Justin, I was replying to the thread drift above in regards to
it all going to the cloud - which is a long step from just Win 8 and the original subject. However, regarding the Win 8 apps, there is a mixed bag issue here as we have been told by Microsoft that only MS approved apps designed to their criteria and certified them and sold through the Microsoft Store (for which they'll get their danegeld) can be loaded onto the Windows 8 loaded ARM devices with UEFI locked on. Sure the full PC systems with Win 8 can use any app made to run with HTML etc. but they aren't the full playing field for Win 8.
I still think it should be possible to create apps in an Industry Standard such as HTML and for them to be platform independent.