Why you and I aren't really relevant at all
Microsoft can't win a fight to defend a monopoly position forever. All you need to do is look to Apple's halving of market share in the face of Android to understand that. It is simply bad business for Microsoft to continue to expend vast resources on placating the kinds of people for whom things like TechNet make a difference.

Microsoft is in no real hurry to bleed away market share – I'm sure their PR droids will be along soon to tell the world that Microsoft does indeed care about the fuzzy wuzzies and 'Why are you saying such mean things!' – but the reality is that if it is to survive it needs to set a bold vision and convince those with deep pockets that it is the way forward. That vision is the cloud, subscriptions, and driving margins up, not down.

The rest of us can follow – or not – as we choose. Microsoft ultimately doesn't care. Microsoft is in the process of shifting into an Oracle-like high-margin player. It wants fewer customers with bigger pockets and it isn't afraid of "drop off" suffered by the disenfranchised or the poor.

Make no mistake: this isn't an arrogance born out of a belief that it retains a monopoly on the desktop, the Office productivity suite, or the server market. It is a wholesale shift in approach in recognition of its loss of monopoly.

You don't matter to Microsoft and neither do I. We've known all known this for ages, but Microsoft has finally decided that they aren't going to even bother to fake it anymore. Now is the time for those of us who don't live "at scale" – and with budgets to match – to start looking farther afield, before we move from "customer" to "hostage". ®

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Microsoft's grand strategists didn't count on botching Windows 8 and Windows RT's community engagement so thoroughly that the backlash would drive users away from Metro-themed products instead of towards them.

Tactical initiatives are simply money grabs. Building userbases and exploiting short-term events to extract the maximum cash possible. Microsoft certainly has a proven track record of parting businesses and individuals from their money, but their tactics are increasingly leading to enmity. Poor tactical execution is limiting future strategic options.

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In the past few years Microsoft has variously alienated large chunks of the systems administrator, SME, developer, power user/enthusiast, partner and office end-user communities. Worse, many of Microsoft's competitors were never populist organisations to begin with. These companies don't have a history of caring about their users' requirements. The leaves the error bars of successful interaction wider for them than they are for Microsoft; put simply, their user bases are more tolerant of mistakes.

[. . .]

The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability. If the wrong calls are made Microsoft's competitors will shred them. It will take a decade or so for Microsoft to die, but if there is a chance for a fatal wound it is now. If the right choices are made, however, Microsoft becomes functionally untouchable for the rest of our careers.