>>>>- Necessity to run on ARM processors - low cost, long battery life
>>- Quick boot and resume from sleep/standby - quick enough to answer an incoming call
>>- Needed touch interface rather than mouse
>>
>>Surely soluble? I've seen FP2.0 apps running on touchscreens and my SSD Windows notebook sleeps and wakes almost immediately...
>
>If it were soluble at the time, it would have been. There was no fast boot/reliable sleep mode version of Windows back when MS had to come up with a competitor to Android to try to stay relevant. Yes, you can now get both with Windows 8.1 or 10 and current SSD-based hardware but those were not mass consumer options a few years ago.
>
>>Seems to me that IT has turned into a hobby club for techos who like complicated options with lots of whirly bits. Why stick to the proven model when you can do away with the Start menu or come up with a really cool new OS to your own design? KISS is boring compared to a whiteboard covered in brainstormed arrows or a room full of spinning parts. IT's not alone: BMW did it as well with its more complicated engines, but the benefit is reduction of maintenance schedules so you can drive 50,000 miles before a service and once you reach the workshop they plug in the car and read off the diagnoses. IOW there's a customer purpose and a KISS customer experience. When BMW did mess with (overcomplicate/defamiliarize) the stereo/aircond controls there was a customer backlash and if they'd decided to do away with the accelerator pedal because of a cool new idea, their brand would have tanked. So a whole new mobile OS? Customers showed how they valued that by staying away in droves.
>
>Microsoft has always been that way. They keep adding new features to Office that hardly anyone ever uses just so they have some checkboxes on comparative reviews that the free/libre competition doesn't yet fill in.
>
>I'm not sure I'd paint all of IT with that same brush.

Absolutely.
MS makes billions because it sells billions of this stuff.
They sell to some pretty sophisticated and demanding large corporate clients.
Those people put Office through its paces and then some.
Several years ago I worked on a project with some accountants from a big 8 (there were 8 then) firm and those people did things with Excel that I'd never even thought of.
If you haven't used a late version of Word, give it a try. It's a pretty snazzy desktop publishing tool.


On the other hand, I'm happy to see that MS is drawing a line with .NET 2015 and Windows 10. These constant upgrades and related learning curves are a real pain.