microsoft is not a consumer company. they may make products for consumers but they are not oriented based on the needs of the consumers. this is why when "the company is somewhat slow in embracing consumer appetites", it suggest that they are not in touch with the consumers, only what they, as a company, are interested on.
look at the situation with the wii when it was first release, you had the ceo, bill gates, calling motion controls a gimmick and a fad. now we have natal. it shows that microsoft is not in touch with the public consumer.
if consumers aren't interested in upgrading to windows vista or windows 7, then why is microsoft, as a company, forcefully have their xp users switch to windows 7. it is because they aren't in touch with the idea that people don't care about the operating system but what you do as the end product on the operating system.
microsoft is not a consumer based company.