Why did Microsoft do it?

ow.

the first article shows why PC Mag was best unsubscribed to a decade or more ago.  Convoluted, contradictory article of market projects.  The only intelligent part was remarking that tablets and phones are not pcs, no matter how clever the invented phase (consumer compute) is. Until businesses start dropping full computers for tablets, or Apple releases an alternative to the mail server, Windows + office will continue to be the dominant force.

And the Dvorak again shows himself to be a man of the 90s, if not 80s.  Complaining about hundreds of rebates yet applauding Google's (not really their's) versioning schema for Android is a perfect example of talking without thinking.  And how many people here run an application (pick your photo editor) in full screen mode?  How many don't?

.1 releases don't solve the problem at hand here.  Microsoft used the RCs and freely available betas to course correct before going GA.  They got more than enough feedback about Windows 8 and choose to go forward anyway.

MS's motivation for win8 is obvious - they saw the ecosystems around IOS and Android and the billions of dollars in development effort going there.  This used to be spent on wintel, and they want some back.