i have to admit, after being tethered to a couple of windows 7 machines, an ipad 2, macbook air, xbox 360, android tablet and droid razr phone for more than a year now, i'm happy to see that microsoft, although a bit late to the game, is finally pulling it all together.
i've been running windows 8 for a couple of months now on my five year old laptop as well as an ultrabook with a touchscreen that intel sent me on loan.
microsoft has a tall mountain to climb but their ambition of universal integration is impressive.
...and kinect on the xbox with voice recognition -- with the latest software updates -- is really a glimpse into the future. goodbye remotes (well, except for turning the tv and xbox on but they'll figure that one out eventually.)
android and ios are great, in their own ways...but what i really want, in addition to having more modern interfaces for interacting with computers, is to be able to continue to use the vast ecosystem of windows software -- some of which i helped to create.
what microsoft has managed to achieve by refusing to abandon compatibility with their previous operating systems (at least in windows 8 pro edition) -- is a true modality that is missing from android and ios -- and bringing the competition back again is going to make everyone's computing better, regardless of which platform they prefer.
here's to now and the future, which is slowly becoming more evenly distributed.