>>James is right, you're comparing apples to oranges. The Microsoft customer we are addressing are developers, someone who has invested a considerable sum into a piece of software, an asset that then has considerable value. When MS changes course the value of that asset is affected,sometimes tremendously and that customer is hurt. OTOH a piece of hardware like video player, or a game console has no comparable value to a customer, nothing anywhere near what a software application does to a developer or company who "rolls their own". Furthermore, there is little expense required to "retrain" for another video player, automobile, and so forth.
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>>You mention IBM, a wise company, on whose systems you can still run applications written in '74 COBOL, PL/1, RPG-II, BAL, and more, languages dating back decades. This protects the investment their customers have in their software. MS could learn something from IBM.
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>And don't think I don't value that. I am still running applications written in all those languages and things are swell. About the only problem I am having is it keeps getting harder finding good suppliers of CRT monitors, tape drives, and punch cards.
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>(KIDDING!!!)

I miss the old 8" floppy disks, since I have a separate temperature regulated room to store them for backup. Now what shall I do with this room? The shrinking size of new equipment leaves huge empty space which collects a lot of dust, who's going to clean it all up? How come this negative side of the technological evolution is never discussed? Instead this subject is silenced to death. Or maybe it's wiped under the carpets together with all the dust mentioned?

Let's bring this problem up to the surface where it belongs. Let's arrange protest marches demanding bigger products to suit the ever increasing sizes of our fingers and other body parts.