I don't think he meant to imply such a sudden disappearance (technological rapture?). All of Microsoft's core products are generic and replaceable, and it's easy to imagine other companies making them instead.
But that's sort of my point too. There's nothing substantially different about an iPhone or iPad anymore. The PC/Laptop Macs are a little more substantial, but I think that's probably because of HP/Dell/Toshiba etc. commitment to mediocrity more than it is because Apple is special in any huge way. I can definitely imagine
Amazon is even worse in that respect - the store is exactly that, and anyone can sell "stuff". AWS is the same, even if the barriers to entry are a little higher.
Honestly, the only big tech company that I can't imagine life without is Google, simply because my Google account is so pervasive now. Perhaps Facebook, too. Even then, when you break both of those companies down, you find that none of the products are overly unique to the company. Other people do social, other people do search, other people do maps, etc.
It's easy to imagine other companies making any of these things, but when you think about it "other companies" in that thought experiment start to just become another black box with a different logo slapped over the top.
