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The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting article on how this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance. Their argument is that tablets are going to disrupt the PC, and these tablets are predominantly going to be running on Google's Android powered by ARM processors — 'Armdroid.' Quoting: 'Both Microsoft and Intel have suffered from the same problem that most successful companies face when dealing with disruption. They cannot find a way to profitably invest in low-end offerings. Think about it from Microsoft's point of view: now that Windows 7 has been developed, to sell another copy, they don't have to do a single thing. Because of this, it becomes very hard for any executive to advocate the complete development of a low cost OS that will run on tablets: not only would it cost Microsoft a lot to develop, but it would result in cannibalization of its core product sales. Intel has the exact same issue. Why focus on Atom, or an even lower-end chip, when there is so much more margin to be made by focusing on its multi-core desktop processors?'"
Their tablet should have been about disrupting the PC market with something light, cheap and simple. Instead, Microsoft tried to make it do everything.
Okay, so we establish that tablets have a subset of functionality as PCs. I agree with this, I don't do software development, word processing or gaming on a tablet. But then the article notes that tablets herald the end of PCs. So are we expecting the software makers to bridge that gap that prevents me from playing World of Warcraft, writing a book in Word or LibreOffice, coding in Radrails, etc? I just don't see that happening. I think there's a fundamental hardware issue with capacitive touch. I am not certain it will ever get to the point where I feel comfortable doing serious work or serious gaming using a glassy surface as my input device. Maybe I'm getting old but I just have never been impressed with even the latest cellphone displays and their response.
I would speculate that most tablet users are first PC users at home and at the office. The tablet is a subset of the desktop computer and it's hard to reach all levels of functionality with only a tablet. So I would almost argue that tablets will bite into the PC market only in markets with people who just need a computer to surf the internet, play casual games and maybe e-mail. In my opinion, it's highly likely that Wintel and Armdroid will continue to coexist for many years with different functional targets.
this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance
There's potential but if you counted all the Wintel machines in use right now and all the Armdroid devices in use right now, I would bet Wintel would retain dominance in numbers. It's fun to get exited when it makes sense to you that this should happen but the reality is that Wintel still sits comfortably above a throne of untouchable marketshare.
My work here is dung.
Maybe the much-awaited Linux surge isn't going to be in desktops but on mobile devices. Increasingly, people have become resigned to the fact that their portable computing devices aren't going to (and don't have to) look like the PC at work.
Android and Meego (when it finally ships) are harbingers of the trend.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The first rule of technology is that "If you don't canabalize your own business, someone else will do it for you". This is the classic tech product/company dilemna and we have lots of examples of dominant #1's who ignored this rule and are gone. Digital? Wang? Visicorp? Borland?
It has already been shown Win7 can run on as little as 256 megabytes. Microsoft just needs to strip-out a few more functions to get it down to Tablets and Netbooks.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The gadgets are fun to putz around with, don't get me wrong, but the fact that I still can't save an attachment from a gmail to my Android device without loading on some third party software means that there is a long way to go.
Whats missing is the ARM-powered linux netbook. Take your typical netbook, remove the expensive ATOM hardware and replace it with a nice ARM SOC (the kind found in things like the iPad or Nokia N900). Run a nice arm-optimized linux distro on it with a full range of software (internet, office, media playback, photography etc) and build in a good range of support for external peripherals so that they work when you plug them in without extra effort (e.g. tethering a mobile phone, connecting a camera, using USB mass storage or USB input devices etc)
Although I think the problem is, most people have this expectation that if it looks like a laptop, its going to work like a laptop and run WoW or Word or Photoshop or whatever other windows-based software they want. Tablets are viewed differently because people dont see them as a "computer" in the way they view a netbook.
It would require comparatively radical changes(and possibly a cut to precious, precious margins); but it seems to me that both companies have a potential major asset that they could rely on in this "Post-PC" environment:
.NET/Silverlight/XNA, which is theoretically cross platform/cross architecture, and(while Apple would never touch that with somebody else's 10 foot pole), a few modifications would produce something that could be licenced to makers of Android gear that would allow it to run(nearly unmodified) .NET/Silverlight/XNA applications, produced in quantity by MS's generally well regarded developer tools. Not their preferred solution, of course, since selling OSes is more lucrative than selling runtimes(Hey Adobe, how's that "flash lite" licensing revenue working out for you?); but nothing in the relevant licenses would forbid the production of "Android for Enterprise", which takes a more or less stock build of Android; but has support for CLR software and a few interface layers to the android UI/notifications/address book. They've made money selling application software to Mac users for years, so this wouldn't be the world's most shocking departure, if Windows on tablet/phone doesn't really pan out...
For intel's part, their chip designs at the low-power end are mediocre and not as profitable as their Xeons and soak-the-gamers parts. However, their fabs are among the best. Were they to announce that some lucky ARM SoC maker could(for a large pile of quite public cold cash and some quiet restrictions designed to keep their product in tablets and away from Intel's bread and butter) be the only one in the industry to be fabbing their otherwise pedestrian wares on one of the smallest, lowest-power processes in the industry... Doing this would, of course, pretty much scotch their attempts to compete in the area with Atom parts, since their plan has been to die-shrink those until they can compete, so offering the competition matching die-shrinks means that that will take forever; but offering the competition die-shrinks will mean a profit per tablet/phone/whatever now, not in "just a few quarters from now, when cargo pants come back into style".
For Microsoft's part, it remains to be seen how well "Windows Phone 7" will end up doing; but, if nothing else, they have
It seems these companies are exhibiting what many old companies tend toward: they prefer the easy lucrativity of relatively low-volume, high-margin as opposed to a more active, high volume low-margin operation. L'aissez faire economics is beckoning to these old stalwarts: evolve or fade-away!
New yet inferior device means an older but superior device is now obsolete.
I can't see too many people willing to trade their Core i7 gaming rig for a touch-screen only tablet with non-removable battery that only runs web applications.
but thats not the point, news stories like this are meant to provoke. think of it as professional trolling.
Windows has never been right for any portable device - phone, tablet, netbook, etc. Name one that has worked well. No news there.
But, how can anyone possibly say that tablets will be predominatly Android? How is the iPad mentioned only in passing? Apple has already built a HUGE developer base for iOS with the iPhone and iPad. Apple is one of the only huge companies to "invest in low-end offerings", as the article has put it and it's certainly paid off for them. They've been hugely successful in iPhones and iPads, not to mention Mac Minis and AppleTV.
Microsoft is the one that stands to lose the most here, because Apple is developing hardware and software and Android is "free". It's going to take alot of convincing for any hardware manufacturer to see the value in licensing a Windows OS for their next tablet device.
Sure tablets might cannibalize the home PC market, but I can't imagine the business market giving way to tablets anytime soon. I will use a tablet at work the day when I can use MS Office (or an alternative with 100% compatibility), Lotus Forms, and am able to digitally sign a document with a CAC.
I've seen some crazy predictions about mobile lately, common sense says it's a bubble.
did you forget to take your meds?
I haven't read the article (shocker!), but really, why would I want to? It is funny how people just don't seem to read/follow what has already been said. Just a little while ago there was an article posted here which discussed why Apple is so successful -- because they constantly invest in that "new thing" that will "disrupt" the existing order and even destroy the market for their older products. So, why can Apple make this work, but MS/Intel can't?
You want to invest in new things, even at the expense of your own, older, offerings because there is a need. Consumers want these things and you better respond. Many people now want lower power processors (just like they want fuel efficient vehicles), an OS that is less bloated than Windows, portable computing, etc.
The near-term future is not going to give us flying cars, or jetpacks, but it is obvious that it will give us ubiquitous computing. We are never going to be without a computer. We will have them in our pockets, or on our wrists, or on belt clips. We will use them for more and more of our daily tasks. And we will leave our desktops behind, except for specialized, dedicated tasks. Such tasks might include programming and photo editing and writing/composing -- things that require time and focus. But, for more and more of our computing needs, tablets and phones and whatever else comes about will be just fine.
You can't tell me MS/Intel can't see this.
it becomes very hard for any executive to advocate the complete development of a low cost OS that will run on tablets: not only would it cost Microsoft a lot to develop, but it would result in cannibalization of its core product sales
What???? Have they never heard of WindowsCE? Not only does Microsoft have a low cost OS that will run on tablets, they are actively developing it. Look at what Wikipedia says about WinCE: "Windows CE ... is billed as a low-cost, compact, fast-to-market, real-time operating system available for x86, ARM, MIPS, and SuperH microprocessor-based systems." That's even ignoring the existence of WindowsXP embedded and WindowsNT embedded. It clearly wasn't hard for an executive to advocate the complete development of a low cost OS that will run on tablets.
It was so bad I had to actually read the article to make sure that the original author actually meant that. Indeed, the quote is lifted directly from the article.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Fair amount of FUD. This article essentially states that Armdroid will rise over Wintel on platforms used mostly for the consumption of digital content. Until the day comes where I can use a tablet in place of three or four racks of x86 server clusters, I really don't care who's coming out with how many me-too tablets.
... try to compete with Microsoft on the low end when their profit margin is so much higher on the high end multi-processor machines?
As the various app stores continue to explode with apps, Intel will feel increasing pressure on ots high end. If they don't play defense on the low end, eventually they'll find their high end niche turning into a smaller and smaller slice of pie.
Heck, my iPad has more processing power than my fist desktop computer and, arguably, more processing power than the average desktop user needs. Five years down the road, ARM will have enough processing power to be installed in high end wokstations. If Intel doesn't keep x86 a popular choice at the low end, they'll eventually find that ARM is eating their lunch at the mid- range and ultimately at the high end.
So we're into tablets that people want to use for, what, one year now, and they are already declaring the PC dead? Not gonna happen anytime soon. The PC business is doing well, and will continue to do well, especially in the very lucrative (for Microsoft, that is) business market. People aren't buying tablets instead of PCs, they are adding a tablet to their existing PCs. Until there is some type of massive shift in business application delivery to tablets, of which I certainly haven't seen even a glimmer yet, there's nothing there to disrupt PCs in the business.
Consider how many businesses cannot even consider a move off of Windows PCs, simply because the vertical market software that makes them go simply isn't available on other platforms. What companies are doing for this isn't rewriting their app for phones or tablets, but just providing a viewer into their application data. That's where the market is going, in my opinion: PCs to do the work, tablets to take their work on the road to review.
It's way to early to plan the funeral for PCs.
Have they never heard of WindowsCE?
Windows CE??? Windows CE and its subset Windows Mobile were a failure. Microsoft is stepping down from that name the fastest they can. WindowsCE is made to work with a pen in a resistive touchscreen, not with fingers.
Not only does Microsoft have a low cost OS that will run on tablets, they are actively developing it. Look at what Wikipedia says about WinCE [wikipedia.org]: "Windows CE ... is billed as a low-cost, compact, fast-to-market, real-time operating system available for x86, ARM, MIPS, and SuperH microprocessor-based systems."
That doesn't say shit about Microsoft being actively developing it. For what we know they are developing Windows Phone and that's it.
That's even ignoring the existence of WindowsXP embedded and WindowsNT embedded.
What WindowsXP embedded? You are delusional. The technology showcased at CES still has a long path before coming out to the market, so you can keep dreaming for a big while...
First the Big Custom Computer market (STRETCH, EDVAC, etc) was destroyed by the mass-market mainframe makers (IBM, CDC, Univac...)
Then the mainframe market (IBM, Honeywell, Univac... does Univac still exist any more?) was cannibalized by the minicomputer makers, like DEC, Silicon Graphics, and Data General.
Then the minicomputer market (DEC, SGI, DG, et al) were literally eaten alive by the PC makers (Microsoft in conjunction with Compaq, Dell, and a new piece of IBM)
Now it's the turn of the PC makers to be rendered irrelevant by the "little teensy computers" that masquerade as smart cellphones, book readers, or "mobile internet devices", whatever _those_ are.
It may well be a race to the bottom, but as long as Moore's Law and it's corrolaries hold up, it's gonna be fun.
Windows CE??? Windows CE and its subset Windows Mobile were a failure. Microsoft is stepping down from that name the fastest they can.
Windows mobile was the dominant smartphone platform for half a decade, and Microsoft is doing their best to continue that. Windows Phone 7 is just a skin on top of WinCE: a minor rebranding doesn't change that fact.
That doesn't say shit about Microsoft being actively developing it. For what we know they are developing Windows Phone and that's it.
For what you know, maybe. Anyone who cares knows that Microsoft released the latest version of WinCE just a few months ago.
What WindowsXP embedded? You are delusional.
Enlighten yourself. Released November 28, 2001.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Something that the tech journalists who get infatuated with tablets seem to fail to consider is that they are lousy devices for content creation. They are good for passive experiences. If you want to surf the web or maybe watch a video (though a TV is better for that) they work great. However the more interactivity that is called for, the less useful they are. When you get to content creation, and by this I mean even simple things like writing an e-mail, they are not very good. They CAN do it, but not near as well as a regular PC.
A tablet can't match a keyboard, mouse, and monitor for entering information. This is because the keyboard is an efficient means of entry, and has tactile feedback, and you can be looking at what you are doing without your hands occluding part of your view.
So a tablet is fine as a toy, and for some special productivity purposes, but it lousy for most general work related things. That alone means that computers aren't going anywhere. Even if homes became 100% tablet, offices wouldn't because you need to get shit done there. Managers are not at all going to be interested in moving over to tablets and then have everything slow to a crawl as people's typing speed (among other things) goes through the floor.
I don't see computers doing anywhere any time soon, particularly not in favour of tablets. We've got a few people at work that have iPads and they amount to nothing but toys. They all crow about how wonderful they are, but all they do with them were things they already did with their laptops, and none of them have gotten rid of their laptops and kept just the tablet. That's all well and good, but it is quite clear tablets are not something that is allowing them to dump traditional computers.
To me Armdroid is a robot arm, as described here: http://www.megadroid.com/Arms/armdroid_1.htm and here: http://www.theoldrobots.com/clone.html and was created some time back in 1981.
But knowing that makes me feel old.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Talking with a friend from Kodak, I learned that they had exactly the same issue when it came to trying to dump film in favor of digital imaging. They had invested so much in film production that it was now effectively "free" to produce a roll of film and sell it leaving a very high profit margin.
To re-tool to produce digital cameras and only take a relatively small profit margin was very hard for them to understand.
Look what happened to Kodak.
There is no end to the speculation of what certain things mean to the future of "the industry." Yes, tablets of varying sizes are extremely popular. They have been popular for a VERY long time starting with the Palm Pilot and some might argue even before that. But unquestionably, Palm (hand held computing) has proven to be a virtually addictive form of computing.
I don't recall, but I wonder if after the introduction and immense popularity of the Palm Pilot series of devices led people to speculate "the end of the PC as we know it?" Clearly that was not the case regardless of any speculation that may have occurred. But now we are looking at really souped up handheld devices that do a great deal more than their forerunners. A lot more of the desktop/laptop functionality is being copied into handheld devices now. But so far I see the following factors as cause not to believe that handheld computing will replace desktop computing:
1. Keyboards
2. Displays
3. General comfort
These factors all have one thing in common -- how the user interfaces with the device to make use of it. A full-sized keyboard is a must for any serious amount of data entry. It would take me four times as long or more to enter this comment from my android phone. Display sizes and positions also contribute to the comfort the user experiences. A good sized display at an appropriate elevation makes all sorts of computer use more comfortable. With handhelds, you can comfort your arms by holding the device low resulting in a "prayer" like position. (I have heard it called a "blackberry prayer" often enough) If the handheld were closer to eye level, then the arms would get tired pretty fast not to mention that the display would likely be held rather far from the user's face making it even more difficult to see the tiny displays. And if it were an iPad display, now you are dealing with an entirely different set of limitations and issues though iPad's display size is pretty optimal in my opinion though it means you can't put it into a small pocket.
The general comfort item was included to fill in the remaining gaps. But the fact is, the way handheld devices are used, they can't really be used for hours on end in comfort. Nothing really replaces the mouse. Nothing seems to overcome the need for a separate numeric keypad. (Though interestingly, since I started on things like C64 and TRS80 CoCo, it took some doing to get used to the 10-key at all... and I still don't use it so much personally -- I just say that people in general make a great deal of use of the 10-key portion of a keyboard even if I don't) To have your hand lower, your arms rested and your head vertical at once is a human ergonomic requirement that cannot be overcome without extreme technological improvements such as display "glasses" or projectors.
While there is unquestionably a revival in the popularity of handheld computing and data devices, I don't see it "replacing" the desktop PC just yet and it has little to do with their power and capacity and everything to do with how it is used. (These are details that gadget engineers tend to forget while they are taking advantage of ever more powerful things in ever more tiny packages.)
Keep dreaming while I enjoy Linux running in my custom made ARM device TODAY :D
I hate these stories. While one rises, the others needn't not fall. There is not limited market space for a phone AND for a computing platform. It's not like people only have a computer OR a phone...many of us will have both for decades to come (and multiple copies of both at that).
Someone at Intel needs to read Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma".
CompanyA is the leader in the high-end market. They see upstart CompanyB, who has a new (disruptive) technology that is targeting a new sub-market with lower profit margins. CompanyA says "Why do I want to compete with B at lower margins in an untested market, my customers don't want that product, and I am already in competition in my existing market. They can have those customers".
So CompanyB takes the new market with the new technology with ProductB and CompanyA keeps making ProductA. But over time, process improvements in B begin to outpace A; Intel's CISC are too much for hand-helds, but an ARM may someday become powerful enough (multicore perhaps) to become a desktop processor. Technology A is already at the height of it's S-curve, while B climbs and intersects the capabilities of A. At that point, products A & B are equal in the eyes of the customer, but B is cheaper and soon nibbles at A's customers. CompanyA is non-existent in the new market which is now growing at unforseen rates. CompanyA is now in a position where it *must* switch to technology B, but it is years behind, and making B's canibalizes CompanyA's existing customers. History has shown that the CompanyAs soon hopelessly fall behind and thus die off.
"Hey, we completely failed to predict this, but here's an article where we confidently make more predictions!"
I expect better from Slashdot - if you're going to up guesstimates posing as real journalism, I'll just browse reddit instead.
"Microsoft's next-generation operating system has abandoned Intel exclusively for the first time." I had to go and read the article, which seemed like normal "tech news" crap. Then I read this line and it rubbed me the wrong way so badly. While technically it might be true, about Windows 8, it sounds like it's implying the NT OS has only ever been on Intel chips. That would be so very wrong, Comptia A+ learning guide's version of Windows history style of wrong.
Without good tools great software and content will be long in coming. Developing with Visual Studio is like driving a fine sports car - Windows score. iOS development with Objective C is pretty nice too and the tools are basically free with a Mac - Apple score. Development tools for Android - ick - what a pain. Hardware abstration with Android? Who knows what my code will run on properly... I'm not suggesting it can't be made to work, but Android dev tools are primitive by comparison. Android no score. If everybody is always on the Internet, web based development with server side code would be a good choice except there is absolutely no standard for secure hardware interfaces and anything beyond basic printer support is almost non-existent.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Looking at what Apple is moving to (the same CPU to power smartphone, tablet, set-top box) and what Motorola is doing (phone that can be plugged into a desktop set), I'm wondering if the future is not about a very smart phone, pluggable into a tablet for larger screen, battery life, IO, storage, and/or a desktop set, for even more of that.
That way, we take our important files and apps with us everywhere, and can adjust our interface according to our circumstances: pocketable, portable, desktop.
It seems the upcoming ARM chips will have enough power for 95% of users, graphics being a sore point, but a "desktop set" might include a more powerful graphics card.
The sore points might be
1- OS/Software: it's hard to design something that works well in all those scenarios.
2- Lock-in: Both Apple and to a lesser extent Chrome OS (Android, less so) are trying to take advantage of that new field and lock us in, in a way MS never dreamed of.
3- Hardware standards: it'd be great in the table set and the desktop set had a standard interface to the phone/cpu module, so that we could switch phone without having to witch everything.
MS and Intel don't seem to have any plans in that direction, and neither x86 nor Windows seem to have any advantages in that scenario.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
> Heck, my iPad has more processing power than my fist desktop computer and,
> arguably, more processing power than the average desktop user needs.
No it doesn't.
It just is constructed in such a crippled fashion to make it difficult to actually notice.
Although a lot of what most people need computing capacity for is secondary. It's a side effect of formats that are in wide use. It's not so much about explicit computation anymore.
Dealing interesting arbitrary multimedia can be very processor intensive.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't think that tablets or smartphones will "kill" the PC (desktop or laptop), but I do think things are lining up to allow the computing world to become more diverse and less of a monoculture (Windows running on Intel).
- Robust and fairly standardized HTML5 support allowing complex applications ...)
- Webkit and Firefox allowing good standards support for the web for many different platforms and players
- Increased use and familiarity with smart phones and other non-PC devices (iPads, Kindles, etc.
- Increasing market share for Mac, iOS, and Android
- Microsoft's Vista black eye
And most importantly:
- The non-geek public is coming to realize their devices only need a good standards-based browser and maybe a place to get apps for that platform (As long as the device does the web fairly well, it can be useful.)
- They do not NEED to have Windows to survive and be productive; it is just one option among many
What I think and hope we are approaching is a tech world where standards provide a basis for minimum (yet still useful) functionality and the different platforms compete on style and added value BEYOND the basic necessities. This will give us a thriving and competitive market where things continue to improve. I hope.
http://john.osbornecentral.com/
http://gp.darkproductions.com
MS did a lot with WindowsCE, however, they for the most part haven't done anything significant with it for several years. Even Ballmer admitted that "missed a few cycles". As far as I recall, Windows Mobile 5 was the last version to have any significant improvements. All other releases since then had minor changes. Windows Mobile 5 was released in 2005. MS has been busy fixing the Vista debacle, answering the Google challenge, trying to fight the iPod, etc. They have been largely distracted from when Android and Apple started to take away their market. Now they are playing catch up.
The question posed by the review is whether CE is enough or does MS have to invest in a costly new system. Right now the MS has put a new interface on top of CE for WP7. In the same aspect, it appears that HP is betting their mobile strategy on WebOS. For years, HP used WindowsMobile but is going what Palm has invented. Most of the smart phone makers have embraced Android. For Apple iOS is a subset of OS X but heavily optimized for touch usage. MS is not the only with this problem. Nokia and RIM also have to determine if their current OS strategy will be sufficient for the future.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The key point is legacy apps. There are countless legacy programs out there that need wintel, so switching to armdroid won't work. This has always been microsofts core strength, the reason they can't be stopped. Tablets and cellphones break this because there isn't any legacy code to deal with, and that's why wintel can't take the market. Armdroid should fix the lack of legacy code, allowing people to base their buisness/life around some piece of 20 year old software written in pascal or visual basic or cobol. The only question is will microsoft participate in that market or just watch from the sidelilnes as their market share falls.
there is no way i am using a tablet for what im doing on my home pc. even proposing that shows how lacking in i.t. knowledge and computer aptitude these harvard business review people are. maybe they think computers/internet means facebook updates, twitter posts, messaging and mail.
Read radical news here
I wrote my first program in 1970
;-)
I have used ICL, Burroughs, IBM, Univac, TI, DEC operating systems, VMS, nix, CP/M, MS DOS, win x, Apple OS etc etc
I have a wintel desktop which I use for devlopment activities, I carry an iPad, I have donated my laptops to nephews and nieces.
If I did not work in the IT 'space' I would happily use just my iPad.
If something better than that comes along I'll move on.
The world moves on, wintel was mainstream, it is becoming niche, I for one, have spent my career in technology because I love the excitement of new things and concepts coming along.
In my experience it is the wintel crowd who seem unable to look forward, and behave as though wintel has some sort of divine right to its previous dominance.
The most important development I have seen in my lifetime has been the internet, connectivity to it, html and the browser. For MOST people, that is how they do most of their computing, oh yes, and lightweight, non bloat, function specific 'apps'. Sadly, I will have to continue to use wintel on a daily basis as I have a server farm, rather than farmville.
J
The fundamental problem with iOS development is that it's a huge pain in the ass. The language isn't used on any other platforms, the developer licenses are relatively expensive and you're subject entirely to the whims of a madman when it comes to what kinds of software you can release, and what kinds of features you can use in it. Pretty much everyone who programs for it in any serious way is doing it for the money, and the money is based entirely around the iPad/Pod/Phone being the hot thing right now. If sales figures for iPhones start dropping significantly the app store will become a ghost town, no one is doing that shit for fun.
I cite myself as refutation to the claim, "no one is doing that shit for fun." I have been programming with Objective-C using NeXTstep/Openstep/YellowBox/Cocoa/Cocoa Touch frameworks since late 1988. I have enjoyed it consistently through all its versions. I was using Unix and a near ancestor of Cocoa at a time when Windows 2.0 was still evolving its 16-bit API.
I think that Objective-C is a near perfect mix of Smalltalk style object orientation and compatibility with ANSI C.
I think the Cocoa frameworks are still generally superior to competitors after 23 years. I am not a big fan of Xcode as an IDE, but it is adequate and improving.
The full professional development environment for Cocoa programming is exactly $0 for both Mac OS X devices and iOS devices. If you want to test or deploy your software on an iOS device, you currently need to pay $99 per year for code signing keys. I don't like code signing, but it has some advantages on mobile devices. It can potentially limit the availability of malware and certainly trace malware back to its suppliers.
Contrast the Apple development experience to Microsoft's: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products
iOS programming is a joy.
The article has some legitimate observations but the conclusions it draws don't follow logically nor do they fit past trends. Yes, Intel and Microsoft have little motivation to get into the low-margin tablet/smartphone market, if they are only thinking about short-term profits (which they may have been) but if they are thinking strategically they'd know that by giving ARM oxygen eventually it will grow into a company that can compete for the notebook market (which will probably be the biggest single market for consumers) and the same goes for Microsoft with Android.
Also, one technology never completely supplants another technology. Each will fit into its niche but since the tablet better fits one niche (i.e. media consumption) it will dominate it. Netbooks, laptops, desktops, and servers are not going away any time soon because they fit other niches. It's not clear where the equilibrium point is going to be but it's also not an either/or scenario. I have a desktop, laptop, and I will have a tablet if the iPad 2 lives up to the hype.
Most people use PCs as a method of online communications and entertainment. Not everyone that uses a computer is a power user. The responses I've seen on /. are expected because of the community. However, you can't forget that the majority of people on the internet are not the audience that /. caters to.
I can see the tablet and other portable computing devices really disrupting the PC. As more people begin to view a computing device as an appliance rather than a platform, the PC will be used less. Don't read into this that these devices will replace the PC, though. The PC will always have its place, but it will become less of an important role for many people.
My PC might as well be a game console and/or media center. My primary use of it is for high end gaming and watching movies/TV. I do more communication and online browsing on my phone and netbook. My netbook does run an Intel processor, but it's running Linux, not Windows, which could make it easily a candidate for any hardware platform Linux runs on. I don't have high expectations of performance on my netbook, which is why I'm okay with it running an Atom CPU. Should a netbook come around running Tegra2, I will probably jump on it for the savings on battery and better performance, and the ability to run either Android or Linux.
Does this mean the end of the PC for me? No. I will always have a need for a PC, but it is no longer my primary computing device outside of work. However, my use of the PC has changed drastically over the years and it has become more of a secondary device for me. Does this mean I won't upgrade? No. I already have upgrades planned so that I can keep playing the "next generation" games as they come along.
No reply eh? Poor boy, someone made you cry :'(
...is gonna change everything. ;)
No-one on this thread seems to understand that windows phone-7 is it's own operating system that could easily operate on a tablet. Also, developing apps for this operating system is astoundingly easy compared to i and android (I've done all 3).
Yes, right now ARM + Android is about tablets and other mobile devices. But who said that they will stay there?
What keeps the wintel duopoly going is not the superiority of their technology, but all the software that run on the platform.
When there are sufficient number of quality application available for the ARM+Android platform, the new platform will be able to replace the old one by moving into PCs and laptops as well
This is a classic example of the kind of development discussed in "The Innovator's Dilemma" by By Clayton M. Christensen http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christensen.htm
Where is my ARM/MIPS/PowerPC motherboard so I could build a proper workstation? I cannot imagine doing my work on a tablet. I also see no reason why technological innovation, power saving etc. should be limited to portable toys.
I have used Linux on non-x86 hardware for a few years, and it is no different from Linux on x86. I currently do all my work on a Powerbook. It is actually nice to know that there are no proprietary, binary blobs available for this system.
Recently I had to buy a new motherboard, since I needed a PCIe slot for some GPU computing. (My only "desktop" system then was a Mini-ITX.) Ironically, I was forced to buy an x86-64 system, even though most of the computation was going to run on a different architecture. Of course, GPU computing at the moment requires closed drivers, which of course are only available for x86.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Different tools for different jobs.
A tablet is near useless beyond websurfing, a little bit of media watching, and a minor amount of gaming. A market already serviced and heading towards saturation by smart phones.
They are too expensive, too fragile, too short lived (batteries), and too easy to loose. Until they come in packs of ten for $100 I can't see them becoming all that common.
Imagine being the guy they hire to manage an ARM port at Microsoft. Could there be a worse job at Microsoft?
Imagine how the ARM guy has to go around and convince various development, marketing and management fiefdoms built on x86 since day 2 to make an ideological shift to include or even imagine an ARM port.
-The costs will be blown sky-high if only to keep things just as they are right now.
-The resource constraints will be retold as enormous
-The market research will cast the ARM market as "bad" for all kinds of crazy reasons.
This ARM guy will probably quit if he has a brain in his head, or get fired for non-performance.
Meanwhile tiny non-x86 devices will eat away at Microsoft's business until they can't pretend any more and the 'business' collapses.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
they already predicted the death of netbooks, a few years after predicting a netbook revolution.
Rather make the money the Wintel platform makes in its "fallen" state then the money the Armdroid platform is making in its "risen" state.
Something that the tech journalists who get infatuated with tablets seem to fail to consider is that they are lousy devices for content creation.
Only for a limited definition of content. For drawing they are far superior to laptops.
Even for writing they can be better, because they are so compact. I prefer taking short notes on a tablet.
For longer writing, you can attach (wirelessly or wired) a keyboard. How many times do you have to write something really long? For most people that is not a common case.
People like you are putting on rather large blinders pretending that tablets are not for content creation. The best tool for creation is one you have with you...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
they have .NET/Silverlight/XNA, which is theoretically cross platform/cross architecture, and(while Apple would never touch that with somebody else's 10 foot pole),
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I actually have a few of the Microsoft Tablet PC (running XP) items that was mentioned in the 2001 Gates speech. Actually - for wintendo boxes - they're quite nice. I was hoping tablets would catch on sooner rahter than later.
As it is I use my ARM/Android device almost as often as my laptop or my desktops.
Still, I can't do development on the Android unit.... yet.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
There've been massive improvements in WinCE 7. Check it out sometime.
BTW people keep seeming to think that I love Microsoft with my posts.....I don't, I just think the author of the original article is an idiot. His analysis is far off.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I see your racks of x86 clusters, and raise you racks of SPARC clusters.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
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I understand that Intel actually makes most of its money selling chips for server farms. Since a large part of the functionality of these new devices (phones, tablets, and even netbooks to some extent) is based in the "cloud", I think Intel is in a rather good position.
People like you say this because you don't realize just how inconvenient the conventional UI really is (it's the same line of reasoning that had people saying GUI would never replace DOS for serious users). Think of the difference between drafting in AutoCAD and drafting on a drafting table. If it weren't for AutoCAD's ability to rapidly make changes to designs, and it's precision, you'd never use it over a drafting table. Now, imagine that you have the benefits of both. That's what a multi-touch OS is. You aren't constrained to your mouse and keyboard. It's only a matter of time before the conventional desktop is completely dead, and you won't believe you were ever stupid enough to have said what you said here.
However the more interactivity that is called for, the less useful they are. When you get to content creation, and by this I mean even simple things like writing an e-mail, they are not very good.
Depends on the type of content you want to create. There are pretty nice "virtual instruments UI layouts" (harmonic tables, janko keyboard emulator etc.) for tablets. Multi touch is pretty useful in music, while the standard computer keyboard can only handle max 4-5 simultaneous keypresses. They're a low-cost alternative for Haken Continuum pads as well.
So these tablets offer a reconfigureable interface for music instruments, which is unprecedented in history.
Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) demoing the Morphviz on Ipad
Mugician demo
Rudess on harmonic table (non-Ipad)
Harvard Business school predicts what the rest of us already knew for quite sometime. I admire Bill G because he knew when to quit. He left on top and didn't waste his life trying to live up to expectations he had no chance of fulfilling. Think Mike Dell.
Now that Windows 7 has been developed, to sell another copy they don't have to do a single thing. And if they don't prepare for the future they will end up not selling a single thing. Very clever of them.... oh wait
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
... greatly exaggerated! Again...
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
As someone who has been using Windows and PCs for the past fifteen years, I'm glad to see the fall of the empire. As a user and sometimes giver of tech support, I'm tired of dealing with crippleware software that was (for example) rigged to artificially only support 4 gigs of RAM when my free 32-bit operating system happily supports 8 via PAE. I'm also tired of having to call a phone number to activate that crippleware when I get a new PC and transfer my existing OS to it.
I just built a new PC and neither of these companies got a dime from me. It runs Linux and an old copy of XP for some legacy apps. The positive side of games going to consoles is that Windows will wither away as a gaming platform. People will be more open to switching to Macs or the above mentioned tablets/cell phones.
Now I'm not one of those "everyone must switch to Linux!1one" guys, I am just happy to see that change in the IT industry is slowly coming. So, even though I will stick with PCs, I instruct people to "get a Mac".
Seriously? People are going to convert en-masse from Wintel desktops to Android tablets?
Let's get real here. Desktops are still desktops and tablets are still tablets. Next year most personal computing will still be done on Wintel machines. I'd love to say otherwise, but let's tone down the starry-eyed dreaming, ok? The death of Wintel is once again being greatly exaggerated. It's getting tiresome.
Tablets will make some inroads into the space currently occupied by laptops, pretty much decimate the portable DVD player market, change the face of the portable navigator market, and create their own tablet-specific space. People will find *new* things they can do on tablets that they hadn't been able to do before, like carry a device in their coat pocket that allows reasonably effective remote access to their devices at home, or provide ultra-portable hand-held access to web applications in the field without the heft and inconvenient piano hinge of a notebook and the dinky screen of a smartphone.
There *is* a difference between the growing tablet market and the Netbook market. Netbooks were effectively killed by the perception that computers must run Windows. Microsoft met the market halfway by forestalling the death of Windows XP, but the fact of the matter is that netbooks had to grow in size to be able to run Winders effectively, which destroyed their main appeal -- small size, low power, long battery life. There is so much overlap between netbooks and notebooks these days both in price and capabilities that the difference isn't important anymore.
What's different in the tablet market is that Microsoft has nothing to compete in this space. With Windows 7 shamelessly re-branding Accessibility features as "Tablet ready", it's plain that Microsoft expects to capture the tablet market through sheer inertia rather than actually having, you know, a product. iPads and Android tablets will continue to be purchased for the things they can do, and a few Windows tablets will be purchased because they're running Windows. Which will rapidly be seen as Not Reason Enough.
But the death of Wintel? It is to laugh.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It seems to me the use case here would be that you have the bluetooth keyboard/mouse at your desk at work, and then when it's time to travel, you just yank the iPad (or whatever) out of the dock and go. Now you've got the best of both worlds: a super portable device that has all the data entry goodness of a keyboard & mouse when needed. If I traveled more, I can totally see this replacing a laptop. YMMV if you do software development or whatever, but lots of people don't need that much power.
That being said, I think the iPad itself is still a little too dependent on being tethered to a computer (come on, Steve, when are we going to be able to do synchronization, backup, or OS updates over the air?) to truly be a laptop replacement. I'm also a little dubious about the touchscreen interface metaphor - I never realize how useful it was to be able to hover the mouse over a UI element, or right click, until I couldn't - but I think the day is coming when we'll have an appropriate device.
The killer apps for me are the Adobe suite. Port CS6 or even Lightroom to Android and my PC would gather dust. I can do pretty much everything else I need to do on either an Android or iPad tablet (admittedly with rare use of a bluetooth keyboard for the times when I have to pound out a lot of text in a short period of time). Microsoft Office? It is to laugh. The features of the latest Office may be of use to a professional administrator tightly connected to an all-Microsoft environment, (I find most of the Ribbon features to be incomprehensible or unimportant) but for the rest of us there's a bunch of free and easily acquired tools that are plenty good enough.
Yes, I know about Photoshop Express. It's useful enough for vacation photos, but what is needed is a complete solution.
Why CS6 on Android and not iPad? Because without an SD card slot or a USB port, or SOME way to get the images from the content capture device to the tablet, it's not much more than a browsing/entertainment device.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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So they can remain relevant?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Customers buy products/services for economic, technical and social reasons.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
That's a far fetched about the platform dominance and unability to respond to the market. I wouldn't even try to say that Meego comes late, as the future will figure that out. More on Meego development (which is basically the famous Qt development now backed up by Nokia)... http://appcircus.com/blog/intel-application-lab-developer-day-mobile-world-congress Now Intel has ARMs and Meego has legs ;-)
Windows mobile was the dominant smartphone platform for half a decade
In some fairly atypical (though highly visible & with a lot of vocal pundits) local markets, at best...
BTW WinPhone7 seems to sit on a hybrid of CE 6 & 7? And anyway, it is now totally about .Net runtime, can be quite transparently moved to NT kernel (what Ballmer seems to suggest, "real / core Windows everywhere" et al). Which of course makes TFA even somewhat more stupid.
One that hath name thou can not otter