"The road ahead, Bill Gates wrote about how he expected Windows to end up on every device, like televisions and what not. "
Yup, but he is and was an idiot. *Every one* of the attempts to shrink Windows to embedded size has failed and will fail, it has way too many cross depencies from everything to everything else to leave anything out.
Embedding the browser into OS? Brilliant: One browser hole grants root access to everything.
Point of Sales machines are *still* using XP (special, very minimized version to boot) as anything newer than that won't run in them at all.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
