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Bill Gates Talks Windows Future, Touch Interfaces
Nerval's Lobster writes "In a YouTube interview released by Microsoft, co-founder Bill Gates offered a few hints of where Microsoft plans on taking Windows in coming years. 'It's evolving literally to be a single platform,' he said, referring to how Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 share a kernel, file system, graphics support, and other elements. At least in theory, that will allow developers to port apps from the desktop/tablet OS to the smartphone OS with relatively little work. The two operating systems already share the same design aesthetic, with Start screens composed of colorful tiles linked to applications. Gates also praised natural user interfaces — which include touch and voice — while taking a subtle dig at Apple's iPad and other tablets on the market. 'People want to consume their mail, reading, video anywhere, and they want it to be awfully simple,' he said. 'But you want to incorporate touch without giving up the kind of mouse, keyboard capability that's just so natural in most settings.'"
If you try to "incorporate touch without giving up the kind of mouse, keyboard capability that's just so natural in most settings.", you end up with Windows 8, Unity, and others I don't even want to know about. Keep touch interfaces out of my desktop, please.
apple got lucky with the price of mobile components dropping to reasonable levels...
yeah, they just "stumbled" into being the most profitable company in the world. it's their manufacturing capabilities and their supply chain logistics that make this happen. there's absolutely no luck involved in this.
It's ironic that the guy who was telling us a decade ago that tablets (with styluses) were the future of personal computing, is now such a big fan of the mouse and keyboard.
Each input method (touch, stylus, mouse, keyboard) has its uses. Different devices need different methods.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Nothing to do with Luck. Microsoft's mistake was assuming people wanted a desktop experience on a device too small for it to be effective. They have now come to their senses and come up with a good cell phone experience but now want to do the opposite and inflict a mobile interface on their desktop users.
As for Apple: The core kernel may be similar but their interfaces are completely different between desktop and mobile.
Open letter to M$... It's clear you're trying to copy Apple's success in the tablet/smartphone world by creating so-called unified interface for both them and desktops. But if Apple is such a clear leader and their vision for the future is so good, then why doesn't OSX look like iOS?
who doesnt want to put fingerprints all over my freaking monitor?
" 'It's evolving literally to be a single platform,' he said, referring to how Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 share a kernel, file system, graphics support, and other elements. At least in theory, that will allow developers to port apps from the desktop/tablet OS to the smartphone OS with relatively little work."
Hasn't Gates been chasing the dream of one Windows to rule them all for something like two decades now? The line of 'Handheld PC' and 'Pocket PC' devices didn't share as much low level architecture, because the hardware wouldn't permit it at the time; but did everything they could to drag a desktop UI onto a teeny touchscreen, and 'tablet' meant getting Windows for Pen Computing 1.0 with your Win3.1 back when meteorites were still mopping up the last of the dinosaurs....
Because unlike M$, Apple borrowed code from the open source community (Linux) to make their OSX. Apple never invented anything, they just took what they saw was available and used it in a better way.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Also attributing it to luck doesn't really make sense since Apple had been planning the device for years, and only released it when the components had become cheap enough to sell the device at what they believed to be a reasonable price point. Also, cheaper components and better touch screens are insufficient to explain where the iPhone came from. Why is it that Apple was first to market with a device like the iPhone, and it took other manufacturers years to catch up?
The iPhone was not obvious. When it was first demoed, people responded in one of two ways: (a) "Holy shit, that's some amazing sci-fi tech right there and I want one,"; and (b) "No physical keyboard, less Exchange support than a Blackberry. Lame."