Open GL was innovation, direct X is just propriety crap, which crippled almost all graphics development beyond one platform. surface tab and windows 8 are yet to be proved in the world. Visual studio, lolwat, I have used in 2003 or sometimes, I wont touch that crap from a 12 feet pole. sql was innovation when invented by Chamberline and Boyce and later by Mysql, M$ brought it form sybase. so no it's hardly an innovation. Azure: lol. that is the worst cloud platform among all platforms. EC2, rackspace, eucalyptus, openstack are clouds worth talking about, azure is just piece of crap. Again, I said i don't have any apple product neither do i like them, i am open source person, but M$ is totally outclassed by them.