Randomize

Microsoft’s R&D budget is 10 times that of Google or Apple, and yet those companies seem to be running circles around Microsoft in terms of actual innovation.

Many people comment that Apple “just” makes things better, easier, more consumer-friendly, etc. They miss the point–innovation rarely involves pure invention.

Making existing things “easier” IS innovation.

Making existing things “better” IS innovation.

Microsoft Research has some really cool projects going on, but the bulk of their R&D seems to be going into useless buckets of failure like MSN Search, Surface, Vista’s UI, “Plays For Sure” and other DRM efforts, Office 2007’s toolbars, etc.

Apple, OTOH, has mostly spent their money more wisely. They’ve had their share of duds (AppleTV may be the next one), but they have at least stuck to using one OS under it all for everything from the iPhone to Mac Pro.

These days, the only Microsoft products I enjoy using more than the OSS or Apple alternatives are .NET, SQL Server, and Excel. These handily beat PHP, MySql, and OpenOffice IMHO.

Microsoft should just release Windows freely under a BSD license and focus their development efforts on Exchange, Office, SQL Server, the IIS+.NET+etc. stack, and support. IBM and Sun both seem to be surviving just fine on a similar business model.