24601, another take on “the device”
I think you have it right when you say, kindly, “I feel that the people at Wave are not always rigorous about their written communications, so when they write something that seems nuanced, I don't know how seriously to take it.”
IMO it would be really ridiculous for Steven to suddenly start using the word “device” to mean the TPM or to mean the combined identity of the user and the machine. If that wouldn’t confuse the issue, I don’t know what would.
So he said, “More specifically, the TPM enables IT managers to create, sign and store authentication keys within a PC’s hardware, strongly binding the identity of the machine and its user to the device.” I believe that the simplest explanation is that he used the word “device” at the end of that sentence because it’s a more generic term than "machine" (and he had been using it throughout the article) - and he simply didn’t realize how confusing the sentence became. IMO he meant (and should have said), “strongly binding the identity of the machine and its user to the machine” or “strongly binding the identity of the device and its user to the device.”
