I'm curious to hear your explanation of why the iPhone 4 can't run Siri in iOS5 and how is that different from the Lumia 900 getting the most obvious new feature from WP 8 (the new Start Screen) but not the other - mainly hardware dependent - features?

Sounds like you haven't been paying attention to the obvious iOSification of OS X.

The Start screen will not take up both monitors, it will take up one at most. I've used multiple monitors for at least 10 years (I'm a developer FWIW) and nomally my "off" monitor - which is normally a lower resolution than my main one - is running an app full screen like a web browser or OneNote. In using Windows 8 and Metro I haven't noticed much of a difference in practice but obviously YMMV. Even still, you can have two apps - including a desktop app - running on the Metro screen. It has quirks but I have found it far from frustrating.

Certainly more accountability in the form of being on the hook to the sponsor and compliance authorities if things go to hell. But with great grant money comes great independence.

I'm confused about #3. The Win8 Start screen displays way more apps than the Win7 Start menu. If anything, the Win8 screen greatly increases the chances of the app you want being right there and not requiring a click of All Programs so I don't see how it is any less efficient. From what I have seen, the only advantage the Start menu has over the Start screen is easier location of recently installed applications.

Though I have to also say that in Win7 (and XP and Vista) I start programs either from a taskbar shortcut or by using Window-R to bring up the "Run" dialog which is analagous to the Quake console. Fortunately I can do the same thing in Win8.

On number 1 I haven't had a remote desktop session where my Windows key isn't forwarded in a long time. I think the newer rdp clients - which I'm sure Windows 8 ships with - have that problem licked.

A shortcut on the taskbar or desktop should take care of number 2.

I'm not saying there has been no cool stuff, I'm just saying that these OSes are just making relatively small enhancements compared to what was happening between releases during the 90s. That, I believe, makes the fundamental impetus to upgrade much less urgent.

I am a Mac user, the only true technical reason to upgrade the Mac OS since 2000 or so was when they switched to the x86 platform. They incentivize upgrades more by by outright dropping support for old hardware than the relatively minor features they add in what basically amounts to a yearly service pack. I just upgraded to Mountain Lion for the hell of it and I wouldn't know I had upgraded if I didn't know what to look for.

The majority of what you listed in OS X has been implemented in some fashion in Windows (task bar upgrades, task switcher upgrades, voice dictation), maybe not as an OS release but as a free download (e.g. Skydrive / live as opposed to iCloud).

Also, as far as I can tell, there was not much to "fix" in Vista. Most of Vista's problems were due to terrible drivers which improved over time. Outside of that, the only other real issue I remember was UAC so I doubt much time was spent on that.

As for Windows 98 vs XP, it's like I said. Windows XP was 100x more stable than Windows 98 because it ran on the NT kernel and businesses knew there were huge productivity incentives to upgrade - similar to the OS9 vs OS X update. Neither OS has seen an update that had near the quality impact since.

Finally, I'm on Windows 8 now and I have to disagree about Metro. I don't think it's anything revolutionary but it adds much more value than it takes away. Exponentially more useful than half-hearted stuff like Launchpad.

Before January of this year my last two laptops were tablets and they were by no means slow compared to full sized laptops. My last one (a Lenovo x220t) had a dual-core i7 processor and ran every bit as fast as a desktop.

The thing is that the Windows tablets were never designed to be full on touch - or even pen - driven devices. You could exclusively use the pen if you wanted, but the real utility is in using the pen digitizer with MS Office. Once you start using it, that one feature justifies the added cost of the device. It's a completely different product from the iPad aimed at a completely different market.

Also, I'm typing this on a Windows 8 machine and I have no problem navigating the Metro Interface with a keyboard and mouse. If you've used Windows in the past, it's pretty easy to get used to.

I don't think you can adequately compare looking back 10 years ago to looking back now. Windows got pretty much everything it needed in February of 1999 with Windows 2000. However, Windows 2000 did not get a consumer release until they added 3 features and called it Windows XP. After that, there haven't been any huge functionality holes in Windows from a general consumer standpoint since the critical XP SP2 update. As best as I can tell, that pretty much puts it in similar territory as OS X over the last decade. In 2002 there were still a ton of computers running Windows 95/98 and there were massive reasons to upgrade from those to XP.

Having said that, I am pretty sure that Windows 7 sales numbers have eclipsed XP. This is probably because the size of the PC market has expanded since XP was in vogue, but chances are that the majority of those XP licenses will at least turn into Windows 7 licenses.

I think you may be overstating things a bit without knowing exactly what the WP 7.8 update will contain.

For apps that aren't 3D games, VOIP, or begging for voice integration - a number I would assume to be the overwhelming majority - the new APIs won't probably won't matter too much and I think it's safe to assume most developers - early on at least - would just target 7.5 since those apps would have the broadest potential customer base and work fine on both versions.

Also, I don't think any level of competition will cause Apple to lower pricing for its leading devices. They are a boutique brand with tons of lock-in. If you want a break it's going to come in the form of discounting old hardware (e.g. keeping the iPhone 4 and 2nd-Gen iPad on the market). Samsung is the only other company outside of Apple making money selling smartphone so I have a good idea of how they might answer the question of whether their high end push is the right way.

I don't disagree with your broader point, but TurboTax Online is pretty freaking sweet. It will get you waaaay beyond 1040EZ.

I don't know that there is anything you can do on a live tile that you can't do on a widget.The live tiles just take up less space and therefore you can fit one of them on one page. Also, the tiles are multifunctional. For example, a tile for a sub-group of contacts will cycle through a list of contact photos but if a contact on that list posts a Facebook status update the tile will show you the update (or at least as much as it can fit in the box. If you miss a call from a person in the group the same tile will tell you that you missed a call. If multiple things (e.g. missed call, text message, tweet) happen it will tell you how many alerts are awaiting you. This is incredibly useful.

The tiles can actually be considerably more sleek than what you see on Android or iOS. The monochrome tiles are basically the Microsoft delivered ones but most others are very colorful and slick. The photo album tile will cycle through animations of random photos in your album and the music+videos tile shows you pictures of the band you're listening to. Mostly they emphasize usability e.g. you can pin Foursquare tiles of your favorite locations, open table reservations, airline reservations and things like that. Is this world changing? No. Is it plain and old-fashioned? I would disagree but, let's be honest, by nature much of this is subjective and further colored by people's brand loyalties and resistance to change.

It's actually a fucking computer with a phone app and transceiver.

The first one that saw the phone maybe? The strengths of WP7 are pretty cut and dried. If it's repeated verbatim a lot then there must be something to it. Especially since I wrote that totally off the top of my head.