Re:Unbelievable (Score:5, Insightful) by Golias (176380) on Friday April 22, @04:04PM (#12316915)

Microsoft does indeed have some very, very smart people working for them. They tend to hire the very best and brightest, right out of the top IT programs in the country, and train them from the beginning of their careers into "the Microsoft Way." I've seen some of the questions they ask new hires in the interview. They love to throw MENSA-type logic puzzles at candidates to really separate the wheat from the chaff and get top-notch problem solvers on board. Apple, on the other hand, has a reputation for a long hippie-dippy history (at least during the times it has been under Jobs's watch) of recruiting programmers with education and experience background completely outside the computer sciences, especially people with artistic backgrounds. I strongly suspect this is the key difference as to why Apple, with a much smaller staff and having much less money, keeps cranking out fantastic ideas (with a few duds in the mix), and spotting the truly great garage innovations worth buying (for example, the decision to hire the SoundJam programmer to build iTunes for them)... while Microsoft seems to be completely incabable of ever bringing anything new to the table, or even recognizing something as worth buying/stealing before it's already a success.