(and things were hypothetically simple, no federal agencies forcing me to do certain things, sending a lot of partners to hell and deal with the lawsuits) I would…
1. Stop fucking around with the huge dominance I still have over the PC Market and milk it as it slowly seems to die.
This means, don’t try to force a touch experience to desktop users. Keep innovating on the desktop, while you move all the bullshit Metro shit to a separate “Windows Touch” that’s meant only for tablets and phones. This works great for Apple, why try to mix the two and give a shitty experience for both? why frustrate your developer community? why kill all the healthy monetizing ecosystems you have built for decades on the desktop instead of letting them evolve on their natural environment. This means putting a real Start Menu on Windows 8, not just a shortcut to metro dashboard.
I’d innovate on a better experience, on a better file system, memory management, CPU and power consumption, and the latest technologies and breakthroughs for operating system borrowing ideas from those crazy linux guys.
2. Remind myself of “Developers, Developers, Developers”. I’d look around and see that developers have been running away with all the great free options the open source community has created over the years, I’d look at my balance sheets and see that what I make on Visual Studio is peanuts, compared to all my other revenue channels and to how much money I spend on marketing and how much money I’m losing with all the developers not coming back and give Visual Studio FOR FREE!
3. Don’t fuck with the gaming Market on XBOX. React now before I lose 70% of my userbase to Sony. Remove all the bullshit restrictions regarding DRM and used games, and instead of trying to shove the console down on people’s throat with stupid marketing campaigns, if I’m going to lose money, then drop that price down and do like I did with the first Xbox. I might even consider getting rid of the Xbox Live monthly fee, somehow sony has managed to deal with these costs, I need to be competitive, specially after seeing the immediate reaction of the media and users after the PS4 has announced a bunch of non-features I’ve created out of my self imposed restrictions.
4. On Windows Phone (which should be Windows Touch) I’d add a Dalvik runtime, just like Blackberry did, and I’d make all Windows Phones compatible with Android apps, and start poaching Android developers over to Windows Phones.