The only problem with all this is that Microsoft seems to have forgotten one small thing. The user. It's fine to make all this glossy 'cool' edge to edge display technology, but has anyone had the pleasure of actually using it?!? I have, and on a tablet or phone it just isn't helpful at all. It leaves no space to hold the device, it makes everything very 'touchy' and easy to bump. It just isn't as fantastic as it's portrayed here.

The fact is we've been able to have edge to edge displays for over a decade, but we haven't actually made them because it just doesn't work when it comes to usability.

Which brings me to another point. The author may have been a bit behind the times in 2006 and using his Palm Trio and Blackberry devices, but I had already been using windows mobile for three or four years by then, and before that even my Motorola had been able to do video calling along with a host of other things!

The key issue hindering development has indeed been Microsoft. They keep creating major flops and bad user experiences which then put people off entire device families. Having used early windows tablets and slates I would have been entirely put off them in general, but for the iPad.

The same goes for the clunky start menu'ed windows phone which never made any sense to me at all.

Does anyone remember 'surface top' pc's?!? Kin? Microsoft seems to feel that using a few futuristic movie production techniques suddenly can be classified as 'innovation' when in fact George Lucas and many others have had that level of 'innovation' for decades!

True innovation is when you can make dreams and the imaginations of many into a reality. It's one thing to imagine it, it's another to actually make it. Microsoft seems to have a history of not really doing either!