It's Schizophrenia developed to an art form.

I personally don't like the look of it to begin with (Metro), but given that, MS really needs to develop a unified method of app development or devs will lose interest really quickly (like before they start).

In fact they'd be better served by doing that first and having a large variety of apps for all devices available before W8 hits the market (RTM).

In your dream...

Mobile ( hand held ) computing is great but :

- no usefull for office work... small screen and difficult for input data...

- no usefull for game who ask a lot of power and where player appreciate big screen...

- no usefull for video or quality music... only stereo and little screen... power problem with the more recent codec ( h264 )... limited storage...

- no usefull for professional... how much mobile will need to be linked together ( if possible ) for have the raw power of a server...

- no usefull for surf on the internet... too few site made for mobile and it is a hell for navigate...

The mobile market will maybe hurt the netbook PC market... similar performance... but some people like a real keyboard and a small but not so small screen...  

We'll see.....

I disagree.  There's always going to be a demand for a big screen, and eventually a computer will be attached to it.

I think , worst case scenario, PC's become the modern day DVD player/console (now console gaming I think is doomed in 10 years time or less), hooked up to the TV, and machines in the workplace. 

Handhelds will have a place, the only way I can see them replacing PC's is when they can project a big screen themselves if needed, and that may end up proscribed the law in some places.

That said, if Stardock developed its Games for Mac, I'd probably switch to Mac.  (may also apply if Stardock lost my business for some reason or another, which is unlikely, but nothing is impossible.   Capcom lost my business this year, and I never thought I'd say that.)    Then again, I'm not really a market worth catering to. 

Think: Streaming to the screen of your choice from your hand held device. It's inevitable. 

Apple is even further ahead than having a cable.  You can directly mirror any iPAD wirelessly to an Apple TV  that share a wireless network and get a 720p HD signal over the A.TV's HDMI.  Full audio, full video.  Major corporations I work with and for are currently outfitting conference rooms with them so people can project from their iPad during meetings.  No muss, no fuss, no looking like an idiot while 3 PhD's figure out how to project powerpoint from the laptop at the wrong resolution so the slides look like crap.  And NO cables.  Walk in, turn on projector, turn on mirroring, present.

For mobile productivity, try using Keynote on the iPad.  Then consider exactly how many people really need the extra screen real estate & computational horsepower.  (Dev's, engineers, artists, video work, ...)  Students and academics are already switching over completely.

For what its worth, I have seen companies firing/ reducing the Windows specific developers on a massive scale.  Enterprise level software can be delivered via HTML 5, you can hire 1 UI developer to cover the iOS specific.  You have to hire 4 to support the windows ecosystem.  You might be able to cross purpose designers and some of the management / support, but still going to need 4 QA teams to support the 4 platforms.  (plus the quirks that each specific device will have)  And when you know your clients (Fortune 500 companies) are purchasing iPads for their employees at 10,000+ units a quarter, WHY are you NOT producing for iOS?  Your business wants nothing to do with the fastest growing tech platform since the Internet?

And, by the way, if I want to release my stuff in the latter two methods, I have to use the Windows Store

im guessing they will take a percentage of your sales.... how much is the question, and will it be profitable? (for you, not them)

id love to make an app i could sell for decent profit....

Say it ain't so Brad!

Brilliant move on Microsoft's part.   BRILLIANT move on Microsoft's part.   The best microprocessors out now are the ARM's, hands-down.  They just don't have the market positioning.   Microsoft and Intel have always had a love-hate relationship, and Microsoft, in coddling a relationship with ARM, they are obtaining leverage from Intel, big-time.   There has been talk of ARM entering the PC space, and it's further along than you might think.   And if they do, I can't begin to tell you how awesome that is.   We finally--FINALLY--escape the x86 instruction set.  That's been an albatross around our necks for decades.  And the configurability of ARM lets you do all kinds of things you could never do on an Intel or AMD.   ARM has traditionally been in the embedded market (which comes in all shapes and sizes), and embedded applications commonly don't need an OS--or at least very minimal, or something funky like an RTOS.  They need a good mainstream OS to launch them into the PC space.  Microsoft obviously saw that, and here we are.

So is that worse/better/same than the iOS or Android markets?

Its going to be a tinkerers dream or nightmare depending on how you look at it. See a rainbow in the sky, quickj ... pull out your phone, 'droid and or whatever and snap a pic. Send it streaming to your home PC over the wifi and when you get home you won't have to ask why your house got a paint job that looks like it came out of the psychedelic sixties.

I think the largest will be the tablets like iPad and such, not so much the phones, more versatility. Second will be the PC then the phones. Computers per se aren't going anywhere anytime soon.