@Kaiser-Machead v.2.3: From what Ballmer said at the Gartner conference about Silverlight, it looks like Air will be its direct competitor rather than Flash. So they're definitely looking to bring the fight in regards to cross-platform appliance runtimes.

I'm thinking the human eye can't discern the difference between this and Retina. Of course this is a bigger screen which would be nicer for browsing and watching media.

@Wayne Ripley: They also know the times, they are a'changin', and as technology transitions into the cloud and appliance devices, their big money-maker better be at the forefront of it if they don't want to pull an IBM and shift into consumer irrelevance.

@zzznowihate: They stopped bundling email and don't bundle all these things with the OS to avoid what happened in the late 90's and early 00's with IE and the European Union.

@MrBlahBlah: It'll be Microsoft's ChromeOS. If you ask me, it's too soon. I'd leave that for Windows 9 (2015).

@TheClap: Q4 2012 isn't exactly super soon. That means 3 years after Win7's release, which is their normal iteration period. Vista was an exception, and suffered so many delays due to feature creep.

It's risky because Windows is Microsoft's bread and butter. If the OS departs too much from the norm, people may or may not like it. Businesses for sure won't upgrade unless it's a huge value proposition (it probably won't be).

@Lucian Armasu: Rather than reasons not to like it, they're reasons to wait, if we can help our early adopter selves. It's obvious the foundation is solid and can only get better from here. If you refuse to see its bright future and want to not like it, that's your prerogative.

@thnikkamax: The multitasking things you mentioned can all be done on WP7. Only third party apps can't multitask. So SMS, email, browsing the web and listening to music can all be done simultaneously.

@Bizdady: I have both an iPhone and and a Droid Incredible, and I gotta say, Android doesn't even come close to iOS's consistence, polish and sheer enjoyability. WP7 might be able to take that crown, when they iron out the very annoying kinks, including:

@Yeah!: Check out the Engadget in-depth preview. There's more reasons to like it there.

Haters gon' hate.

I'm having a Blade Runner moment and I'm now questioning my humanity, because I was never a fan of any kind of car game, Mario Kart or otherwise.

Separated at birth.

@FeodoraChautauqua: I don't think we are in disagreement.

@FeodoraChautauqua:

The fragmentation is there, but contrary to what Uncle Steve said, it hardly affects developers.

@UCFw00t: I think that because the previous CSA was Bill Gates, people expect the CSA to be the face of the company. I think as CSA Ozzie did what he was supposed to, which was catalyze the creation of products to compete in the forthcoming cloud market.

@A.Jaswal: I approve.

@THE.MAC.GOD: I do think they've had a great run and have disrupted markets like no other company has in the past decade and created markets seemingly out of thin air. Steve Jobs has had the comeback of the century (it is still early in the century, no? ;), and all of that is commendable.