[nailer]

The most popular consumer OS is Android. Arguing anything else goes against all known stats.

Microsoft's renaissance is mainly due to Nadella focusing on software and services instead of selling Windows. You mentioned Xbox as a way to support Ballmer. The Xbox story mentioned in the article does not support Ballmer.

Agreed re Azure but I don't know if Ballmer was still focusing on Windows for Azure, which seems likely. Keep in mind Azure is mostly Linux instances today.

[pjmlp]

Try to do Office documents for school work on Android.

[thekyle]

Office has a native version for Android with apparently over a hundred million downloads.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....

[pjmlp]

The point wasn't that it isn't available, and indeed lots of people use it to read documents.

The point was about actually working on documents with a proper level of quality that aspires to good evaluations.

[thekyle]

What features of Microsoft Office do you think are missing on mobile that a typical student would be required to use in school?

[pjmlp]

Starting by not having a keyboard and mouse available, good luck typing a 2 pages report on screen keyboard, let alone something with more deep content.

Then proper copy-paste workflows across applications when placing those pictures into the word document, alongside the table created in Excel for the respective field information and bar charts with the results.

Yes, it is doable, but better have lots of patience and time available to jump through all the obstacles to make it work on Android tablets.

There is also the possibility to use a pen instead, which again is very much hit and miss across Android tablets, more miss than hit actually, when compared with the capabilities of Windows Ink and surface pens.

[thekyle]

Well maybe you're right. But it does seem like Chromebooks and iPads are extremely popular in the education market. Both of which use the mobile versions of Office.

[rantwasp]

huh? ms making money on android. shocker