Cringley's argument rests upon the idea that Microsoft is driven too much by technology and not enough by usability. He says this is because features are owned

Cringley's argument rests upon the idea that Microsoft is driven too much by technology and not enough by usability. He says this is because features are owned by PM's who are technical, but I'm not going to engage that particular claim because I disagree with the first idea. Windows' usability isn't bad. It isn't quite OSX, but if anything it is still easier for the majority of the population to stay with Windows because everyone knows it and is used to its quirks. The only "usability" problem in Vista I can think of that's big enough to be a game-changer is UAC. That's a combination of a legacy problem and an engineering problem (namely, previous versions of Windows weren't well engineered to be secure, and moving to a stricter model while maintaining backwards compatibility with apps accustomed to the looser model was bound to cause user experience headaches, unless they went a pure sandbox/VM route). Look elsewhere in the company. Live search has fine usability but just isn't on par with Google technically. The XBox has excellent usability (and in particular was miles ahead of the competition in terms of an easy online gaming experience), but an engineering problem with the heatsink cost the company billions. I'm not saying that technical issues are the root cause of Microsoft's problems either. There are many different problems but if I had to pick one to call the biggest, I would say a simple lack of innovation, both on the product and technical side of things. This lack of innovation is a contributing factor to two big problems: 1- Big customers are seeing fewer and fewer reasons to buy new versions of Windows and Office. 2- Microsoft is unable to execute on its traditional "fast follow" strategy where they do not create a market but are eventually able to build a product as good or better than the original innovators and then use their muscle to control the new market. Compare Microsoft vs. Netscape to Microsoft vs. Google.