That's because Microsoft understood taste as aesthetic - "we can put it in a pretty box", rather than ethic - fundamental to the process of making the product.

That's because Microsoft understood taste as aesthetic - "we can put it in a pretty box", rather than ethic - fundamental to the process of making the product. Most of their endless UI/UX fails are organisational in nature, no amount of design can create beauty from an org structure which generated stupid requirements. And nobody there cared enough or had enough power to force the org into a shape compatible with Apple-level design outcomes.