See this blog post from a former MS employee about the year it took to design the shutdown menu in Vista: http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...

Microsoft enjoys near monopoly hold on the end-user market (give or take) and they didn't arrive at this position by providing great end-user experience. So there's basically no need for them to improve it -> low priority.

Don't fix what's ain't broken (what's sort of working) approach.

Yeah, probably. However, it's hard to keep a big company like Microsoft under one person's control. Look at Apple's success; they have a tiny product line (compared to Microsoft), and so Jobs can make sure everything is good.

Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite.

Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus.

Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter.

Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player Ultimate Pack...

Compared to:

Mac OS X

iWork

Mighty Mouse

iTunes

I think the lesson here is obvious.

Entertainment: XBox, Zune

Servers stuff: Windows Server, Visual Studio, etc

Online stuff: Live search (and ads, etc), hotmail, etc

Have a look at the organization and you'll see Microsoft is WAY bigger and more complex than Apple.

Also, iPod and Zune (to be fair, this is where the tables are turned with iPod nano, iPod touch, iPod classic, etc.), iPhone OS and Windows Mobile..

Yep, take a look at any Microsoft org chart (http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/orgchart/s...)

It's true that Microsoft has more products in each category, but Apple (as a hardware/software/consumer electronics) company covers more categories.

Other companies like Sony or Asus are extremely annoying with dozens of "lines" of very similar products with confusing names. I didn't look at HP, but I remember it was weird, because they kept the Compaq brand so it was even worse.

Compare with OS X (ignoring OS X Server). There are only two versions, period: OS X and OS X Family Pack. How obvious is it what the difference is between the two? Very. You just count the number of computers in your household you want to install OS X on, and buy accordingly. No upgrade/full version worries, no "what does this have over the other one?" worries, no buying something you don't need...

Sure, OS X doesn't come in so many "flexible" configurations as Vista does, but the thing about it is that you could just do that on your own if it meant so much, and otherwise you get a default config that works for most people.