>Microsoft can abandon anything that's not core to their survival, and right now that's Windows
First, Microsoft has three major divisions bringing in somewhat equal amounts of revenue, Windows, Office and Server & Tools.
Second, if you apply the same metric to other companies, it would be foolish to use OS X, Gmail, Docs. App Engine. Android, and perhaps even Azure.
Third, Microsoft could've competed by making a better Zune, perhaps, but it's not the same thing as the iPad killing Silverlight, because that was done by not supporting plugins. Tablets are slowly overtaking PCs in sales, what sense does it make to push new versions of a plugin that will never run on most of them?
The transitions have mostly been smooth, VB apps still run on Windows. Hell, a game bundled with the Windows 95 CD still runs unchanged on a Windows 8 machine.
Google App Engine is a risky bet for the same reason as Azure, and perhaps even more so. Google could decide tomorrow that it's not worth supporting and tank it, or change the pricing model to make it no longer cost effective.
I don't think the same thing can be said for Amazon's AWS or other infrastructure providers like RackSpace where that would be as much as going out of business.
I'm not saying Microsoft doesn't take care of Windows, if anything they support it too much, but anything that's not Windows is just one executive decision away from being shut down.
XBox runs on Azure from what I hear. Its not getting shut down anytime soon. In fact, if I were a betting man, I'd even go as far as to say that Azure is the future of Windows Server.
First, Microsoft has three major divisions bringing in somewhat equal amounts of revenue, Windows, Office and Server & Tools.
Second, if you apply the same metric to other companies, it would be foolish to use OS X, Gmail, Docs. App Engine. Android, and perhaps even Azure.
Third, Microsoft could've competed by making a better Zune, perhaps, but it's not the same thing as the iPad killing Silverlight, because that was done by not supporting plugins. Tablets are slowly overtaking PCs in sales, what sense does it make to push new versions of a plugin that will never run on most of them?
The transitions have mostly been smooth, VB apps still run on Windows. Hell, a game bundled with the Windows 95 CD still runs unchanged on a Windows 8 machine.
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/deskapps/games/public/AAS/Hover.exe
http://www.johnlamansky.com/blog/the-legend-of-microsoft-hov...