MS has always been a successful company, and they will always be there because they're simply too big to fail even when they blunder, and boy did they blunder a lot. It's why invest with them and I encourage you to do so. It doesn't hurt that Satya Nadella actually has a vision and silly Steve Ballmer is gone.

Products wise, however, I am not as a big of as a consumer as I am as an investor. On the software front, Windows has been a terrible experience for far too long, lacking in taste and functionalities competitors had for years, and I honestly can't stress enough on how tasteless their products are from the aesthetics point of view. Office is Office and the blame lies on the competitors for not competing hard enough, especially Google, they seemed to have a hit on their hands with the free Google Office Suit and I really love that as an Office Suit, the entire experience is replicated on a browser and works on every device I have, but it didn't make inroads in the enterprise space for some reason despite being free. Until Teams became a thing, I never understood why MS Office was preferred by the casual consumer. But recently, with Teams integration, I totally get it and I wouldn't use anything else myself. But is Teams original? no, MS sits back, watch what others make and works, and copies and make it the platform of choice for consumers with the sheer power of Windows and cash, Slack simply had no chance. However, opening your pockets doesn't always work, it certainly didn't work with the Windows Phone. Obviously, they're doing really well with the cloud and most of their innovation is happening there, which is why you need to turn that stimulus check into MS stocks right now, but I understand why this doesn't generate among customers now, it will eventually especially when xCloud and streaming gaming services become bigger. MS is hardly the first to take a stab in this market or even starting it, but they seem the company with the best chance to succeed in popularising it. 

On the hardware front, I know their Surface business is growing, but not nearly as fast as its competitors, and frankly, a lot of the Surface products are a joke that don't work, underpowered and way overpriced. If Apple released something like the Surface X Pro or the Surface duo, they'd be punished severely. The only surface product that generates excitement for me is the Surface Book, and I think if Apple makes their own spin it, or continue to improve the iPadOS the way they're doing now, the Surface Book would be less enticing, because no matter touch friendlier Windows is right now, the apps we tend to use on it aren't. Then you have the Windows Phone, pushed no boundaries, did nothing unique, and deserved to die. Finally, you have the Xbox, which historically has been an embarrassment especially during the 360 era from the hardware point of view, now is a decent product because it's made of PC parts and most of the credit goes to AMD for making the 8th gen and the 9th gen machines as capable and cheap as they are.

So yeah, overall, it's easy why some might perceive MS as a company that's coasting. They haven't done anything that's industry changing in a very long time, they sit back, watch, and copy what works and call it a day, I don't mind it, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, their approach is making richer after all. But compare that to how Amazon changed retail forever, Apple changed the entire future of computing and the mobility of it, and before that, they changed how we consume music with iTunes, and now Spotify & Netflix have changed that again. Google changed navigation and search, Samsung is making inroads with foldable screen that will change computing one more time. Even when it comes to the bits that I hate about tech, it was Facebook and Google who coined data mining into what it is today, before MS joined them. Elon Musk is attempting to fix transportation and is literally aiming at the moon. Even like much smaller companies like Nintendo, they managed to make innovative products like the Wii and the Switch. MS is the boring one, and that's.... fine.