>>> Some - not near sll of them....c'mon. <<<

No, not 'all'. Apple sells more $950+ PCs than all three major PC makers combined. Probably twice as many. They don't break out their sales that way, but their average selling prices are low enough it's mathematically impossible for them to sell high end systems in comparable volumes. This even applies to Lenovo who has a significantly higher ASP than the rest of the Windows PC market.

>>> You're all over the place with those points - that I have an iPad3 doesn't mean I'm unhappy with my desktop PC's or laptops let alone the OSes that I hardly have to think about on them. <<<

There is a lot of documentation out there demonstrating that people are in fact switching from PCs to iPads. Within a year of the iPad's introduction, netbook sales plunged. Of course the iPad lacks a keyboard and that's the kiss of death for productivity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U&feature=playe...

>>> How much softness of the gaming market was really their phone losses isn't known AFIK <<<

Sure. But what we do know is it's not nearly enough to cover their phone losses, that xBox unit volume has been going down, their ASP has been going down, and that they don't have a new Kinect type product to drive sales this year.

>>> I'm also not seeing how a Surface RT product is related to living room game console <<<

Who does the RT appeal to now? No-one. They've alienated their OEMs, include a non-touch version of office, and put in a schizophrenic Windows XP desktop with no purpose (other than as a place for the non-touch version of office to live).

They should have skipped the OEMs entirely for RT, skipped the faux desktop, and let customers pay for the Metro version of Office when it was ready. With the time/ money saved from not releasing the mediocre version of office they could have built xBox integration, written some nice games and lowered the price so it's appealing versus it's main competitor.

They could have skipped the old Windows branding on it also. They could have just called it "xBox Surface". That would have nipped all the compatibility confusion in the bud (and Windows 8 would have "Surface Apps" instead of 'formerly known as Metro' Apps).