As I've noted many times, platforms matter. And while Microsoft was able to set the platform agenda, so to speak, into the early 2000s with its introduction of .NET, since then, developers and users alike have looked elsewhere. Google executives noted at the company's Google I/O show in mid-2010 that all major new application development occurred on the web, and not on proprietary platforms like Windows or Mac OS X. Unfortunately for web-centric companies like Google, however, major application development isn't all web-based: In fact, most modern new applications are created for highly mobile (and, yes, proprietary) platforms, particularly the iOS system that runs Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch products.

Looking at the world today, and at where I expect things to go in the near-term future--remember, the future of computing is both mobile and connected--it's pretty clear that we're undergoing a major shift away from sprawling, ginormous app suites like Microsoft Office that run on complicated, dated platforms like Windows. Additionally, current trends point to simplicity, both in the underlying platforms and in the apps that run on them. So the web and mobile platforms will both have a role in this future, and while we will continue to run big, complicated OSes on our big, complicated PCs and laptops, much of the work that we are doing, and will be doing, occurs through simpler web apps, not in monolithic, aging native applications.