Comment Re:Getting nostalgic... (Score 4, Insightful) 179
Yeah, it's interesting isn't it. I think it's because it's become clear that the kind of big-ticket software that Microsoft has built itself on just isn't where the real money's going to be in a few years. It's reached a peak complexity-wise, features-wise, and usefulness-wise. Instead, collaborative service software (i.e. Google) will be the way a lot of businesses go, and consumers will go with small, cheap, and cheerful (i.e. the Apple App Store), and social network type stuff (Facebook and its successors). Portability is where it's at, and Microsoft has missed so many beats it can't catch up, especially because it means essentially cannibalising they big-ticket software business.
I think you're spot on in your analysis of where the consumer market is heading but when it comes to the business side of things office life is still dominated by standard desktop / laptop computing using big ticket software for most workers. I don't come across many businesses in my line of work where users don't have a desktop or laptop running Windows and Office in addition to one or more big ticket industry specific software applications with the one large noticable exception being the health-care industry where more and more providers are moving to tablets, which for doctors and nurses who aren't stationary makes perfect sense.