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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.'"
So their roadmap is to make Windows like OS-X? Wow. Totally innovative. You go girl.
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.
I thought he wasn't so involved anymore? PFFFFFTTTTTTT
Yes yes, I've always wanted a motorbike that takes 4 passengers and can also carry shipping containers.
*sigh* I s'pose 'cos it's software the mangement view is that all that redundant functionality won't actually get in the way of the 10% you actually want in THIS device
when Shitsta would've been a better name for the product.
Who cares what the old man says anymore? As the Salesforce chap said,Windows is irrelevant these days. Sme goes for Microsoft, Bill Gates ad Ballmer. No one cares what they think or say anymore. The whole tech World has moved on.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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/
when Shitsta would've been a better name for the product.
Who cares what the old man says anymore? As the Salesforce chap said,Windows is irrelevant these days. Same goes for Microsoft, Bill Gates ad Ballmer. No one cares what they think or say anymore. The whole tech World has moved on.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Maybe for Microsoft's survival.
The surface ARM is no more than another netbook (remember those? TABLETS replaced them), and the surface x86 version is just another ultra portable with touch screen support.
As far as Window 8 is concerned, Microsoft is used to shoving its products by leveraging its monopoly in the OEM market. The case with mobile devices however is very different. Microsoft HAS to prove Windows 8 is worth all the fuss (comparing to existing Android and iOS), with the only advantage (which is yet to be tested) of having apps for your Windows based x86 share information with their ARM counterparts (please spare the build-once for both platforms BS). This synchronization may have been a killer app in the early mobile device days, but today information is synchronized across all platforms quite easily.
Microsoft is definitely all-in on this one, if people adopt Windows 8 as a mobile OS, we may very well see Windows taking over the mobile devices market. If it won't, it's only a matter of time until desktop OS's (or at least Windows OS for most desktops) is obsolete, and so will be Microsoft.
Only time will tell, but my money is on a colossal failure for Microsoft
After that anti-trust investigation and suit in the 1990s, Microsoft has been waiting for other companies to take innovative steps so that it can adopt them later. The Apple "app store" was a boon to Microsoft, as they couldn't have done it on their own without ending up back in court.
What's come of this is an intelligent strategy. They are essentially reviving an older strategy for making a standardized interface, which will allow developers and users more ability to mix-and-match interface components.
It's also intelligent to sneak away from the venerable win32 and make a gift to developers, which is one platform for mobile, desktop and any other form of computing (knowing Gates: smart house and smart agents) that will arise.
While I have my doubts about the Fisher-Price interface as well, I also felt this way about the "new" desktop in Windows XP. It'll be great to see Microsoft restoring some competition to the world of computing with this new strategy.
I think he meant to say 'simply awful'.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
But I can't post the story as Slashdot is down!
who doesnt want to put fingerprints all over my freaking monitor?
... by Gates comments, until he checks apples share price, valuation and performance compared to Microsoft. Then he'll just laugh and go back to practicing his golf swing.
Way too complicated GUI for mobile. Steve jobs correctly decided a cell phone GUI was better.
" '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....
I'm just ordering the parts to build another Windows PC for gaming. I'll need one eventually, and with Windows 7 vanishing soon I don't want to be stuck with an 'awfully simple' OS.
At current Windows release rates, hopefully a box built with high-end parts today will last at least until Windows 10.
The summary puts "touch" and "future" together as if touch is a new thing.
Look up the HP 150. This was a desktop computer with a touch screen back in 1983. I'm sure Bill Gates saw this at the 1983 Comdex - a few booths down MS was demonstrating a vaporware product called "Windows". There are reasons we don't waste our money on touch screens for desktop computers, and they were all hashed out a long time ago. But somehow touch screens are magically new and the old reasons magically don't exist any more.
My daughter got a Galaxy Tab 10.1 on x-mas when she was 20month old and been using it since.
BUT Nether she nor you average 3year kid need to be in 3rdp session + citrix containing another 4rdp session + running 10local apps at once.
I have to do that and windows 8 just seem like a pain in the as BIG TIME.
Okay you say, but then your mother, spause and child should run windows 8.
But then I have to support it and I say 'No way in h*ll'. I'ts hard enough to support a OS that you work in on a daily basis on a computer you don't know.
Android/ios is somewhat fine as they are decently locked down but in windows it will just get ridiculous. Just finding the shutdown in windows8 took me a good 20minutes before I by chance stumbled over it.
In the same league as the announcement of the iPhone's curated app ecosystem. Today was the day that mainstream computing officially set a course for curation.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They used to matter when he ran Microsoft.
Granted, his biggest decisions were usually taken to catch up to the market, not lead it - witness Windows 95 and the "focus on the internet".
Also, his track record on predicting the future is lousy - witness Microsoft Bob and "The Road Ahead".
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
You're welcome
More like a trojan horse for developers. Microsoft's decision to make WinRT-based apps appstore-only is a total deal breaker. There is no way I am going to write applications that I am not allowed to sell directly to the user. There is no way any user with half a brain would make himself dependent on an application that can only be installed through the appstore. Those are strings, Pinocchio, and if you voluntarily attach them to yourself or your business, you will get exactly what you deserve.
Swiss Army knife! And we've all had experience with one-size-fits-all. It usually doesn't work very well.
The main pre-emptory objection to Windows 8 is change. Change for no apparent reason other than the whim of the same company that's had as many losers as whiners.
Why doesn't Microsoft understand that people want their tools to be configurable and give them the option for change? The Office and all its predecessors (and competitors) faciliated productivity nicely with keyboard equivalents, most of which were hang-overs from the command-line editors of yore. Microsoft buried, hid or obfuscated this functionality to the point where Office 2012 hides them completely. They still work if you know about them, but the interface doesn't even hint of their existence. WHY?!
The keyboard is still the fastest I/O device for text input, and until such time as there's an improvement, why does the big corporate productivity enhancer think it's a good idea to mess with the 'productiviy' they claim to enhance? I don't get it.
Does Microsoft have a neural interface in the works that they're not talking about? Does this explain Steven Balmer's strange behavior, or is he really just that weird? If Microsoft is working on neural inductance recognition, I can't wait to find out just how much that will improve Bing! Just think of all the new analytics data that will populate the cloud once M$ can read your mind....
But keep it clean.
Gates: But you want to incorporate touch without giving up the kind of mouse, keyboard capability that's just so natural in most settings.
So what does Microsoft do with Windows 8? Remove the ability to easily use a keyboard and mouse with the OS.
Businesses require an OS with applications that allow for interactivity including ease of multi-tasking. The idea of an OS geared toward uni-tasked pipelined user consumption is only a one-way street. I knew it was bad, but having Bill Gates endorsement this paradigm is the final nail in the coffin.
From my POV, Microsoft Office 365 and VM'ed instances of Server 2012 is the only thing they have worth offering. The client side OS and computing platform paradigm is the antithesis of corporate productivity. Clearly they're abandoning this market segment. Either intentionally or not is irrelevant at this point.
Life is not for the lazy.
.
Is this the same Bill Gates who is once again talking about what the future brings?
Bill Gates' mother was on the board of the United Way with John Akers who
was CEO of IBM at the time.
Bill Gates was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of
stupid mistakes made by the entrenched companies in the computer
industry. If you are realistic and informed, you cannot name one single
product Microsoft ever offered which was superior to other offerings
in the marketplace. Microsoft achieved dominance not through superior
product offerings but through dirty business tactics.
My only question is this : why does a guy who really did make great stuff
get cancer and die when swine like Bill Gates lives ?
Maybe the old saying : "only the good die young" is actually true.
Desktop & mobile sharing an OS is like putting the same controls on a skateboard as an aircraft carrier - sure you could, but you should really consider the other options first.
'It's evolving literally to be a single platform,'
It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!
Touch is great for accessing and consuming content.
Touch is currently horrendous for producing or modifying content.
These are not yet 'unified' avenues of usage as yet.
However it is possible. I have given content creation / editing (as in writing software) on both iPad and my Samsung Galaxy S3 the old college try. In many ways, it is this close to actually working and replacing my laptop. With my galaxy I've used both bluetooth and USB mice. I would break down the support for using a mouse on the latest version of Android as:
Hardware support: 95%
OS support: 75%
App support: 5%
The problem lies with the apps. They simply aren't written to take proper advantage of a mouse, or even a keyboard for that matter. For example, when I plug in a keyboard, the OS must recognize I'm using an external keyboard, and thus it doesn't show the onscreen keyboard. However, certain apps I've tried must be triggering it programatically at various times (for example when switching away and back to the app), and when the onscreen keyboard pops up in landscape orientation nearly all the screen real estate is wasted.
Yet even ALT-TAB works on the keyboard to allow switching between apps on Android, showing just how surprisingly complete external keyboard support is in some areas.
Text selection and copying is one of the big issues with mouse support, because at the OS level it is still being reduced down to simple touches. Thus you must click-hold to begin selecting, visual indicators designed for touch use are then unnecessarily large, etc. Can (and should) mouse based text selection work optimally on a mobile device, exactly as it does on desktop devices? Of course it can, and without having to change the existing touch-based behavior either.
Now Microsoft does have a chance to get all this right. Instead of mouse and keyboard support being hobbled on as an afterthought, which is how it has (VERY) slowly evolved with Android from version to version, Microsoft can have well thought out support from day 1. More importantly, they can require (or at least make it very easy or implicitly supported) for 3rd party developers to have proper support for these peripherals. Simple things such as not always assuming onscreen keyboards are being displayed, provide keyboard shortcuts, support for mouse scroll wheels, etc.
As others have already stated, the huge concern here is that MS is going to go off the deep end (as is their wont) and push a paradigm or concept too far. For example, if a touchpad or mouse is available, then I should NEVER need to actually touch the screen to do any standard OS GUI function.
Better known as 318230.
Speaking in Absolutes, we are?
Not to discredit their diligent use of dirty tactics, but Microsoft got where they were through more than just skulduggery. They were sometimes at the right place at the right time, sometimes not at the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes they saw a good thing and bought it out. The original Dartmouth BASIC was nowhere near as flexible as what Gates & Allen produced. You don't get that big through dirty work alone, even though it helps.
And I really hope you weren't referring to a certain other CEO recently departed as "good". He did finally qualify legitimately for his handicapped parking space, however.
Gates is no saint, but I'd say he's considerably less abusive and psychopathic than most of his peers, living or dead.
....that's just so totally unsuited to a touch-based interface....such as Windows 8.
I'm not sure touch interfaces are such a great idea. We risk oblivion if we ignore Douglas Adams' dire warning.
Apple didn't build that!
He still needs to accept some responsibility for this turd.
What Microsoft really wants to do is leverage their desktop monopoly to mobile. They tried to do this by marketing 'Windows Familiarity' as a plus for WinPhone 6. But that didn't work, because as you stated, the desktop is a lousy metaphor for a phone. So now they're remaking their desktop into a clone of their phone so that they can tout the similarities between their desktop monopoly OS and their mobile offerings. This time it's the new desktop interface that's inappropriate for the form factor, but this time, they've got a captive audience and don't care.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
> Laptop with keyboard: Touch is just so-so
Surface has a floppy keyboard connection and no weight in the keyboard. If you try it on your lap and then swipe the screen it is likely to be a disaster.
Touch is currently horrendous for producing or modifying content.
Tell that to painters, or musicians. Touch is far superior for CREATION in those cases.
The world of creation and editing is not limited to words.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My only question is this : why does a guy who really did make great stuff get cancer and die when swine like Bill Gates lives ?
Jobs was a Buddhist.
Buddhists believe in karma.
Jobs was a dick.
Jobs got cancer.
I just think the Metro interface makes the whole touch screen experience better and it's unitifed with the Xbox 360 experience I've had. I like how easy the Xbox is to navigate and this seems to be coming reality for MS desktops.
Having developed for both, I can say that it's not easy to share code between the two. It's fairly easy to port code from one to the other (unless you're doing stuff with networking or threading) but it's not easy to get a single app to run in both worlds.
Just host the .APPX file on your website, and give the user instructions on sideloading it. It's quite easy, actually, although they do have to enable sideloading first (a single Powershell command).
You'll probably make a hell of a lot more money selling through the Windows store than you will selling through your own site, or through traditional retail channels, of course. But you aren't *unable* to sell through those channels. It's just going to have less exposure to the users and require a less intuitive interaction on their part.
People are already hosting (non-commercial, homebrew) APPX packages on forums like XDA-Developers. Typically those aren't packages which are also going through the store - they're either pre-release versions or various sorts of hack - but some are perfectly acceptable apps that the author wanted to allow the community to use for free instead of requiring that they purchase them through the store.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Let me see. He's talking about 1 OS that can run any app from any device that runs that OS. Doesn't matter the CPU, just the OS.
Damn, Linux should of done that.
Be seeing you...
> Microsoft's mistake was assuming people wanted a desktop
> experience on a device too small for it to be effective.
Microsoft's current mistake is assuming that people want a smartphone experience on a desktop PC with a 24" 1920x1080 display. Unless I'm doing a large spreadsheet or watching streaming video, I usually do not want apps to be fullscreen. And no, I do not intend to risk RSI by sticking my arm out 2 feet and dragging my fingers all over the 24" screen.
I'm running linux with multiple workspaces. In my "Forums" workspace, I have 2 Firefox windows side-by-side. At 960x1080 they look a lot more natural than fullscreen browser windows. I have a workspace for a programming project. When in use, it has...
* an xterm window open with vim editing the source code
* a small window to execute the code
* a file viewer window to allow me to look at the input and output files
Fullscreen may have been appropriate in the days of 640x480 VGA displays, but it's not appropriate on a 1920x1080 display.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Microsoft is definitely all-in on this one, if people adopt Windows 8 as a mobile OS, we may very well see Windows taking over the mobile devices market. If it won't, it's only a matter of time until desktop OS's (or at least Windows OS for most desktops) is obsolete, and so will be Microsoft. Only time will tell, but my money is on a colossal failure for Microsoft
This sounds plausible, except Microsoft will not fail so much as change, though perhaps with far less profit. Somewhat like Apple, Windows 8 looks like the largest desktop O/S is moving toward the computer as appliance. This suggests two things:
1) A trend to very slowly reduce the popularity of general purpose computers, shifting people to limited-task devices.
2) Year of the Linux desktop jokes aside, we really could be headed toward Linux/BSD as the main traditional desktop O/S. Not because of advertising or popularity, but because it's the only one.
The money and corporate power will be in the appliances. Independent power will be enhanced by individuals with traditional computers. There is no need for this generation to stock up on motherboards, but long-term thinking makes one wonder if that time will come.
Really? Which of MS's dirty tricks can you now fail to recall? He's mugged entire industries, and he's a liar and a cheat.
Have you noticed Logitech's new touch input surfaces?
Pretty neat! Touch on a large or any monitor makes no sense.
http://www.logitech.com/en-ca/mice-pointers/mice/touchpad-t650
If you just said Gates made sleazy moves to get to where he was, few could disagree. If you claimed Jobs was a visionary, many would agree. But calling Gates a low-down scumbag and Jobs a saint ("the good die young"???) and wishing ill on another human being makes you a bitter, biased troll.
Maybe you heard of how Jobs stole from Wozniak? Or that he denied paternity on his first kid? Or that he didn't make charitable contributions? Not an idol that most people would worship.
So get over it - both of them did sleazy things. One of them made shiny trinkets that amuse you.
How to go about this? It's a two-page full colour ad.
What you see is a guy at a desk in an office; you are looking at the scene from behind, as if you were standing in the door opening. The guy is slumped backwards in a chair, head falling to the side, and a gun in his hand. It's obvious he just shot himself through the head. On the desk is a high-end looking keyboard, similar mouse, and 3 24" monitors in a multi-monitor setup. On the monitors you see HUGE Windows 8 tiles. There's a Windows 8 box on the table.
There need to be no words.
Bill Gates: sombody help me
HHHEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLPPPPP
No he didn't. I honestly can't think of any time when he or Microsoft has ever wronged anyone. The only people who claim what you do are just sore losers who couldn't make it on their own so they needed a scapegoat as an excuse.
Gates is not a genius, just one lucky SOB who bought a lottery ticket and won, another 20th century robber-baron trading on his family connections. Gates thought 640KB of memory was more than enough; thought the Internet was a fad; ripped off the GUI and DOS; missed mobile; missed search ... the list is endless. Just basically a lucky, lucky stupid cunt.
Steve Jobs seems to have been personally much more of a swine than Bill Gates. Anyone who deliberately parks in handicapped spaces because they think they're too fucking important to obey the plebs' rules is pretty much the definition of a douchebag.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Really? Which of MS's dirty tricks can you now fail to recall? He's mugged entire industries, and he's a liar and a cheat.
Gates was a typically ruthless businessman who was in the right place at the right time to exploit the sheer stupidity of most of the rest of tech industry (IBM in particular), but personally he's nowhere near the arsehole that Jobs by all accounts was.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Workstation with large monitor: Touch is horrible. I don't want to move my 30" monitor any closer to me, and I don't want to reach way out to it.
Lay the monitor almost flat on the table. It would feel like drawing with pencil and paper. Upright is fine if it's mounted on the wall, and you're standing in front of it, like they they show in the movies
I need a keyboard to do my (professional) programming and (hobby) story writing. Laying the monitor flat directly in front of me as if I was going to draw on it isn't acceptable. I need my keyboard. That means I have to move the monitor some where else other than where it is easy to look at which means I'm going to get a crick in my neck if I hold my head like that for 8+ hours a day. (Ergonomically speaking, I learned a long time ago that I should keep my head resting on my spine by "looking straight ahead" when staring at a the monitor for long periods of time. If I tilt my head even a little bit and hold it there all day, my muscles work a lot. That means it gets very painful.)
I also need the mouse for precision pointing. I still work in the world of desktops / laptops and there's a lot of information that can't be programmed in a GUI without a mouse. When you're trying to squeeze a little more information on the screen, sometimes a few pixels make a big difference. Gesturing just a couple of pixels with a finger is difficult since you can't see what you're doing.
Also, on a side note, all of the monitors I've used in my life (translated as things that are larger and heavier than a tablet size device), typically aren't very flat on the back side because of the plugs, transformers, and stand. I haven't shopped for monitors in a while... is it now possible to get a 30" monitor that is only a few millimeters thick and lay it down?