devindra

The company as it is may get shut down, but with the leftover cash it could easily rebrand under another name and a new product.

Well they still have two OS versions (although Windows Phone 8 now shares the Win 8 kernel). The real question is if Microsoft's long bet on tablets and touchscreen PCs being the future of desktops is a good one. For once, I think Microsoft is aiming big with its OS, and that's something to be admired. It's going to piss of techies, but it has a real shot at making tablets and hybrid PCs more useful for everyone else.

Also, it seems pretty clear to me that Win 7 is going to stick around for a long time, perhaps even longer than XP. That'll likely be the go-to OS for techies and people building desktops down the line.

It certainly matters to geeks like us, but I also take a certain amount of comfort in knowing normal users are looking at something great, even if they don't quite understand why it's good. Certainly better than pushing junk on ignorant consumers. I'm not an Apple fanboy, but I can't think of too many other companies that would go to these lengths for a consumer product--

A miracle? :P Best you can hope for is finding a copy of the old Siri app

News flash, journalism involves following up on stories ;)

Google Music doesn't currently let you stream music that you don't already own, and it's also not tied to any particular music store. I think they're referring to Google launching a legit streaming service together with the music labels in a few months.

Author of the post here. Where exactly did you hear that the WSJ app shares more data than the others? The WSJ included their own app in the study, and according to them they only use the UDID internally to count users (http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk-mobile/2010/12/17/wall-street-journ...). Now I realize that data isn't exactly trustworthy since they're talking about their own app, but I've yet to see anything that disproves it yet.

Honestly, it seems like the desktop is more in danger of dying these days. Laptops have been far more compelling to average users for some time, especially with the rise of netbooks, and the increasing proliferation of cheap full-sized laptops. It's hard to even recommend desktops to users unless they're heavy gamers or dealing with hardcore media editing.