Consists of one item, and it's not a feature: that tablets will just go away.

This is the main reason I hate 7. I don't put anything on that machine because I don't want the hassle of trying to find it later.

And the thing everyone needs to remember is that no previous version of windows used the screen corners as a UI trigger. It's simply not expected: there's no visual cue in the corners to indicate that they cause something to happen. Not much different than if win95 had shipped with no task bar, but the 80x20 pixel block 4 pixels up and to the right of the bottom left corner was still the start button. Who would know to click there?

Win8 defenestrates most windows usability conventions, and on top of that doesn't express itself very well, if it bothers to at all. People know to click on buttons because they look like physical buttons, they have depth. Metro is just a Wall of quasi-meaningful white shapes (with little to no context) floating on colored boards.

...is legally distinct from "Instagram does not claim any distribution rights". I'm also sure there are legal workarounds for "sell".

Just like ISPs and mobile carriers legally and torturously redefine "unlimited".

If I could find the 2.4 key mappings for 2.5+, I would use it more.

"We" don't. Microsoft does. Microsoft sales, does, at least. And inside MS, sales is the only thing that matters. Trust me on this.

This is why MS is a marketing company and not a technology company. Their products are designed to be sold, not used (as many usability reviews of w8 on the desktop will attest).

Microsoft created a generation of lazy developers who only coded for IE.

If IE was going to focus on actual standards compliance

... you'd see their HTML1, HTML2, HTML3.2, HTML4, HTML4.1, XHTML1.0, XHTML1.1, CSS1, CSS2, CSS2.1, CSS3, JS1.0, JS1.1, JS1.2, JS1.3 compliance comparable to every other browser, and it's not.

If they built a car, they'd put wings and a propeller on it.

No, because that would be innovation. If MS built a car, it would have the steering wheel on the roof, pentagonal tires, the hood welded shut, and would operate best on MicroSoft Roads(TM) fueled by MicroSoft Gas(TM).

And as of a couple weeks ago, it would start up as a Little Tykes vehicle and you'd have to switch it to real car mode to go anywhere.

The two phones MS made a couple years ago that sold ridiculously poorly and were pulled from the carrier (Verizon, I think) after only a few weeks. Yeah, a Microsoft phone will change everything.

By "silly", I think you mean antiquated.

The computer is an appliance. You press a button, it sends an e-mail. You press another one, it plays music for you.

In instances like what you describe, the computer is merely an appliance. The average user will treat it like an appliance because that's all they know.

To technical people, the average /.er, the computer is a tool. You code something, the computer does it.

Apple (and Microsoft) don't want the average person to realize the tool potential of a computer, because then Open things happen, and they don't want the same loss of control to happen on mobile devices that happened on the desktop. Think what you will of Google, but their approach with Android is much closer to that which allowed all of these companies to grow and thrive in the first place... and that strategy is working.

Microsoft has spent 10 years trying to crack open the tablet market, and always failed. Now that Apple has done it, suddenly Microsoft's response is the real holy grail?

The tablet market is fueled by hype and will die out in a couple years once the consumer realizes how limited they are. Just like netbooks

Microsoft has tied win8 to this sinking ship with every rope and chain they can find.

There is only one possibility: Nokia spirals down the toilet, and MS buys it when it becomes a good enough deal. MS, according to their plan of hoodwinking Nokia's Board and installing Elop, gets a handset manufacturer they can call their own which is already primed for Windows Phone exclusivity.

Plus consumers expect Windows === Windows. Even during the NT + 9x parallel Windows version paths (which were merged as of win2k, almost 13 years ago), the amount of software that would not run on both lines was for the most part not exposed to consumers.

The Win8/WinRT dichotomy will be baffling to anyone who isn't technically savvy enough to know there are different chip architectures, and retailers will find it difficult if not impossible to effectively explain the difference, if they even know it.