Subscriptions nourish Microsoft while its hardware businesses go hungry

For several years, Microsoft truly believed that a fleet of hardware devices could carry its software into homes and businesses. Based on news around the company's fourth-quarter earnings report, though, it feels a little like Microsoft's landed safely on the shores of a new world, and is burning the ships that took it there. That a software company should make its money from software and services certainly isn't news. And Microsoft still continues to sell hardware--the Surface lineup, for examp...