Microsoft and (lack of) UI innovation

LukeW gently bemoans the lack of innovation in M$FT’s Vista interface

Vista’s lack of unique user interface features is a disappointment for me as I had been expecting something beyond incremental innovation from the Vista product. It even seems that the concept of virtual folders has been scaled back somewhat.

“We actually considered at one time not having folders,” Microsoft lead product manager Greg Sullivan told [Paul Thurrott] during a recent briefing. "It was all going to be virtualized storage with search queries and so on. We would just completely abstract the file organization stuff from the physical folders and disk structure. But that was too much of a leap over the chasm, too confusing for users.” –Windows SuperSite

i heard bill gates actually ate the my documents folder at lunch before anouncing the vista release and told sullivan to make something up.