While I agree with a lot of what you said, the fact is this young crowd is the future. And the way they get things done is different—so different many older people don’t understand it.
I’ve been to training on this bunch and I was pretty much thinking like you posted, but the reality is we need to figure it out and not just dismiss it. And that’s where I disagree with you—you appear to be dismissive of the younger bunch. I’m trying to figure it out. Not the dating piece, but the working aspects and the interactions that get things done. I’m sure the old farts of your day were saying PCs are stupid—I have a phone. How can you get anything done via email. You need to go stop by their office and go to lunch to get anything done.
I have an I-Pad, I-phone, and a MacBook, oh and a kindle(old one). I bought my husband a kindle fire, and he loves it, never opens his home lap top any more. I really like the kindle for reading better than my I-pad because it’s smaller and lighter and I don’t need the camera.
However, my son uses the Kindle for business. They have their contracts right on the kindle and use the cameras to photograph documents, they can print them out or save them. I’ve used the camera on my phone instead of a fax for sending documents. It’s a whole different mind set.
I have the kindle app on my phone too, so when I’m waiting in an airport or doctor’s office, I just pull out my phone and read.
Perhaps you underestimate a bit. I'm 60 now, but I was a hobbyist at 13, been programming since I was 18, and been designing and building my own personal computers since I was 22. When the IBM-PC came out in 1981 I had been doing computers professionally for a decade. I started using email in 1984 and for 28 years it has been my primary means of communications with family, friends, and business associates -- today it is still the primary log of my life. Anyway, I daresay I have retained most of my youthful enthusiasm for all this techie stuff.
So I do understand the "younger crowd" mentality, insofar as being attracted to the newest, latest toys -- I had it and used it to advantage. The attention span is a lot shorter now, but otherwise not much is different from 40 years ago.
I agree with you that "we need to figure it out and not just dismiss it". I didn't mean to indicate that I dismissed it -- it's very real, and it is the growing market for the future, no doubt. But meanwhile there remains the vast majority of Windows users -- business and professional users -- who don't have any need nor desire whatsoever for a tarted-up lipstick-on-a-pig approach to an operating system. Win8 is being touted as totally different, but if you're really a techie, you know as well as I do that it's the same old NT codebase, with just another facelift.
I hope Microsoft is successful at marketing it -- I really do. I count on them and Windows for my living. But I think they're becoming a little schizoid in their attempts to simultaneously fend off the challenges of Apple in their PC business, and enter the handheld market with something credible. They've been caught yet again with their pants down, and they'd better pull them up before they try running off in new directions.
Time will tell.