They took this route with Xbox and all went well in the end. Secret, keep iterating the damn product.
Xbox is not profitable over its lifetime (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/07/15/how-one-of-microsofts...). Windows PC sales are down 20% from last year (http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33642_7-57556199-292/windows-8-...).
Microsoft has negligible presence in the high-margin mobile and tablet space. By contrast, Apple makes hundreds of dollars from each phone/tablet sale. Phones are repurchased every 2 years, and Apple originally got $18 per user per month for each iPhone subscriber (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9803657-37.html). Microsoft makes ~$50 from one-time PC purchases, which are replaced every 4-5 years.
The XBox is a success because of exclusive video game titles on it. Plus gamers have to keep getting their XBox repaired or replaced to keep playing games.
Some stupid Internet advice tell people to reset the XBox when it has a red ring of death by throwing a towel or blanket over it. That causes overheating, and in some cases fries the CPU or other parts and then they have to buy a new XBox. I don't know why, when the main problem of the XBox overheating is a bad heat sink and poor quality in cooling the equipment, for a solution to that is to apply more heat so the system resets the red ring of death?
This is a common fix for PC video cards too.