"especially wrt collaborative editing" - The office web apps got real time collaborative editing a couple of months ago [1]. I've used it and it works quite well.
I highly recommend enabling the two factor authentication feature. I got my account targeted by some botnet and was breached several times regardless of how ridiculous my password was. Of course, this all stopped the moment I started using two factor auth.
WP8 has been gaining momentum [1]; brushing it aside is a mistake. I also wouldn't count out WinRT. Surface 2 and the Nokia Lumia 2520 have received relatively favorable reviews. I don't expect their sales to double overnight or anything like that, but I expect they'll increase steadily throughout 2014.
The 'no image capture' story is not true. Apparently there was some bad information given out by an Instagram public rep. See https://twitter.com/zpower for more info.
I think opponents of stack ranking generally overlook this fact. Yes, it's terrible if you have a 5 person team, but the data becomes more normal as you add more people.
You need something more quantifiable than that when you're running a giant organization... Your approach would absolutely work in a startup of 20 people or less, but try that in the 10,000+ man Operating Systems Division at Microsoft and you'll run into some crazy logistics problems.
But then people won't do it. You have to force security update installs. There's really no better way around it. I think you have 2 days after the updates install to before it forces you to reboot. That should be enough time right?
I think it was the device. If you read the reviews (or better yet, used one) you'll see that it suffered from severe performance issues. That seems to have been resolved in the new one (the demos on stage looked convincing, but you have to take that with a grain of salt).
The marketing/image problem was to be expected considering it was a new product entering a slightly fermented market. It was always going to take time to build a brand.
"least amount of hassle, pain and blind rage" - I find that comical. My short experience doing android development has been nothing short of a headache which I eventually rage quit, but more power to you if you find it easy.
I would wait till version two comes out before writing anything off. Surface 2 will undoubtedly address many of the flaws that you (and me) found. Since Microsoft will be iterating on Nokia's Lumia's, I wouldn't write that off either.
Yeah the framerate is great on whitehouse.gov videos. I'm not sure how or why but it is nice to see considering I don't have cable and therefore this is how I get my major press releases.
[1] http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/11/06/c...