Windows 7: Microsoft's challenge: Innovation, innovation etc.

Former Softies are weighing in publicly about Microsoft’s culture of innovation — or lack thereof — in the past couple of days. What they aren’t doing is offering any real suggestions about how Microsoft can make a company of 90,000 or so employees more agile, less insular and more innovative.

Don Dodge, who was cut in the last round of Microsoft layoffs, only to resurface days later at Google as an evangelist, is extolling the virtues of Macs this week. Dick Brass, who retired from Microsoft in 2004 and was instrumental in the Tablet PC launch, is airing his grievances about what went wrong back in 2000 in an op-ed piece in the New York Times. Bill Hill, the leader of the ClearType team at Microsoft who left Microsoft last summer, has a post on his personal blog that also criticizes Microsoft’s development and commercialization processes.