I went to college and graduated with around $40k in debt. I spent the next few years eliminating that debt while also buying a house and starting to pay off the loan. My degree had no relevance at all to my career which was launched by the part time job I had to pay living costs while studying.

Through most of my career (I'm 36 now) I have earned enough to live comfortably and invest wisely. My college degree has been useful to convince employers that I have the necessary thinking skills to perform my white collar job but I see as many people in my profession doing as well (or better) than me with either no degree or a degree that they picked up in their 30s or 40s. I'm very glad I completed my degree, it taught me how to think critically and write cohesively. When I'm recruiting people for my team I look for these abilities and have found that writing ability is a scare commodity.

These days I have small children and earn enough for my wife to comfortably be a stay at home mom. I also have enough money available through my investments (mainly in property) to retire at age 45 on a modest but comfortable income. I have this because I sat down when I was 20 and calculated how much equity I would need to retire at 45 and made a twenty five year plan to reach it. I bought my first rental property in 1997 and we have picked another up every year or two since then, all funded out of our modest disposable income. We live fairly simply but still manage to afford great holidays and lots of gadgets to play with. My achievement is not unique, I know plenty of plumbers, builders, civil servants, farmers and IT guys in more or less the same position as me. The one thing we have in common is a plan and a desire to live well within our means.

I have an iPhone 4. Up until upgrading to iOS 6.0 I had to restart it every time I wanted to use it to set up a personal hotspot. I could get one connection out of it - but if I turned off the hotspot feature and then it would need rebooting before it turning on the hotspot feature would work again. Using airplane mode didn't reset the problem - it was a full turn it off and then wait a couple of minutes for the phone to boot fix. All of this mysteriously disappeared when I upgraded to iOS 6.0. Now I'm fine (unless I need a map).

All devices have problems - they are all made for a price.

In my current public sector employer the trend is to move people to smaller and smaller desks, or a hot desking set up. Large monitors and dual monitor setups cost too much in office accommodation. We expect most of our office workers to be on laptops or single 19'' monitors by 2016. Cram em in and have them use one app at a time is the flavor of the day.

Apple changed the mobile phone market. It took four years for the other phone makers to really catch up with Apple. It is only now that the Android offerings (particularly the Nexus 4 and SIII) have overtaken the iPhone 5, and even this is a cause of much debate and blood feuds. Nokia didn't survive the transition and has one last shot with its Windows Phone 8 stuff.

Apple will be the next Nokia in a few years.

Commuting on the train everyday in Wellington, New Zealand I see as many Android phones as I do iPhones. I see a lot more android tablets than I do iPads.

Maybe NZ'ers are more price sensitive than your metro users?

So Apple have from now until their iPhone and iPad sales have the same shape as their iPod sales to bring the "next big thing" to market. The longer this takes the harder the market will look at their valuation. The value won't survive Apple only releasing iterations of iPads and iPhone every year.

Apple relies on being able to create products which are perceived as providing better functionality or a higher quality product. The iPod and the iPhone were both considered by the majority of consumers as being best in class - their ease of use made it worth paying the extra cost over the competitors. Enough people bought them that they became the must have items of their time. Now that Android has caught up with iOS Apple will need to find another way to make the cost of an iPhone worthwhile or see their market disappear to the high end Android (and possibly Windows Phone 8) devices like the SIII (or perhaps the HTC 8X). Its hard to see Apple continuing to dominate the smartphone and tablet markets unless they are able to keep innovating. Slightly better iPads and iPhone isn't going to do it and I don't see them out innovating Google on the software or services side.

Already its hard to justify the extra cost of an iPad mini against the Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire HD. Yes lots of reviews say the build of the iPad Mini is better but is this really worth the extra cost? I can almost buy two 32gb Nexus 7 3G tablets for the price of one 32gb 3g iPad Mini. When the value for the consumer has almost equalized Apple's market will vanish. Likewise there seem to be a fair number of people who are now saying they will switch from the iPhone for their next upgrade.

I, a random person on the internet, give them 24 months. My guess is that their share of the smartphone market profits in Nov 2016 will be half of what it is today.

With the greatest respect ... I don't think you are the kind of user Microsoft thinks of in design.

The typical users in my office do one thing at once in maximized windows. Look at outlook, now facebook, now type in word, now facebook, now type in word, now facebook, now outlook, now facebook .....

Each time they jump from full screen app to full screen app

... and MS needed a full screen offering to compete with Apple and its full screen Apps in Lion and Mountain Lion.

The logic must be:
typical user == someone on a laptop or 15 - 21 inch monitor
typical user of the near future == someone on a tablet or 15 - 21 inch monitor
Let's give these people full screen apps.

Power user = someone on a laptop or bigger monitor
We'll give them the desktop as another option.

If the CloverTrail Atom based machines can deliver 10 hour battery life as claimed then Windows RT will be dead. There will be no reason to a cut down version of windows (WinRT) when you can buy a tablet to run windows 8 with full backward compatibility for the same price and performance. A WinRt tablet doesn't seem like a good buy to me - I'll take the bet that they will be in the discount bins in six months time.

I have been using Windows 8 every day for the last few months on a Samsung Series 7 Slate. Its great for the single use that I have for the slate - taking notes and looking up reference material.

I have tried Windows 8 on the desktop and gone back to Windows 7 - the start menu just works better for a keyboard and mouse

Microsoft are caught here aren't they - they need the Surface to succeed for people to say Windows 8 hasn't flopped but at the same time they probably don't want to take too many sales away from the OEMs and hardware partners.

I'm not a shill I just bothered to finally set up an account after years of reading slashdot. My main point was that Microsoft had to create the Windows 8 interface in order to compete with Apple and Google - they needed something that would get them into the tablet space so that people would start using their stack of services. If the Windows tablet looked just like another iOS knock off most people would just say ... meh. With Win 8 they at least have something that people will say ... "oh shiny, maybe I should give this a go". I think this is that same as Amazon needing to skin Android for the Kindle Fire - it creates a necessary point of differentiation.

I couldn't care less if people buy stuff from Microsoft, in fact I have a hard time understanding why they would when they can get the same basic functionality for free from Google

But isn't the point that Windows 8 is to force change. Most of the new Windows 8 tablets and PCs come with touch. The interface Windows 8 is built for and seems to work fairly well on (at least as well as Android or iOS). I see no sign that Microsoft ever hoped we will also use Windows 8 on equipment released before October this year.

I don't really understand why there is so much hatred of the Windows 8 interface. Why not just continue using Windows 7? Consumers have shown they are willing to learn new ways of doing things from their adoption rate of iPads and Android devices - the learning curve from a Windows PC to an iPad is steep, but made much easier because the usability of the iPad is very strong. There is little reason to think consumers won't also be willing to learn the Windows 8 metro way of doing things if they have a reason to.

Microsoft was forced to innovate by Google and Apple. Google and Apple have been going head to head for years. The competitive pressure has reached a point where both services offer fully integrated service offerings. You can use Google services for your whole digital life - office, media, maps and communications. These services are available on any Google branded device - phones, tablets and PCs. Google makes their money on you as a product for their advertisers. You can use Apple services for your whole digital life - office, media, maps and communications. These services are consumable on any Apple branded device - iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Apple makes their money from the devices you use (not on you as an advertising product).

Up until this you couldn't use Microsoft for your whole digital life. Microsoft's enterprise lock-in practices made it very hard to use office on a phone or a tablet, and Microsoft's media services were limited to the console market. Microsoft milked this for as long as they could and then realized they had to offer a full suite of services or risk loosing everything to Google or Apple. In doing this they also probably realized they were leaving a lot of profit on the table. Now you can also use Microsoft for your whole digital life and consume the services on a Windows 8 phone, tablet or PC. This puts Microsoft back in the game in a big way. They are now back as a realistic competitor to Google and Apple whereas 12 months ago you could have more or less ignored them.

They have also used their late entry to try to leapfrog over the Google and Apple offerings. They've done this in a compelling way and we will know in the next 6 months if they have succeeded. They have huge momentum with the purchase and integration of Skype and the 400 million Windows 8 PCs which will be sold in the next 12 month. Even with this they had no option but to build the Surface because they needed a tablet to compete with Google and Apple. Without a tablet there is no incentive for consumers to switch their digital service stack away from the other big two.