I am going to ignore most of this because it's just more of the same (even if a fair amount is true) - it's fashionable to dog on ms right now. But declaring t

I am going to ignore most of this because it's just more of the same (even if a fair amount is true) - it's fashionable to dog on ms right now. But declaring that using Windows RT (and by extension the full NT kernel) as a basis for their tablet line was a fatal flaw ignores a whole raft of significant potential benefits to across their whole product line. I was surprised when I found out that they were doing a port for their tablet instead of basing it on their mobile code base, but once they announced they were going to be using mainline nt on the phone too it all clicked. Let's get real: The core NT kernel team is the unheralded jewel of microsoft. They put together a good base when their legacy16/32 base of 95/98 was clearly close to technical self destruction. In 10 years Windows stability on the desktop went from borderline worst to best in class by a notable margin. And while few people realize it, they have been consistently the first major player with modern security features and systems like nx, boot chain validation, driver signing requirements, default auto software upgrades, heavily improved os/browser sandboxing, document version based backups, 1st party FDE, and on and on. Note I'm taking the NT kernel team. Not microsoft as a business, app developer, marketer, pariah. I have code in the linux kernel, am typing on os x and goog/aapl make my gadgets. All I know is if I saw tablets/phones as an existential threat to my business and my earlier efforts had clear technical problems, I'd want to put my best team thats proven they can evolve on it. It's a perfect time - phones are shipping 4 cores and 2 gigs, meanwhile my server 2012 domain controller has been running great with 2 vcpus and uses on average 700mb. At the same time laptops and servers are making a huge push into super low power operation. This requires more than just hardware changes - the mobile os's work hard on freezing workloads that aren't actively being used and it makes a big difference. Traditional desktop OS's are super bad at this because of history and existing applications, but future laptops and datacenters are destined for similar techniques. Even if WinRT dies horribly, the laptops people buy in a few years will be benefiting from microsoft's shared learning there. And of course, maybe that full windows laptop they buy won't be running on an x86 cpu. I'm not rushing out to buy a surface or lumia it's true, but they certainly have piqued my interest and in my opinion they are currently doing the best technical/product/design work that they've done since... pretty much ever.