From looking at the patent, the problem is it appears to be a pretty status-quo technique with only arbitrary differences from what anyone else might do. If anything there is really innovative, I'd like someone to point out what it is. To be fair, this article says less about Microsoft and more about the patent office's low bar for granting patents.
I understand that the patent office has limited resources and a lot of requests, but we cannot continue to depend on the court system to sort out what is novel and what isn't. For one, the courts are really bad at it with inconsistent results at best. Also, waiting for courts to resolve the matter does not prevent companies with lots of lawyers from using bogus patents to threaten and extort. Even if a patent is meaningless, smaller players cannot afford the legal battle.
The burden should really be on the patent submitter to point out exactly what is so innovative as do deserve a government enforced monopoly over the approach. If the patent is 90% mundane details, it should not be the job of the patent office to pick out what is worthwhile. If the submitter cannot make a concise and convincing argument, then they don't deserve a patent.