Ineptness? While he is large, boisterous, and a bit of a buffoon, you have to give Balmer credit for greatly increasing Microsoft's market value over the length of his tenure as CEO and for starting many of the initiatives that are coming to fruition under Nadella.

Apple hasn't really overtaken Microsoft. Apple focuses on consumer tech. That takes large R&D budgets, large design budgets, and a lot of risk. It is also a segment where you have to continually invent new markets or else you will become irrelevant very quickly. Microsoft has always focused on the enterprise. There are large dollars there without the huge risk of being a consumer oriented tech company. Sure, Apple has more cash on hand and a larger market cap than Microsoft. That's not at all the same as Microsoft being on the ropes. One or two major flops or missed opportunities and Apple's fortunes will turn quickly. The enterprise isn't going anywhere. Both companies have their market segments identified and are doing just fine in them.

Outlook: https://play.google.com/store/...
Word: https://play.google.com/store/...
Excel: https://play.google.com/store/...
Powerpoint: https://play.google.com/store/...
OneNote: https://play.google.com/store/...

There is no Office suite bundle. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote are all separate downloads on the Google Play store.

Because.

No, and yes.

It is Acompli, rebranded, but it's not the OWA app to which you are probably referring.

This isn't about the OWA app. It's a full Outlook app. Actually, it's just the phenomenal Acompli email client rebranded, as Microsoft bought Acompli about six months ago. OWA is bad, as you have stated, but you're not looking at the correct (new) app.

I've been wanting to buy a good bunch of grappa. But, the reviews have been iffy so I've been waiting for it to be marked down.

Yes. Go into Developer Options and set the Window Animation, Transition Animation, and Animator Duration scale to Off

The receiver for my Microsoft wireless keyboard has to be 1' away from the keyboard or else I drop keystrokes pretty regularly. So unless this thing is laid right across the home-key row I'm not worried that it will pick anything useful up.

You can still swipe away apps to kill them. The new upper-right X is an addition, not a replacement, for that functionality.

Monopoly means single, sole supplier. 89.95% (as of 10/14) is not a monopoly. It's exactly 10.15% (as of 10/14) short of being a monopoly. Just because no desktop Linux distribution can market itself out of a paper bag and Apple is happy with high margin low volume machines that doesn't mean Microsoft is a sole supplier.

"being a monopoly is terrible, because people do not have a choice in using a product"
So if I go invent some new item/widget/process/service/whatever that the world has never seen before and I end up doing amazingly well because of it I'm terrible? I'm the first and only supplier so I have a monopoly for no other reason than I had a brilliant idea and brought it to market. That doesn't make me terrible it makes me an innovator. Almost every government of the world will let me benefit from that by granting my a patent on my idea to give me a legally protected monopoly position for about a quarter decade. Nothing about any of that makes me or my fictitious company terrible - other than you and your incorrect definition of and views on monopolies.

Hypothetical situations that refute your ignorant statements aside, Microsoft is not a monopoly. There are competing products and people every day choose to use them. Microsoft is not attempting to stifle the sales of devices that run other operating systems. It even creates markets on those systems; Office for Mac, Office Mobile for iOS & Android, Skype for just about damn everything - and even contributions to Linux, being the largest kernel submitter for 2012 and most of 2013. All of that helps increase the adoption of those platforms. That is not the behavior of an illegal monopolist.

Communism has nothing to do with monopolies, absolutely nothing. Straw-man arguments are the first and last refuge of someone ill equipped to properly debate the topic at hand. If you believe Soviet era Russia only had one supplier for anything your knowledge of history is woefully small.

I know about computing history in the 1990s. Again, it is irrelevant to the Build announcements this week. The Microsoft of 2014 is behaving amazingly well; developing good products and embracing the idea of letting developers use their tools to deploy software on a multitude of platforms, not just those that Microsoft owns.

The only group of people that don't appear to appreciate what was announced at Build are people that just want to have a villain so they can act hurt and repressed. The only villains doing that to them are themselves.

Even if your claim of a desktop OS monopoly was true (it isn't), being a monopoly isn't in itself bad or illegal. Using your monopoly position to quash competition in or entering that space is where things go from good to bad. Microsoft's announcement today of opening .NET, providing VS to small teams gratis, and providing an Android emulator within VS (and standalone) all point to the face that Microsoft isn't attempting to stifle competition on desktop, mobile, or anywhere else. They're doing what they've always done best, providing development tools. They're providing tools you can use to deploy software just about anywhere.

Why? Why does it matter what CPU is in your phone if it runs the OS you want? I'm honestly curious. How does it materially affect you?

The two statements about the more expensive the wedding the greater the chance of divorce and that the larger the ceremony you have the less likely you are to end up divorced seem mutually exclusive to me.

Why not 5M or 10.15365M? What makes 8M a number that needs to be announced & celebrated?