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Windows 8: Do I Really Need a Single OS?
gManZboy writes "If you skip Windows 8, you lose the appealing opportunity to synchronize all of your devices on a single platform — or so goes the argument. If you're skeptical, you're not alone. OS monogamy may be in Apple's interest, and Microsoft's, but ask why it's in your interest. Can Microsoft convince the skeptics? 'If the hardware and software are the same at home and at work, one can't be "better" than the other. It would help if Microsoft convinced users like me that their platform is so good, we'd be fools to go anywhere else,' writes Kevin Casey."
Visual Studio is top of its class. Which products are better than VS? I bet none.
I would much rather have a variety of operating systems or platforms which use common protocols and formats so that I can switch between them. Technology evolves, operating systems change. Locking one's self into one platform at the exclusion of others is not a good idea. At least not for the consumer, it just makes it harder to switch when the existing platform falls to provide the quality demanded.
Single source OSs or anything else. If they manage to get it right, the perfect OS that satisfies every user, meets all of our needs. Then what happens? Does the world stagnate, or do they go ahead and produce something that may be totaly crap, and we are all locked in, so we all adopt the crap. No thanks, I like variety, choice, and options. I like being able to decide what I want, and what I do not want. I hope the patent situation around the world does not kill inovation, and I do not want this, as it would do the same.
You are arguing with a well known "ad troll"... which makes me curious, shouldn't the government be going after this shill for monopolizing the first post on Microsoft related articles? ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Eclipse is garbage.
Emacs.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Some kind of devices and activities are better suited for some kinds of interactionl. Screen size, to have or not touchscreen, keyboard, mouse, that you must hold it or use it on a surface, are between the factors that make one user interface better suited than others. In Linux you have a lot of different user interfaces, is not the same playing with Meego, Unity, KDE, Android or Sugar, but is all the same OS (or at very least, kernel and basic toolchain) with different user interfaces that are meant to fit to certain range of hardware.
What you're spouting on about is what management thinks is ideal. Any real, experienced developed knows that "write-once, run-anywhere" or even "write-once, run-everywhere" is nothing but a massive load of bullshit. Any user of such software knows the same.
How many fucking times do we have to go through this? For crying out loud, it's the same each time we do it! It doesn't matter if it was BASIC in the 1970s, or C in the 1980s, or C++ in the 1990s, or Java in the 2000s, or JavaScript today.
The end result is that the software is really fucking shitty to write, and it's really damn shitty for the users who have to use it. The developers still get stuck dealing with cross-platform issues, even when it's just the same OS running on different devices. The users get a really half-assed experience, because the developers had to cut corners all over the place just to make the software run on all kinds of different OSes or devices.
Yeah, management loves it, but that's only because they aren't actually creating the shitheap, nor are they the ones who get stuck using it day-in and day-out. They see some great cost savings in the short term, but then things get really fucked up in the long term since the existing users and customers will flee as quickly as they can. You can't run a software business when all the customers left because your software became a raging pile of donkey turds thanks to embracing WORA hype.
If I want a single OS platform, I'd go with Apple. For all the handwaving Apple fanbois do, Apple actually does the unified experience pretty darn well. I'd own an iPhone, MacBook and an iMac to keep things concurrent.
If I wanted to, that is. I don't , and will stick with the mix thats's proven to be effective for me
Just to point out here the assumption of the question is wrong. Apple is proposing the exact opposite of ubiquitous computing. They instead have two products iOS and OSX which evolve semi-seperately so that data can pass between similar applications but that the applications are quite different.
Microsoft conversely is proposing a shift to ubiquitous computing that applications and devices can alter themselves based on the way they are used, the form factor of the human. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0 ).
What the author is proposing is different from either one of these, the current situation where there are loose standards for moving application data and different applications.
current: loose standards
apple: seamless data portability
microsoft: seamless application portability
Apple's views and Microsoft's views shouldn't be confused.
Just how many sock puppets do you have, Pie?
>new account
>similar to other Pie based accounts like PieDode and PieLala - used and then abandoned.
>used to shill Microsoft
>first post in thread
>buzzword bingo
PieMasters (2751119) is all alone in the world.
Indeed.
--
BMO
And it still doesn't. Microsoft has for decades tried to sell us on the idea of one bloated, legacy-crap-filled OS on all devices, it was just a matter of the hardware catching up with their requirements. When they were finally convinced that a KVM interface didn't work on touch devices (giving us wonderful mind-numbing features like a "Start" button and walking menus on a 3 inch phone screen) the solution was obvious -- run a touch interface everywhere, using ideas, rebranded, that have already been successful on other platforms (example, "tiles" instead of "widgets") and convince the computing public that they will love a touch-based interface with huge sliding tiles on a 1920X1200 screen, unless they're some kind of communist.
And a few people will buy into it enthusiastically, as always, and some people will put up with it because it's a requirement for whatever they need to do, and because of Microsoft's lock on PC manufacturers, some people will put up with it because they bought the computer like that and they don't know what to do about it, and that might be enough to maintain their 60-odd percent market. And the rest of us will use something else.
I do have to use windows for some things I do. But I'm just now migrating to 7 from XP, and I have no intention of buying another copy of Windows until I see what 9 looks like. And maybe not even then, if a few companies get off their collective butts and port their products to some other platform.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This is such self-serving BS. Microsoft needs a single, unified OS, not you. Microsoft did what they needed to do, for themselves, and this argument was invented after the fact to make it look like it's good for the consumer. What I need is an operating system that doesn't have to reboot every month on Patch Tuesday.
"Oh man, you mean you hate being required to learn how things work?" Why do you say that (at least I took it as such) in a sarcastic way? If I'm being employed by COMPANY XYZ to make a product, they don't want and I don't want to spend 3 months trying to figure out all off the bullshit to get my job done. Software is one of those unique things that can be molded into a tool that is BOTH functional AND easy to use. I've never quite understood why the FOSS crowd (and I do love FOSS so we're clear on that) INSISTS on making things stupidly complex. WYSIWYG and "Point-Click" Wizards are not bad things, even for those of us who CAN sit down and figure everything out. There are days that I look at a piece of FOSS and go "that is so cool", but if it'd take me 3-4 hours to set it up JUSt to get it working I might just be turned off on it. FOSS should be more than just "you can customize it", it has the capacity to BE better than Commercial software from a non-technical standpoint. All too often I feel like developers forget the human element of your target audience.
The 'joke' is that Java isn't an acronym. So you've basically proved the poster's point.
The logic being presented here is very flawed. The root of the argument is this quote:
"There's a productivity gap when [users] come into the workplace and have to switch operating systems to work with 'in house' software versus 'mobile' software. Windows 8 bridges that gap. Same device at home as at work. Same software. Same cloud back end. Same identity system," wrote reader "moarsauce123."
This post is wrong on so many levels.
- Odds of most large corporations upgrading to Windows 8 any time in the next 2-3 years is slim to none. Windows 8 is a huge paradigm shift and there is simply zero reason for them to endure that kind of re-training cost.
- Odds of most large corporations allowing you to cloud-sync your work machine with your home machine is also slim to none. I can't even plug in my own USB thumb drive at work, you think they are going to allow me to cloud-sync my OS? Crazy town.
- Your company does not want you using the same 'identity system" at work as at home. You think my company wants me logging into Windows with my hotmail address?