>Come back, Steve, all is forgiven!
OK, wanting Big Steve back is going a bit far.
But otherwise, yes, correct. And even with the enterprise MS is too wont to start up products and then kill them off - Silverlight being a blatant example.
i.e. product by product there is really nothing wrong with looking at a business line's results and killing it off.
The problem is with the aggregate, when you do it too often.
MS has amply demonstrated that it is not willing to go the distance and provide stability in its new offerings. As a consumer, does it make sense to invest $$ in a product with a supporting ecosystem that might very well go away?
You can do that with a dumb watch - who cares if the manufacturer is around in 5 years? But what about that $200 smart watch that you've spent another $100 buying apps for and tons of time putting data into those apps? Buy a smartwatch, if you really, really have to, from a company who only does those instead - like Pebble.
The risks of choosing a soon-to-be-abandoned hobbycat of course goes double with enterprise technologies and developer frameworks.
Google does much the same thing - but mostly gets away with it by calling everything Beta ;-).
So... MS... get it into less things, even though diversifying from Office and Windows is key. And, try to stay the distance, even when an individual product has developed not necessarily to your advantage.
Azure is a pretty strong bet for them, I'd _somewhat_ trust them there and wrt its surrounding offerings. But not much elsewhere.
p.s. to be fair to Satnad, the Windows 8 trainwreck, which started Windows' public perception downhill, was launched well under Big Steve's captaincy.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
