"While they don't have a great history with forcing their own hardware into the hands of the public, they have always done a good job of strongarming their partners into doing it for them..."
I find this as being the opposite. It was Intel /and partly IBM/ who was forcing their product, leading the way, and the MS just supplied the best complimentary product to support it. I really don't remember MS to lead the way the IT is going. Maybe with the exception of their role in killing the workstation market /but even then it wasn't exactly as leading to a new ground/.