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Microsoft To PC and Tablet Makers: You're Not Our Future
snydeq writes "Microsoft's plan to build its own Windows 8 tablets puts longtime allies in peril — and it may be the right thing to do. 'In announcing the Surface tablets, due to be released this fall, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cited Apple's advantage (without mentioning Apple) of integrated software and hardware. "Things work better when hardware and software are considered together," he said. "We control it all, we design it all, and we manufacture it all ourselves." ... Like Apple, Microsoft will hire a few PC makers to do the actual production work. But the need for 20 brands of me-too laptops, tablets, and convertibles is low. Manufacturing sophisticated electronics is a skill requiring manufacturing innovation. But all those branded-but-otherwise-undifferentiated PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones just aren't needed in the vision Ballmer sketched out yesterday.'"
This maybe the smartest move microsoft made in the last 15 years
Didn't they bash google over this exact thing when they bought motorola mobile?
That's good news for the customers, because in order to penetrate the market Microsoft will throw shitloads of money at the development of their new hardware toys and essentially give them away underpriced and possibly at a loss.
All we need to find out is a way to hack them and install Linux on them, and there it is, your super-cheap Linux tablet. :-)
They're down and out, they just don't know it yet.
So now all the PC manufacturers need a non-MS alternative... this could be the year... sounds good for EFI being able to boot linux after all!
blog.sam.liddicott.com
All of the recent commentary about MS rupturing their alliance with OEMs is overblown. Microsoft is stuck with OEMs because they don't have the resources to supply an entire computer market with their own hardware. OEMs are stuck with Microsoft because Apple won't license OS X and most consumers won't want linux for the foreseeable future.
MS will make a flagship tablet, which will showcase Windows 8 in the way that they want to show it (without manufacturer bloatware etc). The OEMs will rush in and undercut MS with a range of comparable but slightly cheaper options, and life will go on.
And yet again, Microsoft ape Apple.
The market is already saturated with what people want. Style and pose value from Apple and usefulness and financial value from the Android market. They think that they have a brand to bring to the table but they do not have that. Look at how they do in the Smart Phone world...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Nokia has been assimilated.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
But the need for 20 brands of me-too laptops, tablets, and convertibles is low.
Yet MS insists on making a tablet?
What?
Microsoft wont throw the OEMs under the bus, it just wont happen.
The Surface is Microsoft's attempt to quickly capture a chunk of the tablet market by producing a top end tablet running Windows 8 - I expect the price to be highly competitive in order to drive high sales, the end goal being to encourage OEMs like Samsung to move their investment from Android to Windows 8.
If they launched Windows 8 cold, the OEMs will probably be hesitant to make a major investment when there is no proof of the demand for a Win8 tablet - Microsoft are manufacturing that proof in the form of the Surface.
To be honest, I have 4 tablets in my house. One I use constantly for travel and three others for the wife/kids. Do they use them? sometimes but for me I have a Laptop, a Desktop and other systems to use. The tablet form factor is nice and it does provide a needed distraction from the obnoxious guy sitting behind me in 10A on the flights. I've also seen people now diligently taking their tablets everywhere, as if they're so much jewelry. Today I went to lunch and next to where I was, there was a young couple. Both with tablets, both watching stuff, exchanging e-mail and not really talking to each other. So why go to lunch together if you're not going to be part of the actual experience. Yes, it could be laptops, eepcs etc. but it's simply amazing the tools we now have that actually discourage face to face communications. Oh yeah, I can Skype too but that's beside the point.
Microsoft for jumping into this with a "Me Too" approach seems to be too little, too late. Much like their phones. Maybe they'll sell a few but right now I think the market is saturated by Apple and all of the Android based models out there. This move will also alienate them from a lot of their tried-and-true supporters, the Toshibas, the HPs and the ASUSs for example.
Well, let's wait and see in two years to see if it makes sense or if Ballmer will do his Monkey Boy Dance again!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Hello,
I do not see this so much as an ultimatum by Microsoft to its partners as a warning.
Microsoft has invested a great deal of R&D into making Windows fast and reliable, only to find those efforts wasted by computer manufacturers who load up trial or otherwise limited versions of third-party programs which slow down the boot process and system performance overall, use up memory and disk space and introduce incompatibilities with other operating system components and third-party software, all in the pursuit of pumping up profits by turning the computer that you buy from them into a billboard, with those programs being the advertisements. Software companies have to pay for pre-loading the trial version onto a computer, and also have to pay a commission when a license is sold from that preloaded version.
The fact that whole taxonomies of software have been created (bloatware, crapware, shovelware to name a few), and that an ecosystem of programs like CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner) and PC Decrapifier (formerly Dell Decrapifier) have sprung up to solve the problem indicates how badly Microsoft's partners have abused their position.
In the case of the whole OEM software preload business, I think Microsoft has largely been the victim. They put strict branding requirements into Windows 95 for the desktop because they wanted end users to have the best experience possible. Manufacturers saw it as a way to make more money ("sell advertising space") and that's what pretty much started the initial antitrust investigation into Microsoft by the US DoJ. Yes, Microsoft has done plenty of horrible things, but they've also paid the price for those past misdeeds, not just in terms of fines, but in the distraction of having to deal with lawyers instead of being able to focus on delivering products and competing with companies like Apple.
Microsoft's partners cannot have ignored what Microsoft is doing with Windows Phone, Windows RT, the Microsoft Store, the Signature PC program and so forth. The writing has pretty much been on the wall for a while; this is just the latest paragraph: We have worked very hard to provide you with the tools to provide customers with a great Windows experience. If you do not choose to execute on that, we will.
As usual and for the record, all of this is my own opinion and commentary derived by observation and other public sources and neither reflects the opinions of Microsoft or my employer (who actually competes with them), although they'd both be fools to disagree with me. :)
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Choice is so bad that we're going to get rid of this thing called freedom. This time around, there will be no pesky DOJ, or even an IBM to stop us. That, and we've bought out the last folks who opened up the WP7 platform - cant have users doing what they want with their devices! /s
Someone needs to remind Microsoft and Apple that hardware and software work better when there are more choices to come together - where all layers are in control by the user. Not the other way around.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I smell a rat in those figures.
80% of the iOS devices ever sold? Or 80% of those that are both still in support and deemed 'compatible' by Apple?
These are very different figures.
Though I agree, it would be a big win for the consumer if Google took some sort sort of action to encourage device vendors to release with modern OS versions and a streamlined, fast, update program. Even Samsung, the poster-child for Android success, is still releasing devices (Galaxy Advance) with 2.x
What's the future for Nokia?
Look at both of these URLs and you tell me.
http://ompldr.org/vZWQzcw/charting.the.charts.png
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-15/moodys-downgrades-nokia-to-junk-status
--
BMO
I'm all for this. Hopefully Microsoft will provide non-crapware infested machines like the ones you get from Acer, Dell and Sony. It's bad when you have to spend the first hour of owning a new computer re-installing windows without all the vendor crap.
Apple's tight integration of hardware and software gives them a significantly greater advantage when it comes to releasing hardware that people actually want with software that further fuels their excitement. It's not like the established players (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung) will go broke or lose Microsoft's partnership overnight; the former three will probably, as hinted by the article, concentrate more on their enterprise products (as they should, as they are very good in that space and invest truck-lodes of their R&D budget there anyway) and Samsung will probably be used as the key hardware manufacturer for executing Microsoft's vision (which allows them the opportunity, if it's successful, to exit the direct-to-consumer business completely).
I think MS is very much on the right track. Despite some idiosyncrasies, it is pretty easy to see the amount of effort they've invested in making Windows 8 friendly for content consumption *and* creation. If the hardware is right (i.e. comparable to iPad) and comes with Office and a tight screen for drawing and writing on, I'm hard-pressed to believe that these won't sell.
My god, could you imagine what will happen when instead of windows having to conform and support all the various different hardware it has to run on, the manufactures will have to conform to one hardware standard, and windows will become a much simpler piece of software, a much more stable and secure platform.
Sounds like a complete rewrite, and I mean complete - starting with the specifications if you want decent security. And that would mean a more-or-less complete rewrite for all those third party applications, too, since their behavior and the APIs they access would necessarily change. Other than some of the FLOSS stuff, only the bigger fish or the specialized ones would survive.
A relevant link from yesterday's news.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
7% of android devices are running ICS 7 months after it was released, compared to Apples 80%.
Can you substantiate your claim that 80% of Apple's devices are running ICS? I thought it would take a lot longer than 7 months for that to happen...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This is a bold move. I didn't think Microsoft, especially with Ballmer and the current echelon at the top (and the organization, ingrained modes of operation etc.), had it in them to make such a huge leap.
I will wait and see whether they'll really do this.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
For shipping devices.
Apple releases iOS 6. within 3 months it will be nearly impossible to BUY a NEW device without iOS 6 already on it. I am not talking about already sold but NEW.
Google released ICS how long ago, most companies will start converting to it next YEAR.
That is what is frustrating the lead developers(HTC, etc) are 6-9 months behind google's release and compatible hardware may never get the updates. Only the really popular lines seem to be getting regular updates. however since Android developers are taking the shotgun approach and shipping 50 medicore products a year and hoping one or two stick it is really hurting the overall marketplace.
instead they should ship 5 maybe 10 devices a year and make them better. It will lower their production costs too as you can buy in bulk.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
This cannot end well.
Google needs to start grabbing manufacturers and carriers by the balls like Apple did. Give the manufacturers what they need, but enforce some kind of rollout process. People are pissed, but they can't fight back against an AT&T for being completely feckless. Apple just said, "fuck you carriers, we'll handle the updates so its done right."
Very difficult for the great majority of handset manufacturers. They're following a strict waterfall model - phone hardware gets developed, released, marketed and retired. The software on the phone is developed in the early stages of that process and basically ignored for the rest of it because the development team has moved onto the next thing.
At any given point in time, they could easily have 5 or ten different handsets on the market.
The problem is, when you've got a whacking great business with thousands of staff worldwide, it's fantastically difficult to radically change how it works.
Nokia need to do this, as do RIM. Look how well they're getting on so far.
MS is selling tablets in order to sell Win-8. That's it, that's the only reason. They're hedging their bets that Win-8 won't catch on so they're going to sell devices that have to run it. When after a few years they discover the error of their ways and realize that Win-8 is a niche product and that tablets haven't taken over the world, they'll drop Metro and they'll drop tablets.
That's not exactly true. Since ICS has been released with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, there have only been a few major releases of phones. And while Motorola Razr did not come with ICS, they are slated to have it by the end of this month. HTC One, Incredible 4G and the newest Samsung Galaxy III come with ICS (and those are the major releases from those manufacturers in the seven months since ICS was released, they have really stopped saturating the market with phone after phone). Really only the Razr and it's various iterations have lagged behind on the ICS release. And in the next several months the HTC Rezound, Thunderbolt, Rhyme, the Motorola Razr, Droid 4 and Bionic are all scheduled to receive updates, not next year. I agree it's taking them far too long, but in the case of the Galaxy Nexus, which is supposed to be a pure Android experience and updated by Google, the update from 4.02 to 4.04 took months longer because of Verizon. In fact Google actually leaked a working version of the 4.04 update months before it was released on Verizon and most rooted phones were using it.
Android, in the form used in most tablets and phones, is most certainly not free. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is free, and you can make a quite respectable OS from it, but many of the things that people think of as "Android" features are actually *Google* features, and Google charges licensing fees for them.
Want access to the Android Market (excuse me, Google Play)? That will cost. Want access to Google's map data for built-in navigation? That will cost. Want to use Google's mail and calendar and contacts and chat apps for Android? That will cost. Want Google's support in modifying the OS for your devices and market? That will cost (actually, it costs anyhow, it's just a question of whose developers you're paying).
The truly bottom-of-the-price-chart Android tablets and phones do use AOSP, on crap hardware with crap drivers. That saves on licensing the OS, buying quality parts, and integrating the OS well. Of course, you get what you pay for; a slow and buggy experience that falls well short of what could be achieved on a Nexus or Droid or Galaxy with comparable specs.
The other people using AOSP are those who are investing heavily in building their own OS, and use Android as a starting point. The Kindle Fire, Nook Color, and Nook Tablet are all running Android, but they don't really look and feel like Android devices because, in the Google Android sense, they aren't. They run Amazon Android or B&N Android, and while those companies have sent Google very little if any money in licensing costs, they have spent lots of money on internal development costs.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The "MCPC" thing isn't a cute meme, it's spam.
They're trying to Google to rank them higher by getting as many mentions of their product as possible on high profile websites like /.
You're not helping.
No sig today...
Slashdot links are rel="nofollow", which means Google doesn't count them. So no.
I, as most people in my situation, own a couple of iPads. Wife. Children. Me. All cool. The iPad is a fantastically useful consumption device with minor possibilities for content modification. It's not ideal or even convenient, but definitely possible. This means that when I head off to Rome this summer on vacation, I will bring my iPad on the plane, but I'll probably check my laptop. I will of course bring the laptop. I can do things on that (such as develop software) that simply isn't possible, or at least practical on the iPad.
When the Windows Surface Pro comes out, if it has the specs it looks like it's going to have, my laptop will be retired. I will no longer bring it anywhere, since the Surface Pro will be a fully functional substitute for my laptop. I look forward to not having to travel with my laptop. Oh, and my iPad will be retired at the same time, since the Surface will have 100% of the functionality of my iPad also.
Microsoft is a little slow to the party, but not too late. This offering, if it works as advertised, will simply kill the iPad in the enterprise. Is that important? Yes it is. Once most of us get a Surface at work, why would we need an iPad?
Remeber too, the Surface has at least an order of magnitude more developers than does the iPad.
I'm so glad Balmer just realized what an Embedded System is, you design the software and hardware to work together :-).
it would make desktops very expensive, and out of the reach of most computer fans..
Branded workstations, yes maybe (HP, Dell, etc.)
On the other hand, apart from the graphic card and the sound card an enthusiast's PC share much of its component with servers, cluster nodes, and other machine.
So there will still be a big market for computer parts. There are still going to be computer makers selling beige boxes (from small companies who can't afford the expansive branded workstations) (or enterprises from part of the world where the money exchange rate make the beige boxes the only option even for large companies). And there are still going to be parts that geeks could source to build their PC.
But the overall market will still be on average 1 desktop or maybe 2 laptops per household, and then everyone including the pets owning 1 or 2 tablets and/or smartphones. The TV will be completely missing and be replaced by a tablet streaming app, ev. a cheap small projector (LED or Laser, fed from the tablets' microHDMI or MHL) for family gathering.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
OS/Closed source are irrelevent footnotes to a company like Samsung who will happily go wherever the consumer demands take them (as it should be).
In theory, yes. In practice, it's always easier when you can both control the hardware and the software.
So Samsung will have a slightly higher preference for :
- using Android (which is open source and 100% hackable/forkable to their needs. See how HTC replace the interface with their own HTC Sense thing) and comes with a nice ecosystem of Apps.
- rolling their own 100% custom OS (although nowaday that's a lot of work to reach feature parity with what already exist elsewhere) and this lacks currently a nice ecosystem, so less interesting in the long term.
- selling parts for iProducts (so it's now Apple's problem to get the hardware and the software to play nicely, and they too are in the "control both" school of mind).
And slightly lower preference for using Windows 8, as its not a software that they can control so they'll have to bend their hardware around microsoft requirement.
Require more work to achieve the same quality of end product. Also it will make it slightly more difficult to sell a nice balance of cheap and good hardware, when there's the license of Windows to take into account. But well, as you say if there's a big enough demand....
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Remember when Microsoft ruled the world because they left the dirty, competitive, low-profit-margin work of making actual hardware to other companies? Remember when "beleaguered Apple" was going broke because they still foolishly insisted on making computers instead of licensing their OS to cloners? Remember when mighty IBM fled from the PC business because they just couldn't make it pay?
I'm puzzled over how and why everything now tilts the other way. What changed in the world around us?
Slashdot links are rel="nofollow", which means Google doesn't count them. So no.
You don't have to post links for the googlebot to believe everybody on /. is discussing MCPC.
Disclaimer: It might not work but that's never stopped a Spammer.
No sig today...
I think someone should suggest that every Slashdot reader who has a blog, facebook page, access to their company's website or whatever should post that exact line on it somewhere.
That would probably do the trick ... but it's unrealistic.
No sig today...
Spammers also don't use names like "NiceAssIWillFuckIt".
Apple wannabe and patent trolling... Oh wait, "Apple wannabe" covers that too. Maybe Steve Ballmer should get pancreatic cancer. Or a personality.
The smaller makers may have two choices, throw in the towel or embrace Linux. If Microsoft is throwing the hundreds of smaller makers under the bus then they have to focus another OS. They may unintentially create a third OS option for the average person.The software support has been slow in coming but more game engines like Unity are supporting it and all it would take is a truly user friendly version and maybe a portable version to support the indy tablet makers. Create a Linux app store that works like iTunes and provide a good retail option for movies and music and people could flock to it. Look at it this way, Apple can't hog the retina displays forever and what are the odds of Microsoft not shooting itself in the foot? Apple is closed source and Microsoft tends to be on the twitchy side when it comes to hardware and security. Linux could provide an open platform for development without all the jumping through hoops of Apple. I want something a little more like the early days where you could store any kind of files on portables. Also I want more storage which Apple has been loath to do. Imagine a 256 gig iPad that had a full desktop OS and allowed you to store and transport files and sold for $1,000 to $1,200. A bigger screen and 2560X1440 support would be ideal. The point is a desktop replacement that is completely portable and not in the way a notebook is but think, light and instant on. Something that you could walk out to the living room and stream a movie to the big screen or even stream a movie at a friends house to their TV. Bundle in a DVR so you can record your cable programs and have it completely portable. There's no technical reason you couldn't bundle in a TV tuner and an HDMI and tap into TV that way. Don't compete with the iPad make it something else that is more of a media and desktop Swiss Army Knife. Make a tablet that has everyone saying why doesn't iPad do all this and with the security and stability of Linux. Come up with an accessory Blu-ray player that was the size of a Walkman and I could get rid of more than half my electronics and replace them with something I could hold in one hand.
Actually, instead, especially in the tablet and netbook market, really not much changes, to be granted the OEM licenses for Windows 7 Starter you already have to build your products within a specific specification range allowed by MS. Giving MS control of both the hardware and software, more or less.
This just sounds to me that its more of the same, with possibly Microsoft branded tablets floating about as well as the rest of the OEM makers.
Dear hardware manufacturers: You are now utterly dependent on your biggest competitor to supply you with the software you need to run your product. If MS thinks you have a better product at a better price than theirs? Oops, sorry, our Windows OEM licensing system is having technical difficulties. Oh, wait, it's working again, but we had to double the price. You can only build what Microsoft allows you to build.
Unless you want to become a de facto division of Microsoft, you have only two choices: write your own operating system, or use one that's free.
Dell Launches Laptops Pre-Loaded with Ubuntu Linux in 850 Stores Across India: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Dell-to-bring-Ubuntu-laptops-to-850-retail-stores-in-India-1620657.html This was announced on the SAME day that Microsoft announced the Surface RT and Surface Pro. It seems that the OEM industry is secretly betting that Linux Desktop will overtake Windows in the huge Asian market. This is interesting considering that Valve is releasing Steam for Linux and that EA and other game companies are interested as well. They are predicting that Linux will be a big win and replacement for Windows in the long term. earlier... Dell Launches Laptops Pre-Loaded with Ubuntu Linux in China: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-Dell-bring-Ubuntu-laptops-to-220-Chinese-retail-stores-1368347.html The OEM's are the BIGGEST CLOWNS for not jumping on Linux earlier to counter the Microsoft threat to their eco-system.
You'd think, wouldn't you! Let's find out!
If you wanted to, you could go to Google and run a search for MySpamPC. But you wouldn't find anything useful because I just made it up.
Hmm, guess not.
...right down to the bottom of the sea.
Let's count the problems with this model. Suppose I'm a maker of tablets or laptops or PCs. So far I've put Windows on them to market them because frankly, I have little choice -- it's that or Linux and besides, in order to remain price competitive I have to get the price breaks that come from Microsoft for using Windows exclusively as a pre-installed OS. However, I have taken comfort in the fact that all of the other manufacturers are in the same boat -- we all have the same product, within hardware choices and tweaks, we all run the same OS preinstalled for pretty much the same price, that OS breaks on our hardware about the same fraction of time and we get enough help fixing it that we can usually release a semi-stable product and not piss off our consumer base.
But now Microsoft is going to play! It will design its own hardware, and will apply its own team of umpty-gazillion semi-unemployed programmers to ensure that its OS works perfectly on that hardware, both optimized and with absolutely functional device drivers. OTOH, Microsoft will have absolutely no incentive to help out third party hardware manufacturers like me. Indeed, they will have a disincentive! If my hardware has a constant list of creeping minor problems, then Microsoft's huge team of sales reps will be able to convince many buyers that my hardware just isn't reliable, where theirs is!
It's not like we haven't seen this before, after all. It is precisely how Microsoft became the monopoly that they are today -- Microsoft branded software always worked when a new version of its OS was released, where non-Microsoft software was usually subtly broken for six months afterwards. This problem was so prevalent and reproducible that the term "FUD" was coined to describe the predictable response of the Microsoft reps in that six month window, while they gradually took over the world from the likes of Lotus, Corel, Borland, all of whom owned a serious piece of the PC software business before Microsoft decided it wanted it all, not just the OS and maybe a reference compiler or two.
So now Microsoft has decided to go one step further and become Apple, even though they at one point took Apple to within coup-de-grace range of bankruptcy and refrained from wiping it out entirely only because they were already in trouble with anti-trust suits and needed a viable competitor to convince the courts that they didn't, actually, need to be broken up. Apple, of course, has succeeded largely recently because they have a certain amount of genuine innovation (on top of a fair bit of righteous anti-innovation, adopting Unix as their basic OS and "inheriting" an enormous base of free/open source software that nevertheless becomes part of their overall offering). So Microsoft is thus committed to out-Jobbing the now deceased Steve Jobs, in spite of the fact that as a corporation it has stolen -- well, "hijacked" is a better term -- almost all of its best ideas using the dual weapon of cloning by the world's largest closed shop of programmers who control both software and OS, and FUD. Worked great with corporations and corporate tools, but how will it play with consumers? How will it play with the vast ocean of hardware makers?
The latter is fairly predictable. The minute Microsoft becomes Apple, and adopts hardware that it either makes itself or outsources from just one specific manufacturer, the incentives that have long given them dominance on the desktop disappear. True, they are already getting hammered by e.g. Android and can read the writing on this particular wall, but it may well be that their only alternative at this point is one form or another of elegant suicide. When all of the hardware manufacturers realize that they are competing with Microsoft as well as Apple, with very likely no room left in between, what alternatives do they have for survival? Anti-trust suits, sure. And support for any viable alte
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Should they succeed who is going to make hardware that we can install open source OSs on? Probably just a couple of high priced specialty shops like the ones that currently produce PowerPC boxes.
how did the presentation go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1zxDa3t0fg
and then they will have to offer both amd & intel cpus have desktops that can take any AMD / ATI or NVIDIA video card.
Have a big range of systems and big range of laptops.
Let them load the older windows OS if just for older apps, enterprise.
have basic systems (some times just a MB) for embedded use.
Some how still offer the same software for all of older non MS systems. Offer the same software for mac systems.
"I agree that no single company can create all the hardware and software. Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice."
-- Steve Balmer (Microsoft) blaming Apple regarding iPhone, February 18, 2009
"Things work better when hardware and software are considered together, [..]. We control it all, we design it all, and we manufacture it all ourselves."
-- Steve Ballmer announcing Windows 8 Tablet, June 19, 2012
The % of iOS devices running the latest OS (a varient, i.e. IOS 5 vs. IOS 4) in the wild is EXTREMELY high. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57450474-37/apple-365-million-ios-devices-sold-80-percent-running-ios-5/
app store censorship will need to be looked at it's one thing to ban hack apps and other poorly coded apps that can crash the system.
But it's a other to ban adult games and apps. (may they need a adults only part of the app store)
It's also a other to ban apps that compete with others why does firefox have to be banned?
Why can't I use a 3rd part music store?
Why does in app buying have to give up the 30% cut?
Actually, if you are a certain type of spammer maybe you would...
and I have a car
Why would I want to run Gnome or KDE on a tablet, when I can run Metro?
Because they're not Metro?
As the post says, that quote by Ballmer is telling: "'Things work better when hardware and software are considered together,' he said. 'We control it all, we design it all, and we manufacture it all ourselves.'" This is a COMPLETE reversal of everything Microsoft has always been about (excepting I guess the Xbox), and if Microsoft's actions didn't deliver the "FU" to OEMs, then this explicit statement did. He seems to be saying "Apple was right all along," or at least "Apple is right when it comes to devices." This is a huge statement. The idea that a hardware manufacturer and vertical integration have won out in a world where software margins are so huge and hardware margins so thin is a sea change in the world of technology. Perhaps MS saw the death spiral of diminishing margins, the proliferation of a buyer-confusing myriad of options, and the continued failure to make iPad-competitive devices in the PC industry and decided angering OEM partners really didn't matter at this point. They saw IBM spin off Lenovo, and HP flirt with spinning off their PC division, and spinning off webOS. They saw that the value of these OEMs was diminishing enough to where they could threaten those revenue streams by offering their own hardware.
Despite being primarily an Apple user, I don't feel comfortable with this increasingly integrated model. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can make the transition. It will be critical to be able to command greater margins than the OEMs can on the hardware, though Microsoft clearly will subsidize a platform in order to build out a network (as they did with Xbox). They obviously have the advantage of not having to pay licenses, so that will help. They will probably sell a lot of these--they have an inherent advantage. With a quality MS option, why purchase from a third party who probably can't compete on price anyway? This will hopefully mean purchasing power for parts, again helping margins.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
In order to get your code (any code) to run on these appliances you will have to be licensed. Then the licenses will be harder and harder to get until there is only once source of software. And it will be crappy, bloated, and you will have no choice.
So basically, Microsoft went up to all of the hardware manufacturers it's friends with and said "We're trying to leave you."? There's no way any company would be dumb enough to make that many enemies at once, right?
Apple still ships the 3GS so it will get ios6. Just clocked 3 YEARS old yet Android phones on sale right now won't EVER get ICS.
Out of ALL the iPhones sold only the iPhone and iPhone 3G cannot be upgraded. Given that growth has been crazy it's not 2/5 of iPhones, more like 1/10 or less... Long since out of contract to get a new one.
I have a bunch of iOS devices and a Motorola XOOM 2. On paper, the XOOM 2 should kick the arse of, say, an original iPad but it does not. I have tried to browse developer.android.org on both, and only the iPad renders the API Reference correctly: the XOOM leaves the lower-right pane completely empty much of the time.
To be fair I should compare it to my iPad 2, in which case it looks even worse. Pages generally take an age to load, and the only way to get acceptable performance is to turn off the flash plugin. This means you don't get any videos on the majority of sites unless you enable debug mode in the browser and tell it to use the UAString of an iPad.
Now you can point out that the XOOM 2 is running Honeycomb 3.2.2 and not the latest greatest Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.x, but this is not my choice: Motorola haven't issued an update for ICS yet so I can't have it.
Bigger range? Yes.
Better OS? No. What kind of retard thinks perpetuating a destination-information-free back button is a smart idea? I lose 80px at the bottom of the screen for that, and there are always 600px of blackness which could be used to hint where tapping it will take you, but no.
More Open? Maybe.
Lower Cost? If you don't value your time.
Programmable? Nowhere near as easily as iOS. On iOS I only need to care about the current release because everyone likely to purchase an app has 5.0.1. On Android I have to code for the archaic 2.2 to meet the same market share.
Basically if you buy an iOS device Apple can screw you over, but probably won't. If you buy an Android device Google, the device manufacturer and (if applicable) the carrier can screw you over, and 2 out of the 3 probably will.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Have you ever tried playing cutting edge games on a netbook or an iPhone? Gaming laptops only appeal to some but you cannot compare the two in terms of performance. Not to mention that in a production environment there will always be a use for a desktop PC.
With a duopoly the consumer will pay dearly and the monopolists will rake in huge profits. That makes it inevitable that manufacturers will make their own tablets with some other OS installed. Manufacturers don't sell software and the Linux distributions will handle software support so it makes sense for them to produce their own. Microsoft could easily be setting itself up to be left with only the crumbs while Linux dominates the market and Apple takes the premium.
I keep hearing that and you know what?
Slashdot is still indexed by Google. I can go to google and do a site:slashdot.org x and it will find X. So Google still ranks and indexes the nofollow tag anyway.
http://saveie6.com/
I think Microsoft was forced into this. I think that they realize that to get into the market with a Windows tablet, the tablet will have to be sold at a (large) loss for several years. The normal PC manufactures are not willing to, nor can afford such expense.
I agree the idea of a universal binary is neat because writing software for a desktop, a tablet, and a phone is a lot of effort but I have to ask what kind of apps would those be? The ones I can think of that would be useful across a desktop, a tablet, and a phone can all be created by HTML 5 systems where if nothing else it is a solid "fallback". There are things like Kindle that are "universal" but not the same binary and has some benefit from platform specific behavior. There is some cross platform sharing between Android phone and tablet as well as iPhone and iPad but this is due to sharing so much in the form factor.
In the abstract, one piece of software running perfectly on multiple platforms is a neat idea but as a practical thing I am not sure it is necessary or creates a solid experience. When we get to the design and implementation of a lot of software it is intrinsically tied to the platform design and implementation. Trying to abstract those differences away is like assuming there is a way to build a vehicle that is like a train, a car, and helicopter only because they have something in common (can carry people).
More likely Dell is planning on shipping PCs with Linux so that they can sell them for less (assuming Windows will get pirated on to it).
Not impossible. Don't forget that sales of Apple devices have exploded in the last few years. Apple sold more iPhones in the last quarter than it did in the first 3 years of selling iPhones. Easily 90%+ of their phones can run the latest and greatest!
Could it be that the success of the iPad has uncovered a truth that, so far, only Microsoft in their inimically paranoid way, is able to see. In the age of mobile computing, operating systems have finally become commoditized.
The OEM model of selling (mostly) identical hardware with a pricey Microsoft tax on top won't cut it when competing with a successful Apple. Apple can cut the price to the bone and give away the software. Android OEM's can too. But for Windows OEM's to be price competitive, they need to stop paying big bucks to Microsoft for the OS. Microsoft can only solve this by emulating Apple and getting their baseline profit from the hardware, not the OS.
So far, this only really applies to the ARM tablets. Those won't run legacy Windows apps, so users have no need to pay for Windows on them. The X86 models still have that legacy tie-in, but they're a stopgap. Yeah, maybe some users would buy an ARM Windows tablet just so they can get Office, but not that many are gonna pay an extra hundred bucks for the tablet just for the privilege of paying another $150 to get Office for it. There's a market for that - just not an iPad-sized market. And that's the future. Microsoft is smart enough to see that. There's no profit to be made selling OS software for tablets. A new business model is required.
By the way, Google already has a viable business model. They don't need to make money selling Android for their business model to succeed. OEM's stand a better chance of building competitively powered and priced Android tablets than with the old hardware + MS software model. Whether Android tablet fragmentation prevents uptake or is a minor problem outweighed by real innovations in price and form factor is a question, but the potential is certainly there.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
rel="nofollow" has nothing to do with Google indexing slashdot.org.
I find this funny.
First off, MS has made it's billions based off it's OS and Business software, that runs on pretty much every x86 computer.
Now, when someone else, like Apple, which has had the same type of business for as long as MS has, is actually doing really good, MS is jealous.
See, MS has to control everything, and they do NOT care who they step on to do that.
Remember DR Dos? Ya, MS fucked them.
Remember OS/2? Ya, MS fucked them with W95.
So now, when most everyone runs windows OS, MS is talking about not supporting computers unless you buy their specific hardware. And I'm more then postive it will not be cheap.
Be seeing you...
the difference is that computers aren't even close to that 'simple' point yet, so there's a lot of sacrifice being made for that convenience. The tasks the parent lists require a certain amount of knowledge to do. They can be automated to some degree, but giving access to people who otherwise couldn't figure out a proper tool just creates a ton of really shitty quality output that's then spammed all over the net. Instagram and cellphone recorded youtube videos come to mind as examples. he also lists locked bootloaders as a 'feature'. they're not. they don't stop your hapless techno-weenie from installing malware riddled applications. they only prevent him (and anyone with a clue he asks for help) from getting into the machine's filesystem to fix the problem. They also discourage any potential interest he might have in tinkering. trust me, you don't want to live in a future where the only source of content comes from corporate providers propped up by content lockin.
I could argue that cars, technology that achieved its apex 30 years ago, are being made MORE needlessly complex and expensive for the owner with all the recent computerized additions. Those black boxes are often undocumented and cause all sorts of hard to work out intermittent failures when they die..and they're expensive too. then there's software bugs.. At this point I'd pay up for a car without any programmable logic in it. It'd be more reliable. of course, this doesn't prop up dealer revenues..
oh, and btw, this is slashdot.. most posters are nerds.. maybe you meant to post on espn.com.
Considering the iPhone's still supported start from 3Gs onwards and that iPhone sales have grown close to exponentially I'd say the difference between the two denominators is smaller than you assume it is. But I think it's 80% of devices still in use (i.e. reporting something home through carriers for debugging purposes) and I'd not be surprised if the number is about the whole install base as the recent Apple presentation did show also OS versions of 3.x that have to be early iPhone's too, not just latest models.
Your quote:
Most of the datacenter equipment has less in common with the current desktop components than most would like.
My quote:
from small companies who can't afford the expansive branded workstations, or enterprises from part of the world where the money exchange rate make the beige boxes the only option even for large companies
Yes, I know that the servers in Facebook's datacenter have nothing to do with our desktops.
I was specifically referring to labs in universities, small companies, companies in less rich parts of the world, etc. for whom a "server" is just a beige box with a special purpose.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I think Microsoft was forced into this. I think that they realize that to get into the market with a Windows tablet, the tablet will have to be sold at a (large) loss for several years. The normal PC manufactures are not willing to, nor can afford such expense.
If they're selling at a loss, I say we all go buy a couple. Multiply their loss. Then hack 'em and put Linux (and possibly Android) on them. Considering the number of third-party Android ROMs out there, I don't expect it'll take long.
My prior laptop was an HP, which was "designed for Windows 95." Within 30 days of buying it, it was running Debian (preferred distro at the time). My current laptop came with Vista. That didn't last a week. It is currently running Ubuntu 11.10. I don't use it enough, these days, to bother upgrading it further. The vast majority of my personal access to the Internet is through my current phone (HTC DI2). 99% of the time, I don't need a full-blown desktop or laptop.
My prior phone was an HTC Touch. It came with WinMo. Instead, it ran Android Cupcake, Donut, Eclair and, finally, Froyo during the time I had it.
The pattern is well-established. Buy hardware with MS products on it. Wipe out the MS crap. Run whatever you like. This will be no different.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
"Post-PC" = "Post-Freedom". Discuss.