My point, as has been made in the past, is that MS has not innovated for a good many years. No one is scared by MS any more. No one cares what they do. They aren't leading anything. They are simply trying to eke out their monopoly for all its worth.
No startup thinks "Oh no what if ms are developing a similar thing", because we all know they aren't.
I expect they could still turn it around, but they'd have to actually make things people want which isn't what they are used to. They are used to a monopoly.
I found last year when I worked an Ajax project that when I replace DOM that contains images, IE 6/7 will load images twice. While Safari, Firefox and Opera all just load those images once. So if your managed servers have any program that replaces DOM on the fly that contains images, IE's usage in server log will be higher because IE wastes the bandwidth twice.
Try stats from a less focused source:
Is this 2020? It must be the future because MS has not died and is still very relevant.
"Now you can buy PCs without an OS,"
How many non geeks do you know that bought one of these? I know 0.
"The operating system is becoming irrelevent"
Again this must be 2020 because the OS is still essential to almost 100% of computer users.
"IE is nose diving in usage"
Any stats to back up this claim? I'm not seeing it, in fact IE7 usage is now higher than Firefox on hundreds of my managed websites.
I'm sorry but you live in fantasy tech-geek world where Linux and browser based operating systems are the norm. Do me favor and do some work for real "users" and then re-evaluate your opinions about where MS is and is heading.