I don;t feel that this is true at all. Few other companies can produce consumer loyalty as those who provide an O/S with which you operate a machine. One of those other industries is automobiles. I really never got it but my father, brother, uncles and cousins were all 'loyalists' to particular auto brands. None of them liked Ford and would trash Ford products as though one of their vehicles ran over grandma. Since Ford did not take any money from the auto bailout in 2009(?) guess who's family is filled with Ford's? - and they rave about how awesome they are.
Point is these are cyclical things. MS will have it's time in the sun again as long as operating systems are a thing. The thing that should scare people is that companies have 'institutional memory'. I feel like Apple, having been so close to closing down in the late 90's could get to that place again and feel like it's not a big deal cause they have been in that spot before. Meaning no one freaks out until it's too late.
MS really bit it when they missed the mobile and tablet markets. And both times can be attributed to bad leadership by Ballmer. When the Board let him go, MS still had great financials but their future was uncertain because they were not even competing with Apple and Google (In a realistic way). Point is MS doesn't wait until a the money dries up to try and right the ship.
Wouldn't universal store across devices count? I mean it doesn't matter if you sell X amount of phones or Xboxes or Desktops, you just need the # of devices that have access to the store to give someone a reason to develop for it. I don;t see anyone moving in that direction at all....
Is anyone here aware of Hololens? I am not understanding why people are claiming ms is missing out on the vr revolution, unless you consider AR to be so wildly different that it doesn't qualify as similar?
Funny, my wife and I had a 2014 Macbook Pro with retina display and the backlight on the screen went out. We also have a SurfacePro 3 and have had no issues whatsoever. We brought the Macbook to the apple-store (with extended warranty) and they initially tried to tell me that screens were not covered (as they are almost always broken due to accidental damage). I had to come back with a flashlight and show them that you can still see the image, it's just the back light went out and you cant really break just the back light.
I was really starting to move away from Apple anyway but this really sealed the deal for me. However, I know that my experience is anecdotal, and it's plural is not data so take my experience for what it's worth.....