Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
Yeah, but ....
Asking Bill Gates about Microsoft's platform direction is like asking Mikhail Gorbachev about the future of Russia.
Have gnu, will travel.
Isn't it amazing how Microsoft seems to have been put on the defensive? What a change from not that long ago, They no longer seem to have much strategic vision, and just respond (usually poorly) to Apple's moves. How freaked out they must be now that the iPhone alone makes Apple more revenue and profit than all of Microsoft.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
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
Yeah, running a massive charity that helps eradicate disease around the world and improve education? What a selfish jerk.
Yeah, running A strongarm for big pharma that pretends to eradicate disease without being able to get into every country where it is an issue because of regressive IP policies and attempt to shape education in a way that results in more sales for Microsoft, using money that he effectively stole from the entire computing industry by illegally abusing a monopoly position in such a way that it held the computing industry back at least half a decade, and probably a whole one? I call that a selfish jerk, but I guess that's just because I own a dictionary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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
Not having a touch device, can't comment on how the interface changes, however:
of course it defaults to apps, since the Start Screen is all about listing and launching apps.
What I referred to was how I, in Win 7, will type a string in the 'search' and it will highlight "applications", "Files", and "control panel settings" (and probably other things) and present all results it finds, space allowing. In Win8, I wanted to do an update, I typed 'update' to search for windows update. It said no results. I stumbled over that, since "Windows Update" has always shown up there (in fact before Win 8 it showed up as an 'Application'). It took me a minute to realize I needed to click the "Settings Category" to get more results. When I pondered that a bit too long, the side bar even giving me the hint that 'Settings had 9 results' auto-hid, leaving the entirety of my screen real estate dedicated to the task of telling me it found nothing, and hiding the dozen or so hits it got out of site.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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
That's what happens when you spend too much time defending your market and not enough time 'innovating'.
Apple didn't just put out more and better hardware, they created a unified approach to handing all their customers a market in a box. The iPhone and iPad apps market, the music on your device(s) market, the internet as a TV show market, the eBooks market...
BG was a visionary, but you can only get just so much productivity out of your Office employees before the hardware improvements are lost on those who are moved primarily by the ROI arguments. And the web is a great platform to deliver services, but again, how long does it it take before the western world is saturated with sales opportunities and M$ had to start targeting the 3rd or diminishing marginal returns.
Apple is riding the tide of people who believe that the most portable device that gives them everything, everywhere all the time with slick engineering reliability built in is worth a premium. It's a good thing Steve Jobs came back and rescued us from the inevitable degradation that the Mac clone wars would have ultimately delivered, as evidenced by Microsoft taking back their hardware in an effort to combat the crap that's marketed in the PC world.
Thanks Steve!
(I really enjoy my Swiss Army knife of markets in a box!)
Only on a slashdot discussion of bill gates would you find someone finding fault with curing diseases.
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.
Since when has MS been on the offensive?
Over the past several decades they have always been highly defensive. Every offensive move (aggressive pricing of Office to outcompete WordPerfect; developing a web browser to kill off Netscape; hostile take-over of other competing companies) have always been to defend the status quo which includes Windows on the desktop. MS never innovated much, instead they have bought up many small companies with innovative products, sometimes including the product in their own offering, usually killing it off (by making it suck).
MS makes money by selling Windows and Office to the desktop computers. Anything that threatens this status quo they will defend against.
Now the mobile computing has quite suddenly matured and become popular, and that's what keeps MS scrambling. They don't have an easy answer to that. It's too big to buy (and Apple and Google are not for sale, anyway), and most devices are using hardware that Windows doesn't work well on (ARM processors, touch screens, small screens, no keyboard/mouse).
Add to that the notorious slowness of MS and the company has a big problem. The first iPhone, that set off the revolution, was released five years ago. The first Android release by Google followed two years later. Another three years later and MS still doesn't have a viable competitor, and is by many considered a few years behind Android and iOS.
MS is on the defensive, still, while to survive they must be on the offensive. The Surface proves that they are trying to do just that now. An interesting concept, I wonder if it will be released as product before competitors take over the ideas and release their own. When the first iPad was announced by Apple it was mere weeks before the Chinese manufacturers started to churn out 7" iPads - running Android but looking exactly like the real thing. Just smaller, and cheaper.
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.
One thing you often see on shirt-pocket computers is bluetooth.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...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
BG was a visionary
Yes., he saw what others were doing, and copied it.