Microsoft software has always been troubled but the lack of a genuine alternative has seen Microsoft windows become as a language and it’s users can use the language regardless of its idiosyncrasy to comunicte their needs.

There may be more efficient languages around but if the one you use and understand works why learn another.

To take off on the 37signals guys they weren’t trying to be polarizing with Basecamp, they wanted a tool that worked for them and to grow in a style that kept the spirit and usefulness of the product instead of basing every release on customer requests which as you (and they) rightly point out often don’t quite give the same bang for the buck that the anti-fanboys seem to think it will. Same with Rails, same with Air, same with Zune or the 360. All products that have a core focus and have all come under heavy criticism and hate for not buckling under intense demand to turn the products into the lowest common denominator.

Crystal Reports, oh brother is that a great example. Office is interesting because while people rarely use more than 10% of what it can do they all seem to use a different 10%. It’s such a broad and general product that honestly, do you really want it to be polarizing? I could go either way on that one. I think I’ve tried most of the Office replacements out there from OpenOffice to Google Docs to ZoHo and every time I find myself missing that one extra feature in Excel or Word and keep coming back to them. Plus Office is so ubiquitous that it’s dead simple to share docs vs. some of the hoops I’ve had using other apps. I could go either way on that one.

First off, don’t mistake innovation for polarization. Just because a company takes a UI design a different direction does not necessarily imply polarization – but instead their level of being committed to standing by that decision. I would still agree with you though that the new Office Ribbon UI guidelines are a great example of polarization; however, we have yet to see the long term affects and how MSFT handles the heat as people attempt to adapt.

Examples of MSFT bloat…let me count the ways -

*Sharepoint
*GP/Axapta/Dynamics
*Office (Excel and Word being big offenders)
*BizTalk
*And countless others (including those I was personally on) that died by their own weight before they even shipped…

I am sure we all could find exceptions to my generalization, but in my experience you are correct in saying that many companies (just not MSFT) fall prey to this syndrome.

Can anyone say Oracle or Crystal Reports?

Another example is the Zune. The forums are full of people clamouring for this or that feature which would quickly bloat the software. In fact they took a huge risk in a new UI and using a broken heart/heart rating system vs. the traditional 5-star. This is an area Microsoft outdoes Apple at it’s own game because iTunes has become an ugly, bloated, over-featured slow beast and it’s not even that pretty.

The latest Office is also a strong candidate for a polarizing piece of software. That was a *huge* UI shift to spring on millions of people and honestly took balls from such a huge company with such an established base. Changing the UI that completely was much more polarizing than Apple not having an optical drive in the Air because the Air is such a niche market while Office is everywhere.

Of course I do know that feature bloat you’re talking about in Microsoft products, though that’s not just a Microsoft-only pitfall. It’s a pervasive issue that companies have to watch for because at first it really is so easy just to make something optional vs. rethinking a design or just saying, “Hey, that’s how it works, deal.” The only reason it’s so easy to bag on Microsoft is because they have so many products.

What specific products are you thinking of that are mediocre due to trying to please everybody all the time (vs. just being plain mediocre)? Now I have almost a gut-level hate of WebForms but it’s problem isn’t trying to make everyone happy, it’s that it trys to force a Visual Basic, client-eventing model on top of request/response.