All of my 'iDevices' are now untethered from my computer. When I bought my iPhone 5 they actually made me wait for the iCloud restore to complete before I could leave the store.
Backed up my iPhone 4 before jumping the train to the Apple store. Walked in, purchased the new one, iCloud sync, walked out with virtually the same data I walked in with on a faster and prettier device =)
Are you being positive about Apple devices or not. Because that statement could be taken two ways.
I still had to sync all my music from iTunes though, but I don't see how the Surface would be able to do this without requiring to be 'tethered' (iTunes has WiFi sync) to a PC.
By storing your music in Skydrive, this removes the need to 'tether' to a PC
Are you implying that iPad is hopelessly tethered to a PC? Have you used an iPad?
As of iOS 5, there are very few reasons that one would need to be "hopelessly tethered to a PC" in order to use their device. Backups, music and app purchases, and contact and calendar syncing are all completely untethered.
As for restoring firmware, in reality that's something something that an average user does extremely rarely, if at all. iOS has a "Reset All Content and Settings" feature which deletes everything off the device and reboots it into a completely fresh state. If somehow, an average computing user like my grandmother has managed to get her iPad to the point where it truly needs a restore, any Apple Store would be more than happy to assist her. In that scenario, what sense does it make to carry around a copy of the iOS 6 firmware on the tablet?
Frankly storage is cheap, and Apple has made a business of overcharging for it. They advertise their lowest capacity at a reasonable price, but the upgrades are extortionate. If apple charged more reasonably, maybe we wouldn't be so afraid of using that storage to handle reasonable edge cases like this.