>>>From grumbling aside - this is a sure sign they are milking a cash cow
>and not really innovating. So not a good long term investment.
>
>That's the way of it: the closer a behemoth gets to monopoly, the less desirable innovation becomes. IMHO this has two effects: a) it requires a huge sea change to get things moving again and b) when that happens, the dinosaurs are far too slow to react and they are lost. Probably a good thing- the old know they should make way for the young but it's not always voluntary. ;-)

In case of software that's out there for decades, like office suites, there's not much demand for new features - any new feature is something that millions need to learn how to use. OTOH, marketing doesn't seem to know what else to do to make new version sell, so... at some point, I bought Office 2007, and then on next reinstall of everything, went back to 2003. For music, I use the same player for years, moving to the next version only if there's some crucial feature I need (like a better playlist randomizer).

They seem to think software is like toothpaste, that you can sell the same thing for a hundred years, claiming every year that what you sell is new and improved. If that were true, by now the toothpaste would fix teeth and make dentists extinct.