Well, Windows 9 seems to officially finally do what 8 should've done from the beginning.

At least Vista was feature-complete, instead of a half-assed attempt that everyone realized needed more polish ASAP.

It doesn't make *me* fear. I know better.

It does scare other people away from the platform, which is bad for everyone (except Apple and Google).

For what it's worth, other than typical mobile browser issues, IE on Windows Phone 8.1 (and 8 to a lesser extent) works fine with every site I've tried.

Who said anything about holding stock back?

It's as simple as launching before there's enough stock for a reasonable launch. Let's not forget some suppliers where complaining of a very late design change to the screen.

And they do need the hype - they have a large portion of customers who are more likely to be repeat customers if they're gently pushed to upgrade instead of waiting.

Your doubts have no substance. The questions you asked have many possible answers - both in favor and against an artificial scarcity.

Seems to work fine. Default is the mobile site, desktop site puts me back on the mobile site when clicking "details", but works fine nonetheless.

So, why have I, in real-world usage, never encountered this mythical memory shortage?

That desk must wreak havoc on computer mice...

"It works"? Not if you want to make phone calls.

I only have trouble talking with two kinds of people on the phone: iPhone owners and owners of dumbphones that were dropped one too many times.

It's easy to sell out the initial batch if it contains only a relative handful of units. I highly doubt it's not planned to some extent.

Claiming "there weren't any" amounts to the spreading of FUD.

FUD much?

All versions of Windows are now based on Windows NT. That's why WP7 users didn't get an update to WP8 - every single driver would've needed a rewrite.

I wouldn't call it dumb - the tiny gains related to a custom kernel are far outweighed by the many advantages of commonality, like easy hardware support (one driver is enough for all Windows devices) and easy API portability.

If the judges are as close to corrupt as legally possible, of course most cases aren't going to get far.

That's the problem. Judges won't.

This is happening in small towns that see small highway streatches as a way of earning easy cash - with judges that at best don't give a damn or at worst were hired (yes, hired) to make the money stay where it is as much as possible.

The kernel IS unified. They're literally using the same kernel across all devices since Windows 8 and equivalents. APIs are already optionally unified.

The real last step is getting the WinRT APIs and environments up to snuff so they can be seamlessly used alongside Win32 applications on the desktop. That and providing incentives for applications to be written to universal standards, instead of just for tablet or phone (or desktop, once store apps become viable on the desktop).