Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

Continued...

Think I am being too hard on this, consider the following: First they allowed Internet Explorer's features to become so antiqued that Firefox was able to blow their doors off with a better and frankly, safer browsing experience. Both browsers have their weak spots, but I challenge you to find spyware that can successfully sneak through Firefox - it just doesn't happen.

So back in 2005 when I witnessed IE7 beta being used publicly for the first time in history, naturally I was thrilled. Internet Explorer 7 beta offers some of the best RSS handling that I have ever seen, when you consider the content handling needs of the non-geek. It was straight forward and it just made sense. For the first time in a very long time, you could not shake the feeling that Microsoft was honestly trying to become an innovative company once again.

Then we see their old behavior coming back for a second pass: Limited availability of their Vista beta download, consistently being late to market with better tools for user created content such as Podcasting, openly claiming that "open source is communism" one year only to participate in this exact same licensing type themselves only a short time later.

I can't speak for everyone out there. But as a computer power user, it makes it really difficult to start cheering for anything new they come up with, when confronted with all the smoke and mirrors. All I am asking for is a Microsoft management team who acknowledges that they are in dire need of defining a clear balance, between protecting their brand and remaining in touch with their users.

It's funny, because sitting their at the Gnomedex convention in Seattle, I actually began to find myself believing that they were interested in what people such as myself genuinely wanted from their Windows experience. Today, it just feels like we are being dealt another round of lip service. And you know something Microsoft, that's a real shame.