Is Microsoft Turning the Corner in the Consumer Space?

But astroturf is lying about the lie. Review sites are operating under the flag of representing the consumer rather than the vendor. So now we can't even trust the reviewers when they review anything for which the vendor has demonstrated a willingness to pay for reviews. Now how am I supposed to know whether one of their devices is any good or is just being reviewed by someone who is being paid to say nice things about it?

>Steam should probably stop selling games for OSX and Linux, as they don't represent anywhere near 20% of the market.

You're assuming that a heuristic has to be an inviolable law of nature in order to be useful. If it's right most of the time, that makes it right most of the time. You take the exceptions on a case by case basis when you have reason to suspect that the situation is an atypical one and the cost of further investigation is less than the likely benefit of obtaining more information.

>Or we could just judge technology on its merits, and take everything technology sites say about all of this stuff with a grain of salt.

So then what are we supposed to use to judge the technology on its merits if we can't rely on what technology sites say about it? If I'm trying to decide whether to buy something, I can't very well go out and buy it in order to determine for myself whether I should go out and buy it. These things cost hundreds of dollars or require long-term contracts, and then I would have significant opportunity costs in configuring it with all my information and then having to export it all back out again if I don't like it. Which is exacerbated significantly by Microsoft's prolific NIH syndrome. So if I can't rely on reviewers then I have to rely on something else to tell me whether it's any good, like the market.

Even if the market is wrong and the OS is not as mediocre as its share would indicate, the market is still right. App developers want to write for devices with users. Users want devices with apps. The device has to be a large enough improvement over the status quo to overcome that chicken and egg problem, and until it does, it's objectively worse for both developers and users than devices that already have. Microsoft has benefited from this dynamic for decades, it doesn't change just because now they're on the other side of it.