I agree with you on the vision/marketing of MS. Horrible. Remember how big of a slash Spotify made? I believe most of those features have been available in the Zune subscription service for a long time now.

MS is still making money. If that stops, I'd expect them to get creative.

>Agreed it sounds like a great marketing idea.
>If you think further along it might make you wonder how easy it is
>to get metro style apps working across other OS devices -
>which was the old silverlight/mono idea,
>but possibly without the need of installing silverlight runtimes.
>
>Such an approach might give MS clouds/dev tools a much needed boost
>in the device reach area - but the silverlight pull back is not that easy to forget
>if you are only presented new guesses/visions.
>
>Some MS employees over here seem to be nearly as baffled as myself on
>MS vision and target (personal talks..) and I did not have the impression
>this was done because of gag orders issued to them.
>
>YMMV
>
>thomas
>>Kudos to Microsoft on this move. Brilliant.
>>
>>http://gizmodo.com/5863385/how-to-try-out-windows-phone-on-your-iphone-or-android