Completely rubbish article. His analysis is flawed left right and centre. Not that I'm probably much better but heres my take on his points:

1) The Zune failed because Apple controlled the price of hardware. A Zune was more expensive than an iPod and lacked the years of advertising and brand building behind it.

2) The Metro doesn't fail as a phone operating system. Its a lot nicer I'v found than many others. One major reason it didn't sell was it wasn't shipped to stores. Go try buying one, clerks will try and sell you anything but one. Why... I dunno... probably kick backs.

Personally I went into a store and said I needed one for developing, the guy spent 10 minutes refusing to sell me one and trying to talk me in to an android. I've heard this identical story from several other developers I know as well, its not isolated.

Another point is MS tried to play hardball with carriers like Apple did and got smacked around. With Android carriers have complete control, they roll there own versions, my dad has an android device which is almost unusable due to the carrier OS on it. They have locked it down, and whats worse if he mucks with it voids the warranty, looses help support. Not good for a 60 year old mechanic.

Chances are carriers decided to teach MS a lesson, MS came in guns blazing only to find I bet the resistance they have met has been way more than they expected. And Im sure carriers know all too well the history of MS and have deliberately knee capped them from trying to dominate the phone markets.

3) "Microsoft is being run by HP" and what does that mean? I assume he means run by people without foresight, making bad business decisions. But arguable HP have a good business plan which involves making a lot more more off software than hardware. HP is a hardware company making a transition to software.. its nothing like MS. MS is innovating on quite an unusaual scale, its nothing like HP ATM.

4) Lessons unlearned from vista. Please making an argument that incremental change is plain idiotic. Without incremental change nothing improves. Innovation is a process of failing till you get it right. Sure Vista had huge problems, but if anyone hasn't noticed already every second version of windows sucks. They innovate with one release then perfect with the next. Which is a bad Sign for Win 8 as its an innovate release, Win 9 will be the king maker or breaker.

5) "That’s an alcoholic level of denial" No there isn't, Longhorn was the catastrophe not Vista, Vista was the recovery. And it showed that it was rushed out the door, but it wasn't an epic failure, it sold perfectly well like windows always does. And By SP 2 there wasn't anything wrong with it at all. Denying Longhorn is an alcoholic level of denial.

6) "there’s already an ARM tablet that runs Windows" really.. saying building for arm is a mistake... not sure I can even be bothered going into this. The writer blames MS for being short sight, then says this...

7) "A key reason why lots of PC users have switched to Macs since 2006 is that they could access the native functionality of Windows" sure.. I'd also say 1/3 drop in price helped more than being able to move your apps. But I guess there where some who where interested in running Windows apps on a Mac. Another key reason is the bad press from Vista.

8) "Tablet troll fight: Android vs Windows" this entire area neglects the entire patent and copyright war going on. Is ignoring the head start Apple has. And is focusing on 'fan boy' aspects... weakest part of the whole article, Im not even sure he had a point, just some loosely related comments.

9) "PC market is decline" Wasn't there an article recently from PC World or some similar out fit that totally dismissed this? pointed out numbers are still extremely strong, desktop computing is going anywhere? An article which had industry figures and not just someone thinks is happening from there arm chair. From memory what is happening is desktop are being replaced with laptops and people are buying portable devices along side there primary device (laptop/desktop).

Overall I think he's right Win 8 won't matter as its going to be a cluster f/ck. But its going to be a fun ride for me. I've already written 3 apps for the Win 8 store, got 3 more sketches o my wall.

MS will continue because MS has the contracts, its the same reason Vista sold so well, its going to be on every machine whether you want it or not.