Well written, succint, full of excitement and realisic, all wrapped up in a neat package.  Bravo!

you have no clue about the difference between ARM and x86 - do you? There can be x86 based mobile platforms. Please do your research before writing a "technical" article

Finally ms decided that Windows Applications will not run on windows 8 tablets !!! cause they're too noobs to do something like that ! So what apps will run on windows 8 tablets ? possible crappy html5 metro apps. Cheers !! Microsoft is worthless , no innovation at all but they're lucky apple continues its false strategy !! But don't worry my friends you can always install linux !

You nailed it. There is a school of thought that says the future is web apps or virtual machines in the cloud. But my bet this is merely the old mainframe/vt100 or Clint servers but on very long wires. Got replaced by desktop or local computing, suspect this will play out again with "windows apps". There are cases where hybrid delivers terrific benefits, e.g., Siri, and things like this are just beginning to emerge in the market.

My only quibble: let us never call anything "Windows Mobile" again. Ever.

Are they just too lazy to rewrite Office in WinRT? Why do they themselves not believe in it? If you are going to go in for a new API go into it with gusto! They don't seem to have a single app that they have written for this API that they are proud of.

Windows is the old way of doing things - just like the hardware guys before them. Lock in your customers and control them every inch of the way. Actually Apple does the same and now that their muse has gone, I see trouble ahead in Cupertino. Mindless Corporate MS-only laziness aside, people just don't want to be locked in any more. Microsoft can't see it because every fibre of their being says - CONTROL the customer and NEVER trust them - Stick not Carrot. To survive they need to change their approach to their customer base more radically than I think them capable of. If they remove backward compatibility, there goes their biggest Stick and the only reason people stay with them.

I'll make a mental note not to buy any tablets that run on ARM processors then.

There's this sense out there that companies like Microsoft, who are pioneers themselves, no longer matter. It's similar to one getting older and then finding that the young think them merely a meal ticket. Not me bradda! The Tablet market is considerably smaller than the PC, Laptop, and Mobile phone markets. Thinking there is no room for other players like Microsoft is rather foolish. Good article.

"you’ll able to target hundreds of millions of Windows machines of all form factors" Depending on the level of compatability, the above statement is simply not true. Seems like Windows 8 is starting from scratch.

[...] There is room in the tablet market for Microsoft ($MSFT).  (Pando Daily) [...]

I should point out that not all tablets will be under this restriction. Only ARM tablets will be. I am currently running the fantastic quad-core i5 Samsun Series 7 Slate, and it runs both old apps and new apps just fine. And by the way, the Windows Store won't just be on Tablets, but on every Windows 8 machine. So the store itself will "take off" whether the Tablet devices succeed or not. And by the way, the word Windows Mobile should be stricken from everyone's vocabulary forever. part of the reason that Windows Phone 7 is not selling well is because 3rd party carrier affiliates think it is still Windows Mobile, and not something radically different. I fact, all of your naming ides are pretty terrible. I think we'll just stick to calling it Windows 8, thanks.

"Here’s a suggestion, for free. Let’s refer to Windows on ARM as Windows Mobile" Here's another suggestion for Microsoft, also free: Do not even consider calling it Windows Mobile. People usually hear the words 'Windows Mobile' and snigger. They've used that name before, remember, on software that was not particularly loved by anybody. If anything, they should call it Windows Touch vs Windows for PC. That'd be my choice (admittedly after only 30 seconds or so of thought).

I had hoped they would finally kill that Kindernet Exploder pain-in-the-neck. And still supporting old apps plus Metro? That will make it even more of a a hogwash bog and swamp than Windoze already is up to now. Will they ever make a clean cut? That would be a real surprise.

Let's hope that Microsoft's "new" idea here works better than the last time that we saw it. Perhaps you remember the .NET framework. The concept was the same, in that you could code something in one language and it would work with something else in another language. .NET was supposed to be that bridge of interoperability. Unfortunately, whether by lack of publicity or lack of understanding, it has never really taken off the way that it should have. I hope you're right, Farhad. And I agree that Redmond doesn't often get the credit that it deserves. But the 8,000 word blog post wasn't quite as ground-breaking as you'd like it to be. The major difference is that Microsoft is paving the way to make sure that it's used this time, instead of simply being an option.

Microsoft presents the new Metrosexual style apps. Apps that spend a lot of time and money on their appearance.

6 months ago, I'd have agreed with you, Matt. But it seems that Chrome took an arrow to the knee and it's no longer an adventurer like Safari. I don't know what happened, but I know that it doesn't perform well enough and isn't stable enough to be my browser of choice anymore. That makes me very sad.

Eh seems like a pretty cool guy, he writes delusional articles and doesnt afraid of anybody!

Depending on how Microsoft governs the usage of Windows 8, this could be a bonanza for a lot of people. This could be a massive snowball effect if they play their cards right.