Everything that is old is new again. For full disclosure i went from support Linux/Solaris (sysadmin) to mainframe middleware (CICS/WebSphere app server).
A guy at work traced his family back to the first Millers that immigrated from Germany to the US. When they came to the U.S. they adopted the most American name they knew of at the time. George Washington Miller and Martha Washington Miller. :)
You better tell Amazon/Microsoft/Google about their extortion via their cloud services then. There was a time where IBM would include the software with their hardware and were eventually called out by Burroughs who complained they couldn't compete. This is what brought about the usage model that is copied by cloud providers.
I don't have a problem with their ads either. What I do have a problem with is that the videos sometime load really slow while the ads are always lightning fast :P
I don't know about that. I would think a rising tide could lift the boats of PC OEMs. There is still the Baytrail chip that can be exploited for a lightweight tablet. They just need to step their design game up. Something like the Sony TAP 11 that uses Baytrail could be big.
The app store wasn't available when the IPhone first launched. Originally they developed Safari to be a first class experience for webapps and intended the phone to run those. People kept clamoring to be able to develop for the phone and then the app store was announced.