[grantheaslip]

It’s funny you say that, because what ultimately soured me on buying Apple products was my iPhone 3G being effectively bricked by the 4.0 update, two years after I bought it (and, theoretically, days after some other people bought it from AT&T).

Microsoft may rebrand stuff in weird ways sometimes, but they don’t often kill stuff off prematurely. I’d actually argue the opposite: that they often hang onto stuff for too long.

As to your examples, PlaysForSure was only really killed from the perspective of manufacturers, or if you heavily bought into the MSN Music Store. The Kin was an extenuating circumstance, but no doubt a huge fuckup. Zune may be getting a rebrand, but I’ve heard no reason to believe a Zune player won’t continue to work with Windows 8.

All you’ve really done is name three failures of a company that has hundreds of projects. One could do the same thing for Apple, Google, or almost any other tech company.