Then ios5 wiped out the maps application off your phone.
Then the iphone5 came out which didn't work with any of your existing power cables and docks.
You just don't understand just HOW long Product Development cycles are, do you?
ALL of those changes were WELL along in the development cycle when Jobs took his final breath. I know for a fact that Jobs himself tried negotiated with Google to allow iOS to use Google Maps for turn-by-turn navigation. Do you reallywanted the insane costs and headaches involved in developing a "Mapping" app??? Gimmeabreak!
As for the Lightning connector, it was a long-time coming. Over time, more and more of the pins on that 30 pin Dock connector were becoming unused, and MicroUSB is a bad joke, reliability-wise (not to mention that there are at least 2 sizes of connectors that people think of as "MicroUSB"); so they built a (significantly) better connector system. But I don't want to get mired in THAT whole argument again...
And although I agree with 99% of your comments about "crapware", any Mac user who has owned an HP anything knows all-too-well that HP's absolutely craptastic peripheral drivers and (especially) their "helper applications" are to be avoided if at all possible, using non-HP solutions instead (e.g., VueScan, CUPS, etc.) with their generally excellent peripheral hardware.
My ten year old daughter was in tears because she couldn't figure out her new windows 8 laptop.
Now the laptop was underpowered, but it couldn't play DVDs out of the box and she couldn't figure out how to run her software on it thanks to the removal of the start button. Also, Toshiba added its bonus software which seemed to take over the whole computer periodically since pop ups now take the whole screen.
I was frustrated trying to use it until I found a start menu hack and added it back.
I installed VLC so she can play DVDs and she has a start menu and now is very happy. Perhaps MS shouldn't have tried to do too much too soon?
To be fair to Microsoft, they weren't marketing the OS as a replacement for Stories2Learn.
Arrogant fuck!
Since she was frustrated by the fact that the OS didn't work THE WAY SHE ALREADY KNEW, your bullshit comment is both insulting and ignorant.
Just like Microsoft foisting a broken (well, at least inappropriate) UI paradigm on EVERY desktop user, then bitching when pretty much everyone (except you, apparently) hates it.
I get the feeling that they either didn't do any "focus-group" testing on the "Modern" UI, or simply ignored the results of those tests; simply because Ballmer was scared shitless of the iPad.
Maybe I could do some graphic design with a stylus
Not with a capacitive touch-screen, you won't. The kind of stylus available for cap touchscreens has the dimensions of a crayon. Sure, you can do technical drawing with a crayon using popup menus and well-defined snaps, etc., but it sure isn't intuitive.
Bzzzt! Wrong!
Here's just one of many fine-tip stylii that work on capacitive touchscreens (at least they work on an iPad).
Desktop should have touch as an user Interface OPTION. I can see uses for touch on the desktop just not all the time.
Bingo!
One of the things that helped Windows in its early days was that a mouse was optional. You could do a lot of GUI-based work without buying a mouse at all, just by using the helpful command keys and tabs. Something, that, alas, pretty well went out the window (no pun intended) with the advent of pixel-graphic web browser applications.
You can get much better traction when a new feature is an enhancement to what people are used to than when you force them to start all over.
I'm seriously NOT trolling; but I've personally always found it fascinating that Apple, THE company that, if nothing else, POPULARIZED the GUI interface (see that trick for avoiding the "Apple ripped-off Xerox" flamewars?), not only is REFUSING to buy-into the "Touch desktop/laptop" drumbeat, but significantly, actually has a MUCH more robust set of "Keyboard Shortcuts" than Windows (See this eye-popping list. Shades of Emacs!!!). I have scoured the web (admittedly for only 5 minutes), and I can't come up with a list of Windows OS Shortcuts (that doesn't include application-specific shortcuts) that is nearly as lengthy. Heck, Windows 8 doesn't even have a keyboard shortcut for Shut Down. Sure, you can DO it; but it's a multi-step procedure...
Point is, Apple realizes that not everyone can/will interact with their COMPUTER the same way (leave tablets out of this discussion, please!), and has provided several ways to do so.
Then why haven't they been such a "crisis-level" "problem" for the past 250 years?
Seriously: do you REALLY believe that "the government" will ALWAYS have YOUR best interests in mind? Because if your answer to that is "No", then you have just identified the REAL reason that the 2nd Amendment exists. And if your answer is "Yes", then you need to bone up on some history.
BTW, Certain members of Slashdot that want to get rid of all guns not owned by the government would do well to read this page; but they won't...
I clicked on it, and I got bored. The argument that guns should be a right because some long dead man in a different era, said so. A long dead man with far less knowledge of the world than I have. It doesn't work for me.
And what would knowing do for you? Your neighbor, instead of hiding the fact that he has weapons like criminals do, follows the law and registers his legally obtained weapons. This information is already available to see. What people are mad about is when some asshat decides to conveniently collect all of this information so that only criminals have a use for it. Oh, criminals and idiots who think law-abiding citizens should be ostracized or treated differently because they are exercising their rights and acting in a responsible manner.
Exactly!
The claim and exercise of a Constitutional Right cannot converted into a crime" Miller v. U.S. 230 F.2d 486
(1956). But in New York, for example, they have done just that. If I were a gun owner in New York, I'd refuse to comply, based on the Supremacy of the 2nd Amendment. New York's law is clearly unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.
BTW, Certain members of Slashdot that want to get rid of all guns not owned by the government would do well to read this page; but they won't...
This one doesn't quite hold science to be a sacrement, but DOES hold that:
If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science, they are mere superstitions and imaginations; for the antithesis of knowledge is ignorance, and the child of ignorance is superstition. Unquestionably there must be agreement between true religion and science. If a question be found contrary to reason, faith and belief in it are impossible, and there is no outcome but wavering and vacillation.
Dude.. get the fuck over the missing start menu. It is not needed. Windows-X and Windows-C give you most of the functionality and if you are like any normal user, the applications you use most often already have a desktop icon and access thru start menu is redundant. For those times you need to find something not often used, how hard is it to press Windows key, right click and left click on All apps. Thats what.. one more click? Or do you need someone to make a special shutdown icon for you cause you can't handle ctrl-alt-del? There are plenty of tuturials to show you how to do so in all of 30 secons.
Dude... Learn to fucking READ... Do you see the phrase "Start Menu" ANYWHERE in my comment? What about the lack of a real Window manager?
If that happens, I think we'll actually see microsoft die. OS without mouse as a proper pointing option, which is far, FAR more efficient as a pointer device then fingers on the screen is really going to be DoA.
Not DoA like win8, which still sells to people who have to buy a windows license, but DoA as in people will simply refuse to use it. Even when they have to have windows OS.
Which is why not even the most insane of MS's managers will ever try something like that. Or if they would, they would be ejected from the company faster then cork out of a shampagne bottle.
I dunno. They've gone pretty far down that road in just one revision...
You use the word "usable" pretty strongly there. Having the Metro screen replace the Start menu hardly makes the OS unusable. The full-screen change is a bit of an interruption to my train of thought, but the dozen applications I use with any frequency are pinned to the task bar anyway. It's really not the end of the world.
No, but the utter lack of true window-management, er, IS.
That's fine for you; but what about the OTHER 95% of Windows 8 purchasers that DON'T know how to do all that?
They take 5, maybe 10 minutes to learn how to use the start screen, then carry on? It's not exactly complex: it's a start menu that stretches over all of you screen, rather than just the left 1/5. Don't want to navigate tiles (or navigate nested submenus)? Press start, type in the first few characters of the program you want, hit enter, and voila! Same as 7 and Vista.
Really? I was at Walmart a few weeks ago, trying to get some pictures printed off a USB stick at a photo kiosk. Log story short, I had to take a trip to the Electronics dept. to see if there were actually any files on the stick. All they had were W8 laptops. So, after I rebooted one of them back out of its demo loop, I tried to figure out how to see what was on the stick from the Start Screen (or whatever it's called). I'm pretty sure I Got it done; but it took me nearly 5 minutes, and in addition to my decades of Mac experience, I have also heavily used every version of desktop Windows since 1.0.
They have taken both "ugly" and "non-intuitive " to a whole new level...
Long as it's cheap and will log onto Facebook, the average consumer will buy anything.
That was so last year. Now they use their Samsung Galaxy S3 for Facebook. They have no need to replace their fully WinXP laptop with anything. Especially not someting they cant use (Win 8).
If they desperately need to spend money, they will by "An Android iPad" -just ask them!
Apple laptops are touch-enabled in some way: the touchpad in these machines takes basically the same kind of input as any smartphone or tablet. Only two things are really different: input is separated from the display in order to accommodate human physiology and it is primarily used to drive a cursor using relative input instead of absolute input. The latter could be changed in software, yet it doesn't make sense.
So, Apple understands touch interfaces so well that they've already been doing it properly on the big devices for many years.
Precisely. The Magic Trackpad, and their later-model laptop trackpads, are a (largely successful) compromise between a true touch interface (as in iOS), and a traditional mouse/trackball/trackpad paradigm.
Also, will it make the higher resolution screens that are *finally* starting to come out that much more expensive?
Again: More materials == More expensive (esp. If the "additional" materials cost the same or more as the materials to which they are being "added", as in this case).
What might make sense is if "monitors of the future" could be used either vertically or horizontally (or to basically generalize, 0 = degree = 90). Then you could place the monitor at 20 degrees and use touch for drawing things/poking screen on those applications that support touch, or for standing over the monitor to review a design of some kind (CAD, structural diagram, etc). Then put the monitor back upright when its time to crank out a document or write some code.
It does not have to be an "either/or" situation. A monitor flat on the desk with touch has some practical uses But at 90 degrees touch is useless.
Exactly!
A few years ago, I envisioned Apple modifying the iMac for touch, and coming up with an integrated "support" design that allowed EXACTLY that range of positioning.
It wasn't practical for the old "thick" (and heavy) iMac; but now that the whole thing is much thinner and lighter, perhaps...
From experience I haven't found anything worse than a desktop or laptop with a touch screen. They are ergonomically bad, after 10 minutes I get pain in my wrists and elbows. The only place I have found desktop sized touch screens to be useful is when stood up, for example at a point of sale.
Also, my desktop monitors are too far away to touch when sat down, the screen is a good 6-8 inches further than my reach so they have to be moved uncomfortably too close which doesn't just hurt my neck and eyes, but I have no room to fit my keyboard in front of the screen on my desk when bought closer. When lounging with my laptop the screen is either too close when sat down or when semi lying down too far to touch. Don't get me started on finger smudges.
Exactly.
With integration and control over both the "display" and the "computer" parts into one unit, as well as the obvious "cool" factor, do anyone really think Apple hasn't already thought of, built, tested (and ultimately abandoned) prototypes of, iMacs with touchscreen displays? You think that "OS X Touch" hasn't already been developed (and abandoned) several years ago?
Jobs alluded to as much at during a Keynote (can't remember which one, but I think it was about 4 years ago), where he talked about the "Gorilla Arm" phenomenon.
My money will go to the manufacturers who will provide "old school" displays.
Here's your VT100 sir.
More like "Here's your Macbook Pro, sir."
Isn't it "telling" that the only company in this space that really "gets touch" is also the company that steadfastly refuses to go down the road of "touchscreen laptops"?
Perhaps they have actually CONDUCTED some "usability studies" (unlike Microsoft), eh? Because if you think for one moment that there isn't a Macbook Pro (or 10) with a touchscreen and touch-enabled copy of OS X sitting (unused and abandoned) on a shelf in a hardware-development lab at Apple, you're delusional.
If touch screens are all that is available, no, we don't have to use it... but we still have to PAY for it. It is also one more thing that can go wrong.
And when Windows 9 comes out, and touch is your ONLY "pointing" option, you'll be really pissed when you can't simply plug in a mouse when the cable bringing said "touch" information FAILS, and you have a laptop with a perfectly good display; but no way to "select" and "drag" (without resorting to keyboard gymnastics).
Not if it uses more "raw materials", requires more complicated assembly, and has a higher percentage of manufacturing defects (which it cannot avoid), it doesn't.
but the OP has it right - I didn't mind at all when flatscreen displays were cheap enough to replace CRTs, and no-one minded when they were replaced throughout the entire portable PC range.
In this case, touch-screens will simply be a cheaper option than the standard flatscreen, so manufacturers will install them.
Now... the problem comes when silly old Julie Larson-Green (of Ribbon and Metro infamy) comes along and says "hey, changing all that old working stuff with anything new will make me look good" and puts a table interface on all PCs. Nor if Shuttleworth sees this and thinks that the mobile interface is taking over the world and so all desktops need roughly the same interface too (to be fair to Ubuntu, their desktop interface isn't designed to be touch-only unlike Metro).
Just don't blame the hardware manufacturers for software 'designers' mistakes.
Sorry. No way, no how is a MORE complicated component with MORE raw materials and LESS overall "yield" going to be "cheaper". Even with the "economies of scale" factored-in, It just doesn't work that way.
Well, at least this will take care of the (small) price differential between Apple laptops and Wintel laptops...
I've had Windows 8 for three months now and I haven't used Metro in two and a half months. Sure, it takes a whole 30 seconds to find a Start menu replacement and another couple of minutes to install and configure it how you like it. Yes, it sucks Windows doesn't have one by default that you can turn on, but it's no big deal to get one yourself. Personally, I like having the choice of numerous Start menu replacements - most of which have an option to boot right to the desktop. And don't start bitching about how you need a third party software... Windows has been the only OS that's built from the ground up by one entity (MS) for at least ten years.
So, in order to make Windows 8 USABLE, you have to run around and find third party apps and haxies to turn in back into Windows 7?
Lovely. That's fine for you; but what about the OTHER 95% of Windows 8 purchasers that DON'T know how to do all that? (And yes, there are plenty of people that couldn't find and/or install the proper apps and find and/or change the proper settings).
Slashdot Mirror
Then ios5 wiped out the maps application off your phone.
Then the iphone5 came out which didn't work with any of your existing power cables and docks.
You just don't understand just HOW long Product Development cycles are, do you?
ALL of those changes were WELL along in the development cycle when Jobs took his final breath. I know for a fact that Jobs himself tried negotiated with Google to allow iOS to use Google Maps for turn-by-turn navigation. Do you reallywanted the insane costs and headaches involved in developing a "Mapping" app??? Gimmeabreak!
As for the Lightning connector, it was a long-time coming. Over time, more and more of the pins on that 30 pin Dock connector were becoming unused, and MicroUSB is a bad joke, reliability-wise (not to mention that there are at least 2 sizes of connectors that people think of as "MicroUSB"); so they built a (significantly) better connector system. But I don't want to get mired in THAT whole argument again...
And although I agree with 99% of your comments about "crapware", any Mac user who has owned an HP anything knows all-too-well that HP's absolutely craptastic peripheral drivers and (especially) their "helper applications" are to be avoided if at all possible, using non-HP solutions instead (e.g., VueScan, CUPS, etc.) with their generally excellent peripheral hardware.
My ten year old daughter was in tears because she couldn't figure out her new windows 8 laptop. Now the laptop was underpowered, but it couldn't play DVDs out of the box and she couldn't figure out how to run her software on it thanks to the removal of the start button. Also, Toshiba added its bonus software which seemed to take over the whole computer periodically since pop ups now take the whole screen. I was frustrated trying to use it until I found a start menu hack and added it back.
I installed VLC so she can play DVDs and she has a start menu and now is very happy. Perhaps MS shouldn't have tried to do too much too soon?
To be fair to Microsoft, they weren't marketing the OS as a replacement for Stories2Learn.
Arrogant fuck!
Since she was frustrated by the fact that the OS didn't work THE WAY SHE ALREADY KNEW, your bullshit comment is both insulting and ignorant.
Just like Microsoft foisting a broken (well, at least inappropriate) UI paradigm on EVERY desktop user, then bitching when pretty much everyone (except you, apparently) hates it.
I get the feeling that they either didn't do any "focus-group" testing on the "Modern" UI, or simply ignored the results of those tests; simply because Ballmer was scared shitless of the iPad.
Maybe I could do some graphic design with a stylus
Not with a capacitive touch-screen, you won't. The kind of stylus available for cap touchscreens has the dimensions of a crayon. Sure, you can do technical drawing with a crayon using popup menus and well-defined snaps, etc., but it sure isn't intuitive.
Bzzzt! Wrong!
Here's just one of many fine-tip stylii that work on capacitive touchscreens (at least they work on an iPad).
Desktop should have touch as an user Interface OPTION. I can see uses for touch on the desktop just not all the time.
Bingo!
One of the things that helped Windows in its early days was that a mouse was optional. You could do a lot of GUI-based work without buying a mouse at all, just by using the helpful command keys and tabs. Something, that, alas, pretty well went out the window (no pun intended) with the advent of pixel-graphic web browser applications.
You can get much better traction when a new feature is an enhancement to what people are used to than when you force them to start all over.
I'm seriously NOT trolling; but I've personally always found it fascinating that Apple, THE company that, if nothing else, POPULARIZED the GUI interface (see that trick for avoiding the "Apple ripped-off Xerox" flamewars?), not only is REFUSING to buy-into the "Touch desktop/laptop" drumbeat, but significantly, actually has a MUCH more robust set of "Keyboard Shortcuts" than Windows (See this eye-popping list. Shades of Emacs!!!). I have scoured the web (admittedly for only 5 minutes), and I can't come up with a list of Windows OS Shortcuts (that doesn't include application-specific shortcuts) that is nearly as lengthy. Heck, Windows 8 doesn't even have a keyboard shortcut for Shut Down. Sure, you can DO it; but it's a multi-step procedure...
Point is, Apple realizes that not everyone can/will interact with their COMPUTER the same way (leave tablets out of this discussion, please!), and has provided several ways to do so.
Microsoft would do well to study that philosophy.
No, guns are the problem. You move.
Really?
Then why haven't they been such a "crisis-level" "problem" for the past 250 years?
Seriously: do you REALLY believe that "the government" will ALWAYS have YOUR best interests in mind? Because if your answer to that is "No", then you have just identified the REAL reason that the 2nd Amendment exists. And if your answer is "Yes", then you need to bone up on some history.
BTW, Certain members of Slashdot that want to get rid of all guns not owned by the government would do well to read this page; but they won't...
I clicked on it, and I got bored. The argument that guns should be a right because some long dead man in a different era, said so. A long dead man with far less knowledge of the world than I have. It doesn't work for me.
Then move. You are exactly the problem.
And what would knowing do for you? Your neighbor, instead of hiding the fact that he has weapons like criminals do, follows the law and registers his legally obtained weapons. This information is already available to see. What people are mad about is when some asshat decides to conveniently collect all of this information so that only criminals have a use for it. Oh, criminals and idiots who think law-abiding citizens should be ostracized or treated differently because they are exercising their rights and acting in a responsible manner.
Exactly!
The claim and exercise of a Constitutional Right cannot converted into a crime" Miller v. U.S. 230 F.2d 486 (1956). But in New York, for example, they have done just that. If I were a gun owner in New York, I'd refuse to comply, based on the Supremacy of the 2nd Amendment. New York's law is clearly unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.
BTW, Certain members of Slashdot that want to get rid of all guns not owned by the government would do well to read this page; but they won't...
There is no public interest knowing if a woman has had an abortion. If my neighbor carries loaded guns around I want to know about it.
Except, of course, that the mere fact that a person OWNS a gun (which is all the list shows), in no way states that they "carry loaded guns around".
It's people like you that are the real problem.
Oh, well. Who needs that pesky ol' Bill of Rights anyway, right?
Do us all a favor and read some history.
This one doesn't quite hold science to be a sacrement, but DOES hold that :
If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science, they are mere superstitions and imaginations; for the antithesis of knowledge is ignorance, and the child of ignorance is superstition. Unquestionably there must be agreement between true religion and science. If a question be found contrary to reason, faith and belief in it are impossible, and there is no outcome but wavering and vacillation.
Paramahansa Yogananda, Parlez Vous?
So, in order to make Windows 8 USABLE, you have to run around and find third party apps and haxies...?
Ah! So it's like linux then?
Kind of, but without all the excellent support.
Dude.. get the fuck over the missing start menu. It is not needed. Windows-X and Windows-C give you most of the functionality and if you are like any normal user, the applications you use most often already have a desktop icon and access thru start menu is redundant. For those times you need to find something not often used, how hard is it to press Windows key, right click and left click on All apps. Thats what.. one more click? Or do you need someone to make a special shutdown icon for you cause you can't handle ctrl-alt-del? There are plenty of tuturials to show you how to do so in all of 30 secons.
Dude... Learn to fucking READ... Do you see the phrase "Start Menu" ANYWHERE in my comment? What about the lack of a real Window manager?
If that happens, I think we'll actually see microsoft die. OS without mouse as a proper pointing option, which is far, FAR more efficient as a pointer device then fingers on the screen is really going to be DoA.
Not DoA like win8, which still sells to people who have to buy a windows license, but DoA as in people will simply refuse to use it. Even when they have to have windows OS.
Which is why not even the most insane of MS's managers will ever try something like that. Or if they would, they would be ejected from the company faster then cork out of a shampagne bottle.
I dunno. They've gone pretty far down that road in just one revision...
When Windows 9 comes out, I will be still sitting there waiting for ebay bids on my WinPhone 7.
LOL.
You use the word "usable" pretty strongly there. Having the Metro screen replace the Start menu hardly makes the OS unusable. The full-screen change is a bit of an interruption to my train of thought, but the dozen applications I use with any frequency are pinned to the task bar anyway. It's really not the end of the world.
No, but the utter lack of true window-management, er, IS.
That's fine for you; but what about the OTHER 95% of Windows 8 purchasers that DON'T know how to do all that?
They take 5, maybe 10 minutes to learn how to use the start screen, then carry on? It's not exactly complex: it's a start menu that stretches over all of you screen, rather than just the left 1/5. Don't want to navigate tiles (or navigate nested submenus)? Press start, type in the first few characters of the program you want, hit enter, and voila! Same as 7 and Vista.
Really? I was at Walmart a few weeks ago, trying to get some pictures printed off a USB stick at a photo kiosk. Log story short, I had to take a trip to the Electronics dept. to see if there were actually any files on the stick. All they had were W8 laptops. So, after I rebooted one of them back out of its demo loop, I tried to figure out how to see what was on the stick from the Start Screen (or whatever it's called). I'm pretty sure I Got it done; but it took me nearly 5 minutes, and in addition to my decades of Mac experience, I have also heavily used every version of desktop Windows since 1.0. They have taken both "ugly" and "non-intuitive " to a whole new level...
Long as it's cheap and will log onto Facebook, the average consumer will buy anything.
That was so last year. Now they use their Samsung Galaxy S3 for Facebook. They have no need to replace their fully WinXP laptop with anything. Especially not someting they cant use (Win 8).
If they desperately need to spend money, they will by "An Android iPad" -just ask them!
Shudder...
Apple laptops are touch-enabled in some way: the touchpad in these machines takes basically the same kind of input as any smartphone or tablet. Only two things are really different: input is separated from the display in order to accommodate human physiology and it is primarily used to drive a cursor using relative input instead of absolute input. The latter could be changed in software, yet it doesn't make sense.
So, Apple understands touch interfaces so well that they've already been doing it properly on the big devices for many years.
Precisely. The Magic Trackpad, and their later-model laptop trackpads, are a (largely successful) compromise between a true touch interface (as in iOS), and a traditional mouse/trackball/trackpad paradigm.
Also, will it make the higher resolution screens that are *finally* starting to come out that much more expensive?
Again: More materials == More expensive (esp. If the "additional" materials cost the same or more as the materials to which they are being "added", as in this case).
What might make sense is if "monitors of the future" could be used either vertically or horizontally (or to basically generalize, 0 = degree = 90). Then you could place the monitor at 20 degrees and use touch for drawing things/poking screen on those applications that support touch, or for standing over the monitor to review a design of some kind (CAD, structural diagram, etc). Then put the monitor back upright when its time to crank out a document or write some code.
It does not have to be an "either/or" situation. A monitor flat on the desk with touch has some practical uses But at 90 degrees touch is useless.
Exactly!
A few years ago, I envisioned Apple modifying the iMac for touch, and coming up with an integrated "support" design that allowed EXACTLY that range of positioning.
It wasn't practical for the old "thick" (and heavy) iMac; but now that the whole thing is much thinner and lighter, perhaps...
From experience I haven't found anything worse than a desktop or laptop with a touch screen. They are ergonomically bad, after 10 minutes I get pain in my wrists and elbows. The only place I have found desktop sized touch screens to be useful is when stood up, for example at a point of sale.
Also, my desktop monitors are too far away to touch when sat down, the screen is a good 6-8 inches further than my reach so they have to be moved uncomfortably too close which doesn't just hurt my neck and eyes, but I have no room to fit my keyboard in front of the screen on my desk when bought closer. When lounging with my laptop the screen is either too close when sat down or when semi lying down too far to touch. Don't get me started on finger smudges.
Exactly.
With integration and control over both the "display" and the "computer" parts into one unit, as well as the obvious "cool" factor, do anyone really think Apple hasn't already thought of, built, tested (and ultimately abandoned) prototypes of, iMacs with touchscreen displays? You think that "OS X Touch" hasn't already been developed (and abandoned) several years ago?
Jobs alluded to as much at during a Keynote (can't remember which one, but I think it was about 4 years ago), where he talked about the "Gorilla Arm" phenomenon.
My money will go to the manufacturers who will provide "old school" displays.
Here's your VT100 sir.
More like "Here's your Macbook Pro, sir."
Isn't it "telling" that the only company in this space that really "gets touch" is also the company that steadfastly refuses to go down the road of "touchscreen laptops"?
Perhaps they have actually CONDUCTED some "usability studies" (unlike Microsoft), eh? Because if you think for one moment that there isn't a Macbook Pro (or 10) with a touchscreen and touch-enabled copy of OS X sitting (unused and abandoned) on a shelf in a hardware-development lab at Apple, you're delusional.
If touch screens are all that is available, no, we don't have to use it... but we still have to PAY for it. It is also one more thing that can go wrong.
And when Windows 9 comes out, and touch is your ONLY "pointing" option, you'll be really pissed when you can't simply plug in a mouse when the cable bringing said "touch" information FAILS, and you have a laptop with a perfectly good display; but no way to "select" and "drag" (without resorting to keyboard gymnastics).
Mass adoption means a drop in price point.
Not if it uses more "raw materials", requires more complicated assembly, and has a higher percentage of manufacturing defects (which it cannot avoid), it doesn't.
but the OP has it right - I didn't mind at all when flatscreen displays were cheap enough to replace CRTs, and no-one minded when they were replaced throughout the entire portable PC range.
In this case, touch-screens will simply be a cheaper option than the standard flatscreen, so manufacturers will install them.
Now... the problem comes when silly old Julie Larson-Green (of Ribbon and Metro infamy) comes along and says "hey, changing all that old working stuff with anything new will make me look good" and puts a table interface on all PCs. Nor if Shuttleworth sees this and thinks that the mobile interface is taking over the world and so all desktops need roughly the same interface too (to be fair to Ubuntu, their desktop interface isn't designed to be touch-only unlike Metro).
Just don't blame the hardware manufacturers for software 'designers' mistakes.
Sorry. No way, no how is a MORE complicated component with MORE raw materials and LESS overall "yield" going to be "cheaper". Even with the "economies of scale" factored-in, It just doesn't work that way.
Well, at least this will take care of the (small) price differential between Apple laptops and Wintel laptops...
I've had Windows 8 for three months now and I haven't used Metro in two and a half months. Sure, it takes a whole 30 seconds to find a Start menu replacement and another couple of minutes to install and configure it how you like it. Yes, it sucks Windows doesn't have one by default that you can turn on, but it's no big deal to get one yourself. Personally, I like having the choice of numerous Start menu replacements - most of which have an option to boot right to the desktop. And don't start bitching about how you need a third party software... Windows has been the only OS that's built from the ground up by one entity (MS) for at least ten years.
So, in order to make Windows 8 USABLE, you have to run around and find third party apps and haxies to turn in back into Windows 7?
Lovely. That's fine for you; but what about the OTHER 95% of Windows 8 purchasers that DON'T know how to do all that? (And yes, there are plenty of people that couldn't find and/or install the proper apps and find and/or change the proper settings).