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Bill Gates Has An Android Phone. Has Microsoft Changed? (neowin.net)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the where-do-you-want-to-go-today dept.

Bill Gates uses an Android phone now. "It may not be the most surprising revelation, given profits are sinking faster than a boat without a hull and big-name partners are jumping ship left and right, but the founder of Microsoft has presumably left Windows Mobile," reports Neonwin. Long-time Slashdot reader Billly Gates (no relation) writes: I would assume this is the final nail in the coffin for Windows Phone and the rumored Surface Phone which may never see the light of day. Over the past few months we have seen a change in Microsoft with them being friendly to Linux with stories of porting .NET core over to Linux, helping write a custom Linux kernel, as well as introducing the not-so-popular-on-slashdot WSL Ubuntu for WIndows 10.
Noting the Android emulators in Visual Studio, he's wondering if the company's ambitions go beyond developers, and if they're planning a Microsoft version of Android, "as the tools are in place with Ubuntu, Node.js, Python, Microsoft Code editor, and the Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition."

His original submission points out that 10 years ago these stories would have been unimaginable, but he also asks a second question: has Microsoft really changed? "Could we be seeing a new Microsoft now that the world is moving to mobile and they have no operating system in it?"

88 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Of course it would be Android by TheZeitgeist · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm sure Bill has the worst carrier distro of TouchWiz possible, all full of bloatware, loaded onto something like a Galaxy S3.

    That way it at least feels like Windows on an HP, even kinda makes Billy feel at home.

    1. Re: Of course it would be Android by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Windows Mobile, or Windows Mobile?

      You have to include the full name, not just some vague platform grouping. Windows Mobile up to version 6.5 was Windows Compact Edition. At that point, WinMo ceased to exist for a while. Consumer smartphones used Windows Phone 7, which had a rewritten kernel that fully met the WinNT spec. Industrial devices used Windows Embedded Handheld, which was just another rebranded version of WinCE. Then Windows Phone 8 broke compatibility with Windows Phone 7, and Windows Embedded Handheld 2013 broke compatibility with Windows Mobile/Embedded Handheld 6.5. Then Windows Phone 8.1 broke compatibility with WinPhone 8, while WinEH 8.1 broke compatibility with WinEH 2013. Then Windows Mobile 10 superceded both Windows Phone 8.1 AND WinEH 8.1 (technically, EH was replaced with the Win10Mo "IoT" SKU, but it's interchangeably compatible with the regular Win10Mo SKU), without breaking compatibility with either one of them.

      I had an HTC Touch Pro 2 with WinMo 6.5.3. It replaced an iPhone (original, 2G). I also have (and continue to use) a Lumia 950XL with Win10Mo. It replaced a Galaxy S3 with Android 4.3 (maxed out, T-Mo wouldn't issue 4.4 OTA). I also do a LOT of development with WinMo 6.5.3 on Intermec CN50 and CN51 devices. I also have an iPad Mini 4 (freebie that I won as a prize at work). And we're getting ready to replace those Intermecs with something that runs Android 5.0 or later (and at this point, I hope 6.0 or later, really).

      I know plenty about all of these platforms, and at a level most people can't even imagine. So take my following opinion as a very informed one: I dread the day when my Lumia 950XL dies and I have to endure a shitty, unsecurable, dead-end, barely-supported Android device again, but not as much as I dread the idea of iOS becoming the dominant mobile OS. If the world were perfect, both iOS and Android would vanish in a puff, forgotten and abandoned, and Windows Mobile would make everything Just Work.

      Again, my opinion, but based on real, actual, honest-to-god reasons, good ones, from my time as a user and developer on all of the currently available platforms.

      And if I could call out Bill Gates as a hypocrite to his face, I would. Nadella doubly so.

    2. Re: Of course it would be Android by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I know plenty about all of these platforms, and at a level most people can't even imagine. So take my following opinion as a very informed one: I dread the day when my Lumia 950XL dies and I have to endure a shitty, unsecurable, dead-end, barely-supported Android device again, but not as much as I dread the idea of iOS becoming the dominant mobile OS. If the world were perfect, both iOS and Android would vanish in a puff, forgotten and abandoned, and Windows Mobile would make everything Just Work.

      I find this interesting, you list a whole shit-load of reasons why Windows mobile sucked and is wholly unsustainable, which reality has borne out. And then you come back with it should "Just Work" which MS has never been able to make work. Ever. So that's a fantasy, as is the thought that anything windows can be secured (MS wouldn't know a secure system if it walked up and locked MS in a sealed vault). I agree Android sucks from just about every way you possibly can view it, and it actually has some of the same issues windows mobile has, although not to the same degree of fragmentation. Why do you dread iOS so much? I know why I dislike it, as a developer. But from a consumer perspective, for the 99% it's actually a more than workable system, and going from version to version and phone to phone usually involves no relearning the interface (a big blow against Android's usability for consumers)

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    3. Re:Of course it would be Android by Outta_the_way_peck! · · Score: 1

      What wrong with the S3? I'm still using mine. It has a replaceable battery that doesn't explode.

    4. Re: Of course it would be Android by KingRatMass · · Score: 1
      WinMo 6.5 was MSFT's apogee in the handset market... there were several factors that all played into the slide from a 45% mobile smartphone marketshare to below 1%...

      1) The introduction of the iPhone, which rode the momentum of the iPod and really introduced the notion of a mobile app ecosystem. This made 3rd part developers happy. The fact the the hardware and software came from a single source made the carriers happy because they were no longer dependent on 2 sources for OS updates, MSFT and the handset maker. And it was billed as a device that would "just work", which for the most part, it did live up to that expectation.

      2) The introduction of Android, while fragmented and seemingly all over the map. It offered a far better licensing model for handset makers than MSFT was offering at the time. It's Linux roots gave it a very solid foundation from an OS development standpoint and resulted in there being more programmers able to work with the code to integrate,extend and update the OS for the handset makers.and for the carriers. The OS stagnation model of planned obsolescence was hurting carriers and handset makers. Reliance on MSFT for a bulk of the OS updates, having those updates filter down through the handset makers and finally through the carriers created a nice planned obsolescence path at first but it also bred a lot of customer dissatisfaction. The creation of the app ecosystem for the Android platform made it attractive to third party developers. The fact that it tied into Google's cloud strategy was also a key selling point.

      3) Point 2 leads to the next point, the exodus of the enthusiast market segment. There was a perverse symbiotic relationship between MSFT, the handset makers and the enthusiast community by 2006. This is most evident if you look at one of the most important enthusiast sites of the time, XDA-Developers. Virtually all the work being done there at the time was focused on WinMo 5 and 6. By the time WinMo 6.5 came to light, There were scores of early WinMo devices languishing without any OS updates. Thanks to the dedication of the core of the XDA members, WinM0 6.5 landed on a lot of these devices, much to MSFT's and the handset maker's amazement. The fact that there appeared to be elements in both camps that were secretly supporting these efforts perplexed and scared them. I believe it was the ROM dump scandal at MWC that drove this point home. The fact that a demo phone had it's OS dumped and ported so easily seemed to lead some executives to believe that WinMo was slipping away from them and that they needed to do something radical to stop that. The fact it appeared as if there were insiders supporting these activities bothered them greatly. So they ditched WinMo and pushed to WinPhone to stop this... and enthusiasts fled to Android, where there were far fewer hurdles in place to hamper development. OnePlus and Cyanogen are just a couple of entities that grew out of this.

      4) The mad rush to jump into the post-WIMP world led to the adoption of the Metro interface and a radical shift away from a UI that had grown slowly and incrementally of the years. It also marked the beginning of the end for the hardware keyboard/stylus based paradigm to a cheaper, touch only design.This was yet factor that slowed WP7 adoption and contributed to the market share decline. Those that didn't flee to iOS or Android clung on to WinMo and the devices running them, thereby stagnating the Windows Phone market.

      5) The decline of Blackberry, this one does not necessarily seem to factor in at first. Because why would the decline of you only major competitor hurt you? The first part was the fact that those ditching BB devices were not fleeing to MSFT, they were fleeing to iOS and Android. These departures affected other elements of the MSFT business, the enterprise application market segment. RIM's dependence on Windows Server and Exchange was good for MSFT. Losing the customers that were leveraging these technologies to Apple and Google hurt them across multiple market segments.

  2. Gates has his people with phones by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    lots of phones; lots of of people

    1. Re:Gates has his people with phones by Kristoph · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Forgive me for saying so but your definition of a 'normal computer' is rather limited - maximizing windows, and having in-window menu's do not a computer make.

      I have a couple of Windows machines, both for development and for gaming. However, OS X, as a *nix platform, can do far more - through the sheer availability of both commercial and open source software - then a Win PC, with the sole exception of gaming. It's also way more robust and much easier to maintain and requires minimal effort to keep running efficiently.

      PS. hotkeys and a trackpad on full acceleration are far more efficient then a mouse, on any platform

    2. Re:Gates has his people with phones by tsa · · Score: 1

      And let's not forget its much better interface that works with you, not against you.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    3. Re:Gates has his people with phones by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have a couple of Windows machines, both for development and for gaming. However, OS X, as a *nix platform, can do far more - through the sheer availability of both commercial and open source software - then a Win PC, with the sole exception of gaming.

      Gaming is far from the sole exception. There's masses of application software which doesn't exist on the Mac. If you want to do video or photo editing, sure it's a great choice. Major Open Source packages which haven't been ported to Windows are few and far between, and you can always just run them in a virtual machine anyway, so who cares?

      I, for one, prefer the Windows 7 interface to any Macintosh interface in my history, and I've used Systems 5 through X. Windows 10 would be fine too, if they hadn't moved all kinds of stuff around again for no reason. That kind of thing is, admittedly, quite irritating. But so is the lack of configuration options in the Apple GUI. Honestly, the best thing I've ever used was Pre-systemd Ubuntu with GNOME2+Compiz+Emerald. I even used AWN for a mac-like dock because shiny shiny. Way more functionality than the complete intersection of OSX and Windows put together, you can run OSX or Windows in a VM for compatibility, and it had complete configurability.

      Apple doesn't want you to be able to change things because that makes support more complicated. I'm sympathetic to that idea, but it's annoying to me personally. For the average user, I'm sure it is fine.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Gates has his people with phones by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Gaming is far from the sole exception. There's masses of application software which doesn't exist on the Mac.

      Really.... what? What essential task that you must do can you not do on a Mac? In fact, I'd make the opposite argument that you need extra software on Windows to even come close to being able to accomplish what you can on a plain Mac installation. Now, if you're arguing that there's more software available, like 39743 versions of BD ripping software, ok, I can agree to that.

      If you want to do video or photo editing, sure it's a great choice. Major Open Source packages which haven't been ported to Windows are few and far between, and you can always just run them in a virtual machine anyway, so who cares?

      This goes both ways. In fact, it was because of VMs that I fully switched to macs way way way back. And then my VMs for those purposes went unused not too long after.

      I, for one, prefer the Windows 7 interface to any Macintosh interface in my history, and I've used Systems 5 through X. Windows 10 would be fine too, if they hadn't moved all kinds of stuff around again for no reason. That kind of thing is, admittedly, quite irritating.

      So, I think we can pin down your exposure to MS as probably having become an "expert" with Win7. Among other systems, with windows I started with Win 3.0, and went all the way through XP as a daily use system, except for a few stints with Linux and OS/2 in between. Since about 2004, I have used Linux or OSX as my main desktop, and haven't missed windows at all. So the changes in windows versions are all the more jarring when I do go into those systems on each new version.

      But so is the lack of configuration options in the Apple GUI. Honestly, the best thing I've ever used was Pre-systemd Ubuntu with GNOME2+Compiz+Emerald. I even used AWN for a mac-like dock because shiny shiny.

      I'm honestly confused by your statements here. What do you want to configure that's "hidden"? Why do you use a dock? (To me, the dock is much like the start menu in windows, useless) From an OS perspective, OSX does everything I want - it allows me fast access to the things I'm using, and stays out of my way, like it's not even there. That's all I ask of an OS. Let me work on what I want to work on. I don't want to work on the OS itself.

      Now, I will say I've configured my system with a number of options that required a terminal (or 3rd party software if you need a gui) to tweak, but those things are not things 99% of the normal consumer market would ever want to know about, and I would fully not expect Apple to reveal those options in a GUI for someone that is click happy to really screw up their system with. The options are there, and if you know what you want you can mod them. If you don't know about them, then you likely wouldn't need to ever see them.

      Or will you also gripe about the about:config in firefox, which offers a similar interface into its settings?

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    5. Re:Gates has his people with phones by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      What essential task that you must do can you not do on a Mac?

      That's not what it's about, because that's not how the business world works. You frequently have to use a specific software package, and most software doesn't run on the OSX. In fact, Windows is probably the single platform with by far the most software, no matter how you measure; PD, Shareware, Commercial...

      What do you want to configure that's "hidden"? Why do you use a dock? (To me, the dock is much like the start menu in windows, useless)

      The dock shows me at a glance what is running right now. Too bad it was so much better in NeXTStep than it is in OSX. It was even in the right place! NeXTStep was fairly peppy on a 68040@20MHz; OSX is poky even on a dual G5 at 2000 MHz. I'm not sure how Apple managed that, but it is pathetic.

      Or will you also gripe about the about:config in firefox, which offers a similar interface into its settings?

      I do gripe about that; Firefox has too much important functionality hidden away in that fashion. It's definitely taking the sleazy way out. And having to go to a plist editor to change basic GUI settings is also ridiculous. I don't have to fire up regedit to change fonts.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Gates has his people with phones by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      What essential task that you must do can you not do on a Mac?

      That's not what it's about, because that's not how the business world works. You frequently have to use a specific software package, and most software doesn't run on the OSX. In fact, Windows is probably the single platform with by far the most software, no matter how you measure; PD, Shareware, Commercial...

      OK, that's your office machine, not your personal. You may have little control over your office machine. For the past decade I admit I have had more than most. And I have found 0 reason to run Windows, except in 2 very specific cases where a VM did everything necessary for the 1 or 2 times a week I needed to access those apps officially.

      What do you want to configure that's "hidden"? Why do you use a dock? (To me, the dock is much like the start menu in windows, useless)

      The dock shows me at a glance what is running right now. Too bad it was so much better in NeXTStep than it is in OSX. It was even in the right place! NeXTStep was fairly peppy on a 68040@20MHz; OSX is poky even on a dual G5 at 2000 MHz. I'm not sure how Apple managed that, but it is pathetic.

      NeXTStep. It's been a really really really long time since I've seen one, and I was never fortunate enough to get to use one personally as my daily system. And Apple didn't own Nextstep. That was Jobs company after his first stint at Apple. One of many he was involved in. Say what you want, he did accomplish much. Regarding the dock, I use Cmd-TAB / ~ to navigate currently running apps, and that's far more useful than the dock ever could be (with the exception of the trashcan, I don't even know if it's anywhere else) and is infinitely more useful than anything in Windows user space.

      I do gripe about that; Firefox has too much important functionality hidden away in that fashion. It's definitely taking the sleazy way out. And having to go to a plist editor to change basic GUI settings is also ridiculous. I don't have to fire up regedit to change fonts.

      Well, I don't go to regedit to change fonts either. Not sure what your deal is, but Cmd-T in almost any app gets me to the font properties window. Or are you wanting to customize the fonts on the OS itself? In that case, I look at that so little I never worry about it. This goes back to me saying I don't want to muck with the OS, I just want it out of my way. In fact, until relatively recently, I used the excellent QuickSilver for app launching and other tasks. Spotlight has improved to the point that I no longer run QS. If you get the drift that OSX merely serves as an app/memory/display manager for me, you'd be largely right. It also makes several other tasks easier, like backups, so there's a lot less work on my part in accomplishing what I need to accomplish.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    7. Re:Gates has his people with phones by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      OK, that's your office machine, not your personal. You may have little control over your office machine.

      That's where most of the PCs not being used for gaming are installed. In an office. Furthermore, it's not just about corporate desktops. It's about professional use of computers, and interoperating with other users.

      There is also very little engineering software on the Macintosh, regardless of which specific discipline you might be thinking about. But basically all of it is either developed on or has been ported from Unix to Windows. So if you're a creative but not an artist or a video or sound editor, you probably won't be able to use the Macintosh anyway.

      NeXTStep. It's been a really really really long time since I've seen one, and I was never fortunate enough to get to use one personally as my daily system. And Apple didn't own Nextstep. That was Jobs company after his first stint at Apple.

      Apple did own NeXTStep, though, and turned it into OSX. You can get NeXTStep installation media trivially and install it in a VM to see what you missed. Like BeOS, it made the absolute maximum use of the available hardware. It had to, because the base systems had 68020 processors, and even the last 68k systems they built ("Turbo Slab") only had a 68040@25. They churned out a few x86 releases (which is what you can run in a VM obviously) but never had more than halfhearted hardware support, and a massive per-seat price tag.

      When they made it into OSX, not only did they somehow punch it right in the breadbasket, but they also took away its famous display resolution independence in the name of performance. They eventually brought it back, in the form of display pdf, but it's not used system-wide like Display Postscript was.

      Well, I don't go to regedit to change fonts either. Not sure what your deal is, but Cmd-T in almost any app gets me to the font properties window. Or are you wanting to customize the fonts on the OS itself? In that case, I look at that so little I never worry about it.

      It was just an example. On Windows you have a lot more configurability accessible through the GUI, and on my former favorite (compiz et al.) you had vastly more, down to things like spacing, or individual graphics options. You could not only turn eye candy off, but you could also typically turn off specific elements of the eye candy. Frankly, Windows is not remarkable in this respect, but it's still ahead of the Macintosh.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:Gates has his people with phones by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      That's where most of the PCs not being used for gaming are installed. In an office. Furthermore, it's not just about corporate desktops. It's about professional use of computers, and interoperating with other users.

      You do realize that as a developer of enterprise systems I do nothing other than work precisely in that realm?

      There is also very little engineering software on the Macintosh, regardless of which specific discipline you might be thinking about. But basically all of it is either developed on or has been ported from Unix to Windows. So if you're a creative but not an artist or a video or sound editor, you probably won't be able to use the Macintosh anyway.

      It's been a long long time since I worked with engineering software, but the majority of stuff I worked with would most likely still not run on a windows machine. That's not actually denigrating windows, because if it wouldn't run on windows, it won't run on macs or most *NIX machines either. So I may have a slightly different view about engineering software than the common one.

      Apple did own NeXTStep, though, and turned it into OSX. You can get NeXTStep installation media trivially and install it in a VM to see what you missed. Like BeOS, it made the absolute maximum use of the available hardware.

      Apple "acquired" NeXTStep when Jobs returned as CEO. It might be interesting to get a NeXTStep VM just for curiosity's sake.

      When they made it into OSX, not only did they somehow punch it right in the breadbasket, but they also took away its famous display resolution independence in the name of performance. They eventually brought it back, in the form of display pdf, but it's not used system-wide like Display Postscript was.

      I can only agree that OSX is snappy enough. As for display resolution independence, I hadn't even noticed how limited it was until you mentioned it, because I don't tweak my GUIs visibly generally in this fashion. Everything "just works" as far as I'm concerned, and I haven't needed to muck with it. I guess that's a statement to how unobtrusive and consistent the GUI is compared to, say, Windows, where you can still get a circa NT4 dialog box in all its ugly non-scaling font inconsistent GUI glory, at least as of NT 2012 in certain control panel apps.

      It was just an example. On Windows you have a lot more configurability accessible through the GUI, and on my former favorite (compiz et al.) you had vastly more, down to things like spacing, or individual graphics options. You could not only turn eye candy off, but you could also typically turn off specific elements of the eye candy. Frankly, Windows is not remarkable in this respect, but it's still ahead of the Macintosh.

      I doubt it. :) Because I have 0 eye candy enabled. No effects whatsoever, sliding whirling fading nothing. On anything. (The way I do tweak my GUIs, remove time-wasting crap) Not sure why you think macs are not configurable in that context. You were willing to install compiz to gain these features, there are equivalents for macs, but you don't need them. I don't have them. It sounds more like a lack of familiarity than any real complaints, other than the system font configurability. That one I'll give you, but I'd posit it's irrelevant for 99.99% of the user base.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  3. Not this tripe again... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Could we be seeing a new Microsoft now that the world is moving to mobile and they have no operating system in it?

    This prattle is not new, and is bandied about every time someone notes whatever the current level of PC sales are. But here's the thing: Yes, the consumer has no need for anything other than their phone. But things are not (strictly speaking) created on the phone. Engineers don't do cad-cam on the phone. Commercial applications are rarely written on the phone. Secretaries do not manage memorandums on the phone. Factory controls (hopefully) are not accessed from the phone by some engineer on a chaise lounge by the pool.

    Phones and phone apps are big. In a consumer way. Otherwise, I do most of my work on a PC running CentOS, though I could get by with Widows. I don't do much work from my phone except to receive communications from my boss who is reclining on a chaise lounge by his pool.

    The world is not moving to mobile, consumers are moving to mobile.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Not this tripe again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sure, today. Next year and probably the year after that. But it won't be much longer until a business person may be able to use a phone to do basic tasks by connecting it to a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

      How much longer until you can do CAD on a device the size of a phone. 2 years, 5 years, 10?

      Or another possibility Android and iOS become the dominant desktop OS. I wouldn't give Windows that much of an edge anymore. Plenty of business software can be ported and plenty will.

      All I do know is that in 2007, NOBODY thought smartphones would be this big, and NOBODY thought Apple or Google would corner the mobile market and destroy Blackberry, Palm, etc.

    2. Re:Not this tripe again... by lucm · · Score: 1

      I do most of my work on a PC running CentOS

      I can understand not using Ubuntu, but why CentOS, when there's Fedora? That's like choosing Windows Vista over Windows 7.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    3. Re:Not this tripe again... by green1 · · Score: 1

      Considering how dead simple it is to hook most Android phones to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, I'm really surprised that we haven't seen more of a push in that direction. The phones are more than powerful enough for most applications, and if you use them with a large screen, keyboard, and mouse, what really makes them different from a desktop?

      I often feel that the only real reason we don't see more of it is that the phone manufacturers also manufacture either full laptop systems, or parts for them, and don't want to cannibalize their own market share. (It would also hurt all the "cloud" providers who rely on making it easy to move your data between multiple devices if you only have one device and a few docks instead of 2-3 separate devices)

    4. Re:Not this tripe again... by Kjella · · Score: 1

      This prattle is not new, and is bandied about every time someone notes whatever the current level of PC sales are. But here's the thing: Yes, the consumer has no need for anything other than their phone. But things are not (strictly speaking) created on the phone.

      Not yet, but I think mainly because nobody has dared to push the phone as the centerpiece. Take the iPhone X, it has four high performance cores at ~2.5GHz which drives a bigger-than-FullHD 2436x1125 screen, has 3GB of RAM, a very fast NVME SSD and so on. Is anyone in doubt it could be a quite solid desktop if they let it? But Apple has iMac / Mac Pros, Google has Chromebooks so it doesn't seem like they'll seriously try.

      Maybe if Apple does away with Intel and goes ARM on the Mac line too, not many people saw Apple dropping Imagination Technologies as their GPU supplier but if they plan to make all-Apple hardware then the CPU is the obvious next big target. If they fire a broadside with ARM laptops, ARM all-in-ones and an ARM dock so everyone with an iPhone effectively gets a Mac then Windows could sink like a stone. The downside is that I don't think they would without imposing the store-only restrictions on the new Macs too.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:Not this tripe again... by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      They should try to perfect phone OS's and designs that plug into docking stations with bigger screens and/or CPU's. Then phones can start to replace PC "productivity" apps.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    6. Re:Not this tripe again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's more like using Windows 7 when Windows 8 exists.

      Nice stable base and still able to install the latest packages if required. No experimental wank in the core of the system.

    7. Re:Not this tripe again... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 2

      I can understand not using Ubuntu, but why CentOS, when there's Fedora?

      Because I don't need "bleeding edge", I need rock solid.

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    8. Re:Not this tripe again... by Lije+Baley · · Score: 1

      It will be a sad day when our software stagnates to the point where a desktop computer no longer has a productivity and capability advantage. We should be able to keep advancing the power of software in ways that need more computing power and "because physics" the desktop will survive. It's possible that "the cloud" will fill this space, to some extent. Also, if I dock my phone to large display and better input devices, and the OS provides proper support for desktop productivity, then it IS a desktop computer. The war may be won by the OS that does both, and Windows 10, for all it's warts, has a head start in that direction. What do you think it will take to get IOS usable as a desktop OS? Seems like a tall order to me...

      --
      Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
    9. Re:Not this tripe again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, it's because those "os-es" are actually completely fucking terrible to use as an actual operating system. Seriously - would you *rather* use it than a real OS? For any application ?

    10. Re:Not this tripe again... by zilym · · Score: 1

      Indeed. Every Android smart phone and tablet I own from up to 4 or 5 years old has Bluetooth support built-in. All ya gotta do is go buy a wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Boom! Mobile computing is here.

      I don't see much reason to hook up a larger screen. It just wastes electricity. A big screen several feet away from your eyes really isn't all that different than having a tablet screen less than a foot away from your eyes, unless you're trying to play a movie for multiple viewers.

      I also don't see the big need for lots of multitasking. At less than $50/tablet, I can just buy more tablets and run multiple tasks on different tablets if I really want multitasking.

      Unfortunately, good development tools aren't here yet. I still gotta fire up my hot, heavy, power guzzling laptop to write software for my tablet/phone, but I could easily see that situation changing in a few years. Someone WILL make a good tight development toolchain for Android on Android. And then the laptop will end up in the dustbin of obsolete hardware for me. There are already days when I don't even bother turning on my laptop anymore.

      I'm eager to move everything to Android because these cheap, low power computers can be run from a solar panel quite easily and cheaply. GREAT for living on the road in my RV. Less power consumption means less need for A/C to cool things back down, another HUGE power savings. Laptop/desktop computing is on its way out!

    11. Re:Not this tripe again... by afgam28 · · Score: 1

      More than any other company, Microsoft showed how control over a platform and the ecosystem around it can be used to build and maintain a monopoly. If you wanted to write software in the 90s, you had to write it for Microsoft's platform, because that's what people were using - consumers and business alike.

      As Microsoft loses control over the web and mobile platforms, their desktop operating system monopoly and the businesses that depend on it are increasingly exposed to competitors. It doesn't matter if it's only the unsophisticated consumers that are moving. The world is definitely heading towards a more mobile-oriented computing culture, even if mobiles never take 100% of the market away from desktops, and this is bad for Microsoft.

    12. Re:Not this tripe again... by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      You miss just one little thing. Virtual reality glasses, not the monstrosities but compact fixed view glasses, no bigger than regular glasses with lenses fitted by an optometrist, ground to suit your vision and with a fabric shroud over the glasses and pulled up to your face to exclude external light sources as an option. So those glasses can effectively put a virtual high resolution 125'' screen right in front of you and you can hook the glasses to a smart phone. So portable hooked to servers can work and of course servers are Linux and portable is Android so Windows is dead and not to be missed after windows anal probe 10.

      M$ was repeatedly warned by the market that the abuses of windows 10 would kill the windows phone and they choose to ignore those warnings, instead relying on their arrogance to what, I don't know, they clearly did not know, and their arrogance did nothing but kill windows phone. First blow, Windows 8 trying to force a mobile phone interface on desk top users to force acceptance of the windows phone interface and then the mass invasion of privacy of windows 10, where they call invasion of privacy telemetry and pretends it means nothing 1. The science and technology of automatic measurement and transmission of data by wire, radio, or other means from remote sources, as from space vehicles, to receiving stations for recording and analysis. http://www.thefreedictionary.c..., basically phone tapping with a fancy name. They should have provided a secure edition of Windows 10 over a year ago, they did not, so fuckem.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    13. Re:Not this tripe again... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      People who buy Apple's [most] serious desktop machines are doing content creation stuff and they need bandwidth and memory. How much memory bandwidth has that iPhone got, even if you could cram 16+ GB in there so that you could actually work with large files?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    14. Re:Not this tripe again... by Kjella · · Score: 1

      People who buy Apple's [most] serious desktop machines are doing content creation stuff and they need bandwidth and memory. How much memory bandwidth has that iPhone got, even if you could cram 16+ GB in there so that you could actually work with large files?

      Workstations obviously don't fit the phone form factor, I was thinking more your average business desktop that has run MS Office well since forever. They'd still have "real" desktop version above the "X" version for tablets, probably with quad-channel RAM... 25GB/s bandwidth for phone, 50GB/s bandwidth for tablet, 100GB/s bandwidth for workstations.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    15. Re:Not this tripe again... by iampiti · · Score: 2

      Exactly! The mobile OSs are very crippled. I'd say intentionally so but I'm not so sure. Anyway, they don't even allow you to be administrator on your own system and at least Android kills processes in the background like there's no tomorrow. They aren't architected as a traditional OS and it shows.
      It's a pity since they're plenty powerful for many tasks.

    16. Re:Not this tripe again... by nasch · · Score: 1

      A big screen several feet away from your eyes really isn't all that different than having a tablet screen less than a foot away from your eyes, unless you're trying to play a movie for multiple viewers.

      If the tablet is less than a foot away, you're either holding it in your hands (so no keyboard and mouse) or you're hunched over your desk (terrible). If your monitor is "several feet" away, you're doing it wrong. I did some rough measurement holding up a ruler, and I could have a tablet 18-24" away, or one or more monitors 30-36" away. A 23" monitor is way better than a tablet. Like, not even close. Is it necessary for all uses? No, but it is far superior.

    17. Re:Not this tripe again... by nasch · · Score: 1

      We should be able to keep advancing the power of software in ways that need more computing power and "because physics" the desktop will survive.

      Already most people don't use software that exploits the full capability of a modern desktop computer. I think that trend is more likely to accelerate than reverse.

    18. Re:Not this tripe again... by lucm · · Score: 1

      This question reveals much about the one who asks.

      Well it probably reveals that I use Fedora, but I fail to see in what way this makes the discussion move forward. Or did you just have a burning desire to post that little nugget of wisdom, even if it was not really relevant to the thread?

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    19. Re:Not this tripe again... by lucm · · Score: 1

      > but why CentOS, when there's Fedora?

      I use CentOS for my desktop. It is stable and solid and runs all the software I need, though these may not be the bleeding edge.

      But mainly my clients run RHEL servers so I can do development and testing and know it will work 100% on their servers.

      CentOS is not 100% the same as RHEL. For instance, try to install a recent version of docker, you'll see. But yeah, it's closer to RHEL than Fedora is. This being said, just for the fact that you get the latest kernel and version of everything, Fedora is a blessing on desktops. For instance, some Intel wifi chips have drivers that are only compatible with very recent kernels. That would not work on CentOS.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    20. Re:Not this tripe again... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Take the iPhone X, it has four high performance cores at ~2.5GHz which drives a bigger-than-FullHD 2436x1125 screen, has 3GB of RAM, a very fast NVME SSD and so on. Is anyone in doubt it could be a quite solid desktop if they let it?

      Even a low end core i3 from 3 years ago can do 3 times that resolution with its onboard GPU and dirt cheap laptops come with 4GB of RAM these days.

    21. Re:Not this tripe again... by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Why is this bad for Microsoft? They are adapting to that change rather than fighting it and risking becoming irrelevant. Windows has been made more touch-friendly and they even got to the point of creating their own tablet hardware to demonstrate would could be done and Office has gone from being Windows & Mac to being available across the spectrum of consumer computing platforms including Android, ChromeOS, iPhone, iPad and pretty much any device with a web browser through Office365.

  4. Re:No by Motard · · Score: 2

    Fuck of click bate

    I had to look up 'bate': "(of a hawk) beat the wings in an attempt to escape from the perch: "

    A fuck of that sounds pretty clickey-wild.

  5. ?? Sinking? by furiousgeorge · · Score: 1

    "profits are sinking faster than a boat without a hull".

    Today must be Opposite Day. Nice fact checking SD. MSFT is doing just fine.

    1. Re:?? Sinking? by pthisis · · Score: 1

      The quote is about Windows phone profits, not Microsoft as a whole. Microsoft did see a downturn in overall profits last year when phone revenue tanked, but this year a boom in cloud products has turned that around nicely.

      The article is still wrong, though, because it confuses profits and revenues (Windows phone is not profitable at all, and I don't think it ever was). If you click through far enough the original article doesn't make that mistake:

      https://www.neowin.net/news/ye...
      During the quarter ending in December, Microsoft's phone revenue dropped to just $200 million, which included some sales of feature phones, before the company completed its sale of that business unit to Foxconn in November. That figure has now dropped to virtually nothing.

      According to the company's 10-Q filing to the SEC for Q3 FY2015, its phone hardware revenue for that quarter totalled $1.397 billion. One year later, in its 10-Q for Q3 FY2016, Microsoft said that phone revenue had fallen by $662 million, reducing it to $735 million.

      Today, as Microsoft published its earnings report for Q3 FY2017, it revealed that its "Phone revenue declined $730 million". Based on its earlier financial disclosures, that means the company's phone hardware revenue fell to just $5 million for the entire quarter ending March 31, 2017.

      --
      rage, rage against the dying of the light
  6. Bill Gates is not Microsoft by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He has been out of the company as its head for some time now. Are people really expecting him to clutch to a an unsupported mobile platform like a drowning man in the sea because he's too proud to admit his former company made a bomb? I think he's a little more practical then that. Not being indoctrinated into the Kool-Aid Klub, the choice of where to go is obvious.

    1. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by pthisis · · Score: 2

      He's no longer the head, but it's not his "former company"; he remained as chairman until 2014 and has been a technology adviser since then. He actually puts in more time at the company now than he did in the chairman years.

      https://www.theverge.com/2014/...

      --
      rage, rage against the dying of the light
    2. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by TheZeitgeist · · Score: 1

      Are people really expecting him to clutch to a an unsupported mobile platform like a drowning man in the sea because he's too proud to admit his former company made a bomb?

      Yes actually. I've noticed that guy on interviews and the like looking dazed and irritated when asked about phones. I think deep down he's haunted by fact that Apple - which had been so vanquished MSFT was loaning Apple money just to keep them afloat in 1998 as a antitrust argument - has turned into a bigger nastier corporate-critter than Microsoft ever was.

    3. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      I think deep down he's haunted by fact that Apple - which had been so vanquished MSFT was loaning Apple money just to keep them afloat in 1998 as a antitrust argument...

      This idea Microsoft had to "save" Apple once upon a time is one of the oldest in the book. I've heard some people go as far as to claim that Microsoft bought Apple. They didn't loan Apple any money, as you state. They purchased $150 million in stock, and it was non-voting shares at that. This on a company with a market cap (at that time) or 2.3 billion, to put into perspective the size of this investment really. Also, the share purchase was part of a lawsuit settlement, not Microsoft being nice.

      The stock was all sold by 2003, and Microsoft made a decent profit on their investment -- the end.

    4. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by lucm · · Score: 1

      I think deep down he's haunted by fact that Apple - which had been so vanquished MSFT was loaning Apple money just to keep them afloat in 1998 as a antitrust argument - has turned into a bigger nastier corporate-critter than Microsoft ever was.

      I'd be surprised that he would truly prefer to have built Apple than Microsoft. Apple is swimming in gold at the moment, but it's not sustainable. If you compare the profit history of both companies it's immediately obvious. In another 2-5 years Apple will reach the bottom of the barrel but Microsoft will keep printing money, like they've done since MS-DOS 3.0.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    5. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by TheZeitgeist · · Score: 1

      Might also suggest it was strategic "investment" by Microsoft into essentially a sock puppet they could show at their antitrust trial as a 'competitor.' This was right about same time Michael Dell said if he was running Apple he would liquidate the operation and pay shareholders any leftovers because it was dead.

      Bet Mikey regrets that one.

    6. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      ...but not as much time as when he was CEO.

    7. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      He has been out of the company as its head for some time now.

      Understatement. Bill Gates hasn't been CEO for almost 20 years. Thankyou for making me feel really old now.

    8. Re:Bill Gates is not Microsoft by lucm · · Score: 1

      LOL. Hope you're not your own an investment advisor.

      When you reach the point where you know enough to know that you don't know much about the stock market, come back and we can talk. Until then, feel free to remain an oblivious dud.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  7. Is this the thread where someone points out... by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    .... that Microsoft probably makes more money on Android device sales than anyone else including Google themselves, due to patent royalties?

    1. Re:Is this the thread where someone points out... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      I'm VERY surprised that Google doesn't just stop paying the royalties and calls Microsoft's bluff.

  8. Microsoft will just be another Linux distro by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    in a few years, (as soon as win-10 starts getting old) MS_Linux under the hood with their own desktop environment and icons & themes, maybe their own office suite too, unless they give that up too and go with libre/open office

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:Microsoft will just be another Linux distro by Kevin+Oldman · · Score: 1

      Kind of makes sense now that you mention it.

  9. 'Unimaginable' 10 years ago? by Kaenneth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    https://slashdot.org/comments....

    from 2006

    "even if Windows dies, nothing (from a legal standpoint) could stop 'Microsoft Linux' (Optimized for Office, with IE, etc.)"

    1. Re:'Unimaginable' 10 years ago? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      It's coming!
      OSes don't really pay the bills anymore. Windows specifically is a small portion of Microsoft's revenue, (less than 10%) that Microsoft has less and less of a reason to keep working on it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:'Unimaginable' 10 years ago? by green1 · · Score: 1

      I though they stopped working on it a decade or more ago. You can't tell me that windows 10 was on purpose was it???

    3. Re:'Unimaginable' 10 years ago? by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      10% of Microsoft's revenue is still a fuckton of money.

    4. Re:'Unimaginable' 10 years ago? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Give it ten years. What do you predict?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  10. How many times by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    How many times will Microsoft try (and fail) to make a successful phone before they give up and admit that they suck at making phones?

    They've had about 10 different phone projects in the last few years and they've ALL failed miserably.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re:How many times by lucm · · Score: 1

      How many times will Microsoft try (and fail) to make a successful phone before they give up and admit that they suck at making phones?

      They've had about 10 different phone projects in the last few years and they've ALL failed miserably.

      i don't agree. It wasn't a commercial success but I've used a Windows Phone for a while about 5 years ago and it was great. The Metro thing that sucks on desktops was working really well on a phone. Looked sharp too.

      The big problem is that they kept messing around with the SDK, always releasing half-baked versions too late, and antagonizing developers will all kinds of limitations and fees. It was almost like sabotage. It's too bad because native apps using html5/js would have opened the door to a huge marketplace if they had done it right.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:How many times by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      The Windows Phone hardware and the built-in OS was pretty nice. It was certainly better maintained and updated than Android on the equivalent hardware (mine was an under $100 Nokia on Virgin Mobile).

      But the Windows Phone App Store was a disaster. Hardly any worthwhile apps at all, lots of really really terrible third-world shovelware. At the time I was using it, there were dozens and dozens of Flappy Bird copies and clones.

    3. Re:How many times by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agree 100%.

      Considering Microsoft had a 17 year head start (they have been doing phones since 2000 with Windows Mobile or if you WinCE 1996) -- in all that they time they STILL can't produce a phone that wasn't crap.

      Give it up Microsoft -- because you SUCK at phones.

    4. Re:How many times by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      How many times will Microsoft try (and fail) to make a successful phone before they give up and admit that they suck at making phones?

      They've had about 10 different phone projects in the last few years and they've ALL failed miserably.

      Yet they still get $5+ for every cell phone sold https://www.howtogeek.com/1837...

    5. Re:How many times by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      i don't agree. It wasn't a commercial success but I've used a Windows Phone for a while about 5 years ago and it was great.

      If it was so great, it should have been at least a modest commercial success. None of the Windows phones have gotten any traction in the marketplace, and I think that speaks volumes about the Windows phone. (And yes, the MS "app store" was a miserable joke. It was like inventing the automobile and forgetting about the need to provide gas.)

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    6. Re:How many times by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 1

      So, uh, how much time did *you* spend in the WinMo6 ecosystem a decade ago? Because in ~'08, Android (aka the TMobile G1) was a kooky developer toy without any real mainstream acceptance, iPhones had horrifying teething issues in enterprise, and if you wanted to do actual, grown-up business, you either used a Blackberry because you were technologically illiterate, or you used WinMo because ActiveSync.

      RIP Touch Pro/2, and the granddaddy of you all, the HTC PocketPC!

      --
      Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
    7. Re:How many times by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1

      Windows Phones were great. They just had fewer users so they got fewer apps so they had fewer apps so they go fewer apps so they had fewer users... etc.

      Windows Phone will be back because phone/pc/laptop/ar is an arbitrary distinction. In 5 years you'll have a computing device and augmented reality vision which creates your screen. The same people who mock Microsoft's mobile ambitions also mocked their Surface product line... which is now a multi billion dollar business. Windows Phone will be the same. They've tried to out-android android and failed. But they'll succeed by being a full computer that happens to also function as a phone.

      Phones are dumb. Just watching someone squinting, hunched over a smartphone shows how bad the whole idea is on principle. It's the best of terrible options but Microsoft has nearly completed their OS which runs legacy Win32 applications like Photoshop, UWP 'tablet\phone' type apps, supports LTE\Cellular calling and can be used with Mouse and Keyboard, Touch or AR hand gestures.

      Android is nice and all, but for most usage I want an Augmented Reality OS which throws up a giant 30" screen in front of me and lets me just use a touchpad in my palm as if it was a laptop.

  11. Re:It would've been more surprising by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

    If Bill were still using a Lumia, clickbaiters would speculate the new Surface Phone was just around the corner.

  12. Re: Bill Gates IS AN ANDROID by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Gates is a nerd. He is one of us. 'Hair cut fashion??' Are you even a nerd? Who let you in?

  13. Hell No!!! by HermMunster · · Score: 1

    Hell fucking no they haven't changed and never will. Period!!!

    --
    You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
    1. Re:Hell No!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They have though. Quite a bit. First you have the linux layer in Win 10. Yes I know, "embrace and extinguish", except the linux dev community isn't interested in working around MS specific bugs, and none of the uninformed are going to be turning that layer on, which is what embrace and extinguish requires.

      Then there's TFS, Microsoft's attempt at a software project management system. They wrote their own version control system for it. It's a centralized VCS that is painful to use at best. And then they added git support. And now, today, git is their recommended and default option. Let me say that again, the default version control system for Microsoft's software project management application is not the in house, Microsoft built and developed and closed source TFVC, but the open source, not under Microsoft's control, third party and fully 100% recognized git. Not only that but they actually have employees writing code for and contributing back to git. No one who remembers 90's Microsoft would imagine them doing this. So yes they have changed. Doesn't mean they're best friends with the software community, but they're not what they once were either.

    2. Re:Hell No!!! by Brett+Buck · · Score: 1

      He's more the same than ever.

  14. Microsoft Linux? by aliquis · · Score: 1

    I'd be curious and maybe pretty quickly it would become one of the best distributions around?

    With some locked down/in content? Maybe the rest of the community would had tried to fight back with GPL everywhere?

    1. Re:Microsoft Linux? by green1 · · Score: 1

      They might make a distro, it may even be the most popular around. But I'd be shocked if it was one of the "best" by any sane measurement. Their history with software in general isn't that good. (though in general MS hardware is kinda nice)

    2. Re:Microsoft Linux? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      MS software isn't quite the track record of "best, most useful" software. More to the point, they sometimes have really great ideas and can be quite visionary, but from conception to execution, far too many idiots get to meddle with it, demand "compatibility" and "oh, we could add THIS to it" that it becomes an unusable mess. Example: Registry. By itself a great idea, storing all configurations in a single database, easy to manage, easy to secure, easy to maintain... until suddenly EVERYTHING had to be included, along with nothing being required to use it, resulting in the sluggish mess it is today.

      I would expect nothing less from "Windows Linux".

      They may even have some good ideas for the init and maybe even replace the /etc mess with something that's easier to manage, but I already know between design and execution they'll fuck it up so badly that it makes systemd look like a very good, stable, secure and easily manageable solution in comparison.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  15. Bill Gates is using Android by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

    Bill Gates is using Android publicly, but, secretly, is using an iPhone.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  16. Re:I'd love to use Microsoft Linux. by jordanjay29 · · Score: 1

    Considering it's Microsoft, they'd find worse replacements for systemd, PulseAudio and Gnome3 and they'd not only be included by default, they'd be proprietary and written into the kernel so you couldn't remove them.

  17. User known as "Billy Gates" no bone to pick there by BenJeremy · · Score: 1

    Yes, he selected his user name by pure coincidence, and is not obsessed with digging up "dirt" (or at least what he thinks is dirt) on Microsoft.

    Newsflash: Bill Gates no longer runs Microsoft.

    I bet he even has a PS3 in his home entertainment center, and maybe even an iPod in his junk drawer. Maybe he's running Linux in his Roku! What a shocker!

    Seriously, this has to be one of the dumbest anti-Microsoft posts yet here at Slashdot.

  18. Microsoft continue to work on mobile by ET3D · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure why anyone would start speculating based on what Bill Gates uses. Just the other day we learned about Windows Core OS and we also know that Microsoft has been working with Qualcomm on x86 Windows for ARM. So it's obvious the Microsoft does continue to think about a mobile response. But yes, Microsoft has also realised that a lot of the market is elsewhere, and it would help keep more devs on Windows by allowing them to easily develop for Android and Linux. Windows 10 Mobile did have Android emulation planned, it just didn't pan out. So nothing new on that front either. Perhaps MS is still working on it. (All in all, feels like a meaningless 'news item' by someone who has no clue.)

  19. What has Bill Gates got to do with MS? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    I mean it has been 17 years since he retired as CEO and 3 years ago he even stopped being chairman of the board.

    He could be using all the Linuxses at once in a virtual machine running on his Macbook pro and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to Microsoft.

  20. I don't know - but slashdot surely have by Megol · · Score: 1

    Gates isn't a spokesman of MS, not the leader of MS and have used products from other companies before. So what?

  21. android sucks by strstr · · Score: 1

    I can't get over the performance problems. Take a look at Super Mario Run for example, it runs so much smoother and faster on iOS. The Android version on a T-Mobile Galaxy S7 Edge which is more powerful hardware wise than iPhone, lags, hangs, slows, skips frames, and runs at a lower frame rate than the iPhone version. just clicking the game icon and it takes many more extra seconds to load, and transition from screen to screen.

    it's something i'm getting tired of. every new android phone and version is the exact same piece of lard. it's slow, lags, stutters, loads apps slowly, transitions from screen to screen with huge latency.

    but iOS is only superior in terms of performance, Apple forces developers to censor apps, such as requiring web browsers to only load pages on the web version of the site, unable to switch to a desktop user-agent. Furthermore other advanced features and hacks are not allowed to be included in iOS addition software, that are legal in Android software. additionally I like to record calls: Android and Windows 10 include built in phone recording features, Android just requires an app download to tap into the features most vendors add into the core OS. Windows 10 has it built right into the control panel now. iOS does not permit phone recording at all, except by hacks such as three way calling into a recording service. Android/Windows actually intercept the GSM stream and save it to amr, wav, flac, mp3, mp4, opus, right on the phone storage device.

    1. Re:android sucks by strstr · · Score: 1

      meant that iOS web browsers only load the Mobile version of a site, preventing access to the desktop version of the site.*

      by default on Android I literally only browse the desktop version of the sites.

  22. Trust Microsoft at your own peril by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    What has changed is the fact the MS is not the 800 lbs gorilla it used to be. Today is little more than another player, but as foul and obnoxious as it has always been. If it is not wreaking havoc that's because it can't any more. But, don't be deceived: it still extorts millions upon millions on licensing fees from Android, and it still has a program to undermine free software whenever and wherever it can, as long as that effort does not clash with its own interests. Trust Microsoft and prepared to be killed.

  23. Re:More job to do ... by ichimunki · · Score: 1

    Yes. C# for Android and iOS. Haven't tried it myself, since I'm having more fun playing with JS for Android via Cordova (developing in VS2017).

    --
    I do not have a signature
  24. Embrace Extend Extinguish by Casandro · · Score: 1

    That's one of Microsoft's classic strategies. They did that with the web, gaining them many years of browser dominance.

    Also Microsoft is changing. They want to go from software to services.

  25. RAM-hungry application killer by epine · · Score: 2

    How much longer until you can do CAD on a device the size of a phone. 2 years, 5 years, 10?

    Never, until the non-volatile memory manages to come up with something that combines endurance with density with DDR access latencies, all at a commodity price point.

    Some of these technologies are presently planning to embed a power-hungry FPGA into the NVRAM module to handle bit-error correction. The carbon nanotubes looks great, but at 32 MB per chip, you're not packing 16 GB into anything smaller than the original Motorola brick phone, with a sticker price to rival Iridium.

    While the ARM processor may be a killer application, background DRAM refresh on 16 GB of working memory remains an application killer, for any mobile device.

    Due to physics, charge storage cells are unlikely to ever improve from the present level (brought to you by the sexy Kate MOS insulation deficit).

    NRAM set to spark a 'holy war' among memory technologies — 12 January 2017

    The best NAND flash, with error correction code, can withstand about 100,000 erase-write cycles. According to Nantero, NRAM can withstand 10^12 write cycles and 10^15 read cycles — an almost infinite number.

    Next stop, coming to a decade near you: volume arrays in volume production with volume endurance.

  26. Re:I'd love to use Microsoft Linux. by nasch · · Score: 1

    If they could include a seamless VM for running Windows software, it could be a hit.

  27. Answer: No by Trogre · · Score: 1

    Microsoft is still the evil, avoid-at-all-costs, company that will screw you over any chance it gets.

    On the bright side, Bill Gates now uses Linux! Hell may have just cooled down a few degrees.

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  28. Windows Phone by MercTech · · Score: 1

    I remember how seamlessly Windows Phone worked with Windows XP. Then, suddenly, all support was dropped and a Windows Phone quit synchronizing with Windows. And people wonder why a Windows 10 phone was viewed as a toxic proposition. Useful items orphaned leaving consumers with a WTF moment.

    Windows Phone
    Windows Mobile 5 (PDA OS)
    Windows Reader
    Streaming to Xbox360
    Native video codecs in Windows 7
    Windows Media Player (Under Win8, you had to pay extra to get it only to have it removed by the free Win10 upgrade)

    --
    NRRPT/RCT