Microsoft knows how to take a technology and drive it into the ground. Take Nemo, a front end for Windows Live that includes Spaces, Messenger, and Live Call. The interface is designed for widescreen televisions and monitors and includes a Front Row-esque lazy susan system of picking out folks to contact. It uses the new Vista presentation layer to make things look like Minority Report on speed.
I’ve heard a lot of talk about how Vista is essentially OS X, and that’s true, but it’s high time that a lot of the fancy UI stuff that Mac users take for granted ended up in the most popular OS in the world. Eye candy sells PCs and Vista is going to be the sweetest of them all.