iOS takes up a couple of gigs of storage alone ya know, not a couple of megabytes. I really hope they don't cut out the desktop on something like my Surface - I spend half my time in the desktop on that thing..
Ehm, no, but granted, iOS is by far the fattest of the three. It occupies about 1.4 GB. That would be 14 hundred megabytes, and I did say hundreds of megabytes, not just "a couple megabytes" as you've falsely implied.
You are likely refering to the fact that to download, unpack, and install iOS requires about 3GB of free storage space, but that is irrelevant in this context.
WP clocks in around 400 megabytes. AOSP Android can be even smaller.
The point is, again, that these are all much leaner and cheaper to accommodate than a full blown Windows/RT installation of 7GB or more.
Finally, I never said MS would cut out the desktop on your surface (Pro). Such devices will continue to ship with full blown Windows, just as they do today. Completely different topic. However, MS will completely remove it from the simpler Surface (non Pro) tablets... they already kind of have.
And technically Atom tablets can run x86 programs, it just depends on how MS implements it.
Technically, yes. So? Again, that is completely irrelevant to my point.
I think your reaction kind of proves how refering to both OS' by the same name would just confuse people.