If Microsoft didn't talk about a 3-4 year push, they would hardly be doing their jobs, would they? It would dumbfound me if they didn't. Even Nokia did, with both Symbian^3 and MeeGo alike, up till the 2/11 attack on Twin Platforms.

At our small company we talk about a 3-4 year push, and that doesn't mean that we're about to succeed in conquering the world. It means that officially, we're still employed.

I don't expect to hear Microsoft saying "Look, we're going to push Windows 8 as the next big thing up until, say October, but as soon as it hits the shelves, we're going to stop developing it and it'll not be replaced by the next thing that we'd usually already be looking at developing next".