M$ had a finding of fact in a court of law on abusing there monopoly so nothing new here. There judgment ended in 2013.
Yes, that court case started in 1998 and ended in 2000 with the antitrust judgement, which was appealed and an agreement reached in 2001 between MS and the DoJ, and it was approved in 2004. There's a lot different at Microsoft from 1998, or 2001, or even 2004 to now in 2013, and I'd wager over the next 3-4 years even more will change, and perhaps drastically as the global economy changes further.
As to the decline in PC sales, they were declining year over year from 2011 and 2012 before Windows 8 was released. Sales of mobile devices had outstripped sales of typical PC devices before then when mobile device shipments were higher than PC shipments in 2011; the last time PC sales were much higher than mobile devices was 2008, even before Windows 7 released. IPads alone ship more devices than any one major PC vendor ships quarter to quarter, and this has been happening since mid-2011. Do we say Windows 7 was then responsible for this? Does that even make sense?
Windows 8 isn't necessarily helping PC sales, I think we can concede that much is true right now. However, PC sales (and the OEMs) aren't exactly helping the sales of Windows 8 either, and I don't see a lot of vendor promotion of Windows 8 devices aside from Microsoft's commercials, which are mostly for their own Surface devices. If you don't advertise in a competitive market, you aren't likely to do well at the till.
Unfortunately, lots of technical people complain about the fact that Windows 8 seems to cater quite a bit to the touch/mobile market, but they miss the reality of what is happening -anyone still wondering why Microsoft is going down this road likely needs to take a hard look at the economics of what mobile devices, both phones and tablets, are doing to Microsoft's business model. OEMs are apparently unable to market or sell competitive PC devices like they used to be, and the consumer, globally, is voting with his or her wallet and spending far more on mobile devices and tablets than PCs year over year. It's not a surprise that Windows 8 isn't selling as well as Windows 7 either - it's a different market from 2009 to 2013... not entirely, as the trend had already started, but now it's in full swing - and it's sales probably won't reach anywhere near Win7 levels for some time yet. I'd hold off on making predictions that Windows 8 is responsible for the decline of PC sales, though, as both the OEMs and Apple both have a lot to do with that (as has the proliferation of smart phones that are becoming more useful and powerful and "tablet-like"). Heck, even I have a smartphone like this that I actually do a decent amount of work volume on when it's quick and easy to do, which for most people isn't a small amount of their day-to-day job duties.
So, does that mean that hardcore technical people might dislike the new OS and it's changes? Probably a good number of these folks (and some of those they will influence) will have issues with it, some enough that they'll be dissuaded away from the Microsoft platform altogether in the short term (although competitors are starting to copy Microsoft's consolidation of OS across devices, so don't expect to be able to stray too far in the long term). Is it the right thing to do for the bottom line and the survival of the company? Yes, it is - Microsoft needs to (in this day and age of computing) rely less on OEMs to provide platform software sales (they're proving incapable of keeping up with consumer demands on hardware and cost), continue to provide it's own hardware and services as measuring sticks, and continue waging across the front to be the go-to server provider and cloud platform provider for the world. The ways to do that, like it or not, are with Windows 8, consumerization of devices and IT, and services across the web (aka the cloud). Traditional business models, as a revenue model, are declining year over year (and perhaps starting a precipitous decline this year or next, if the numbers hold up), and people who don't see this coming and adapt are likely doomed to decline in value with them over time.
