Most importantly of all, no prices at all have been unveiled. There are no reviews. There is no ecosystem (speaking specifically of the ARM device. The Intel device is going to be a hot, power-gobbling, very expensive beast and is effectively an ultrabook more than a tablet)
Yup, sure thing. Apple better start saving for that rainy day.
OP here. I agree (and state in my article) that MS could completely screw this up by pricing themselves out of the market. I don't expect they will though, but mostly because they can afford to make it cheap - even sell at cost, if they have to.
I'd argue that reviews and software are less relevant here than they were for say Android in a similar position:
1. People will buy it regardless of reviews (even if only on the desktop at first). Metro is guaranteed to get share off the back of Windows.
2. Developers will follow that share.
Essentially with enough time Microsoft are guaranteed to leverage their Windows share to Metro, and combined with some competitive hardware makes them a force to be reckoned with.
I'm pretty much the definition of an Apple fanboy (I own an iPad, 2 MacBook Pros, an iMac, an iPhone AND APPL stock). And I still stopped to say - that hardware looks impressive. If they can do that to me, well...
That's taking shape already. There is an app store, there is an SDK. And there are loads of programmers who know one or more of the supported languages on the metro API for Arm and Intel - C++, C# or Javascript
Yup, sure thing. Apple better start saving for that rainy day.