I wonder if blog posts like this will cause some kind of reform. I was under the impression that Microsoft was aware of how important keeping 3rd-party developers happy is toward the long-term success of any OS or platform they publish.
If Microsoft started alienating the very high number of Windows (desktop) developers (which is going to be higher than the OS X community for a foreseeable future), do you think they'd just abandon the platform?
On the other hand, I'd say alienating the developer community would prevent hackers from making things for new(er) Microsoft platforms like Windows Phone or Azure. Things that might have been the killer app for that platform.
The benefit to Microsoft of having developers on-side is that those developers write applications that make Microsoft's platforms valuable to their customers.
No developer capable of writing platform-defining applications is ever tied more than casually to a specific platform.
If Microsoft alienates the developer community, Windows is dead. Whether its successor would be OS X or Linux or iOS or Android or something else entirely is hard to predict, but that is irrelevant to Microsoft's fate.
What, Office? No. Microsoft actually writes the core software that makes their platform valuable. There are developers that provide additional value, and that's very important, but I don't think it's easy for developers to force Microsofts hand in that.
Edit: in fact, the power gradient goes the other way: as a developer of an end-user application for a PC, you still have to very strongly consider writing for Windows whether you like it or not, because of the software written by Microsoft providing the core value for customers.
What about the thousands of games, utilities, applications that make Windows so though to eradicate from the average business? Windows RT offers little more than that core value and the market shows clearly it's a failure.
Even if half of their 3rd party developers left they would still have thousands of apps.
There's a lot more than just Office.
I'm writing this on a Windows PC with several heavyweight software packages and plenty more lightweight tools installed, all commercial and legally purchased, that are not available on my obvious alternative platform (Linux).
However, I have little use for a heavyweight office suite. For example, most of the text-based documents I create are either plain text files or "serious" work created with more powerful tools than Word.
as a developer of an end-user application for a PC, you still have to very strongly consider writing for Windows whether you like it or not
You're begging the question. The point is that you can develop end-user applications on many other viable platforms today. Some of them, such as web apps, are also accessible from PCs. Others require different devices, but if my expected customer base already has those devices or would be willing to acquire them to use my software, that's not a problem for me.
There are obviously some advantages to writing a native application over, for example, trying to do everything in a web app. However, writing and maintaining native Windows applications is now so unpleasant compared to numerous other options -- almost entirely as a result of Microsoft's choices regarding APIs, installation/update mechanisms, and other system-level functionality -- that the path of least resistance is to use other platforms when you can and write natively for Windows only when you must. That's very bad news for Microsoft.
What field are you in, if you don't mind my asking? I really can't figure out based on this statement whether or not you're in MS' target demographic.
I work with multiple small businesses, one of which is a vehicle for consultancy/freelance work, so we have some diversity. Everything we do is using creative technologies, whether it's software development, web sites, etc.
That means we deal with a lot of technical files (but things like source code or HTML/CSS are all plain text) and a lot of client-facing documentation (but that would typically be done with software like TeX or Creative Suite and probably supplied as a PDF). That doesn't leave a lot for the middle ground where tools like Word are useful, so while we do keep LibreOffice around, it's mostly so we can read word processor documents sent to us and create the occasional simple spreadsheet, not for any of our serious creative work.
Hasn't that already happened though? This is Microsoft with 20 years of bad press in hacker-circles we're talking about!
That's obviously a bit of a joke but it is in fact all a matter of perspective. Most people think the world is populated with clones of them and their friends/colleagues.
It's not.
Until 5 years ago Macs and Linux weren't even a vaguely viable option for selling software.
pg's "Microsoft is dead": http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html