Name a single innovation Microsoft has added to any of its operating systems that was not a money-making product for some third party at the time. And name a single Microsoft product that lived up to its prerelease hype and was actually usable in Version 1.0. Innovation in this business is often not about big surprises. I'm convinced there will always be plenty of things for utility vendors to do. That doesn't mean I approve of integrating everything into the operating system.
Some functions really do work better as separate applications.
It's an oft-cited truism that Microsoft takes three tries to get anything right. I certainly wouldn't be promoting DOS 1.0 or Windows 1.0 as software paragons, but remember that the first versions of Access and Excel were actually pretty good. Nevertheless, I did encounter some interesting products. While push as a buzzword is dead, the concept of delivering important information to users is still alive. You can read more about it at ZDNet News .