With respect, I do hope you realize that "taste" and "design" are about an awful lot more than "pretty."

I would say that MSFT products being "pretty" demonstrates how little they get it. They think that making something "designed" means smearing pretty on it after you're done, as if you can design a web application by building something randomly then hiring a graphic designer to make the page slook nice just before you go live.

"Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

- Steve Jobs

MSFT's failure is that some parts of it seem to get that, and others seem entirely oblivious to it.

Some of their products really are excellent -- usually ones that are largely independent shops that haven't been entirely squished into the conglomerate, like the Expression suite and a good many of the MS games.

It seems to me that the ones that have the most issues with inconsistency and usability botches are the ones that get the most micromanagement, like Office and the OS.

Okay. But throwing out Vista and Silverlight, I contend that the XBox 360, Live Maps are both highly usable, well designed products that people want. This may be true of Silverlight too, if they ever wake up and realize that good webapp, flash and UI designers/developers tend away from Windows.

I found the Xbox360 UI to be atrocious, actually. Why does the green X button turn the system on and off? Why are there 6 different versions of the Marketplace, none of them consistent? Why are there ads everywhere?

I enjoy the games themselves but the design seems extremely ad-hoc.