If Windows is dying, it's because they hacked it to death trying to turn it into a tablet OS, not because of this "death-of-the-PC" myth nonsense.
Bingo.
Some additional thoughts:
When they first announced they were porting Windows to ARM, I thought it was a bold move. Then the ARM version turned out to be Windows RT, a cut-down, crippleware version of Windows 8, itself suffering from a terrible identity crisis.
If Windows ARM had been full Windows (like Linux - same system, multiple architectures), they would have had something, especially with an x86-to-ARM (and vice versa) emulator. Instead, they're forcing everything through the 30%-cut Windows Store, cutting off decades worth of programs and reasons for using Windows. They had an opportunity to unify the platform - instead of just the UI - across form factors and they blew it.
Meanwhile, on x86, they're not outright restricting proper desktop programs, but they're sure not encouraging the appropriate UI for the form factor. Surely they could have used the "design language" of Metro to develop a desktop UI toolkit that would be familiar to both traditional desktop users and Windows Phone users.
And if they'd bothered pushing the "one-program-multiple-interfaces" feature of Windows 8, their problems would be solved: one codebase to build desktop and touch versions. Instant ecosystem.
Microsoft has a bad habit of messing with what works. XP fixed the stability and usability problems of the Win95-WinME era, so they followed it with the travesty of Vista. Windows 7 cleaned up that mess, so they threw it away and gave us desktop Metro instead.
I don't think 8.1 will stop the bleeding. It'll probably take them until 8.5 or 9.0 to turn things around.
