The decline of the PC as a platform are greatly exaggerated. The only thing that happens is that upgrade cycles have gotten longer because PCs in use are good e

The decline of the PC as a platform are greatly exaggerated. The only thing that happens is that upgrade cycles have gotten longer because PCs in use are good enough, the operating systems are good enough as well, so people don't feel the need to buy new ones every one or two years. I've got a 4-year old laptop. I only had to replace its battery, still works fine. Meanwhile I've got an iPad and an Android tablet (received as a gift) and both are gathering dust. What do you know, tablets are declining - too big to fit in your pocket, too small to do anything productive. If anything, Microsoft was hurt to get on this bandwagon in the first place. I guess they had to, too bad that they followed the Windows/iOS model, instead of following the Android one. If they would have released Windows Phone as an open-source platform, maybe they would've had a chance. But I digress - there's a lot of opportunity to improve desktop operating systems. Too bad that Microsoft decided to release a desktop / tablet hybrid. What a dumb idea that was. > For Microsoft, it's less bad if everyone switches to an uncontrolled platform than if they switch to a platform locked in by a competitor. Exactly, these companies want openness only as long as they are the underdogs. Check out what happens with Google - broken IMAP in Gmail, broken CalDav in Calendar, dropped Exchange support, dropped XMMP support in Hangouts, PNaCL as their own version of ActiveX, Drive still does not have a Linux client, etc... > [Apple has] done fairly well at killing off Flash, and Silverlight never stood a chance in this environment Well, I'm actually glad that they did that, because it encouraged open standards to emerge. It would have never happened if Flash survived the mobile world. No, my pet peeve with Apple is that their App Store policy prevents Firefox from happening on iOS. And that's not what I consider a platform I can build on or an operating system I can use.