Is Microsoft heading towards a non-Windows future

[40hz]

Interesting article over at The Register. Does Microsoft's future business plans no longer include Windows as we know it? Are they moving towards a hardware/software combination like Apple has done? And is Windows running on a general purpose PC going to become a thing of the past as the corporate focus shifts towards WindowsPhone OS and Windows-RT on the ARM platform? And possibly a version of Windows that is more "locked-down" to use Julie Larson-Green of Microsoft's words...hmm...

Microsoft's hardware chief has given the strongest indication yet that Microsoft has too many operating systems.

"We have the Windows Phone OS. We have Windows RT and we have full Windows. We're not going to have three," Julie Larson-Green told the audience at a UBS investor event. Larson-Green looks after the "Devices and Studios Engineering Group", the part of Redmond where the Surface hardware and the Xbox games console is built.

It's been suggested, rumored and bandied about in several places before. Might this be the first clear signal this is where Redmond is going?

And she kept on tellin' me, kept on tellin' me, kept on tellin' me...
I want you
I need you
But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you
Now don't be sad
'Cause two out of three ain't bad

The Register article is here.

[x16wda]

Hmph.

How to say it? Everyone is crazy to get that tablet market because it's growing so quickly. Makes it so easy to forget who brung you to the dance.  Do away with "full Windows" and kill Technet at a reasonable price, and you'll end up with a hundred thousand versions of Angry Birds in your locked-down store, but the people who need specialized small-volume stuff for their business will be running it under Linux -- because the people who are writing it won't be developing it in Visual Studio...

Remember, after Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy wrote "I Am Not Spock"?  And then, when he finally gave up fighting it, he came back and wrote "I Am Spock"?  Not everybody gets that other chance.