I still don't think those exact product (Surface Book, windows phone, Hololens) were slapped together in hopes that enough people like it. If Microsoft continues to improve its products and quality they'll own the future one day. Here we may disagree but I agree that in the end quality matters.You are correct. I was impressed with the Hololens. Anything else from MS, not really. As for unified OS, it's been tried and nothing has come from it. Like I said, if you rush and don't provide a GOOD product, it simply won't work. What's different with Apple (at least when Steve was around) was that the products were made for PEOPLE to use them; they were not slapped together in hopes that enough people like something about it to justify keeping it around (think of Motorola Atrix or
Regarding Apple I don't believe it knows what it's doing right now and knows where to move. It has problems with delivering hardware and even software updates on time. I don't think they'll move into the same direction as MS at least until MS will succeed on a huge scale but then it may be too late and Apple in fact will rush and slap something together creating an ugly mix of iOS and OS X. I don't think they are working on it right now. At Steve times they were brave innovators now they are careful followers going to where the money is. Huge screens are popular? Ok, here we go with iPhone 6/Plus. Wirelese charging is the new trend? Ok, here we go with iPhone 8.
Why not be the first with say a 4 camera smartphone? To blow anything out of the water. You have so much money and resources, what you are waiting for? Research, develop, do not rush, do it properly. We'll see what the year brings us with iPhone 2017.
Original iPhone wasn't the first smartphone but it was revolutionary. You could control it with your fingers when everyone was using stylus and tiny buttons. You could pinch, zoom, swipe. It was innovative. Same thing happens right now with MS. They're innovating while Apple is waiting for something. IMO.