I disagree. I think Toyota may not be perfect but the
"Kaizen" consciousness and
customer focus is exemplary. As for MSFT look at the stock price during the
Ballmer years, "Vista", "Bing", "Zune", the Nokia acquisition. not exactly category killers right? Satya is much different and now they have turned it around, but just look at their stock during the Ballmer years and that kind of says it all about the "customer experiece" IMO.
Nothing in what you post has to do with the topic of UI design. A product fails or succeed for many reasons beyond its user interface.
Remember, I worked for Sony for years and did so at Microsoft. I interacted with every consumer electronics company trying to get them to compete with Apple on audio players. This is what I did for a living. Please don't counter this experience with looking at the tea leaves through stock price and such.
I guarantee you this: an Apple or Microsoft UI designer would rather have a heart attack than be associated with the UI on this Sony player or any other.
Zune's UI was superb compared to stuff we are talking about here. Here is a quick snippet of reviews for Zune HD:
The words I have highlighted won't remotely be used to describe what we are seeing in these DAPs. I had to look up the manual just to figure out how to put the thing in DAC mode. First hit back, then hit suitcase, then hit "DAC" then answer a question on turning on or off then DAC. Then the "database building" shows up even though it did that when you hooked it up to the PC!
I should say I was NOT responsible for Zune. I gave them my team for them to develop the software. They had their own hardware people they borrowed from Xbox team. Every decision they made was wrong in my opinion (including getting into media player business at all). But right is right and their user interface was designed by people who understood user interface design.
Bing has no interface to talk about so not sure what that is doing there. And Vista followed the Windows scheme. If it was as bad as the OS in most phones of the era, it would gotten killed years earlier.