>>Calling anything the desktop of the future is a bit premature, I think.
Microsoft and Google began issuing "desktop of the future" statements quite a while ago. This stuff is moving FAST.
>>The current chaos and jockeying in the mobile world has echoes of the micro computer world (Remember the Commodore and the S100 bus?) before the IBM PC came along in 1982 and settled all the arguments.
>>After one glance at it, we all generally agreed that a new standard had arrrived and got busy figuring out how to make money with it.
OK, but IBM's competitors were comparatively weak with less credible support/education channels and lower build standards. That's not what MS is facing.
>>I don't see anything similar yet in the mobile world but I'm sure it will arrive or emerge.
Actually you could reasonably argue that Android is the mobile version of the PC. Certainly that's what activation counts suggest.
>>Meanwhile, healthy debate and analysis of the would-be winners is productive and useful, but I wouldn't bet my retirement on the short trade of MS.
Agreed- mobile may be big but there will be plenty of desktop sales beyond 2015 as well as servers, databases, etc etc.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
