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PC Makers Plan Rebellion Against Microsoft At CES
Velcroman1 writes "Fearing rapidly plummeting sales of traditional laptops and desktop computers — which fell by another 10 percent or so in 2013 — manufacturers are planning a revolt against Microsoft and the Windows operating system, analysts say. At the 2014 CES in Las Vegas, multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and the Android OS that powers many of the world's tablets and smartphones, two different analysts said recently. The new devices will be called 'PC Plus' machines, explained analyst Tim Bajarin. 'A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well,' Bajarin wrote. Another analyst put the threat to Windows bluntly: 'This should scare the heck out of Microsoft.'"
Who the fuck wants this? Sure, Windows sucks but why would cramming a shitty OEM version of Android make things better?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Any movement away from a Microsoft dominated software market is probably a step in the right direction. As for the question of whether anyone will use these features, I will withhold judgment until I can actually see them.
I see it as the only way to compete with android. Just give it out, completely free. Still charge for the server level OS's and support, but for a desktop, MS makes money from plenty of other areas. Office is still a cash cow. Xbox is a profit center.
Google makes its money from their "free" OS through the app store. They also have a pretty neat ecosystem and various ways app makers can make money (in app advertising) They control the entire ecosystem. If MS could do the same with windows, I think we'd see the desktop come back.
If it weren't for the fact that Windows 8 (and 8.1) seems hell bent on removing the things that make it a computer, and not just a tablet, I would feel a lot more confident this move was going to just lead to a bunch of laughter.
Why does everyone want Android everywhere? I've used OS X, iOS,the original Mac OS, Windows 3.1 - 7, and various linux distros. And Android. Android is hands down the most annoying. And yet people persist in wanting not just smartphones, but real computers to run it.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Most people who use computers these days have a very minimal idea of how they work. You don't truely understand this until you work in tech support. I could tell you some horror stories...
- The user who organised their files for years by using file->save as on word, because they didn't know you could click 'my computer' or 'my documents' and get a window intended for the task.
- The user who accidentially associated PDF files with word and could only report the problem as 'my email broke.'
- The user who had to call helpdesk for instruction on how to launch Word, after the shortcut was shuffled off the start menu quick-list.
Many users don't get the concept of a program. Or a URL. Or a file - they know there is a little picture they click on to open a document, but they think this little picture *is* the document. That's why you see so many of them attaching shortcuts to emails. They don't even know what an operating system is - and they are incapable of understanding, as they lack the foundational knowledge of how computers work. Now imagine the tech support nightmare that would come from giving them linux, even a polished distro.
For thirty years the technology industry has strived to make computers so easy, so simple that any untrained user can use them productively. Well, we succeeded, and now we must deal with the consequence. We've created a situation where any untrained user can sit at their computer and do their job, getting on with their objective without wasting overhead time on studying the technology itsself. That's good thing, mostly. The down-side is that if anything changes, even the most trivial thing, they are completly unprepared.
Or throw their money and expert knowledge behind linux. It might mean a bit of restructuring - they'd probably want their own organisation making whatever distro they go with - but it could be done. Not likely to happen though, because most OEM manufacturers don't wish to also be software companies.
What makes Android better than any other distro?
Google Play Store has a large selection of Android applications, especially in categories that free software tends not to touch, such as games and video-on-demand players. Other distros might catch up should more games and clients for VOD services get ported to SteamOS (and thus to GNU/Linux), but that isn't guaranteed to happen.
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect. - Linus Torvalds
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The MS Office requirement used to be a big deal for me, until I recently gave CrossOver a whirl. It supports "only" Office 2010, not 2013, but I found that it works perfectly well, no bugs yet (and I use it a lot). So, for me, CrossOver solved the last hurdle requiring Windows.
This is another lost opportunity for Linux operating systems. By Linux operating systems i do not mean OSs with a Linux kernel, which is not a real Linux OS, but one that has the full standard userland as well. I believe many of the main Linux developers have themselves to blame for the failure to capitalize on Microsoft's ineptness. This especially includes failing to realize that hardware support is the big thing that holds up Linux being a viable Windows replacement and the fact that accepting the fact we need to make it easy for users to use Binary drivers and provide a stable ABI for binary drivers. Instead Kernel developers lie through their teeth. One lie is that drivers in the kernel source tree are better than binary drivers. Yet there is a long list of binary drivers that perform much better than the ones in the kernel source tree. Another is that its reasonable to ask hardware vendors to provide open source drivers, when in fact many cannot because they license their driver source from third parties, furthermore, hardware companies cannot be expected to make huge concessions to Linux communities when the user share is still small. The fact is many hardware vendors will never open source and no amount of wishful thinking will change that. Linux people who think that somehow its a privelege for hardware vendors to develop drivers for Linux and will make huge concessions to do so are fooling themselves, if anything, they are doing us a favor and we would have to convince them to do so, including by having a well documented driver API.
The lack of a well documented driver API is a serious problem itself. Part of the problem is the fact Kernel developers practice what are generally regarded as poor habits by failing to document their code and properly document interfaces. Microsoft has better driver API documentation than Linux. I have looked into the documentation myself and it is extremely hard to find any. Most companies will just throw up their arms and not continue if they cannot find clear documentation. They are clearly not going to root around some kernel hackers source code to try to backengineer the API from the source code.
Everytime I see "doomed" in Slashdot these days, I expect a big hit around the corner...
Actually, it seems, many home users don't need full-blown MS Office and Photoshop, and are very happy with modest apps and casual games. If not more happy, because the full-blown desktop OSes give them headaches. An antivirus? System update that takes 45 minutes? My mom doesn't see how that helps her. These people love their iPads and the ChromeBooks are selling like hotcakes.
And MS is scared of ChromeBooks, enough that they've released a series of anti-ChromeBook ads.
Selling a laptop dual-booting Ubuntu is pointless (and I say that as a 100% Ubuntu supporter): but dual-booting Android indeed gives the laptop a different experience, with superfast boot and simple use, that many users will enjoy. If the laptop does touch, too, then you get a nice Android tablet, too, which is far more functional than a Win8 tablet: indeed, PC+.
Also, let me educate you: Android *is* a Linux distro.