Re: If we can cut through the fanboy drivel from both sides briefly....
Ian Watkinson: "So MS can definitely do consumer devices."
Like Samsung, MS can put together the same form factor. But fundamentally their DNA has absorbed IBM - they make machines to make you do the work for a hierarchy, feeding information into the system. You are not in charge. MS and IBM are on the side of managers. That is not for consumers.
It is the same way MS copied Macintosh - Windows has always been an ersatz copy of Macintosh. Windows - and thus surface - still has horrors like physical drive mapping C:, D:, etc. User has to think about physical configuration of computer. Then three letter dot extension file types - ugh metadata in a filename to tell computer how to handle file other than logical naming which tells user what file is.
But even files are a low-level 'how the computer works' type consideration, exposing memory hierarchy. Apple are subtly moving away from that, particularly in iOS. That is Apple directly designs devices so you can do the work you want to do, not the work to make the device work, or work that others want you to do.
Microsoft is just pretending to do consumer.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
