Regarding the fifth item - Apps are going to break the OS boundary. And they won't do it using emulated APIs, but using Virtual PCs within your PC. That is, an x86 instruction set and whatever OS you want running within this virtual machine, and interacting with other apps through some type of environment. Processors are getting parallel and faster, this is already possible right now (I'm typing this from within a Windows XP layer running on top of Mac OS X), but it will become even easier and less problematic very soon.

The OS layers are merging. The differences in the OSes are becoming more about eye candy and less about functionality. That will be reflected in the apps.

It's silly to invest a million man hours in some huge suite like Office and then all that goes to waste just because another vendor decided to expose the same functionality over different names.

Software is going to have to standardize the way all other user tools have standardized. Cars all have the same usage mechanism with different looks. Our OSes are going to go the same way, it WILL happen.

Look at Linux - back in 99, it used to handle quite different from Windows. Now most things are the same.

The Apps are also going to have to be the same across all the OSes. Some will say that the web is the way to go - but I believe that the iPhone has shown that when people have the choice between native and web, they choose native. Infrastructure does not change that fast, internet speeds are not changing that fast.

We are standing on the verge of a reorganisation of software. The big companies are struggling for dominance at this stage by struggling to control the APIs. Soon, it will be possible to write in whatever language and have it compiled to a base API that will run across all the platforms. This move makes sense, and I believe that the easiest way to do it for now will be using x86 instruction emulation - I really don't see any of the big companies giving up their APIs or platforms anytime soon.