E.g. the always-net-connected Xbox One.
http://www.ign.com/w...Online_Connection
The Xbox One was originally marketed by Microsoft as requiring a constant connection to the internet, with offline intervals greater than 24 hours disabling key features. Games were intended to be continually connected to the cloud, and many would not function without an active link to the web.
They have tried, many times, to introduce various toll-gates on the internet, in advertising, in on-line payments, and elsewhere. E.g. threatening people who are using FAT - http://www.neowin.ne...idates-fat-patent . E.g. attempting to lock-down the bootup sequence in new PCs in ways that Linux can effectively be shut out - http://www.wired.com...ows8-secure-boot/
Yes, WinPhone runs on ARM. Yes MS has some ARM tablets. Yes something called Win8 will run on ARM. All of them have tiny market shares on ARM. And them doing some things to open up their products and giving out some open source stuff doesn't mean that their management culture has changed very much.
MS is very much interested in selling stuff other than "Surface" - Xbox One, Nokia phones, Nokia tablets, and probably Nokia/MS Watches/Glasses/etc. as soon as they figure out how to do it in a way that is sorta compelling in spite of being years late. They know that desktop PCs running Winders is an evolutionary dead end and they have to do something - they just are being slaughtered in the marketplace with their non-Intel offerings.
MS could be a great company. They've got the money, they've got the knowledge, they've got the patents and IP. They've got lots of good people. But they're hamstrung by management that should have retired about 15 years ago - management that still wants to crush competitors using any hammer they can find. Fortunately for us, the hammers they have been able to find are rather smushy. They learned all the wrong lessons from their Win3 and killing OS/2 successes and didn't learn much of anything new until it was too late.
It'll be interesting to see if things change when Ballmer finally leaves.
Cheers,
Scott.