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Bill Gates: the Traditional PC Is Changing
Billly Gates writes "Bill Gates, in an interview with Charlie Rose last night, defended the move to Metro-ize Windows 8 and focus solely on the tablet experience (here's the video — tablet talk starts around 28 minutes in). When asked how traditional PC users will react, he explained that the world is moving into tablets, and a new PC needs to have both experiences integrated together. Also, he defended the move to build the Surface while charging his competitors a bundle for Windows 8. He says users have access to both experiences, whether it is a signature Microsoft one, or from an OEM. Is the a sign the desktop is dead or dying?"
Gates stopped short of saying the traditional PC is dead, but dodged direct questions about its future. This is a big change to the stance he has advocated in years past.
Mobile computing is the future -- just ignore the battery life.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Bill is right, the traditional pc is changing... But is it too late for ms to figure it out, or has apple already sucked out all the oxygen? It sucks to be late to the party...
Why, as a society, can't we take what we need from Bill Gates to fund projects we desperately need as a society? We have hungry people, poor people, people with a small tv, crummy roads/bridges/criss crossings, and people without pacemakers who desperately need them and we just let this man keep all these billion. NOT putting his money where it's needed is a failure of our society and we are condemned TO HELL for it.
No, it's a sign that /. needs editors.
I don't see Apple shoving a grand unified UI down the throats of its tablet, laptop, and desktop users. And I don't see Apple users complaining or getting confused by tablet gestures vs keyboard/mouse operations.
How about we just standardize on the iPod? Put one wheel on the front of everything and be done with it.
Have gnu, will travel.
The PC is dead, long live the...
You know what? Screw that.
Forget Microsoft, install Linux!
The traditional PC won't go away as long as we have PC games.
The vast majority of people who used a Windows PC because it was the only way to do basic things like web, email and simple word processing or data entry never really needed one. Those people will now move to something else, since at long last there actually IS something else other than a Mac that cost about twice as much as was still almost as complicated.
But there are those who DO need a PC. As they realize that Windows 8 isn't a PC operating system anymore they have a choice to make. Suck it up and try to keep using it because of the legacy app problem, move to a Mac or try Linux. (For the people I'm talking about it is probably, try Linux.... again.)
Linux blew the opportunity offered by the Vista fiasco by having most popular distros all but unusable during that period due to the PulseAudio debacle. And now when we get a redo every major distro is as deeply into "Tablet Madness" as Microsoft. We just can't win. Only consolation is Apple is ALSO terrifying their own user base with the increasing iOS creep into OS X. Option #4 anyone? What would it be though?
Democrat delenda est
Some people browse the web on iPads now. This is approximately the only piece of evidence I've seen that the PC is "dying".
We all still have a PC in our office to do real work. People write code, write papers, design things, run simulations, SSH into servers, work with complicated spreadsheets and databases, run custom software applications, etc. When there's any sign at all that most of that work is moving onto tablets, then it'll be reasonable to start saying the PC is dying.
This guy makes a strong argument that tablets will pass traditional form factor PCs (desktop/laptop/notebook) by Q3 2013. It isn't very far out to forecast.
My anecdotal data bears this out. Among buddies buying new systems when old machines die or are given away, very few replace a PC with a PC. They replace them with tablets at least 80% of the time.
The world is changing, and it's an interesting inflection point, very much like when PCs took over from workstations as the main "go to" computer for most tasks. People didn't believe it then either - had all kinds of reasons it could never happen - but happen it did. Just like then, there is a crowd now that doesn't believe it, but the sales numbers don't lie. Tablets are growing 100% year over year, and PCs sales are flat (declining in the developed world, slight increase in the developing world).
This man is a reptile and Rothschild Zionist. He is all about population control and GMOs, when his controllers brought the moon here they never could have imagined the control they would end up with.
It's like that time in the 1990s when Bill Gates discovered the Internet several years later than everyone else...
But it's Bill Gates, so some people listen and think he's said something profound!
#DeleteChrome
If the PC is dead, what are the developers writing dinky little games and apps for your shiny new tablets going to use? Have you tried designing a gui with gestures? Typing 150,000 lines of code on a touchscreen? Sure, you can attach a bluetooth keyboard and mouse ... as long as the batteries hold out.
In addition to that, if PC gamers wanted a braindead machine they'd get a handheld or a console. The sort of games I enjoy need a mouse, keyboard and very large screen. Tablets have their place but they're no substitute for a real computer.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
they pry the last one from my cold, dead fingers.
Or nuke me in my bunker. Same diff.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Until we can fit a dual GTX 690 or Tesla card into a tablet and not have it melt our hands or fry the battery. The big box with a massive power supply plugged into the wall with a dozen fans or liquid cooling, 10 or more usb ports, 6x Display support with room for expansion, isnt going anywhere.
When I'm designing stuff (mechanical, schematic, PCB layout), I need a desktop computer: good optical mouse, comfortable chair, big monitor, full-sized keyboard, fast/loaded computer. I have tried to do that on a tablet or notebook, it's not even close. I agree with Spacejock, there is no replacement when you need real development.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
I'm willing to give that tablets and tv's together will replace the "infotainment" desktop. But I don't see them replacing the serious work desktops have been used for. That's where the PC started (because it was better than what people were using at the time) and maybe that's where it's going back to.
Why change interfaces we're accustomed to (Win9x shell) for metro? Why change menus for ribbons in other apps??
People are telling you they do NOT want them (despite your "research groups" saying otherwise).
Sir - a basic marketing rule: You cannot sell people what they don't want.
Signed,
Disgruntled and Frustrated PC user
This so dumb, I don't even know how to comment on it anymore...
A computer is a universal information processing machine.
You have to stop and think about how awesome that is. It's the holy grail of information processing, for fuck's sake!!
Would there be the same thing for physical matter/energy, it would be the be-all-end-all of technology!
And they don't get that AT ALL. They think it's like a vehicle, where you make specialized models for specialized purposes...
YOU DON'T NEED TO! IT ALREADY DOES *ALL* PURPOSES! THAT'S THE WHOLE DAMN POINT!
The only reason they actually want this, are...
1) because retards who don't understand computers, and have never ever in their life actually used one themselves. (Using applications that happen to run on a computer is *not* "using a computer". Automating *your* work away, is.)
2) because they want to have full control over the system, allowing nothing, and charging for everything. You breathe at the device? Two dollars. Click an icon? 50 dollars. Dare to actually create anything with it? 5000 dollars. Minimum.
As always... the reasons are greed and stupidity. Which go so well together... (And are what Bill Gates [among others] got his entire wealth from.)
Sigh...I don't know why it's so difficult to understand, but I guess tech is just any likely as any other industry, even science, to suffer from fashionable ideas.
Not to say that touch-based interfaces are a fad, they are not. I'm saying that the desktop is not dying, but adapting. It is really that hard to realize that both the desktop and mobile touch UIs are going to merge? I'm sure many of you slashdot readers could figure that out a long time ago.
However, given MSFT's track record of major releases, I'm guessing it's going to be another buggy semi-disaster like Vista. But hey, they're the ones that always liked the concept of "give it 3 versions at least." So maybe the next version, or if we are lucky, a relatively quick service pack or two will do the trick. (Not that it matters, but I mostly use products from the "overly expensive fruit factory" (Apple) these days. It just seems that "MSFT computers" only offer low monetary cost.)
"Also, he defended the move to build the Surface while charging his competitors a bundle for Windows 8"
Gates is CEO again?
His track record is hardly reliable....
The premise that Metro is a forgone conclusion for the way a tablet/phone experience succeeds is a poor one. The market has not shown that to be true. I figure Win8 is their move to try to force the issue and gain some traction by effectively throwing the desktop market under the bus, since they don't have to worry about losing those to competitors by and large (Vista proved that in relatively modern history).
I've always hated hot corners, and Windows 8 demands they be used a lot. Both in the annoying 'mouse happened to go to a corner of a screen, do something without user 'clicking' anything' and the somewhat more forgiveable hidden UI element to click on and do things. The hotcorners aren't as bad as the 'activities' hot corner of Gnome 3, but I find it a questionable choice, *particularly* in the context of touch interfaces where hot corners don't even have their 'auto-find' aspect that people like so much.
The jarring difference between 'Metro UI' and Desktop applications is unfortunate. It's especially bad where you have two 'Internet Explorers" that behave very differently. OSX full-screen really did this right, the full-screen app management pretty much let's the apps be the same in windowed and fullscreen mode, and just tweak the navigation/task switching.
The search feature is 'hidden' (a common theme in the Metro interface) as there is no visual indication of it's availability. For a keyboard user, I consider this minor, but wonder how it plays in a tablet UI, where typically a text field is a cue for virtual keyboard. More annoying is that the search by default hides all but 'Apps' results, meaning you have to note the non-Apps categories count when searching. Worse yet, that summary will auto-hide, leading you with no UI indication of actual results that you actually want.
All that said, conceptually there is one thing I think is nice about Metro and Gnome 3, the general concept that when you do 'Start' or 'Activities', that the entire screen real estate is dedicated to the action. I kind of prefer Gnome 3's view over the Metro start (the former giving better consideration for task switching rather than just launching).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You need a keyboard, monitor, mouse... not a desktop computer. All those things will be able to connect wirelessly to your tablet.
For the few uses that really NEED a desktop, they'll still exist, but will be a niche market and more expensive. They won't die entirely, just like mainframes haven't died entirely. There's still a mainframe market and business. Neither will desktops die, but they won't be used by the masses any more, so the price will rise accordingly as it becomes more and more niche.
For atom-based businesses, the tablet will replace the clipboard and the PC. For bit-based businesses, larger and multiple screens will replace the single-screen PC, but they will still be keyboard/mouse based.
Metro will work just fine on both. Windows, even in this day and age, still has app lock-in. I tried bringing up one of my PowerPoints in Impress on Ubuntu, and my text boxes were all incorrectly word-wrapped because the fonts were different. So annoying. I've also been doing some C++ on Eclipse. Had a linker error but all Eclipse would report is "make failed". I had to hunt down and manually run the make file to find my linker error.
So Gates is wrong in his prognistications of the future, but he can rest assured that Windows will continue to sell nonetheless.
he explained that the world is moving into tablets, and a new PC needs to have both experiences integrated together.
Yes, integration between the desktop and the tablet is important. But in no way does that imply that they need to share the same GUI.
We need two OSes from Microsoft: One specifically designed for a mouse, and the other specifically designed for the touchscreen. We want those two OSes to provide seamless interconnectivity with each other. But we have absolutely no need for those two OSes to use the same GUI design. Microsoft is badly confused, and is giving us the latter when they should be concentrating on the former.
I wanted to post in the story, but didn't want to appear off topic is how similar this is when Gui's in Mac/Windows were competing against Dos/Unix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The IPhone is almost 5 years old and parallels to 1989 when the Mac just turned 5 years and Windows 3.0 was in beta with the same too companies today.
Is this new trend similar to the gui vs CLI wars? X was hated and used in the UNIX community too back in the late 1980s similar to Gnome-Shell/Unity today as well. Ironically it was the Macintosh that brought the gui and professional IT staff and programmers HATED it! Hipsters or those who could afford one loved it, but many preferred Unix or Dos if you could not afford a $30,000 workstation.
Is the Tablet UI the new gui and a new age in computing? It seems professionals love the old way better.
http://saveie6.com/
Desktops won't die...
What else are you going to use to code all those little mobile apps?
Read this - it interviews many of today's leading game designers. The next generation of games are being written to operate on both mobile devices and traditional consoles. You'll be able to start a game on your console, then continue it on the bus on your mobile device.
This means the games people play will work just fine on tablets, and will be designed for that kind of input control. The graphics processing power of tablets is growing very rapidly and they will very soon be powerful enough for this.
This isn't a bad thing. Means more choices about when, where, and how to play.
I get it now. He says the PC is changing. Because he (well, Microsoft) is going to MAKE it change. Change to a locked down environment that can only run Microsoft approved OSes. And do things the Microsoft way. And you are going to like it because they will spend bazillions in marketing dollars making everyone think it is the best thing since sliced bread.
Count me out.
I develop software and sites. I use a 'traditional pc'. A tablet is useless to me. I deal with software, that is mostly words, not mostly pictures. Tablets are like a big-people speak-and-spell. If you don't need to deal with words (specifically words that you input, rather than words you read), a tablet is shit, and a PC is a thing of beauty. You can read text as easily on a pc as you can on a tablet. A PC has a million times as much processing power as a tablet. If you have to refer to text while typing other text, a tablet is useless (unless you have a book beside you, or two tablets). I commonly use two screens at the same time when using a PC. When the minicomputer came along, people questioned whether the mainframe would die. When the PC came along, people questioned whether the minicomputer would die. The tablet comes along and people question whether the PC will die. Next, smartphone users question whether the tablet is dead. Some may no longer need PC's, I'm not one of them.
Tablets may be great to consume media and apps on, but I don't know what he thinks we're going to use to write this stuff with, and I mean either multimedia authoring or programming. Can any of you really see running a programming IDE in a Metro based environment while referring to some documentation at the same time? I didn't think so.
Through it all we persevered. A few of us were preaching separating "GUI from kernel" "event driven code from procedural code". And we pulled extra hours to practice what we preached. Fellow developers from MS world randomly included afxwin.h deep inside non graphical kernel library code to add a one line debug statement, broke the linux builds and threw tantrums when called to fix the offending code, "it is working in Windows, so it can't be my problem. You fix it in Linux". We suffered all these indignities and got our product to build and run in Linux all the time. We no longer have a 3 month delay in releasing linux version.
Now this. Good riddance. Let the windows and its market dominance and its subsidizing the computing platform go chasing the tablets or whatever. Before Wintel monopoly we had 90% revenue fro unix sales, it dropped to 10% at the height, now linux is back up to 40%. If they cram the win-8 interface down the throat or make our software to be sold through appstore or something, our windows version sales will have no place to go but down. Finally sanity will return. We will separate content from presentation. We will separate gui code from non-graphical code. We will separate event driven code from procedure libraries. Vindication at last.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Dear Apple :
Microsoft believes that the PC is dead.
Would you please go ahead and release your OS for generic hardware?
Or simply release a mid-tower box. Good enough for me.
Signed : A Lover of PCs
Windows 7 will soldier on until MS replaces 8 with a useful PC OS. Just like XP did when Vista bombed and MS needed a couple of years to replace it.
Is the a sign the desktop is dead or dying?[sic]
Why do I keep hearing this? The desk top has been around since recorded history, and it's use has only increased - drastically - in modern times. Oh you were talking about computers that you put on a desk? I put mine under the desk, and I put my mobile device on desks sometimes. Oh you were talking about square box non-portable personal computers? Well I think there will always be a market for a computer that can fit under an office desk and not in your pocket, for those that need a bit of extra data storage or more processing power than the average pocket can contain. Oh wait you were talking about... what exactly? People who say X is dead should be tied up and tortured until they reveal exactly what dead means in this context. Bill Gates stopped short of saying the desktop pc is dead because he is less of an idiot than the writer of the slashdot summary. Seems the average person is.
In other news lot's of people drink soft drinks, is this a sign that water is dead or dying?
"that the world is moving into tablets" actually means "we want to move the world into tablets".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I can see file-based user interfaces becoming a niche, 99% of the world doesn't need to learn how to manage a file structure! Why does this program want to install to C Drive? What's C Drive? The common user has all their computing needs in their pocket these days with a task/action based UI that's far easier to understand and near impossible for them to delete that "windows" folder or format that drive.
I've seen a huge decrease in people needing my help in the last five years to fix their desktop and an increase of people asking me to make them an app. This is because the common user is better able to understand their computer (phone or tablet) because functions and actions aren't hidden behind a complex layer of little folder pictures.
We have heard that promise before, time and again. Time for show and tell.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The very near future beings shirt-pocket computing more powerful than Star Trek tricorders and communicators. It frees us all from being bound to one spot in order to compute and game and browse.
One thing I don't see very often on shirt-pocket computers is a keyboard for entering large amounts of text or a gamepad for controlling a video game character. A completely flat touch screen is no substitute, as Intellivision II owners learned in 1983.
This means the games people play will work just fine on tablets, and will be designed for that kind of input control.
Which leaves fans of genres that don't work well on tablets out in the cold. Based on comments to previous Slashdot stories about the phone vs. 3DS/PS Vita battle, these genres include at least platformers and fighting games. Or are tablet gamers expected to buy a Bluetooth gamepad?
It's changing right now, in ways you don't know about. Both malware and non-malware alike is having a field day with your system configuration.
Soon you will be "solving" the problem by buying a new PC and migrating whatever files you're still able to salvage.
We all know that the desktop computer is not dying. It's large screen, superior processing and graphics power, peripherals, connectivity options, and multitude of input devices are irreplaceable in the world of content and product creation.
What Bill is talking about is that *tablet devices* (thin, portable, touchscreen computers with crippled OSes) have such quick consumer turn-over, that they are the future of big-freakin-PROFIT.
The computer workstation is here to stay with those who need to do more than consume digital media, type out emails, or draw things with their fingertips. In fact, most people with tablets have a laptop or a PC. The difference is that people are more likely to buy new tablets when new ones come out because end-users cannot upgrade components. No adding RAM. No swapping processors. No getting a new USB dongle for the newest Wi-Fi standard. Just buy new!
They're the future... of profit.
Is PC dead?! You must be joking! According to wikipedia (may 2012) Windows XP has 44.85% market share. That means near 50% of all (win) PCs are old school. Yes, there is a change in mobile world and some tasks have moved to phones but a PC is still a PC. Moreover they haven't invented better way to input data than a keyboard. My two cents.
Desktop computers for document processing, number crunching etc will remain what they are, with most users benefiting from 2 or more screens and not the focused app space Windows 8 wants to deliver.
Targeted consumer applications including media delivery is not something the desktop is optimized for.
Like the internet Microsoft is again late to the game and does not appear to fully understand it. Multifaceted small scale application delivery is a different beast from desktop applications.
We have to put out our own tablet, because our OEMs can't build a competitor to the Kindle Fire and sell it for 199.00 if 80.00 dollars out of that 199.00 is for our OS.
Microsoft can't release a 700.00 tablet. Anyone going to spend that much money would go for an Apple product. The logical entry point to sell a lot of them is on the low end, and guess what...the OEMs can't meet the low end price point and use Windows 8.
This may not be the year of Linux, but it could be the year it backed MS into a corner.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Even if Microsoft tries to kill it, the general purpose PC is not going away any time soon. I'm not a software developer, I don't need a lot of the stuff a PC does, and I have a tablet. The tablet is useful for some things, but using a tablet as a PC replacement is like using one as a TV replacement. Last I checked average screen sizes are getting bigger, because it's better like that. Sure I can watch TV on a tablet or an even smaller smartphone, but the experience sucks. I can't think of a single way a tablet or smartphone is better than a general purpose PC except for portability.
fuck that nigga main windows and shit but hos n trix
If the PC is dead, what are the developers writing dinky little games and apps for your shiny new tablets going to use?
You'll [develop software] with, as you say, a wireless keyboard and monitor.
But how would you compile it and digitally sign it in order to test it?
The real interesting part about that is you can continue your work on the bus. On the airplane. Anywhere you are.
Which I can already do with my 10" laptop. I don't see how a tablet improves things, especially with the everything-is-maximized window management policy that most tablet operating systems enforce and the centralized code signing policy that everything but Android enforces.
People actually want to do less with their computer and so those that want to do more than that must have their thumbs removed. It's only fair. It's those that want more the are against the children (have you thought about the children?) and with the terrorists. It's time more people just shutup and did what they were told. This new war on 'real uses of computers' will proceed. Computer as general purpose devices will disappear to be replaced by shine new, expensive products of limited utility, and attached to pay monthy service contracts. And you will like it.
The only thing he can do is keep monopolies going that fell into his lap. For all else: Clueless and incompetent. Tablets and phones are nice as terminals, but personal _computing_ will not go away. Just takes a while until people realize the cloud is a dead end for many things.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Good luck finding affordable hardware on which to run X11/Linux after the economies of scale leave the PC market.
Where the hell is everyone going that the personal computer has to suddenly become "mobile computing"? I move around more than most people and despite my best efforts, I still can't find anything so freaking important that requires a computer while I'm going from point A to point B. I mean, I really want to justify the price of these tablets, but besides playing a few not-so-good games and watching some movies, it's just shopping and reading. Are any of those things so crucial that the entire world of personal computing has to be transformed into "mobile computing"? The reading thing is nice, but how "mobile" can you be when your battery doesn't even last half a day?
I hear a lot about how "mobile computing is the future" but I still don't understand the "I'm always on the move" part and I need that computer while I'm moving" part. I mean, I understand it, but not enough that the entire world of personal computing has to change.
I think what Mr Gates really means is "computers are for shopping, instead of making". I have yet to meet someone who has produced anything meaningful on a smartphone or tablet.
And does it matter to Mr Gates and the Zombie Steve Jobs that there are still a lot of us who actually want to make things with our computers and would actually like a nice powerful machine with a big screen and full-size keyboard? Maybe a couple of cool interfaces and controllers? A desk full of control surfaces, a variety of interface devices, good sound reproduction and display technology?
Why is it that whenever one of the god-kings makes a pronouncement like this I seldom feel that the actual desires and needs of consumers are being taken into consideration? It's all about what they want for us - what they think we should have.
Remember how we were all going to have netbooks? How tablets are the new black? Well, couple years have gone by and they're still just shopping interfaces and metered toys.
You are welcome on my lawn.
yea go fire up solidworks and make something and watch it drag a dell precision with an i7 down pretty quickly, you thing your little pussyfoot P3 era powered tablet is going to get anywhere close to that?
Well I think there will always be a market for a computer that can fit under an office desk and not in your pocket, for those that need a bit of extra data storage or more processing power than the average pocket can contain.
There will always be a market, but I fear that it will become a market to which only established companies have practical access. For example, imagine all Macs being priced like a Mac Pro, and everything else in Apple's product line running locked down iOS.
Oh wait you were talking about... what exactly?
How about "home computers capable of running a compiler are dying"?
Who watches porn on an iPhone?
"Mobile computing is the future" my ass.
It's not the architecture as much as the input device. A video game controlled by on-screen buttons on a completely flat multitouch screen gives the player no way to find the buttons by sense of feel. This is true whether the CPU behind the touch screen is x86, ARM, or a freaking 6502 for all that matters. Did device makers learn nothing from the Intellivision II's flat keypad? What would surprise me is if more makers of tablets and smartphones were to introduce gaming models including physical buttons. The only one I can think of right now is Xperia Play by Sony.
The next year will be the year of the server on desktop.
No, he said CAD so he really does need 3 huge monitors. There's a wifi attach that turns the Raspberry Pi into a monitor for your Android tablet now, so multi monitor support next year is not unreasonable. Maybe by then VDI solutions will be up to snuff for him too. Then he still needs the computer, but it doesn't have to be in the way - or even anywhere in particular. Then he can take his CAD workstation tablet workspace anywhere he needs to go.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I've been reading about the death of the PC for the last 12 years. Considering the "battle" between content owners and distribution wouldn't it make sense that the industry would want a locked down platform? The death of the PC (heck Windows 8) heralds a new environment designed FOR copy protection and really, nothing else. I may be a curmudgeon and I certainly pay for all the content I consume but when my XP bites the big one that will be one less Microsoft product in my house.
And with the rumored consoles coming out, and them being as bad in terms of graphics as the previous generation, I can't see why people would keep buying them.
Ultimately, it's because of two things: 1. consoles have exclusive games, and 2. the majority of non-geek users have a misconception that a PC cannot be used with a TV monitor.
I DON'T WANT A TABLET
I DON'T WANT A TABLET
I DON'T WANT ANYTHING LIKE A TABLET
I don't care if the marketoids think it's the future
I DON'T WANT A TABLET
Have I made myself clear?
Most [iPad] users aren't creating dissertations of 30 page Excel spreadsheets, but they are creating something.
The problem comes when someone owns an iPad and no PC, realizes he wants to do something creative that would be far more difficult on an iPad if not impossible, but has no money for a PC. Ideally, he should have bought a PC in the first place. For example, I often run into needing to do some scripting to analyze various data so that I can incorporate the analysis into a document. An iPad in a keyboard case wouldn't work for that because of Apple's policies. So I carry a 10" laptop instead.
Windows 8 is a hell of a gamble. It wouldn't surprise me if it ended up like OS X 10.0: shows promise, is ultimately too flawed to use. But when Windows 8 OSR 2 (or whatever) comes out with a few tweaks, it might work quite well.
Likewise, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was enjoyable, but Windows Vista RTM had already tarnished the Windows Vista brand that Microsoft needed to rebrand SP1 as "Mojave".
Not a single tablet out there can handle rendering at a profitable rate. Given the growing amount of engineers, animators, architects, advertising firms (etc etc) who need that as a machine feature in today's market, that consideration is pretty well beyond 'niche'. One also has to consider the student's currently learning the skills to work in those fields. Your response is valid in a forward (10 years, give or take) thinking sense, however. That said, Microsoft can call me back when they release Windows 12.
Gates isn't saying that we'll all be using tablets, but that for the vast majority of users, convergent devices are more convenient and suitable.
Workstations will become niche as per servers, but they will remain. The trend started half a decade ago when notebooks started outselling desktop PCs.
POKE 36879,8
PCs will never be able to run the software we need. They'll never be powerful enough to replace this room sized machine. Etc. Yet, it happened.
The argument back then was that PCs are incapable of running heavy workloads. The argument now is that tablets are not permitted to run certain kinds of workload because of manufacturers' policies on what they'll allow in the device's only application repository.
But how is Microsoft going to get around "You make a grown man cry" this time?
in the mid-80s. Microsoft gained its dominance through economies of scale in the HW market. It will happen again if MS goes down that path.
In the mid-1980s, there was nothing in the PC market comparable to the Secure Boot with no custom mode and no disable that Microsoft is requiring on ARM tablets.
Let me get this right..... a software company (MS) is producing hardware, a hardware company (Apple) is producing software ( iOS X?). WTF? ;)
I think this is what you call a figure of speech. It encapsulates in a few words what will probably take a paragraph or more of explanation. Perhaps it's better phrased as "the PC is dying" or more prosaically: "The phenomenal growth in the market for personal computers is levelling off and is expected to go down. It's even possible that the total number of PCs will go down in the near future."
So is the PC dying? What we have are a few indisputable trends. There are now more cellphones in the planet than there are PCs. The percentage of cellphones that can somehow connect to the Net are increasing. Smartphones today are more powerful than the typical desktop from the Windows 95 era, arguably the turning point when the PC migrated from the office to colonize the home market.
The only thing missing for the smartphone to replace the PC is the consistent ability to connect to input-output devices that are taken for granted in the PC world. Support for keyboards and external pointing devices is iffy at best. Support for printers and large monitors is even more dismal. But these issues are being addressed (some of the pricier smartphones now have HDMI output).
Developers and hardcore gamers don't count in the post-PC world. Developers weren't a large breed to begin with. For them the PC will become a niche product, just like mainframes. Hardcore gamers will always have their consoles.
Yes, the tablet is no substitute for a real PC. But superior technology don't always win out. Microsoft should know this better than any other gigantic tech company.
Swype
From this page: "Currently Windows Phone does not support Swype. Currently iOS does not support Swype." And from this page it appears that Android users have to return to swype.com every few months.
Sony has a phone with a slide out gamepad.
What manufacturer other than Sony makes something similar? If not, what developer not owned by Sony will limit its market to only Xperia Play owners?
There is also one company (Tactus) that produced a touchscreen that is able to change its surface in order to produce buttons.
Vapor until it becomes a standard feature on several manufacturers' devices.
The invention of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" is perhaps the biggest mistake committed by socialists of whatever stripe. Radical socialists of the Communist variety have taken what was intended to be a political figure of speech (perhaps equivalent to "war on poverty" if not "war on terror") to mean a literal dictatorship (or at most an oligarchy) that tolerates no dissent. Maybe the 20th century would be a vastly different place if Marx (or is it Engels?) used the term "democracy of the proletariat".
The version of Swype that comes stock on most Android phones never expires.
My Android device happened not to come with Swype; that's why I asked.
The LG Versa had a slideout gamepad attachment. I have also seen one for the iPhone.
The one for the iPhone is the iControlPad, and it's a $62 add-on that I don't imagine a lot of people will already own or be willing to buy just to play one game.
Developers do not have choose one or the other control method, they can have as many as they want. There are a number of games on Google Play that work with any phone, but also have support for Xperia gamepads.
How do these games on Google Play provide feedback to the player on a non-Xperia device as to where the player's thumb is relative to the on-screen buttons?
*sigh* Another "IS THE PC DEAD?!?!?!" headline, another dollar. People who try to view tablets as "desktop replacements" are consistently missing the fact that tablets are not PCs, are not intended to be PCs, and aren't going to replace PCs.
For many people, they may even totally replace the need to have a typical computer at home. If anything, it is only for this group of people that the PC will be "dead".
But for anyone wishing to do serious work, so long as the PC remains exponentially more powerful, expandable and capable than tablets, it won't be going anywhere. Go try using Photoshop Express on the iPad, then use CS6 on the desktop. Use any of the multitude of word processors for tablets, then go use Word. Use a mobile browser, then use Firefox or Chrome. Play the popular games on a tablet, then play the popular games on a PC. Do you see where I'm going with this?
Tablets have created, and filled, an entirely new niche in computing, and done so very well, but they aren't PCs.
...if the interview had been given in 2007. Bill Gates, always five years behind.
You missed the bit about the chair; he/she left out the bit about the desk. As soon as I want to do any kind of work, and writing a longish e-mail comes into that territory, I want a desk and a chair as well as the keyboard and the mouse. Try it yourself next time you're lounging about with your pad of choice. As soon as you start to write something, I bet the first thing you do is sit up straight; easier and more comfortable to do at a desk.
Can you write a tablet app on a tablet? No? Then the PC is not dead.
The future without PC's is a long way off, we will all need them to do "real" work until the Star Trek computers become real. But the majority of computer time is not real work, its people browsing the net while watching a movie from their sofa looking up an actor, or playing a game while waiting for your daughter to try on a dress in the mall.
It has already changed, mobile devices are taking over the majority of pc usage time. It means people will buy less real PC's for home, spending the majority of their cash on mobile devices. It means web sites will adapt or die. It means Facebook will loose ad revenue because less people are visiting on 24" monitors, instead visiting from their phone that limits the number of ads they can show. Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.
> a new PC needs to have both experiences integrated together.
Microsoft recently said that Metro will soon become "the most familiar UI" and when people have used it they will demand it on the phones and tablets. And thus is revealed Microsoft's strategy to unseat Apple and Android: force Metro down the user's throats until they like it or die.
What MS failed to notice is that releasing Windows 8 doesn't automatically make Metro appear on every existing PC. What they will need to do is release critical, unavoidable, automatic updates for XP and Windows 7 that replaces the 'Start' button and menu with Metro. Vista is already hated so no need to bork that.
I see Microsoft today, and I see a company that has no idea what it's doing. Well, I don't claim to know what is best to do, but I'd at least aim for consistency.
I'd thought about making an Ask Slashdot based on this premise, but I probably will never actually do it. So here's what *I* would do if I ran Microsoft.
Windows. Still a good product, at least on the desktop, but the brand keeps getting diluted, and attempts to "re-imagine" it or "re-invent" it simply will not work. On the desktop side, you really don't NEED to change much. Just keep focusing on making the existing experience incrementally better. Try to get boot times down to under a second, make it more stable, little improvements like that.
Windows Server? Can it. Windows Server is so far behind *technically* that it's not even funny. The only reason it's used is because a) it's far easier than Linux, and b) Microsoft. (B) won't last forever, so you know what? Give up. Give up a bit of control. Make the next Windows Server a Linux distro.
BUT
Don't do it like every other Linux distro.
The theme should be "it all works together seamlessly". Port Active Directory, port Exchange, port Microsoft SQL, port ASP.NET and everything (make sure it runs as Apache or nginx modules, though. IIS itself is a "maybe"). Wrap it all up in a GUI that makes things easy to figure out - your goal should be that you don't even need a manual. But don't ignore the command line and config files. Make the best damn Linux distro you can, and *sell* it.
Yes, sell. Obviously, anything open-source should stay open-source. Maybe even open-source the stuff that lets others integrate with you - AD stuff, .NET, and so on. But the big stuff? Keep it proprietary, and sell it. And not ridiculously overpriced, either.
In fact, hedge your bets on the desktop side as well. Port the Windows desktop environment over to Linux, because trust me, KDE and GNOME are fucking things up right now, and the Windows desktop experience is actually *better*. You don't even have to make it natively X11, just include an X11 library so all the old apps still work (like how OS X does it). And release for free tools that make Linux integrate well with Windows, stuff to EASILY integrate with AD and such. Yes, open-source stuff can do most of this already, but those are both a pain, and not supported by Microsoft.
Windows Phone? Drop it. You aren't going to win unless you have the apps. And WP7 does not have the apps. It does have some good ideas, though, some very good things. So you know what you should do? Take Android, and mod the shit out of it. Put Office on it. Make it integrate with Active Directory and Exchange and all that shit, so businesses will love it. Make it work with the Xbox and whatever else you've got. And license it out to whoever wants it. Make it "Android, but with ___, ____ and ___". Still compatible with the millions of Android apps, but it has several that, at best, you'd have to buy on the marketplace; at worst, simply not available.
The Xbox is one of the few things Microsoft's not just doing well, but is recognized as doing well. This is your new Big Brand. Make a new Xbox, price target $400-$500. It should be a powerful core-gamer machine. Let Nintendo have the low-end market with the Wii U. And make it more than a game console - you're doing well already, having Netflix and all that on there. Keep that up. Make it work with your WinDroid phone systems, both as a Wii U-like display for the console, and as a remote for Netflix and such. This way, you aren't just fighting Sony - you're also fighting Apple TV and whatever that Google thing is called. Keep backwards compatibility, maybe add a Blu-Ray drive (even if the movies aren't selling so well, it is good for games). But don't do anything crazy. Just... incremental improvements. Make one device that does the task of many others, well enough that it isn't a compromise, and cheaply enough that it's an option if you only actually want one part of it. Yes, that's
The problem isn't capitalism or socialism. Both are like unicorns in that people who claim to have seen real instances thereof say they are quite wonderful, and no solid evidence for their existence is recorded. The problem is the culture in the U.S. You could ban guns and our murder rate would not go down. You could punish white collar crime with drawing and quartering, but nepotism, corruption, and greed wouldn't even pause. These symptoms are indicative of a sick culture that no amount of regulation (or deregulation) can ever fix. The only workable solution is for you to be a better person.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
You (and I) are an edge case. You really need to think about the millions of people for whom Excel is the most complicated program. That's really 99% of the user base. I'm worried about the future when the PC I want is not available for a reasonable price since most people are getting one of 6 models of mass-produced tablets.
It's terrible for businesses that need clean interfaces. And I don't like the idea for home use either.
To me it's a sign MS is trying to save money by developing 2 OS models into one. I think it will do poorly, and MS will have to make up with it on Windows 9. I can promise you my company will not be buying one Windows 8 box.
> Their efforts to change the user interface to suit the tablet
> continued with the introduction of the Ribbon in Office 2007.
Everybody agrees that the universal desktop UI absolutely sucks on tablets/smartphones. What annoys me is all the idiots who want to ram a tablet/samrtphone UI down my throat that absolutely sucks on a desktop. It's not just MS either. The idiots writing GNOME and KDE are doing the same on linux. I'm sticking with ICEWM.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
that you don't have an IKEA?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Microsoft's new device is a laptop with a flimsy keyboard and a touch screen, and most of the other "tablets" have add on keyboards.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Again, different use-cases demand different hardware....
I own several Macs but I've never bothered to buy a Magic Trackpad, and don't think I want one. Why? Well, have you ever tried to play a game like Team Fortress 2 with one instead of a mouse? Yeah, not really happening ....
And really, from what I've used of it so far in stores and on friend's Macs who own it, I found it's not only poor for image work like Photoshop, but really for anything requiring a lot of precision.
It is great, like you say, for browsing content where you need to do a lot of moving back and forth through pages.
You're totally ignoring the whole performance thing though. Unless you're assuming that in 5 years tablets will replace desktops.
Bill Gates also thought he did the right thing when he wiggled his butt for network television.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
640 seconds should be enough for everyone.
Let us know when a smartphone gets 640k seconds - just over a week - of real operation[*] out of one battery charge. It would be an enormous improvement over today, whether or not people would agree that it would be enough.
[*] Not just the fictional standby-only time, but with a couple of hours per day spent making calls, accessing internet, taking photos, watching video, and so forth.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Bill, you can't tell me how I am or have or will use my computer. It's part of why I use Linux, so fuck Metro, fuck Microsoft, and FUCK YOU!
That's pretty much what I say when anyone brings up anything that cocksucker says, regardless of who's around. Now the folks down at the local daycare know not to bring this topic up whenever I go to pick my kids up after work. :-)
I guess a cluster of RaspberryPis is going to be the desktop computer in the not too distant future.
...stop trying to be a visionary - you aren't. Your record on future predictions equals that of the world cup animal oracles.
Sure the PC will change - it always does. But the world isn't "moving to" tablets, it is adopting tablets. Most tablet owners also own a PC and for that reason alone don't want the two to be identical. One tool for the one job, another tool for a different job. Some people are happy with just one of the two, that's fine, too. Yes, some people now use a tablet instead of a PC because what they used to use the PC for is better done by a tablet, there just weren't any.
MS more than anyone should know this. Their second cash cow is MS Office, after all - something that nobody really wants on a tablet for any serious work. Sure, the iPad office apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are bestsellers - because people want to read and update their documents on the road. But it is not only my own opinion that serious office work doesn't get done on a tablet. And if you need business numbers, look at the sales figures for notebooks and netbooks. Not exactly dead in the waters, are they? So even in the mobile computing market, there's still an interest in real computers in addition to tablets.
MS is missing the boat - again - because they are so out of touch with what the users want. That's the true secret of the Apple success - the give people something they want, sometimes something they didn't even know they wanted. Sure, it's a "our way or the highway" offering, but MS still thinks they dominate computing so much that they can get people to follow them anywhere - and that hasn't been true for a decade.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You're turning to Apple for a solution?!!!!!!!!
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
If the technology was adopted in a form respecting the privacy of people, I would agree with you. But it is not the case and the more those devices can, the more private and public entities attempt to track us. Contrary to US slashdotter I don't mind public tracking, because we effectively limit it by law and (unless it is police stuff) we can check what we are tracked for and correct data (Privacy law and right to correction in EU). Heck they might be people spying onto us, but they are our LOCAL thug obey a modicum of respect of the law. Whereas private entity in mobile device, are often in another country not respecting the privacy of people in the slightiest bit (USA), meaning if that data go there , your control on it is GONE forever in the hand of some foreign governement and private thug your own law has no effect on.
So yes, I see that progress as a sort of 1984 in worst : not only the telescreen is portable, but the data is sent to private entity you cannot even do a bloody revolution against. At least in 1984 even if revolution was unlikely, the dictature and spying was governemental.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Windows Server? Can it. Windows Server is so far behind *technically* that it's not even funny" -
Then, why on EARTH did Linux copy these things from it:
---
1.) SMP, & thus, ENTERPRISE READY SERVERS for Linux couldn't happen until things very like:
a.) Windows NT-based OS' completion ports in process scheduling
b.) Re-entrant kernelmode code.
2.) True usermode threads (instead of a single 'round robin' to a single kernelmode thread as Linux had due to process fork type structuring in process mgt.)
3.) DFS (Distributed File System) was around way, Way, WAY before Linux had things like ZFS available/ported to it.
4.) Lastly but FAR FROM LEAST? What the NSA "bolted on" to Linux via SeLinux, in MAC (mandatory access control) which IS a copy of what Windows NT-based OS had LONG before Linux ever did, in ACL (access control lists) @ the filesystem, & registry levels...
---
* Hmmm?
(Care to tell us another line of utter bullshit?)
APK
P.S.=> You "Pro-Linux" Penguins are FUD spreaders, bigtime - I'd like to see you explain your way out of this one... apk
You can't work the games without a mouse, your bullets miss! Touch typists hate fake keys too. Their focus groups must have been compromised ...
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Why is /. so obsessed about Metro lately? Do we really need a thread about it every day? It is not that PCs that have become irrelevant, it is Microsoft that is irrelevant!
"Fuck me up - Ballmer fucked me up (he'll never stop)..."
According to Eichenwald, Microsoft had a prototype e-reader ready to go in 1998, but when the technology group presented it to Bill Gates he promptly gave it a thumbs-down, saying it wasnâ(TM)t right for Microsoft. âoeHe didnâ(TM)t like the user interface, because it didnâ(TM)t look like Windows,â a programmer involved in the project recalls. ...
A former official in Microsoftâ(TM)s Office division tells Eichenwald that the death of the e-reader effort was not simply the consequence of a desire for immediate profits. The real problem for his colleagues was the touch screen: âoeOffice is designed to inputting with a keyboard, not a stylus or a finger,â the official says. âoeThere were all kinds of personal prejudices at work.â According to Microsoft executives, the companyâ(TM)s loyalty to Windows and Office repeatedly kept them from jumping on emerging technologies. âoeWindows was the godâ"everything had to work with Windows,â Stone tells Eichenwald. âoeIdeas about mobile computing with a user experience that was cleaner than with a P.C. were deemed unimportant by a few powerful people in that division, and they managed to kill the effort.â from -> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-was-destroyed-by-its-stack-review-process-according-to-new-vanity-fair-expose-2012-7
I don't see myself working on a tablet when I do such tasks as programming, audio or videoediting or just doing my own household tasks. This is yet another example of the industry telling the consumer what he should do, thereby having the excuse of doing what they say the consumer wants.
It's the same for 1290x1080 computerscreens (no sane person would choose that above 1920x1200) and will probably also be true for that hideous 21:9 TV format.
Sure, it's good that you can take it everywhere. But the problems are:
* Small screen is hard to see.
* Input is difficult for large amounts of text, and there isn't the precision for doing things like graphics & photo editing.
* Poor battery life.
The solution would be to mount good quality peripherals to some kind of frame or harness that you leave at home or the office (maybe have one at each) and you plug your tiny portable into it. It'd be almost like a proper computer!
If you think of the portable as like a ship sailing from port to port, then the harness could be called a "mooring terminal" or something like that.
Nah, it'll never catch on.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You (and I) are an edge case. You really need to think about the millions of people for whom Excel is the most complicated program. That's really 99% of the user base.
A majority? Maybe. 99%? No way. There are a lot more of these "edge cases" out there than you think. Anyone who does serious work in Photoshop won't be satisfied with a tablet, even if it does have a keyboard/mouse/monitor hooked up. Too slow, not enough RAM. Anyone who's at all serious about PC gaming won't be satisfied with a tablet; 3D graphics aren't nearly up to par. Anyone who does programming won't be satisfied with a tablet (hint: compile times will absolutely suck). And there are literally hundreds of other specific applications that need real PCs, each of which may have "only" thousands or tens of thousands of users, but that adds up.
There has to be a real desktop OS and real PC hardware. The "average" (lowest common denominator) home user may ditch their PC for a tablet, but people who do real work can't.
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is already in deep trouble because of metro...Nobody wants their PC to look or act like their tablet. M$ dont want to admit it, but Android is tha tablet OS of choice and nothing M$ does will change that. And the desktop PC is NOT going away anytime soon. Neither are laptops. Netbooks, tablets, and smartphones cannot replace either one. People who need to get work done still need a PC or laptop with a real, full sized keyboard, and a screen large enough to display their work without needing a magnifying glass to read.
Smartphones, tablets, and netbooks have their uses, but are mainly good for media consumption, web surfing, and checking email on the go. There are even some pretty good games for them. But serious gamers still want a powerfull desktop PC, and the desktop PC is is where the printer, scanner, router etc...reside. It is where the several terabytes of hard drive reside that the other devices are synced to and backed up to. It is where CDs and DVDs are used to back up important data for off-site backups.
And how many people would choose to use a smartphone or tablet at home to watch streaming video from Netflix, Hulu Plus etc...when a laptop, desktop PC or TV with web streaming capabilities is available? What do people use when their portable devices batteries are charging?
.net does not cut it on the efficiency and user-experience front. Imagine a .net game which freezes for GC in the second you want to lie down to dodge a handgrenade. When the GC is done, the handgrenade fragments will have killed you. So, .net is an amateur tool and it was designed to fend off Java. Java of course suffers the same systematic weaknesses.
Microsoft and Apple want to kill off GENERAL PURPOSE computing, where the computer can run software not approved by Microsoft and Apple. And Google, although ChromeOS has failed. The idea of users having local storage and running software they buy or write themselves doesn't fit the iOS and Win8 model of gatekeeping.
Sure, people can give up their general purpose computers, but the frightening thing is this USEI (USEFI? what is it?) lock-down - if manufacturers stop giving us general purpose computers, what are the people who don't want locked down computers going to do?
BG was a visionary
Yes., he saw what others were doing, and copied it.
He is tired of games, tired of typing text, tired of developing, tired of Microsoft, and tired of life.
Sure, just go on and make everything mobile and cloudy. I'll be here on my linux box with KDE if you need me. -- When MS or Apple comes out with something new and interesting, I'll give it a try. When Bill Gates tells me to replace my desktop with a tablet, I just roll my eyes and post on slashdot, like this. Only problem is that parts for my desktop will become more expensive, but thankfully they last a long time. Also, there are many others like me, so there will be a market for computer parts unless someone invents something better than a desktop.
I know very few people write code in the first place, but I've never seen a workable system for entering a computer program through dictation. I searched Google for programming language dictation, and the impression I got from pages like this (disclaimer: decade old) was that it's not there yet. If it were there yet, there'd be a HOWTO or something in the first ten results. That's why when I work on personal programming projects on the bus commute to and from work, I do it on a 10" laptop.
What you want is Ubuntu for Android. We had a story on that four months ago.
Developers have been shifting heavily back to the PC the last two years.
Even things like fighting games? Mortal Kombat 2011 was not ported to the PC. In fact, the only recent fighting game I can think of that was ported to the PC was Street Fighter IV. As for Smash Bros. and other Nintendo first-party franchises, those will still be console-exclusive for a long time.
The second is more because they simply don't know, but that's because idiots in the stores telling them don't know.
It's a catch-22. One Best Buy sales associate was aware that TVs take VGA and HDMI in, but he encouraged me to buy a console instead of a media PC because the games that work well in the console environment aren't ported to the PC. (See above.) And games aren't ported to the PC because statistically nobody already owns a media PC. See previous comments by FunkSoulBrother and CronoCloud. People like hawguy, Endo13, and ratbag symbolize what I perceive to be the general public's attitude toward media PCs: "No PC in my living room, thanks". So it appears HTPCs are only for diehard geeks.
Then again, most video cards that have been in the "already built" PC's haven't had HDMI out until the last couple of years.
There are often really easy workarounds involving appropriate cables. If they have DVI-D out, there's a cable from that to HDMI, and one of the HDMI ports on my TV has audio inputs next to it. If they have VGA out, a lot of TVs take that too, at least here in the United States. I'm told VGA input is less popular on European TVs because they have to make room for the SCART input.
..Naive. If you have a device from a US company (google, msft, Apple), all they (these 18+ US intel agencies) need is a nicely worded letter to get ALL your fecking data on your device. It is called "National Security Letter" and it does need exactly zero US judges and even less than that number of judges from your home country to approve it.
All your Android/Facebool/whatever data is already nicely stored and indexed in some data center in Montana, ready for USG to put their snouts into. Don't ever get into politics, if you don't want that data used against you.
If you extrapolate a bit.. yes, it just might run on that tablet.
It may not be a tablet running the workhorse calcs. That might be a cloud feature.
Solidworks is also a bloated inefficient pig. A pig with lots of lipstick. It will be displaced, just like it displaced AutoCAD.
It hasn't happened with graphics, yet, but I just moved my entire OpenEmbedded chain to the cloud for giggles. It is very fast and cheaper than running the power on the machine I use now.
I find it a bit sad that a company with as many resources available to it has to be strictly a market follower. I know it has been this way for a long time, but still.
I'm told VGA input is less popular on European TVs because they have to make room for the SCART input.
Dunno where you heard that but it's not been my experiance in the UK. Every HDTV i've been involved in setting up has had one VGA input, one component input, 1-2 HDMI inputs, scart socket, 1-2 other SD inputs (an extra scart socket and/or a group of seperate connectors for composite/s-video) and an aerial input for the PAL and DVB-T tuners. Sometimes there is also a slot for a conditional access module for receiving encrypted DVB-T services.
It's very noticeable that HDTVs have a LOT more inputs than SDTVs did.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Thanks for the interesting video link of someone trying Windows 8 for the first time. First, it seems obvious that Windows 8 has picked a default style that hides context (like a hierarchy of system states), which makes it hard to discover things, which is especially important for novices. "Tune defaults for the novice." I see the same issue with "LCARS" Star Trek like displays that look beautiful on TV or the movies, but in practice might be hard to use if you only had one screen and needed to make it do a bunch of things (including at once). To do multitasking, you need to manage system state and you need to display context.
With that said, when personal computers first came out, unless you were a very technical person, it was often expected that you would need training in how to use them. In addition, it was expected that you would have to read one or more manuals, and you would need to ask your friends, family, and coworkers for help. So, more than anything, what that video shows me (in context of how it was made and what it is probably trying to show) is how much our expectations have changed over the last thirty years about "ease of use" for novices with computing devices.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
which i will not be playing on a tablet. let the sheep buy tablets.. when they call me to fix it i will simply tell them to throw it away and get another.
boring art.. time for some gaming.
See, I'm not a fan of his Philantropic activities, or any charity work or "donations" done by a corporation. The problem is that when a single person or corporation supports an initiative then they control WHAT charities and institutions will exist. Basically, we take the democracy out of our country:
1. Company/Person gets a lot of money.
2. They find a charity THEY like or support. (and can, not always, but can, put conditions based on the money being donated)
3. The make a donation.
4. They get a tax write-off.
5. Government (democratically voted in) gets less money.
6. Groups that are NOT popular with people/companies in #1 are now pinched for funds the government doesn't have.
7. Groups that are NOT popular with #1 die and/or can not compete for air time, marketing, etc like #2 now can.
8. Corporation gets the "karma" for doing good while the government (and general populace) looks lazy/bad/poor for not doing it themselves.
So, how does this make a difference? Lets say Corp A puts X dollars into Cancer Research, a very noble and worthwhile cause, but because of this the government doesn't have money (gets Y minus X tax from corporation) to support an Environmental group (or even the EPA), then who is winning? Why find a cure for "a" cancer when the causes of the cancers are being exploited and even increased for the general public due to lack of funding to those groups that would actually help more? -- Now, this is just contrived, but, hopefully gets the point across.
Giving Corps the power of funding which groups THEY like (and/or that don't interfere with their overall ambitions) is just asking for trouble in the long run. There was a time when a person/group could protest for free, those days are gone, now you need permits, planning, responders, marketing, advertising, etc, or the group will fail (see 99%'ers, see Quebec Students, etc) and their message NOT get out. Don't think this attack on democracy was just coincidental, MONEY rules, and this is what the corporations want, and controlling charity and donations is just another bullet in their gun :(
But how would you compile it and digitally sign it in order to test it?
There's nothing about the /hardware/ that prevents this.
Except the fact that most people aren't willing to solder in a modchip to circumvent verification of the signature chain.
and what percentage of 6Billion people do CAD/development?
Now you can rationalize what Bill Gates said last night... or you can look at the opposing view:
"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that's what you needed on the farms. Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.
"PCs are going to be like trucks. They are still going to be around. However, only one out of X* people will need them."
- Steve Jobs.
When it comes to understanding how computers are used by society (Bill Gates understood how computers were bought), I believe this is the right view. we are Post PC like we are post agrarian... a few people will grow their own food (and need PC Trucks), but most people will need to 'buy' their food and drive their iPads to the food store who employ huge trucks (a fleet of cloud based semi-truck mainframes).
Some families will have a pickup truck/garden tractor (home PC), because they like to it themselves.
*and I feel X will approaching 100. 1% of people worldwide will need a desktop PC to do their job/live their life.
What an idiot. You give me a keyboard and mouse and I'll perform any task faster than 10 tablet users pounding away with their fingers. Give my PC a complex task, it'll finish processing it 10x faster. Give me a DVD and I'll um...put it into my computer lol. Touchscreen typing makes you borderline disabled from a computer use standpoint and every single person who owns a tablet says it's downright painful to try to type a simple facebook post on it. I type around 95WPM so yeah, not a big tablet fan.
I have the opportunity to look over the shoulders of younger computer users (younger than me) pretty often. Most of the time, they are shopping online, playing simple games, and hunting down on Youtube that fat girl doing the splits called "Splat". While there are a massive amount of PC's in homes, most people are doing similar stuff on them. They are shopping, enjoying media, and doing online tasks. They used PC's for this, because (up to now) this is what they had to work with. Viable mobile computing has changed this. Except for the occasional task of creating something, only a small portion of the population actually use PC's for something a table or smart phone couldn't do just as easily. For most PC users, mobile devices is a better way to go. This is not lost on those in the computing retail market.
People involved in developing operating system interfaces, like Apple, Microsoft, and Ubuntu (Linux in general) are keenly aware and some are trying to get a solid hold on the computing uses of the masses. The PC and traditional desktop isn't going away. It will be a player in a niche market of computer users that do something besides casual computing.
The other half is the business environment. Casual computing interfaces isn't always the best to use for that. Right now operating system developers are trying to straddle the fence between casual and business uses of a computer. They are not doing both very well and are struggling for a good middle ground. In the mean time, we will have to put up with the crap until they figure this whole thing out. Sooner or later, the right combination of hardware and operating system is going to make that "straddle that fence" regimen (or not) and things will settle down.
367++ TOP FORTUNE 100/500 (or best 100 to work for per CNN Money) COMPANIES, EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS, &/or GOVERNMENT AGENCIES USING WINDOWS (over other solutions like Linux) both in HIGH TPM ENVIRONS, & FROM "TOP 100 COMPANIES TO WORK FOR" (per CNN Money 2011):
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38 HIGH TPM & 99.999% "uptime" examples:
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XEROX: Managing 7++ million transactions a day for office devices for its customers using Windows Server 2003 + SQLServer 2005 64-bit with 99.999% uptime!
NASDAQ: The U.S.' LARGEST STOCK EXCHANGE, Since 2005 has had Windows Server 2003 + SQLServer 2005 in failover clusters running the "official trade data dissemination system" for them in 24x7 fabled "5-9's" 99.999% uptime, doing 64,000 transactions PER SECOND (compare London Stock Exchange using Linux @ 3,000 per second)
FUJIFILM GROUP: Tracks data for its imaging, information, & documentation for its products & services using Windows Server 2003 w/ a custom SAP solution on SQLServer 2005, achieving 99.999% uptime.
HILTON HOTELS: Manages 1.4 Billion records a day for customers in 1000's of their hotels worldwide - for 370,000 rooms & catering services forecasts (switching from 6 *NIX systems to 1 Windows Server 2003 + SQLServer 2005 clustered failover system using a data warehouse with 7 million rows & 99.998% uptime).
MEDITERRANEAN SHIPPING COMPANY: Manages & Tracks 7 million containers out of 116 countries daily using Windows Server 2003 + SQLServer 2005 in failover clusters with 99.999% uptime.
SWISS INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES: Serves 70 airport destinations worldwide, with 6,500 employees + 110 branch offices via Windows Server 2003 & Active Directory with 99.95% uptime (all while growing their business 30% per year). THEIR PREVIOUS LINUX SYSTEM COULD ONLY HANDLE 250 concurrent users - the Windows one handles over 500++ users concurrently/simultaneously!
UNILEVER: Global consumer good leader, migrated to mySAP on SQLServer 2005 + Windows Server 2003 & scaled UP their operations by over 200% & yet saved money + have 99.999% uptime!
MOTOROLA: Using System Management Server, Windows Server 2003 & SQLServer 2005 to conduct inventory of 65,000 desktops from a single location (e.g. for system updates corporate & worldwide).
NISSAN: Uses Windows Server 2003 to manage 50,000 employees' email & calendaring (w/ out VPN, & using Exchange Server 2003) for local AND remote + mobile users.
TOYOTA MOTOR SALES: Reduced the # of techs needed per dealership (1,000's worldwide) from 7, to 1 using Windows Server 2003.
SIEMENS: 420,000++ people, 130 business units over 190 countries managed in Windows Active Directory
REUTERS: Managing 3,000 servers worldwide @ customer sites internationally (using only 4 managers to do so, remotely).
DELL COMPUTER: Managing 130,000 servers & 100,000 PC's worldside using Windows Server 2003 + 40 million customers' data worldwide.
LEXIS NEXIS: Searches BILLIONS of documents each second delivering news, legal, & business information.
HSBC: Deploys System Center solutions to 15,000 Servers worldwide & 300,000 desktops using Windows Server 2003.
RAYOVAC: Chose Windows Server 2003 over Linux to manage their infrastructure - saving 1 million dollars estimated in software, staffing, & support costs.
JETTAINER/LUFTHANSA/U.S. AIRWAYS: managing shipping to 3,000 flights to 400 airports every day.
CONTINENTAL AIRLINES: Manages crew communication systems, log on/log off, schedules, & shifts using Windows Server 2008 worldwide.
JET BLUE AIRWAYS: Managing 12 million flights & their data annually + ticketing, finance, & personnel too.
TIMEX: Using Windows + Exchange Server for remote personnel & executives (for their ENTIRE workforce)
7 ELEVEN STORES: Chose Windows Server 2003 over Li
2012:
Medicaid hack update: 500,000 records and 280,000 SSNs stolen:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/medicaid-hack-update-500000-records-and-280000-ssns-stolen/11444
So, what's dts.utah.gov running everyone?
LINUX (and yes, it got HACKED) -> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=dts.utah.gov
What's health.utah.gov running too??
YOU GUESSED IT: LINUX AGAIN -> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=health.utah.gov
* Ah, yes - see the YEARS OF /. "BS" FUD is CRUMBLING AROUND THE PENGUINS EARS HERE & 2012's starting out just like 2011 did below!
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2011:
KERNEL.ORG COMPROMISED - The Cracking of Kernel.org: (that's VERY bad - do you trust it now?)
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/08/31/2321232/Kernelorg-Compromised
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Linux.com pwned in fresh round of cyber break-ins:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/12/more_linux_sites_down/
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Mysql.com Hacked, Made To Serve Malware:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/09/26/2218238/mysqlcom-hacked-made-to-serve-malware
What's that site running? You guessed it - Linux -> http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=mysql.com
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London Stock Exchange serving malware:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1484548/London-Stock-Exchange-Web-Site-Serving-Malware
(I mean hey - NOT ONLY DID LINUX FALL FLAT ON ITS FACE less than a few minutes into the job http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/02/19/0147232/London-Stock-Exchange-Price-Errors-Emerged-At-Linux-Launch, & crash not only ONCE, but TWICE there? You see "Linux 'fine security'" in motion @ the LSE too!)
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DUQU ROOTKIT/BOTNET BEING SERVED FROM LINUX SERVERS:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/11/30/1610228/duqu-attackers-managed-to-wipe-cc-servers
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Linux Foundation, Linux.com Sites Down To Fix Security Breach:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/09/11/1325212/linux-foundation-linuxcom-sites-down-to-fix-security-breach
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Linux's showing in CA's breached recently too? Ok: (very, Very, VERY BAD for ecommerce, online shopping, banking, etc./et al)
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=StartCom.com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=GlobalSign.com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=Comodo.com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=DigiCert.com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.gemnet.nl
The list of CA Servers BREACHED that RUN LINUX (StartCom, GlobalSign, DigiCert, Comodo, GemNet)... per these articles verifying that:
"Of course Linux would copy those features." - by gman003 (1693318) on Wednesday July 04, @11:48AM (#40542047)
With that single sentence from you above requoted - Linux copied things from Windows NT-based OS, & yet, you said it was "so far behind"? Please... lol!
* "Good artists copy, great artists steal"? No, I don't think so - thieves do...
(I note you avoided the other points that illustrate the SAME thing too... I can see why - it's more admissions of Linux stealing things Windows NT-based OS had BEFORE LINUX, & yet you said Windows is behind?)
Microsoft USED to port NT-based OS to PowerPC, MIPS RISC platforms of all kinds (alpha) etc./et al but gave up on it to concentrate on the MOST USED hardware platform: X86 & that's held true to this very day!
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"Oh, and it runs on damn near everything." - by gman003 (1693318) on Wednesday July 04, @11:48AM (#40542047)
Linux HAD to explore other areas or die... because they surely are way, Way, WAY behind on PC desktops + Servers combined, by far... by what?
2% @ best for Linux, vs. 94% of thereabouts for Windows in terms of desktop marketshare & around a 50/50 split on servers (& the ONLY REASON Linux does any good there? No cost (up front @ least, later that gets "head over heels", because Windows by your own admissions/statements in your initial post noted it in YOUR OWN WORDS no less)).
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"Can I install Windows on an UltraSPARC? What about a POWER chip?" - by gman003 (1693318) on Wednesday July 04, @11:48AM (#40542047)
Power PC? See below... as well as OTHER RISC architectures!
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"What about those oft-theorized "hundreds of ARM cores" processors? Right now, all Windows Server runs on is x86 and Itanium, shortly to be just x86" - by gman003 (1693318) on Wednesday July 04, @11:48AM (#40542047)
See why above... YOU evidently are NOT AWARE of the history of Windows NT-based OS!
( I note you avoided the other points that illustrate the SAME thing too... I can see why - it's more admissions of Linux stealing things Windows NT-based OS had BEFORE LINUX, & yet you said Windows is behind?)
APK
P.S.=>
"Look at the TOP500 lists. The top five hundred supercomputers in the world." -
LOL, big deal - how many of those ARE THERE IN THE WORLD? As many as PC desktops &/or servers??
As to servers, see this (it won't even FIT all of it, but here goes):
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2955431&cid=40542927
and, as to Linux "fine security"? See here:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2955431&cid=40542947
...apk
This tablet vs "legacy" debate is quite amusing.
You take a computer, shrink it into a device that fits in your pocket and it is a smartphone.
You take a computer shrink it to the length and width of a sheet of paper, throw out the keyboard and it is a tablet.
You take a computer shrink it to about the same size as the tablet but a little thicker and keep the keyboard and it is a notebook.
You take a computer and don't shrink it at all and it is a desktop.
Who the fuck cares it is all for the most part the same guts and shit. People should have the choice to use whatever form factor they are most comfortable with. The UI and underlying operating system should help accomodate the users choice.
If I want I should be able to hook up a full sized keyboard to my smartphone, tablet or notebook.
If I want to I should be able to hook up a full sized monitor and keyboard to my smartphone, tablet or notebook.
This is the problem with Windows 8 it does not properly accomodate people who decide a keyboard and mouse is their preferred input method. Neither does it accomodate the avaliability of large displays. Two apps max on screen at once is the definition of epic fail. I looked it up.
The problem with Windows 8 is not pandering to users who prefer tablet form factor. The issue is militiant instance users who prefer other form factors conform to the tablet perspective or pay the price with a nonsensical jarring UX that does not help the paying customer.
Microsoft could have very easily made different choices to respect ALL classes of users and preferences yet they decided not to.
From the looks of things (lack of Interest in win8 beta and overhemlingly negative reaction) they will pay for their insolence with a market hit to their bottom line and further erosion of market share.
Tablets are not replacing PCs. They are replacing that empty space that used to be between your hands when stretched on a sofa watching TV. Consumer's appetites are moving towards tablets, and the market is growing because more people are buying them for the fist time. As a business, this is the next opportunity.
PCs are incredibly useful and practical, and are never going away. Same with mobile computing, and now tablets.
Who said we had to choose? They are all staying, and the experience is evolving as they all complement one another. This is not to be confused with "replace".
Watch this TED talk by Melinda Gates.
I may not like some of what they do, but I loved this talk because she's absolutely right.
All this tablet BS is just an industry fad. Apple's success with mobile devices has gotten everyone seeing green, but in reality the PC and the laptop will remain for years to come. For computers that will remain stationary, PCs are superior because of their ability to be easily maintained and upgraded, as well as the ability to attach multiple big monitors to them (which is hugely more efficient than a tiny laptop or tablet screen). And for anyone doing any word processing or coding, the tablet is an unacceptable platform.
All this crap is just boardroom buzz that gets business executives excited.
You already are carrying a keyboard around if you have a laptop, you're just carrying it around with the display.
And I prefer it that way. A 10" laptop means I don't have to charge the keyboard separately or worry about losing it. The form factor has also traditionally been associated with freedom to run whatever software I feel is best for doing a given job.
Yeah, when I want to play a game like that, I plug a real mouse in.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Again, different use-cases demand different hardware.....
THIS! a thousand time this!
You bring the subject back home with this simple statement. A Tablet is not a desktop is not a laptop is not a smartphone.
I have a real desire to have what I feel is the best appliance for the job at hand. That's why I have all the above except for the smartphone, which I find similar to an old Chevy El Camino - they do stuff, but they don't do anything well.
A mouse would seem to be a monoculture device. But with different mice doing different things well, I have multiple mice. They are cheap enough, so why not use what works best? The magic mouse is great for browsing and after you use a tablet, you'll move back and forth seamlessly between tablet and MM.
On the other hand, it is a nuisance for programs such as Photoshop, and especially Illustrator, where I was constantly accidentally moving my artwork into never never land. So I have a hub, and a second mouse plugged into it
If people have to have a one size fits all approach, they will have to appreciate that some of the fits are not going to be all that good.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It only costs me the $99 developer license.
And all your apps stop working at the end of the year when the developer license expires.
Maybe a stylus is more appropriate, because I'm sketching, not typing.
I thought a capacitive touch screen like that of the iPad, iPad 2, and new iPad didn't allow use of a stylus.
but it's more important to be open minded
Hence why I phrased my post as a question.
i wonder, what's the price on a 25inch tablet pc these days ? The 3d performance , how many fps can crysis or battlefield get on a machine like that? Why would you need a windows pc other than to play games anyway? I think i'm just gonna dig in here in my nice dark cave full of cables and open cases and noisy fans
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
So you say **squintsville** is the future, not 60" big-screens. Watching 1/4 inch beables chase 1/8 inch poggies sounds like lots of fun ... lil' byte-fyucks & meth-heads do it for hours ....
You will never get the productivity of a PC on to a tablet. The keyboard and mouse were designed in the 60's because they were the most efficient and easiest to use. Why. Because being able to type 60 words a minute a skilled typist can literally type almost as fast as they think up what they are going to say. Tablets have many disadvantages. Disadvantages I don't see being overcome any time soon.
People have been predicting the death of the PC for 30 years. Almost as soon as its was first developed. Wasn't IBM's prediction that the world would only ever need 6 computers? Today computers are everywhere. Now I'm not saying that tablets couldn't replace some things on the PC. I'm sure the touch screen could replace the mouse pretty well. But the keyboard is more efficient then a touch screen. These devices have the ability to adapt to our needs. That's the beauty of them. I wish these companies would realize that there are people out there that will have different needs and as a result they will need to build a variety of hardware to meet those needs.
I see this industry moving towards meeting more niche markets rather then the one size fits all mentality that is still dominant in the industry today.
SOOOOO many people get angry when you tell them the heart of the xbox is the same as apple's before the switch to intel.
from "non-dead" to dead.
Welcome your new mobile overlords, Microsoft.