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Overall, Microsoft indeed just follows Apple if you look at the products they made in the past few years. But that shouldn't be an excuse for failure (look at Google, they actually do the same). But also, when MS has a truly good products in their hands, they just can't figure out how to sell it, look at WP7 for example.
I believe a key difference here is their (former) leaders: Jobs just knew how to make you believe that even if you bought his sweat, you would be a happy consumer. But Balmer... well, he just scares people :-p (developers! developers! developers!)