'm pretty sure I remember Microsoft not listening under Ballmer either.
If you don't agree, explain Vista to me then.
Vista wasn't bad because it lacked the features people wanted. It was bad because it was already years behind schedule, so the marketing guys got the better of the company and they essentially released whatever it was they had at the arbitrary date-- and it wasn't ready.
Vista evolved into its very close sibling, the ever popular Windows 7, because MS listened to what people hated about Vista and fixed it. Vista itself got a lot better in time, but few noticed as everyone had already written it off by then, so their only memories of using it were from a time when it was still terrible.
Microsoft could have told people that Vista was the last version of Windows ever (so get on board, you have no choice) and sabotaged XP so that it would not work correctly with any architecture from Core 2 forward, but they didn't. They could have done a lot of things to force people to use Vista even though they hated it, but instead they corrected the problems and gave people a product that remains the most popular Windows version almost a decade later, and almost at the end of its extended support period.
If that's not listening to what people want, what is?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
