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In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?

Because craploads of our innovation isn't going into consumer-oriented products. One of the drawbacks of having such a ubiquitous platform is that it tends to overshadow a lot of the work we do. Also, there are lines of work here that consumers will simply never see directly, like our work in security, testing, IT management, development, and all sorts of other areas where we're making massive strides, with our target release dates being 2009 and beyond.

While you may think that microsoft's world revolves around the consumer giants, office and windows, the reality is, these two stay afloat because it's supported by ever more effective pontoons of tools like visual studio, system centre, identity lifecycle management, WPF, WCF, WF, Cardspace, Biztalk, and Unified Communications, not to mention several others..

I know that's a giant link salad, but it's pretty clear to see that almost all of those tools aren't in any way aimed at consumers, and most will do a lot to drastically increase microsoft's business dominance. Without them, much of the third party products and inhouse tools that are going to come through the pipeline in much less connected and interoperable fashion. While some of these products may not be the winners we hope they will, they all add up to a pretty strong whole.

ash

In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?

Because craploads of our innovation isn't going into consumer-oriented products. One of the drawbacks of having such a ubiquitous platform is that it tends to overshadow a lot of the work we do. Also, there are lines of work here that consumers will simply never see directly, like our work in security, testing, IT management, development, and all sorts of other areas where we're making massive strides, with our target release dates being 2009 and beyond.

While you may think that microsoft's world revolves around the consumer giants, office and windows, the reality is, these two stay afloat because it's supported by ever more effective pontoons of tools like visual studio, system centre, identity lifecycle management, WPF, WCF, WF, Cardspace, Biztalk, and Unified Communications, not to mention several others..

I know that's a giant link salad, but it's pretty clear to see that almost all of those tools aren't in any way aimed at consumers, and most will do a lot to drastically increase microsoft's business dominance. Without them, much of the third party products and inhouse tools that are going to come through the pipeline in much less connected and interoperable fashion. While some of these products may not be the winners we hope they will, they all add up to a pretty strong whole.

ash

In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?

Because craploads of our innovation isn't going into consumer-oriented products. One of the drawbacks of having such a ubiquitous platform is that it tends to overshadow a lot of the work we do. Also, there are lines of work here that consumers will simply never see directly, like our work in security, testing, IT management, development, and all sorts of other areas where we're making massive strides, with our target release dates being 2009 and beyond.

While you may think that microsoft's world revolves around the consumer giants, office and windows, the reality is, these two stay afloat because it's supported by ever more effective pontoons of tools like visual studio, system centre, identity lifecycle management, WPF, WCF, WF, Cardspace, Biztalk, and Unified Communications, not to mention several others..

I know that's a giant link salad, but it's pretty clear to see that almost all of those tools aren't in any way aimed at consumers, and most will do a lot to drastically increase microsoft's business dominance. Without them, much of the third party products and inhouse tools that are going to come through the pipeline in much less connected and interoperable fashion. While some of these products may not be the winners we hope they will, they all add up to a pretty strong whole.

ash

In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?

Because craploads of our innovation isn't going into consumer-oriented products. One of the drawbacks of having such a ubiquitous platform is that it tends to overshadow a lot of the work we do. Also, there are lines of work here that consumers will simply never see directly, like our work in security, testing, IT management, development, and all sorts of other areas where we're making massive strides, with our target release dates being 2009 and beyond.

While you may think that microsoft's world revolves around the consumer giants, office and windows, the reality is, these two stay afloat because it's supported by ever more effective pontoons of tools like visual studio, system centre, identity lifecycle management, WPF, WCF, WF, Cardspace, Biztalk, and Unified Communications, not to mention several others..

I know that's a giant link salad, but it's pretty clear to see that almost all of those tools aren't in any way aimed at consumers, and most will do a lot to drastically increase microsoft's business dominance. Without them, much of the third party products and inhouse tools that are going to come through the pipeline in much less connected and interoperable fashion. While some of these products may not be the winners we hope they will, they all add up to a pretty strong whole.

ash

Add to that CardSpace. Facebook allowing the use of CardSpace for sign-in would give Microsoft a hell of a leg-up in the Social Login game.

Cardspace could do something similar, in theory. You might want to look into that. Even though it's from Microsoft, it is pretty cool and surprisingly open.

At the very least, CardSpace is doing a fine job at providing a mechanism for exchanging identity information without boiling it all down to the root of all evil: Shared Secrets (passwords)

It's worth looking into the specifics of CardSpace, which I'm kinda suprised there were no links that talked about that end of the equation.
CardSpace community site (Part of .NET framework 3)
CardSpace community PM

who needs Microsoft Passport when there's Card space. I wonder if anyone is ever going to implement card space, even microsoft!

I believe a variation to the bog-standard "ASCII info per site" has been implemented - http://cardspace.netfx3.com/ . Sure, it's similar to a password manager, but the technology behind it allows for a great deal more.