There's also the community-driven Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) that gives advance notice on vulnerabilities and upcoming patches to partners. Does this mean good-bye to the finger pointing among software vendors after a disastrous patch?
I can't say that I can recall any "disastrous patches" recently. Most of the problems that I have encountered have been when a patch has not installed correctly for some reason. That can result in instability and unpredictability.

I tend to use this free (to private users) software for a "second opinion" as the MS update history sometimes does not spot a failed installation.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

As for the finger pointing, I think that is a little unfair? MS have always taken the stance that they don't support software that hooks the Windows kernel. OK a lot of security products do just this, in a variety of different ways.

I would say that it is up to the third party vendor to ensure that their product still works, particularly if MS give them advanced warning.

I do find it slightly unusual that MS don't seem to test their updates with major third party software, if only as a public relations exercise to their customers. In particular I am thinking of security products, that are the most likely items to have issues?

A couple of days ago I fired up a machine that I hadn't had on the internet for a few weeks. MS downloaded their updates and asked permission to install them. At that point ZoneAlarm sent me a popup warning me to install their update first. I thought that was rather good