Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Has An Android Phone. Has Microsoft Changed? (neowin.net)
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?"
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
.... that Microsoft probably makes more money on Android device sales than anyone else including Google themselves, due to patent royalties?
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.)"
Gates is a nerd. He is one of us. 'Hair cut fashion??' Are you even a nerd? Who let you in?
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.
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.'"
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
Next stop, coming to a decade near you: volume arrays in volume production with volume endurance.