely new. It wouldn't be a platform to move Windows Mobile users to. Palm has created something that looks really great. But Microsoft really needs to decide if it's willing to let go of the legacy compatibility that Windows Mobile has going for it and require the people who have made Windows Mobile applications to suffer a dead end and port to a new platform. It's easy when you're at the bottom to embrace change - you don't have developers and customers to loose. Microsoft has a lot to loose. Break compatibility and people can migrate to competitors as easily as they can migrate to your new model. Of course, the other side is that if you don't make the changes necessary, you can start loosing people because your product gets old and kludgy.