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'Gorilla Arm' Will Keep Touch Screens From Taking Over
Hugh Pickens writes "With Windows 8, Microsoft has made a billion-dollar gamble that personal computing is taking a new direction and that new direction is touch, says David Pogue. It's efficient on a touchscreen tablet. But Microsoft expects us to run Windows 8 on our tens of millions of everyday PCs. Although touch has been incredibly successful on our phones, tablets, airport kiosks and cash machines, Pogue says touch will never take over on PCs. The reason? Gorilla Arms. There are three big differences between tablet screens and a PC's screen: angle, distance and time interval. The problem is 'the tingling ache that [comes] from extending my right arm to manipulate that screen for hours, an affliction that has earned the nickname of gorilla arm.' Some experts say gorilla arm is what killed touch computing during its first wave in the early 1980s but Microsoft is betting that Windows 8 will be so attractive that we won't mind touching our PC screens, at least until the PC concept fades away entirely. 'My belief is that touch screens make sense on mobile computers but not on stationary ones,' concludes Pogue. 'Microsoft is making a gigantic bet that I'm wrong.'"
And if you wanted an article that actually intelligently criticized Windows 8 instead of that completely unscientific article from Scientific American:
Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users
It seems to me, and many others, that Microsoft has an internal policy of deliberately making bad versions of Windows to increase sales. Look at the background of bad versions: Windows ME, Windows Vista, Windows 8.
A company that has a virtual monopoly can make money by deliberately abusing its customers. That's especially true when a product is complicated and customers don't have the time to become technically knowledgeable.
Many people who buy a Windows computer now will want to buy Windows 9 when it is released because Windows 8 is so weird. That tends to double sales, because customers don't pay an upgrade price, Microsoft requires them to pay for an entirely new operating system, even though there have been few changes between versions. Also, Microsoft has established multiple prices. Customers who bought Windows 7 because they didn't like Windows Vista paid far more per copy than computer manufacturers.
It seems that abuse is deliberate Microsoft company policy. Yes, Microsoft management is incompetent, but also knowingly destructive. For example, a court case established that a Microsoft manager had said before Windows Vista was released that it was not ready to be released. Knowing that, Vista was released anyway.
Microsoft has been alternating bad and good versions of operating systems since the days of DOS. For example, DOS version 3.0 had serious bugs. DOS version 3.1 fixed the bugs. Customers who owned DOS 3 were required to pay the full retail price for DOS 3.1, even though there were few changes.
So run that shit in a virtual machine. FFS, the real operating system doesn't have to be compromised by decades old libraries and executables that are full of exploits.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br