My long-time Microsoft TV friend and Silicon Valley colleague M3 has some good comments about Microsoft and its competitive situation relative to Apple, Google, and others. He acknowledges that these companies make good products and are good at marketing themselves, but suggests that this is just the nature of things in a dynamic industry and what's wrong with that?

I agree.  These angsty discussions about Microsoft miss the point.  Microsoft is like the air -- it's everywhere, it's vital to everything, and its invisibility is what lets you see the rest of the world.  Think about last week's blow-out financial results. If a "normal" company showed double-digit profit growth of this magnitude, it'd be all anybody talked about for weeks.  But like the air, Microsoft's huge, huge size and influence are exactly the reason people pay so much attention to everybody else.