An aside to this thread, but Windows Phone 7 isn't as bad as you might think. I understand that you are mainly wary of the Microsoft slow moving / non-exciting culture but Windows Phone 7 is quite exciting. Microsoft Research does a lot of really fabulous HCI research and slowly but surely it is percolating through the company despite having dinosaurs like Ballmer in charge. To refer to a lame example, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that a phone UI actually used amodal completion in it's design(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amodal_perception). A mobile phone with its limited screen real estate is ideal for such a design and I believe this came out of their research lab.

Anyway, Siegler's article had the interesting reference to Amazon. If Jeff Bezos/Amazon picks up WebOS, it might just have a chance of survival.