What about playing encrypted BRDs? :(

Wow if that's how you use QED or define "usefulness" then you should probably re-do highschool maths and english.

You may want to read that in more detail, also the AC above you should read this too.

TPM is required if boot device encryption is used and supported by the UEFI bootloader.
TPM is also required if the device supports ConnectedStandby (a funny new power management method that makes Windows devices behave like mobile phones with a sleep button that keeps it connected in the background but mostly powered down).

It is not a requirement of Windows 8.1 generically.

That being said:
Most vendors will ship all but their cheapest machines with TPM chips.
Most vendors of convertible tablets are supporting connected standby and thus have to ship with TPM chips.
All of Microsoft's reference machines ship with TPM and even better ship with bitlocker enabled on the system drive out of the box, and setting it up with a boot password is trivial 3 button presses in the Bitlocker Drive Encryption tool in the control panel.

TPM is here to stay and it's only being value engineered out on the cheapest and nastiest of devices.

Because the OS provides only a very limited subset of functionality which most vendors include in their equipment.

Driver updates would require working with the OS vendor and Windows Update (actually this is one part I wish would happen).
Display management is frankly poor on the OS. Windows does not provide for strange resolutions, forced outputs, separate colour controls for hardware overlays, or any 3D settings at all.
Power Controls is another thing where every vendor has their own idea of how to improve power consumption. The OS has no native understanding of dynamic brightness adjustment, and selecting which devices can go to sleep is a windows 2000 era dig through the device manager which no users would undertake.

Basically they write the tools because they have to.

Conversely I bought guitar hero and 2 guitars. I only had to put in 10 minutes setting up the profile but that was all it took to start two of us playing pop songs and sounding good in the process. Not to mention the competition kept things very fun and entertaining and we didn't annoy the neighbours with the "learner player" sound because even if you don't play the music doesn't sound bad.

As for your experience there's two likely explanations:
1. You are a musical freak of nature. Some people are. My girlfriend's sister is the type who can pick up an instrument and start sounding good within hours, but she's also at a musicians college and has been playing since she was big enough to hold an instrument.
2. You're no where near as good as you think you are and have a really over inflated opinion of what is considered "good". I know people who have been playing for years who don't sound good and would have trouble playing in a band or playing any song that isn't in an entry level learners book.

I would go recommending your path to anyone based on your experience. It's not the normal experience.

The alternative is asking for bankruptcy. Running communications lines is about the most expensive part of any telecommunications / power infrastructure. This is one area where doing the minimum possible is the only financially sound move.

People will complain no end about service interruptions, but will complain even more when their bills or taxes go up as a result of mitigating the disruptions.

I used http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-C... but it didn't work on my king ant's very old ProStar lappy's HDD. I had to use my friend's different brand and model device to work. He told me that not all of them will work too even on desktop HDDs. :(

I agree. He might be able to run it in a VM too. Why UPS though? :P

Funny you mention China, given that iOS has less than 20% of the market share there. Isn't 20% that magical evil number you quoted earlier? If I were targeting the Chinese it most definitely would not be iOS. And no the carrier and manufacturer's app stores are not the way you get apps in China. There are dedicated 3rd parties running app stores run by the likes of news companies and Tencent (the company behind the hugely successful QQ chat program). Also with 2 app stores you target some 90% of the Chinese user base crapping on anything you can achieve there in the iOS app store.

Ever wonder why there are so many more Chinese apps on Android? You should come over hear and live here for a while before being an expert on one of the largest countries with the largest Android market share.

And the Streisand effect at work.

Which makes no difference to 99.99% of software vendors out there. Most 32bit programs run just fine on a 64bit platform. You make it sound like it's a real hard piece of work maintaining support for multiple platforms. That may be true only if your application has a specific need to run in 64bit.

That depends entirely on it's use. As a tool to confirm the identify of communication with other people, the number of other people using it is most definitely directly related to its usefulness. Likewise this. A cryptographically secure way of authenticating the sender of a message would be very useful, more so a way of encrypting it in transit.... if the sender used a compatible standard to do it.

Tell it to the people who upgraded to Gnome 3

So the flat style makes it harder to click on?