Re: Why would you buy a phone from Microsoft ever again?
"Do they honestly expect us to buy the ever-rumoured Surface Phones at this point, when evidence points to them getting bored and killing the platform 18 months later? "
Of course. It's what they've done with countless other technologies and been successful. Define new platform/api/infrastructure, get developers on board, ditch it for something else, rinse and repeat.
The amazing thing is that everyone keeps falling for it. It reminds me of Johnson's comment on second marriage : 'a triumph of hope over experience'.
(To be fair, I could make a similar criticism of google and various linux developers. The software industry thrives on fixing things that aren't broken, and failing to fix things that are).