The End of Windows
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Windows 10 was the giant step in that direction - an always updating, maintenance mode, single OS that MS will need to support. Arguably until Win 7 dies out they won't be entirely there but once they are, maintaining Windows is a much simpler affair than yesteryears.
None of this means Windows itself is dying - it only means the OS has matured enough for the needs of present and any future needs will be addressed as and when they arise - instead of inventing the future they will abide with it on their own schedule.
This allows Microsoft to focus on things that truly matter for the future without killing Windows or spending a lot of resources on advancing/supporting it. It's not hard to imagine Windows stays a very dominant client OS for a long time to come - even if the overall PC market share continues to decline, because none of the alternatives are there and nobody is going to invest the resources to get them there.
I will also add that Satya's success lies in speeding up this strategy that started late under Ballmer and also in executing so well on it. Considering the scale of what MS is doing - Office ports to iOS, Android, Windows 10 releases, Azure, ton of other Enterprise stuff (Exchange, O365, Development tools, cross platform stuff like .NET Core, VS Code etc) - the change of course and the success they are having with it all - you can't argue it's not a phenomenal achievement.
https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...
* In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category.
* In 2018, the most popular memory amount for users of Firefox is still 4GB, trailed by the also disappointingly small 8GB. In my world, I consider 16GB a bare minimum, but at least with memory I haven't been deluding myself—I know many people economize on memory. Still, I would have thought 8GB was the most common memory size by now.
* A surprising number of people still have Flash installed.
I can barely conceive of the poor experience of running a modern web browser on 4 GB of memory at 1366x768. Can you imagine the user experience of today's modern over-JavaScripted web pages on such underpowered hardware: not simply slow because of their grotesquely large transmission payload but also because they caused your computer to start swapping memory pages to disk?
To me, the hardware report shows technology is quite stagnant on display resolution and memory. 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. 4GB was common in desktop computers in 2005. ~15 years have passed and consumers in the $750 price range are still hamstrung with 1366x768 and 4GB of memory? I would expect better from a $750 phone, let alone a computer.
I think we're actually talking about computers that are very old and have never been upgraded or new computers in the $200 to $400 range.
So yes, the innards of your 2017 MBA are very old. It has Broadwell generation (circa 2014) CPU/GPU, and one optimized for power draw at that (i.e. a slower one).
In 2002, the most common resolutions were 4:3, not 16:9, not only because notebooks were not mainstream yet.
> 4GB [RAM] was common in desktop computers in 2005.
That's the time when notebooks became mainstream iirc. I purchased a gaming notebook in 2006, it had 1 GB RAM. I also bought a midrange notebook in 2009 which also came with 1 GB. (I later upgraded to 2 GB aftermarket.)
Sure. I didn't really intend to get into fine-grained technical details, but yes, back then 4:3 was the predominant aspect ratio. In fact, some of the 17" LCD displays from the time were that awkward 5:4 resolution of 1280x1024.
But putting specifics aside, the broader point is that computing technology—at least with respect to the most popular display resolution and amount of memory—is stagnant. In this thread there are people arguing for technology asceticism and making the point that 4GB and 1366x768 are good enough. And maybe they are for some people. I am surprised there are so many who are satisfied with this particular flavor of "good enough." (Though I would like to see how well that correlates with mobile device technology asceticism.)
I want the hardware industry to do better, and I thought things had started improving a few years ago when 4K displays emerged and the shackles of "High Definition" (1920x1080) were cast aside. But this data shows adoption of 4K displays for computing is so low it's not even measured as such. That disappointed me, but it's unsurprising. What surprised me was realizing 1920x1080 isn't the top dog I thought it was—in fact, the situation is worse than I thought.
And to my mind, all of this feeds into the subject at hand: an operating system vendor getting stuck. The embrace of "good enough" is suffocating.
I think there's a huge disconnect between what's you think is "common" and what people actually have. Steam hardware survey from 2009[1] says only 10% of steam (gaming) users have ram greater or equal to 4GB. I'm going to estimate that in 2005, that figure is less than 5%. Saying 4GB is common in 2005 would be like saying 64GB today is "common".
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20090415225520/http://store.stea...
There's quite a lot of these, e.g. HP Stream; the Windows license is much cheaper for these systems because they have such low specs.
If anything it's worse now because the RAM is soldered in and they're using BGA ICs which makes it impossible for most people to upgrade.
That being said, my parents are perfectly happy using Google chrome on 2gb ram with a core 2 duo. And that's not with only a few tabs.
It may come as a shock to you but there exists a world outside of California/London/random-tech-hub
£670 is much more than people I know want to spend on a new machine. None of them have ever mentioned screen resolution when i've asked what they want in a laptop.
It seems that most people who make websites nowadays think similarly. I don't get why they are making websites for themselves, rather than for their users.
Because most people making websites don't care about basic usability, even though they have stats that shows their users use small laptops they'll still stick a fixed header that takes 1/5 of screen real estate because it's the latest "bootstrap/material design fad". Google does this a lot, which is ironic with them pushing "AMP" on mobile, they can't even give regular people a good on experience on their laptop.
Websites become a problem on slow internet, which is surprisingly common in companies. This is because they are often located in cheap rent areas with little infrastructure.
I don't remember anyone having any problems running the latest chrome or Firefox. I think people even managed to run things like SolidWorks or Matlab perfectly fine on those machines.
It's been about 8 years since I last had a laptop without at least 1080p I think.
Because the latter is what most people buy for, as far as I can tell.
That said, I suspect most people over the age of 35 or so can't read text at "normal" size on a 1080p 12inch screen, so if they want a 12 inch screen they have to either scale up their text or drop the resolution. And I believe the reported resolution in the Firefox telemetry is the one the OS thinks it's using, not the one the hardware has.
In 2018, my computer only has 2GB RAM and runs more than fast enough for what I need on a 32-bit processor. I don't understand why some people always want bigger hardware numbers, rather than better software.
> * A surprising number of people still have Flash installed. I do too, I don't see how it's abnormal.
> I can barely conceive of the poor experience of running a modern web browser on 4 GB of memory at 1366x768. Can you imagine the user experience of today's modern over-JavaScripted web pages on such underpowered hardware: not simply slow because of their grotesquely large transmission payload but also because they caused your computer to start swapping memory pages to disk?
I can barely conceive of how narrow-minded and myopic your technological experience must be that you feel only the latest and "greatest" is viable. As someone who browses the Web regularly, I spend a lot of time on places like HN, YouTube, etc. My screen resolution is 1440x900 - one step above the 1366x768. As I said, 2GB RAM, etc. This is why I've argued, constantly, against the nonsense of Chrome and "modern" Firefox. That's why users of old computers are going to Pale Moon if they know about it, or back to Internet Explorer, or just not upgrading to the newest Firefox.
Your technological experience is very much a high-class experience, but you have to understand that there are users all over the world and in all economic positions. All this push toward expecting the best and most modern only works to force out the common person - in America it's the poor person in the ghetto who still is well above the position of people in other, even less prosperous nations. Most people, if they are lucky, have a used <$200 laptop which is often a decade or so old. Library computers are often almost as old - I know two libraries which are still running their .5GB 32-bit Windows NT2000 computers as patron-access machines because they are in poor areas and simply cannot afford to upgrade.
People who have the view that everyone should have base access to the latest, greatest, and most wonderful hardware upset me greatly. I have one comment about it that seems constructive. If you think it's so important that they should have this, you should provide it. If you can't give every person who has an old reliable computer (that they can repair) the newest bleeding-edge tech (and give them service when it inevitably breaks), then you need to understand that they have valid concerns too - and help provide better software and help others like you to understand what reality looks like for most of the world.
Malware authors rub their hands gleefully when they see sentiments like this being spread online by people like you.
Don't do any of those suggestions. Disable multiprocess mode in the Firefox config if you find it eats too much memory, stick with the ESR if you're scared of upgrading and use Edge over IE.
In any case you must be at least airgapping it (right?), so I guess it's academic.
Edit: you might be onto something here. Running an old, outdated browser on an old, unpatched 32 bit windows xp box might trigger some anti analysis defenses on whatever malware is sure to come your way. Security through being too obviously insecure!
But I know three families in low-income situations for whom that sort of PC is the only one they have, because they got it from either an office or a school when the place was discarding computers. So no, it's not being air gapped. It's the computer the kids look up homework info on, it's the one the parents use to search for jobs, and more. They can't afford to upgrade, and they're afraid that even upgrading the software would make the whole thing come apart at the seams.
I develop for an organization that serves people of mid-to-lower economic strata. 10% of our users are still on Windows XP.
We get caught up in the tech sector echo chamber and don't realize that upgrade cycles for millions of people is a lot slower than we are used to.
I think that it's not surprising to see what Firefox is reporting. A lot of people go to Firefox seeking something that runs faster or better than what came with their Windows box years ago. Most of the people we serve on low-end computers are Chrome, not IE/Edge.
Most of the tasks in the real world doesn't need multiple 4K displays, including low level and systems development. Most people read stuff, and as a developer and system administrator, when the text is looking good, this means the resolution is enough.
> In 2018, the most popular memory amount for users of Firefox is still 4GB, trailed by the also disappointingly small 8GB. In my world, I consider 16GB a bare minimum, but at least with memory I haven't been deluding myself—I know many people economize on memory. Still, I would have thought 8GB was the most common memory size by now.
8 GB is more than enough for most people. My family's Win10 desktop is happy with 4GB, my office desktop is cozy with 8GB. My own desktop has 16GB of RAM, but it runs many, albeit small, virtual machines. "The hardware is cheap, let's waste it" mentality doesn't help anyone and it's wrong. I've written some state of the art algorithms which use 1.5MB of RAM and make the CPU scream for cooling (I develop high performance computing software as a side-academic gig), so like every resource, RAM should be used sparingly.
Edit: I've no comment for flash. I think it's a forgotten remnant of old systems.
Personally, I've just upgraded from 1680x1050 to 1920x1080. My old monitor was 10 years old, and was performing relatively well. I bought a new one, because it started to show its age (mostly backlight age).
The other footnote should be that display prices have been crashing recently. You can get an IPS 24" FHD monitor for like $90, and a QHD version at 27" for about $150. Those would have been twice as expensive a few years ago.
That being said, all those 768p screens are crappy plastic laptops with really slow hard drives. That I guess is what we end up with the Intel took what should have just been the natural evolution of notebooks - small SoCs running a high PPI display in a metal frame - and made them into some premium brand name product with a huge margin on the prices of chips that cost peanuts to manufacture because they didn't have any real competition in the space for a very long time (and even then, their monopolistic behavior lets them keep AMD out of all the major brands premium notebooks anyway).
You're right, however not everyone has the same desktop space to accomodate a 27" panel. I can barely fit a 24" on my desk. 1440p monitors start at 25".
> The other footnote should be that display prices have been crashing recently.
When I was in the US at the end of 2014, one of my friends said the same thing about flash drives when I pointed out a $44 PNY 128GB flash drive. Unfortunately, other parts of the world doesn't work same way. Because EUR or other currencies are not fixed against US$, and prices fluctuate at most parts of the world if not increase. So, no, technology doesn't become cheaper as it matures at some parts of the world unfortunately.
Addendum: BTW, you are right about the 768p screens are generally found in entry level laptops or netbooks. These devices are most feasible ones when they first came out. Now they are bottom end cash cows which are virtually free to build.
You can get 24" 4k (2160p) 180ppi 60Hz for $300 e.g. LG 24UD58.
Anything higher resolution-wise requires a much larger display to be readable at 100% scaling. I'm adamantly against using scaling.
Why?
Perhaps my experience would have been better on a desktop, but this was for my work where I have a Surface Pro which when going from a docked to undocked state (or vice versa) with monitors that didn't match the same scaling as the surface resulted in graphical issues that can only be resolved by logging out then in again.
Also still come across apps that don't know how to scale so that can be really frustrating.
I have to say you have it exactly backwards!
Gaming on 4K is extremely expensive and still basically impossible at refresh rates higher than 60 Hz. In fact, you’ll be lucky to get even that much. 1440p/144Hz is a much better and more realistic target for even the most enthusiastic gamers.
Also a most welcome recent trend has been to ship with novel temporal antialiasing techniques, completely redefining how games can look at lower resolutions.
Temporal artifacts have always been the bane of 1080p, forcing higher resolutions either directly, or indirectly as subsampling. Once you take that out of equation, the benefit of native 4K is much more modest.
4K movies are nice, but as with games, it’s more of a linear progression. I doubt most people could even tell the difference in a blind test.
Full-range HDR is, in my opinion, a much better investment if you want to improve your TV viewing experience (and lately gaming as well) in a noticeable way.
I don’t know much about graphic design, but I doubt 4K is all that essential. Everyone has been using 96 dpi displays to create content for very high density mediums for a long time. Even the most craptastic ink printer is 300 dpi+. All you need is a zoom function. Color reproduction is, I think, much more important than resolution.
Where HiDPI displays really shine is actually in the most mundane: font rendering.
For anyone that works in the medium of text, programmers, writers, publishers, etc., a 4K display will be a considerable and noticeable quality-of-life improvement.
Even the most Unix-neckbeardy terminal dwellers will appreciate the simply amazing improvement in visual fidelity and clarity of text on screen[1].
> I tested out a 4k 28" and unless I had it at 200% scaling couldn't use it for longer periods of time.
That’s what you are supposed to do! :)
It’s only HiDPI at 200% scaling. Otherwise it’s just 2160p, or whatever the implicit resolution is for some partial scaling value.
For 4K at 100% scaling you’d need something like 45" screen at minimum, but that’s not actually practical once you consider the optimal viewing distance for such a screen, especially with a 16:9 ratio.
> I get more screen estate and still readable text with the 25" 1440p.
A 4K display should only provide extra space indirectly. With text on the screen looking so much sharper and more readable, it might be possible to comfortably read smaller font sizes, compared to equivalent 96 dpi display.
If you also need extra space as well, then that’s what 5K is for.
Though for things like technical drawings or detailed maps you can actually use all the extra 6 million pixels to show more information on the screen.
A single-pixel–width hairline is still thick enough to be clearly visible on a HiDPI display[2].
> but now you have to render 2.4x (Vs a 2560x1440 monitor) the amount of information for what I think is fairly little gain.
Yes, that’s an issue with things like games. However you can still display 1080p content on a 4K screen, and it looks just as good[3], and often even better[4].
Most graphics software will also work with 1080p bitmaps just fine. Vector graphics necessitates doing a little bit extra work, but for a very good payoff.
Overall though, for things like programming or web browsing, it shouldn’t matter. I have a netbook with a cheap Atom SoC (Apollo Lake) and it can handle 3K without breaking a sweat. That much more capable[5] GPU on your Surface Pro should easily handle even multiple 4K displays.
Pushing some extra pixels is not a big deal, if all you’re doing is running a desktop compositor with simple effects.
> going from a docked to undocked state (or vice versa) with monitors that didn't match the same scaling as the surface resulted in graphical issues that can only be resolved by logging out then in again.
Yeah that must suck. Still, it’s only a software bug, and you mustn’t let it keep you from evaluating HiDPI on its merits.
> Also still come across apps that don't know how to scale so that can be really frustrating.
That’s life on bleeding edge ;)
Sure, it’s annoying, but the situation is a lot better than it used to be. Even Linux is doing fine, at least if you stick to recent releases. Some distros like to ship outdated software for some reason :/
Still, in my opinion, the quality-of-life improvements of a HiDPI display very much outweigh the occasional inconvenience. Though obviously, YMMV.
[1] https://www.eizo.be/eizo-pixeldichte-im-zeitalter-von-4k-e5....
[2] Assuming you’re viewing at optimal distance.
[3] With the notable exception of 96dpi native pixel art.
4K has exactly 4 times as many pixels as 1080p, so it shouldn’t be an issue in theory. Nearest-neighbor will give you exactly what you want.
However in practice you need to force scaling in software, otherwise graphic drivers, and most monitor’s postprocessing, tends to default to bicubic scaling. That said, pixel art is not computationally expensive, so it’s mostly just an inconvenience.
[4] You can use advanced scaling algorithms to upscale 1080p to 4K and it usually looks great. E.g. MPV with opengl-hq profile or MadVR on Windows. For that you’ll need something a notch over integrated graphics though, e.g. RX 560, GTX 1050 and on mobile Ryzen 2500U or equivalent.
[5] http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-HD-4000-Mobile-12...
I'm with you on accurately calibrated monitors though! God most of them suck out of the box.
Both displays are around 200 pixels per inch, plus or minus. It's great not having to see the pixels, so much more pleasant and easy on the eyes.
Also the combination of a portrait display with the landscape display is really nice. I can read an entire PDF page without scrolling.
The original Windows "standard display" was assumed to be around 96 DPI. That's the monitor that 100% scaling (i.e. no scaling) is intended for. Round the 96 up to 100 and we can say that in rough terms, the percentage scaling should be in the neighborhood of the monitor's DPI.
So monitors in the 200 DPI range are best at around 200% scaling.
A 28" 4K UHD has 157 DPI, so I wouldn't want to try it at 100% scaling - ouch. It ought to be running in the 150-175% scaling range.
The idea with a high-DPI monitor isn't to make everything smaller on the screen, it's to make everything sharper and more detailed. When you double the DPI and scale appropriately, you get four times the number of pixels for everything you put on the screen.
That’s not how it works. Lower dpi does not somehow give you more real estate!
You should still be running with ~200% scaling because you are viewing it at a greater distance.
Optimal viewing distance, assuming 16:9 ratio, is 120 cm vs 140 cm for 24" vs 28", respectively[1]. Accounting for the difference gets you ~155 ppd with both monitors[2][3], maintaining 25.0° horizontal viewing angle.
The closer your viewing distance the more ppi you need for the same density. That 28" is not inferior to the 24", when you account for distance, despite the lower ppi, because the greater viewing distance makes the pixels look smaller, thus creating more dense image.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_size
[2] http://phrogz.net/tmp/ScreenDens2In.html#find:density,pxW:38...
[3] http://phrogz.net/tmp/ScreenDens2In.html#find:density,pxW:38...
Also, apps that don't scale properly are a pain haha.
You need a higher PPI to make anti-aliasing work on screen (finally looking nearly as nice as print).
I’m not being sarcastic. The last time there was a thread like that on HN a bunch of people figured out they need glasses.
I have a 4K @ 24in monitor (180ppi) and a 267 ppi netbook and when I switch between them the 4K starts looking like a blurry mess!
Don't get me wrong, I can see a difference, but not nearly as night and day, especially when it comes at the cost of other features (eg refresh rate... which isn't the end of the world for coding so if it's the only thing you do on the monitor it could be worse... otherwise ouch my eyes.)
What scaling is that? 200% scaling is what you should have, 4K is exactly 4x as many pixels as FullHD. If someone is using lower scaling then they are trading sharpness for virtual space.
Its fair advice, but some eyesight issues cannot be solved with glasses.. if they can be solved at all.
Also worth noting that with TVs the distance matters a lot. With monitors, laptops, and gadgets it is relatively stable.
Maybe as the price comes down and more transistors end up in basic chipsets we'll see 2 and 3 heads of 4K displays become common.
I wouldn't trade my three 1080P 24" panels for 4K panels, unless the goal was to sell the 4K panels and rebuy the 1080P 24" panels. I don't do a lot of gaming anymore, but they're hardly a horrible experience in that regard either.
I think at this point in the market, I'm going to stick with 16:9 native resolutions. If I do any swaps, I'll probably try out dual 27" 4K panels (also 16:9, great for 1080P content), with one mounted below the other. That'll be pretty nice in time as 4K becomes better supported.
Of note, 8GB is most popular with 1920x1080 resolution.
Moreover, even apps that do support HiDPI often look like crap at 125% scaling -- the default setting on Windows 10 for most 1920x1080 laptops these days. And if you go up to 150%, you only get 1280x720 effective pixels. That's even less information density than 1366x768. Most legacy Windows apps expect to be able to use at least 768 vertical pixels.
The search turned out to be more difficult than I expected, because most high-end PC laptops with good build quality had already transitioned to 1920x1080 by early 2016. I finally found the perfect model for my father and told him that he should expect to use it for a long, long time since it's the last laptop that will ever support his apps. Fortunately, it's a well-built Broadwell i5 with a number of upgradable components, so it should last well into the early 2020s.
A friend of mine is thinking about buying a new laptop. We were looking together at what's available in the sub 400 Euro range, basically everything is 4 GB and 1366x768. Add some 200/300 Euro and 8 GB and 1080p start to appear in the lists. Guess what people buy most? The cheapest stuff.
By the way, the new laptop must be Windows because anything different will be too difficult to cope with after 30 years of training. He's replacing the old one (only 2 years old) is getting too slow. Probably a malware party but disinfecting that machine it's a hopeless effort. That one and the previous ones were periodically cleaned and/or reinstalled but there is no way to change those ingrained clicking habits. No adblocker because my friend wants to see ads and they could actually be useful in his business. I told him that he'll be back with a slow PC soon and that he's wasting his money, and I've been wasting my time.
why would you need that much ram? are you running 3+ VMs all the time?
My daily machine at home is still a 2011 Macbook Air with 4GB of RAM, which is admittedly not enough. My work machine was a 2012 Retina MBP with 8GB which was PLENTY for all of my everyday needs except when running VMs. To this day, 8GB is enough for 'most' uses, and my work machines only have 16 to get me over that "8gb-is-not-quite enough" hump. But I've got retina displays everywhere, and a 5k iMac at home. No clue how much memory it has, to be honest, but 32 is insane for not just the average user but even most power users unless they have really specific needs.
https://www.amazon.com/Performance-HP-Quad-Core-Processor-Gr...
This is the weirdest part for me, as I've myself never met a person who'd like to see ads. Installing an adblocker seems to usually be a relevation for people.
Possibly a good candidate for just doing a reformat?
Most just don't have a choice. Plenty of laptop models top out at 8GB,with 16GB either being confined to larger form-factor machines, or being so outrageously expensive that no-one in their right mind would bother.
I mean, look at the current line of macbook pros, you simply can't get 16GB without going up to the 15-inch model.
Could the chart be reporting CSS pixels rather than hardware pixels? Macs are only 7% of total Firefox users but the majority of Mac hardware has a "Retina" display with a higher resolution than these.
BTW, 2560x1440 is listed with about ~1% but it's not visible because the line and text is black on a black background.
EDIT: https://www.asus.com/us/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-SWIFT-PG3... 100Hz is awesome, even for just browsing the web.
Exact model:
Great monitor though. Both for gaming and for general usage.
My main computer has 8GB RAM. I don't know why I would need more than that. Right now I have firefox with 15 tabs, qt creator and 3 terminals open and I'm only using 2.5 GB of RAM. Unless I suddenly wanted to get into heavy video editing I don't think I'll feel the need to upgrade soon.
I think a good SSD and GPU are much more important than having a lot of RAM if you want to improve general user experience.
It's included in the university fees and there's no way of opting out of it, so I had to take it. Not only do they overcharge us for it, finding a seller is hard for it too, so I decided to wipe it clean and use it as my daily driver.
I've used for years a CoreDuo system+4GB with Firefox then PaleMoon playing videos in FullHD on 23 and 27 inches monitors, and never got even close to hit the swap partition unless I was running virtual machines or heavy games. Now I'm on a i5 Debian+XFCE with 8gigs, one Waterfox (privacy oriented Firefox derivative, thanks to the HN user who pointed me at it) instance with 4 tabs opened and a shell with 2 tabs; here's free output:
~$ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 8037636 1194044 4182928 187332 2660664 6555172
Swap: 8249340 0 8249340
~$ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 8037636 1453204 3761776 280824 2822656 6202520
Swap: 8249340 0 8249340
[1] ~$ uname -svo
Linux #1 SMP PREEMPT RT Debian 4.9.30-2+deb9u5 (2017-09-19) GNU/Linux
(a bit older RT kernel needed for low latency audio)Works great on my iPhone X and iMac Pro? Perfect!
Unless you just need your monitor for gaming. New gen temporal aliasing mostly makes up for the lack of pixels.
SSDs have an order of magnitude faster random access performance (both read & write) and you can measure that. NVMe drives additionally increase parallelism by a significant margin. Typical workloads are very sensitive to this metric. At least at cold boot you should see significant improvement in performance.
Font rendering, likewise, you can just see[1]. See the full page[2] for more examples.
If you have good eyesight, you will see a difference. I could see how 4K to “retina” (>260 PPI) might not be worth paying extra to some (though I personally want the highest PPI I can afford), but 96 PPI to ~185 PPI is a world of difference. It goes from blurry to sharp.
That’s not all—because LoDPI text rendering often involves subpixel rendering techniques, HiDPI also brings significant improvement in contrast.
For crying out loud, some people even get headaches from the blurry subpixel rendering! [3]
[1] https://www.eizo.be/eizo-pixeldichte-im-zeitalter-von-4k-e5....
[2] https://www.eizo.be/knowledge/monitor-expertise/understandin...
[3] https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/p7.html
Maybe that’s arguing semantics, but to me a waste of money is something like a $150 HDMI cable… Or 64GB of RAM you’ll never use. Things that you can brag about but that don’t actually improve your life in any way at all.
However, the $100 extra I’ve spent on a 4K vs FullHD monitor was, I’m certain, one of the best purchasing decisions in my life.
My 4K display[1] makes spending time productively so much more pleasant, and so much less tiring, both on eyes and mind. And it just looks gorgeous.
The first time experience of watching BBC’s Planet Earth in 4K on this thing was mind-blowing. It must look absolutely incredible on an actual big screen with full range of HDR.
I also have a very cheap Chinese netbook with a 3K display (260 ppi), and I have, on occasion, used it to read books etc. I would have never even imagined doing any extended reading, of any kind, on my old laptop. The font would need to be huge to make that experience at all bearable. At least that’s an option for something like ePub or HTML, but a lot of things are available only as a PDF. On that little netbook it’s no bother to have multiple columns of tiny text on the screen, all at once, just like in a real book.
I wear glasses and with the old LowDPI devices I was always unsure if I need a new prescription or if it’s just the crappy display.
As for SSD I can strongly recommend getting one in addition to your HDD. For my workstation, I’m running a bcache setup (in writeback) with a 60GB old SATA3 SSD + 1TB HDD RAID1 and I’ve been extremely pleased with that so far.
I can only tell I’m not running an actual 1TB SSD right after I do a major upgrade. It takes at least one cold boot to promote files in the boot path to cache[2]. Every time that happens it reminds me just how much faster SSDs are for certain things.
Nevertheless, you almost get to have your cake and eat it too. Bcache (or dm-cache, a fine choice as well) will intelligently sync all the randomly accessed and most used data with the SSD and stream anything bigger (like movies etc.) directly to/from the HDD.
In writeback mode it will also use the SSD to buffer random writes, until they can be written sequentially, all-at-once, to the backing device.
It makes both your SSD and HDD so much more valuable. Strongly recommended :)
[1] http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-24UD58-B-4k-uhd-led-monitor
[2] It’s something that could be solved, though. An explicit interface to promote certain extents would do the trick. So far I think only bcacheFS offers something like that.
That’s why I have an adamant rule about never trying hardcore drugs or displays capable of refresh rates higher than 60 Hz.
Yes. The laptop I keep by the TV has 4GB of RAM, a 1366x768 screen, and a quad-core Celeron, that I think is some descendant of one of the Atom families. I tend to keep 10 or fewer tabs open, avoid sites that use really heavy Javascript (well, I do that anyhow...), and usually don't have much else besides a Bash window running. It's got a spinning-rust drive, and swapping would be very obvious. With my usage patterns, it doesn't swap. Performance-wise, it's a fair bit nicer than my phone, at least.
The screen issue does bug me though. Not just a haxxor feature anymore, all basic Windows users can leverage the split-screen capability to put two applications side by side - on a 720p screen, there really isn't enough screen space to practically do this. I think 1080x1920 or at least 900x1600 should be the standard for 2018.
The laptop I'm typing this on is exactly that: A Lenovo Ideapad from 2010 with 4GB and 1366x768 resolution, running Bunsenlabs Linux and the latest Waterfox (Firefox fork with telemetry removed). It's blazing fast even without a SSD; the browser starts in the blink of an eye and it takes nearly 70 tabs open to start slowing down.
Yes, the resolution can be limiting for some websites, but most are designed well enough to work fine on it. In fact, on text-heavy sites like HN I find myself browsing at 120% magnification for less eye strain. I couldn't imagine what 1080p or higher on a 15" screen would feel like, but it would likely be painful. It's actually more comfortable to read on than my iPad mini for that reason as well, and of course typing is a dream compared to any other laptop I've used, to say nothing of klunky touchscreen keyboards.
Granted, it would be slower with a more bloated Linux distro and certainly was with Windows 7, but when it comes to the OS I prefer minimalist and stable to kitchen sink and bleeding edge.
Subjective. Depends entirely on the settings you are using and the resulting frame rate at that resolution.
The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too.
They will have an entire ecosystem up and running, and windows 10- level flexible to be tailored to whatever comes. Of course it would be crazy for them to drop it now
Every single incarnation of windows mobile / phone was well tailored for the mobile hardware of the day.
What sunk windows phone was not that it was slow, it was that it was late to go touch-first and failed to differentiate enough to make up for it. That and tightly controlling the vendors while up against android made the quality of windows phone itself irrelevant.
This is such an utterly clueless explanation of why Windows Phone failed that it’s kind of stunning. Until, of course, you remember the culture-induced myopia I described yesterday: Myerson still has the Ballmer-esque presumption that Microsoft controlled its own destiny and could have leveraged its assets (like Office) to win the smartphone market, ignoring that by virtue of being late Windows Phone was a product competing against ecosystems, which meant no consumer demand, which meant no developers, topped off by the arrogance to dictate to OEMs and carriers what they could and could not do to the phone, destroying any chance at leveraging distribution to get critical mass…
Interestingly, though, Myerson’s ridiculous assertion in a roundabout way shows how you change culture…In this case, Nadella effectively shunted Windows to its own division with all of the company’s other non-strategic assets, leaving Myerson and team to come to yesterday’s decision on their own. Remember, Nadella opposed the Nokia acquisition, but instead of simply dropping the axe on day one, thus wasting precious political capital, he let Windows give it their best shot and come to that conclusion on their own.
However, it looks like Microsoft is isolating the online services from the client platform in order to de-prioritise Windows, which inherently makes Windows itself more replaceable. That creates a huge potential gap in the overall tech market, particularly once Windows 7 reaches end-of-support and a lot of people are going to be wondering about what they can do if they don't want Windows 10. (After all, if they did want Windows 10, why are so many people still not using it?)
There obviously aren't that many businesses that would be in a position to exploit such a vulnerability and start building not just a viable alternative client OS but a viable alternative ecosystem around it, but there are some. Apple could be a threat from one direction. Traditional big tech companies like IBM could be a threat from another. With the foundations available with modern OSS stacks, an unexpected alternative from (or sponsored by) the likes of Red Hat might be less likely but not totally out of the question either, or even a curveball from the likes of Intel.
So, what if one or more of them really did produce a compelling client platform and moved the whole industry back in the direction of local software and in-house operations? If the current focus on Cloud everything wanes, but Microsoft has voluntarily given up its long-standing dominance of the more traditional parts of the industry by neglecting Windows as a platform in its own right, where does that leave their online services five or ten years from now?
Maybe the likes of Satya Nadella are just much better connected in the big boardrooms than a mere geek like me, and they're confident that the emphasis on Cloud everything isn't going anywhere any time soon. But now we've been doing that for a while and the gloss has worn off a bit with all the real world problems of reliability, security, leaks, costs, and so on, I can't help wondering whether Nadella is mostly playing to Cloud-obsessed big investors and at some point those investors will prove to have been throwing good money after bad because they didn't know any better.
I've been thinking about this too but I don't see who would stand to gain from it.
If Wine got some serious commercial backing it could be leveraged to run all "legacy" Windows apps on another platform (Linux). Desktop Linux is relatively far along but with solid commercial backing it could become a serious contender. Or something more exotic...
The only question is: cui bono? Who would have a reason to go that route?
The claimed benefits of the Cloud have always been as much hype as substance, and a lot of the "sales pitch" in the early days has now been debunked. We're not going to run short of stories about major Cloud services having significant downtime, poor support, data leaks and so on any time soon.
Likewise SaaS is a great pitch if you're a software developer, and converting capex to opex makes it attractive in some contexts as a customer as well. However, I get the feeling that patience is starting to wear a bit thin in some quarters now, with customers looking at the overall costs they're paying, how many improvements they're really seeing in return, and also how many unwanted changes are being pushed out.
Depending on where you stand on those issues, combined with the general dumbing down associated with many online apps compared to traditional desktop software, I can imagine a variety of situations where businesses might be looking at keeping more IT in-house as we go round the cycle again. For personal use, I suspect there's less of an incentive because many of these users are quite happy with just using their tech for basic communications and information retrieval, but for those who do want to do more creative things or who enjoy more demanding applications like games, again there's surely a big enough market for a serious desktop OS with an emphasis on good management of local native applications and not just being an expensive thin client for online services.
So who potentially benefits from an industry shift? I guess the simple answer is anyone who is interested in developing software for the markets I just described.
Someone like Valve, who has a massive investment in Windows software in areas that Microsoft has specifically targeted for "embracing."
What Microsoft doesn't seem to understand is that when they screw with Windows and deprioritize the needs of its users, they're also screwing with the rest of us who live, work, and play in their ecosystem. Gabe Newell, being an old-school 'softie himself, understands that very well... and he's one of the few interested parties with the funding to do something about it.
That is the part that baffles me. Visual Studio Code is a fantastic advert for the Microsoft brand: every day it shows every developer who uses it that MS can produce genuinely great software. It makes Azure more credible, as well as providing on-ramps to services. If people have a bad experience with Windows, why would they be inclined to get other services from MS?
Ironically, we decided not to try out VS Code specifically because of privacy/security concerns about Microsoft that have been heightened since Windows 10. We checked Microsoft's written policies to see what sort of telemetry data was being uploaded. We were unable to find any detailed information about it, and the general wording appeared to allow for uploading more-or-less anything, up to and including our own code.
"telemetry.enableCrashReporter": false, "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false,
into vscode settings and you are fine wrt telemetry.
What concerns me more is that the .rpm build is consistently later than other builds. Usually it means, that the user is staring 2 out of 4 weeks every month on update notification, that cannot be used, because the build is not ready yet.
It brings back the memories of MSIE and WMP that used to be available for Solaris and HP-UX, always slightly later... until they weren't and the users were left in the dark.
... for the moment, as far as you know.
The problem is the trust thing, not the telemetry thing.
Yes, exactly, and trust is hard to earn but easily lost. Given the corporate philosophy of Nadella's Microsoft, and the fact that Nadella was made CEO in the first place when it was pretty clear what style of leader he was going to be, I don't see Microsoft ever regaining the kind of trust we used to place in it without fundamental changes that start at the highest levels. And sadly, as long as investors continue to buy into that vision, those changes are highly unlikely.
It's not often I feel so strongly about a business, but Microsoft's actions in recent years almost feel like a personal betrayal after being being their customer for so long and trusting them as a keystone of the tech industry. In this case, I really do regard them as "the enemy" now, and I really do hope that someone else will drive a wedge through a gap created by their customer-hostile strategy with painful and expensive consequences for their management and investors.
I wish I could agree with you. However, the QA layoffs at Microsoft were in 2014; if something like was going to happen, it would have happened by now.
I have championed it when it came out, and despite being in a hard position to pick one up I managed to do so.
I deeply deeply regret it.
If anything I have gone from being a massive supporter to actively doing what I can to spite the brand.
The product is an expensive laptop, which has such critical issues with it that it renders it inoperable.
Then when you need to try and talk to MSFT help, they are about as capable as toddlers. Politely unaware and unhelpful.
The surface line went from having a great rating, to having that rating revoked since it is unrepairable.
I want to love my device, I am using it right now, but there are serious issues with it, and this is a device which has been placed in the same context as apple products and their legendary support reputation./
One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store.
Even though Win10 attempted corrective action it always struck me that it was still accepting the fundamental thesis of Win8. They still kept with the Orwellian redefinition of phrases like "Windows app" to mean very recent, immature and unproven technology. They were still talking about ARM devices that don't let you do a straightforward recompile of old code. They were still pushing the Store as the only means to distribute software, where even Apple has not succeeded in changing people's habits on the desktop.
I hope that with a weaker organization, people keeping the lights on for Windows will know to not shake things up too severely and ease up on pushing some of these silly ideas. I somehow doubt it. I've been hoping for that for... 7 years?
A fun result of the whole mess is that after a new Windows 10 install, the first thing I do now is open Store to install Ubuntu WSL.
The old Windows desktop might have had a half dozen things prompting you to elevate and update. Flash player, Adobe reader, Java runtime, all these things wanted your undivided attention to update, not to mention were polling the network and using resources to do that. So maybe you could see a single piece of infrastructure allowing those third parties to hook in less intrusively.
But that's not what they asked for. They would prefer you trash your app and write for the thing they came up with this year, to be thrown away when they do the rewrite the next year.
That hasn't been true for over a year now. Classic Win32 desktop apps have been in the Store for over a year now (nearly a year and a half). It's my preferred way now to install things like Office and Paint.NET. Even Photoshop is in the Store now.
(Even iTunes was promised at one point, and I'm still very hopeful for that, because Apple's Windows Updater is still one of the worst updaters on Windows, where bad updaters was once an art form.)
Selling only WinRT software made all their efforts worthless.
Forcing developers to provide Win32 and WinRT versions of software alienated software developers.
Some of the calculation was correct. WinRT was not.
They don't have to sell all existing legacy Win32 apps in the store, but they should at least allow some Win32 apps.
About malicious software, I think it would be very dangerous legally for the malicious developer to expose his personal and financial information to MS and expect nothing happens when caught.
And all it would take is the developer to claim that their machine had a virus unbeknownst to them that somehow made its way into their binary.
Dunno, Steam is in a position where they don't really have to care about the Windows brand but Microsoft does, so they have a bit more freedom than Microsoft in that.
With Windows 8 they tried to do too much too quickly and not well, however their motivations and intention were spot on in my opinion. Security has always been a pain point for Windows and it's only been getting worse, the Store introduced a sandbox like that found on iOS and Android. ARM, iOS, and Android showed that modern hardware and software can produce power efficiencies that put x86 and Windows to shame. UWP introduced hardware independence and a modern development framework that would put Windows Apps on a level playing field with iOS and Android.
The problem was that Microsoft thought that merely by virtue of their existence, developers would adopt UWP/Store despite the path forward being a huge pain in the ass. We see how that played out. With Windows 10 we've seen a course correction and a change in strategy. You can have traditional Applications sandboxed in the Store, and you can have UWP Apps outside the Store. Microsoft bought Xamarin and is folding it into UWP, the intent is to not just have hardware independence with UWP but also OS independence.
will keep my Win7 for as long as hardware and software keeps running. don-t expect much more from OS honestly
Android and iOS have demonstrably shown that most users don't value freedom as long as the OS works for their needs. Most users are security nightmares as IT Admins and relatives supporting family members can attest to. The Store is Microsoft's attempt to introduce that stability and safety to the wider Windows audience.
That's not to say that there isn't a significant subset of power users who want the ability to do what they will with their machine however they are the exception.
Microsoft is struggling with how to cater to both markets simultaneously.
The first is designed to be casual and apps grew out of a situation where there previously was nothing, while desktop OS's have had decades of external software being installed regularly. Introducing something new, especially when opening up so much potential, is far easier than trying to change existing habits of both consumers and vendors on an existing landscape.
The iPad is a good case showing how the same model doesn’t succeed without top class apps.
IFF your user has enabled side-loading.
That’s a bold claim presented without evidence.
Wasn't old windows desktop technology the one proven to be bad? I mean I can say this because I like windows, but people have made fun of windows bugs and viruses for three decades now..
Granted, Windows Store still sucks ass years later its introduction, but building a new ecosystem with unified and modern tooling was probably a necessary step for them to make
A lot of that stuff could have been (and is now being) fixed incrementally. Lots of that tech is available to Windows desktop applications without needing to switch to UWP. Some of it is UWP only (except for a backstage pass for Edge, which tells you everything you need to know) only to push developers to the Store.
I sometimes wonder if maybe they should have done a hard fork between 7 and 8 and continue to develop 7 for commercial users and 8 would be the consumer version.
In the commercial branch, they could undo some of the moves they made years ago (like putting GDI in the kernel rather than user space) to eventually get a more stable, secure OS.
The thing with "people making fun" through is that a lot of it was by-product of culture war between linux and windows world. between radical ideological open source and closed source - where Microsoft engaged in a lot of ugly tactic. Between techies who wanted tech focused on their needs and commercial company that cared significantly less about needs of admins, tinkerers and such.
Meaning, the jokes were much more political and much less technical. They were often result of people hating Microsoft (recall their ugly tactic).
I feel like MS had mostly quashed these problems with XP - it was certainly not bug-free, but after a few years was a solid enough platform many used it all the way to (and probably past) its EoL in 2014.
Here's hoping they'll rethink that at some point and follow Apple's approach of having just one desktop OS instead of nickel-and-diming the masses for features such as BitLocker.
But they just can’t bear to actually get it all right, so still try and stiff people to switch off ‘S’ mode.
- There will be less SKUs
- Updates won't require to restart the OS
Well ...
With the possible exception of my non-Retina iPad mini I’d rather watch Netflix on any of my mobile devices. It never even occurred to me to look for it on my laptop, because the form factor is so ridiculous for movie watching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
Windows for Pen Computing was released in 1992.
For the record, I had a MP120 and absolutely loved that machine.
Now, I have no idea where to even start! C#? C++? .NET? Win32? MFC? WPF? XAML? WinForms? UWP? What a rat’s next! How did MS let the development ecosystem get so muddied? I know I can go online and research all of these, learn the trade offs, and hope I bet on the right horse, but then again I could also choose to simply leave this crazy platform alone and work on more features on the platforms that are more comfortable.
Out (but not gone/forgotten): Win32 (hand-coded C, C++ MFC, C++ ATL and related alphabet soup [aka back in the day the choice wasn't easy, either], VB6, .NET WinForms, etc), WPF/Silverlight (a .NET only XAML platform)
In: UWP (C++ with XAML, C#/.NET with XAML, JS with HTML/CSS)
Just three UI platforms to consider (Win32, WPF, UWP), two of which are mostly deprecated and not recommended if you are building a fresh application or porting one to a new UI. The remaining platform (UWP) gives you language choice (C++, C# or other .NET languages, JS), but not UI design framework/markup language choice (XAML, unless JS and then HTML).
If you are doing a fresh port of a C++ application from another platform, the choice seems pretty simple to target the UWP and use XAML to define your UI.
In the mean time, if you, in a corporate environment, must Windows 7 until the bitter end in 2020, you can use WPF as a bootstrap step towards UWP. The XAML is similar between them and a lot of the coding paradigms are same (MVVM patterns), and if you architect well (.NET Standard 2.0 libraries) you can share 100% of your business logic between a WPF application and a UWP application.
Xamarin.Forms also has an open source WPF renderer if you'd prefer to further go the cross-platform route. (Xamarin.Forms supports UWP, iOS, Android, macOS.)
I agree that I think Microsoft should have had the .NET Standard, XAML Standard, WPF Xamarin.Forms development stories in place sooner to better leverage developers that need to support older Windows, but many of those pieces are in place now if that is what corporate developers were waiting for.
Presumably, given that the opposite has happened, in that case, "targets" would not have been met by "Q4" and important team members would have to be "let go".
As you point out, this is not new. I would pin the start of this trajectory on the introduction of Windows Activation with XP. It's all variations on the theme of restricting the user's freedom. It hasn't been your software since 2001. It's theirs.
One of the points the article makes is that Ballmer's MS would do things like not release Office for iOS because that would potentially eat into Windows marketshare. That no longer will happen. MS sees its more important to get o365 everywhere they can.
From my perspective, switching small businesses over to Exchange Online and other o365 services - The future is bright for MS in that space. These SMBs we've switched over have gone from using a version of Office they purchased forever ago and an old Exchange license to paying 50-100 a month for Office 365.
Mac OSX, Linux+desktop (any of several), IOS, and Android are all operating systems that can do everything you need of an OS, except MAYBE run windows programs.
Which is to say Windows as a separate company probably cannot make it long term.
The only computer I own at home (other than ipad/iphone) is a Chromebook. But I lease a cheap VPS that lets me do "computer stuff" otherwise.
Can you list some? That sort of software is my favorite genre and I'm always interested to hear about different ones.
(Then there's scientific software -- Stata and Matlab and that stuff. But ten years ago Matlab, like gagh, was best served in higher-end minicomputers and now everything is Python and can be ran on a cheap VPS or on AWS.)
Besides the sheer gobsmacking convenience, there's also the fact that it's way more fun for bean-counters to have higher OPEX in exchange of lower CAPEX. It really kicks the llama's ass.
I'd even buy the Windows 12 Pro 2021 version when the time came for fundamental internals shifting like wider WSL access.
I would. An update to Windows 7 that worked well with modern hardware and had modern security updates but otherwise ignored almost everything Microsoft have done in more recent versions would be a significant improvement on anything currently available for those of us who value stability and security over bells and whistles.
That is surely overstating it, at least for definitions of "long" meaning <= 20 years. If you assume that Windows is more or less "done" their engineering expenses could be low, and revenue significant, merely serving the corporate and various niche (gaming, etc) markets which are still heavily bound to Windows. Their market share is declining in some niches (such as CAD) and maybe even overall (to OS X), but negative revenue and market share growth does not necessarily mean quick extinction. Some dinosaurs take decades to bleed out.
Windows is a perfect example of no focus at all. Maybe this makes sense for a true mainstream OS.
To be honest, I wonder if Azure, Exchange online or Office 365 can really be their future. Why not use AWS, Scaleway or a local service. It's cheaper and better.
If you mean as in a desktop PC then no, but smartphones is becoming more and more important and Apple is not strong outside the US. Around here almost everyone has an Android phone as a work phone and I see more Chromebooks by the day.
I also want to point out that i believe that saying they abandon the ecosystem is missing the point. They don't. They just don't let Windows dictate what the rest of the business does.
There are still a lot of tech heads and gamers that depend on Windows and will continue to buy into the platform. I even know hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server.
With Android being a clusterfuck of vendor specific bloatware and not having a single concept of a clean install, Microsoft should focus on keeping a clean Windows install equivalent to a fresh Mac install.
Everyone hates when Microsoft changes something core and foundational about Windows and thus there has been little change in certain areas of the OS for the last two decades. That build up of cruft has become untenable and Microsoft attempted to address major pain points like the Control Panel with Windows 8, then 8.1, and still in 10. The problem is that rewriting something like the Control Panel would consume 100% of developer resources for an entire OS Dev cycle. Can you imagine if Microsoft announced Windows 11 and the only difference between it and 10 was a new control panel?
Windows 10 is the perfect opportunity to start fixing cruft. It's already controversial but not universally hated, they got the majority of people to adopt it through free upgrades, and they've introduced the semi annual upgrade cycle that allows them to gradually introduce foundational changes gradually. With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently.
And with every shift towards ads or trying to force a mobile-first UI on a desktop/laptop, they alienate users off of it. I switched to OS X as soon as I saw the writing on the wall with Win8 (and Wine on OS X got stable enough to play GTA San Andreas, tbh).
Also, I wonder if it would be possible to get Windows 7 userland to run on a Win10 (and with it, WSL) kernel. Now that's something I'd switch back to Windows for.
You mean like Apple asking me to use iCloud every single time I unlock my Mac? Or every time I power on my test iOS devices? Or do you mean up I have to open the App Store to apply MacOS updates and click past the ads?
Windows 10 adds some shortcuts to the start menu during the bi-annual updates, they're annoying but once they're deleted they don't come back. They also have an add in Explorer for OneDrive that also goes away permanently when dismissed.
If I had to choose between MacOS/iOS Ads, and Windows 10 Ads, I'd choose Windows but ideally they'd both stop it.
> trying to force a mobile-first UI on a desktop/laptop
Windows 8.1 and 10 don't require UWP apps to be full screen. And actually the Settings App in Windows 10 is fantastic because it responsively adapts and is usable whatever size you make it.
MacOS on the other hand won't allow you to resize most settings windows and they're fixed to a size that's comparable with a 90s era Macintosh despite MacOS only working on machines with high resolution displays.
> I switched to OS X ... with Win8
So you've never used Windows 10 first hand then and you're just spouting things you've read to validate your decision?
wtf? I don't use iCloud and don't get this nag. I only get a single question when I reimage my test computers or wipe a test device, that's it.
> Windows 8.1 and 10 don't require UWP apps to be full screen.
The start menu is enough for me to permanently turn me away. Or this stupid "tile" interface. What's that crap even for?
> So you've never used Windows 10 first hand then and you're just spouting things you've read to validate your decision?
No, it's these things that I always encounter when having to fix other people's computers. Plus I do not really like that Windows 10 has un-opt-out-able telemetry (yes, you can turn it off by hacks, but every random "update" will turn it back on again).
Are you signed into it though? I'm not and it nags me to sign in.
> The start menu is enough for me to permanently turn me away.
Which one? 8, 8.1 and 10 all have very different start menus.
> Or this stupid "tile" interface. What's that crap even for?
In Windows 10 it's not unlike Dashboard in MacOS.
No, I don't use it in any form.
> Which one? 8, 8.1 and 10 all have very different start menus.
And they're all not the Win95-to-Win-7-era one. I need a working menu with nothing else, especially not tiles or ads.
> In Windows 10 it's not unlike Dashboard in MacOS.
Which Apple doesn't force one to use, thank God. Programs folder in the Dock, that's it (although, I admit, I'd prefer a list/menu...).
That's not an 'ad' - there is a ton of OS-level functionality that's tied to your iCloud ID and account, you can ignore it if you want, but it's not an 'ad' if they want you to use it...
Also ads on the lock screen, ads in the start menu ("app suggestions") and (Edge) ads from the toolbar. Just off top of my head, maybe I missed some.
I don't get asked to use iCloud every time I unlock a Mac. Additionally, I don't recall a Mac ever displaying ads in their file explorer asking me to upgrade my SkyDrive storage. Nor do I ever recall Mac OS ever installing third party bloatware apps and games and making them front and center in the Start menu. I also don't recall ever having to proactively prevent the mass collection of "telemetry" data when installing Mac OS.
To be fair, it will ask you once at profile creation if you agree to sending telemetry. To the best of my knowledge though, Apple respects the choice and does not reset it quietly like Windows does.
Let's have a look at the "Get Going Fast" screen
https://media.askvg.com/articles/images5/Customize_Privacy_S...
You'll see at the very bottom a Customize Settings button that is nearly invisible. It's located on the left side, shaded in a color that is different from the other buttons and the text size is substantially smaller than the standard button text size.
The majority of users will have missed this and just clicked on the Use Express Settings button.
Let's have a look at what is turned on by default:
Personalization
1. Personalize your speech, inkling input and typing by sending contacts and calendar details, along with other associated input data to Microsoft.
2. Send typing and input data to Microsoft to improve the recognition and suggestion platform.
3. Let apps use your advertising ID for experience across apps.
4. Let Skype (if installed) help you connect with friends in your address book and verify your mobile number. SMS and data charges may apply.
Location
1. Turn on Find My Device and let Windows and apps request your location, including location history and send Microsoft and trusted partners location data to improve location services.
Connectivity and error reporting
1. Automatically connect to suggested open hotspots. Not all networks are secure.
2. Automatically connect to networks shared by your contacts.
3. Automatically connect to hotspots temporarily to see if paid Wi-Fi services are available.
4. Send full error and diagnostic information to Microsoft.
Browser, protection, and update
1. User SmartScreen online services to help protect against malicious content and downloads in sites loaded by Windows browsers and Store apps.
2. User page prediction to improve reading, speed up browsing, and make your overall experience better in Windows browsers. Your browsing data will be sent to Microsoft.
3. Get updates from and send update to others PCs on the Internet to speed up app and Windows update downloads.
And some folks get the really big money for "driving business initiative", "spearheading new projects" and stuff like that.
What's the use case for a "hard core Linux dev" and WSL? I've tried it. It failed miserably for Rails development when it was released. I logged bugs. I went back to what I was doing. Maybe it's gotten good now?
Speaking of Windows OEM bloatware clusterfucks here's your typical Windows HP OEM Windows clusterfuck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1GyAI5d-Yw&feature=youtu.be...
Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005 era, and it kind of stuck around.
Windows has provisions for performing all sorts of tasks across a fleet of desktops. I can automate deployment of a Windows desktop to the point where all you have to do is boot it up and join it to the domain (which makes it easier to hire someone to do it as well).
What's more is that these settings will work across updates. I've gotten really sick of the screwy changes Apple makes to macOS with little warning. Windows goes to great lengths to ensure backwards compatibility between major version upgrades. (For example, did you know VB6 apps still run just fine?) Also, I can get fine grained control of updates to Windows.
But maybe most importantly, I can virtualize Windows and create a virtual desktop environment. Now I can hand out toasters to users and they can just log in to their box from anywhere.
Windows is simply much better at making desktop units fungible.
That said, everywhere I've worked the past 8 years, across 3 jobs, was virtually Mac-only. But yes, the valley is an outlier.
From the medium to enterprise range, maintenance and stability issues are often one in the same. Breaking automated maintenance and/or deployment leads to instability.
Keep in mind I don't mean "kernel panic" levels of instability or even "programs crashing" levels of instability. The smallest of changes can cause a mountain of work in large environments. Simply changing the icon of an often used program can cause a deluge of tickets.
This level of stability and control is something that macOS doesn't even come close to recognizing.
My MBP and its periodic gray screen of death begs to differ. Apple really needs to shore up its QA.
amazing how many people here are missing the point. this is not about Windows vs MacOS. Client OS has become a commodity with prices approaching 0 (MacOS no longer charges for upgrades, neither does iOS or Android) and users care less about how they get to Facebook.
Think about server/mobile space. if MS tried to hang on to their dominance simply via desktop lock-in (because it worked in the past) that would be their Kodak moment. All Nadela is doing here is emphasizing efforts on staying competitive in cloud/o365 which is where he thinks they can continue to grow and stay competitive and bring in revenues from enterprise clients. Less and less companies want to lease/run their own windows/database servers, and with technologies like containers a lot of companies are now going with open source solutions.
And guess what, the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux.
This is a small and shrinking corner of the market. Valuable. But still a corner.
They haven't really up until now have they? MS licenses are not a big part of the IT budget compared to the people needed to run an in-house data center (typically staffed 24x7)
No, established enterprises (both private and government) are, in the real world, important customers for cloud offerings like Azure, GCP, and AWS.
I'd be wary about how the real world actually deals with that, but there is no lack of large companies jumping on short term costs cuts without looking at the risks.
Really? People incentivised into looking for your best interests vs. a managed organization incentivised into dissolving your contract and gaining on average. I can't imagine anything that could create more different risks.
What people seem to do all the time is looking at an SLA and believing the real world must behave the way things are on paper; because there's a signature there. People do this even after being recently burned by the same partner. Some people have the same trust for in house staff, but the usual on high management is to have the exact opposite bias.
My Boss is smart and he'd wonder what the business plan would be should say 5 years down the line you want to move away from the cloud for some reason.
You threw away decades of accumulated knowledge about the company and it's systems to save some money upfront.
He thinks on a longer scope than most bosses I've known though (largely because his family own the group so he doesn't have to answer to shareholders).
When we're talking about an entire ecosystem going away, the new one has to have almost 100% adoption. Windows desktop is going to exist for a really long time, especially when everyone else is giving up on desktops.
And yes, companies are entirely moving their systems and data. Salesforce runs their sales team. Oracle and SAP runs their ERP and finance. And now AWS/Azure runs their IT infrastructure. They use email from Google or Microsoft, along with hundreds of other SaaS products used day to day by employees. New startups are even more invested and start using other vendors for every non-core activity from day one. This is what a strong global business ecosystem enables and is a massive advantage for everyone.
Disclaimer: I work at SAP, but not in the same division. And not in sales either, so take my word with a grain of salt. ;)
I guess the 5 years I spent at a massive tech company shutting down our datacenters didn't happen and all the recruiters offering me huge amounts of money to move their stuff into aws aren't real.
[CITATION NEEDED]
This is very myopic. Establishes businesses are huge customers (both current customers and potential customers), for cloud providers.
You are incredibly unbelievably wrong here. I work for a vendor known for incredibly high prices and have knowledge of basically the entire infrastructure of every one of my clients, and nearly all of them have a massive cloud strategy that's in-place right now. I even have clients shipping their security and compliance logs to the cloud, or sending them from cloud to cloud.
Actually the more medium-sized businesses are the ones most hesitant to move to the cloud, because of the lack of cloud expertise on their teams. But even then... it's still a huge strategy. They're all consolidating physical datacenters and using Amazon or Azure or Google.
Also, I don't want to get off topic but how does SIEM space fit into the infrastructure stack you see in the future? In security, what about the firewall vendors trying to become the central hub for managing the new security needs brought about by the cloud (CASB, endpoint, virtual firewalls, etc?). What about SaaS only Iidentity & access management solutions like OKta?--I hear they are a game changer, but is a cloud-only solution really the best positioned seller for something like this, especially considering the hybrid structure of most large orgs today (on-prem & off-prem/public cloud)?
When it comes to next-gen security appliances, I see them enhancing the SIEM, but not replacing it. Too many regulations require centralized log management, and organizations depend on a central alerting and monitoring platform. I do see these security platforms making the SIEM cheaper and dumber, though. Whether it’s a storage-based pricing like Splunk or an event Rate pricing like QRadar, licensing costs a lot. Which means it costs a lot to feed a bunch of dumb logs into a system that makes information out of dumb logs. As long as you already have a Palo Alto, you might as well feed the IDPS logs into your SIEM and forget the rest: it’s fewer logs, cheaper licensing, and less hardware needed on the SIEM. You already have the Palo doing the intelligence.
With regards to hybrid clouds that are popular today, you see a lot of SIEMs go to the cloud. You can ship logs cloud-to-cloud, which saves bandwidth backhauling it to the enterprise. It is a challenge for security logging to get data from there though. Oftentimes it costs extra to send logs, or can’t be done at all. Amazon wants you to use Cloudwatch. Microsoft wants you to use Security Center. It’s a pain to centralize it all. That’s going to have to change.
To your last point: sounds like it should change, but not that it necessarily will. I can’t fathom the cloud providers would allow an independent third party come in and take this business from them, despite how much easier it would be for the customer.
I thought splunk was usage based pricing, not storage based? But yes, I have heard similar things on how quickly it can get expensive, sometimes without any warning when they get a bill 10x what they expected...
Thanks for your time.
When it comes to "someone else's datacenter", I think you'd be surprised at just how few companies even own a datacenter, let alone their own racks. Even the major clouds lease their own space from actual datacenter builders and operators.
Established businesses do this all the time.
That Windows we all know, both desktop and server side, is not dead. The economics on the server side are diminishing (20~30 year outlook) and Microsoft won't be around if they don't do something about it now.
IMHO it's a very smart strategy, people just didn't understand what Ben was saying because he didn't articulate it correctly (which I do find with his content, but it's less often the case)
Most definitely not. There are a ton of Microsoft Certified Somethings that will refuse to administrate Linux servers unless their life depends on it.
Source: I work at SAP's internal cloud unit. We have to support Windows VMs (begrudgingly, if I may say), even for payloads that could run on Linux.
They aren't abandoning the desktop Windows ecosystem, they’ve just demoted Windows from a single desktop and server org that the rest of the firm orbits to something that serves the areas where there actually is expected to be growth.
I suspect it's a mere marketing strategy to jack up their stock price and gain a "cool factor". MS will go wherever the market/profits leads them.
Their cloud is commercially successful, a rarity for new MS products actually, and that's where they currently see future growth. But if Windows stays a nice cash cow, they'll quietly milk it.
"Productivity" applications still need a real GUI, something the Web has yet to do right cross-browser: CSS/JS/DOM is a mess. I believe we need a WYSIWYG standard to get GUI's right. The server side can still scale the window & widgets per device size under WYSIWYG, so it's a myth that WYSIWYG is anti-mobile. The client-side auto-flow approach sucks for efficient UI's.
Sticking with something just because it's a large majority is a great way to fail when that something fades into the background.
I'm not a huge fan of using my tablet or phone for things. I almost always prefer using a "real" operating system. I know that puts me in the minority to an extent, but I'm not the only one. The problem is, neither major desktop OS is moving in a direction I like. I guess I'm just getting old and cranky.
With the open source AMD drivers.
For everything else I do use native editors.
Edit for the audience: http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html
The major sticking point in that whole discussion is that Tanenbaum may have been right in principle but Minix was not a very good illustration of what a micro kernel could look like. QnX on the other hand was awesome and to this day powers a very large chunk of the embedded sphere.
Even containers are a kind of workaround for achieving the same goals.
Whether or not Windows as designed to be like QnX is immaterial, the question is what would be the better OS to serve as the engine behind a computer interacting with its users and my vote definitely goes to a real time operating system using a micro kernel. Because in my opinion that's by far the best match for that workload.
Stability, speed of interaction driver isolation and so on are much much better when using something like QnX vs a monolith. And a GUI is a real time affair.
This is useful both when debugging and when dealing with broken applications.
Which is usually not the case on desktop oriented distributions.
Works with Linux out of the box as Dell made all of the driver's work for their developer edition's in Ubuntu. Battery life and and the 3200x1800 screen are phenomenal. Well made and Dell's warranty process is actually fairly good. It's no Apple warranty, but does the job.
Back in the late 90s there were genuine hurdles to do with Linux desktops, my 1999 desktop didn't work in X with redhat 5.2 because of the graphics card.
Today's when most productivity programs are web based, and so much more is cross platform, its far easier to run Linux than windows.
The only problem I had I might blame Linux for was that it randomly dropped the connection to my Bluetooth headset, and it took a reboot to connect the headset again.
I bought a Lenovo Carbon X1 4th gen a few months ago. I was originally going to keep a Windows partition, but wiped Windows 10 Home after about 20 min. The fresh install of Linux Mint was even simpler than expected. I’ve been really enjoying Linux ever since, with the only issue being the HiDPI support mentioned elsewhere ... a 1.5x would be perfect and once that happens, I’d recommend my build even to my parents who are long-time mac/windows users.
[0] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/showdependencytree.cgi?i...
OpenJDK 9 supports HiDPI out of the box[1].
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Fractional_Scalin...
So no, I don't consider it an "edge case" if everyone in the office with a Linux laptop has the same problem
High dpi is important as is low dpi (for a while still at least), mixed dpi is an edge case even if you disagree.
It's only an edge case on Linux because anyone trying to use such a laptop on Linux is met with pretty much unacceptable breakage and has to move away to Windows or macOS.
Basically all you need is at least DisplayPort 1.2 (or 1.2a if you want Freesync) for 4K @ 60 Hz.
The RX 550 has 1.3 support, so it should handle up to 2x4K @ 60Hz with MST (daisy-chained or with a splitter) or a single 5K @ 60Hz.
Some 4K monitors can also work with 2×HDMI, but I don’t think you’ll find that on any low-end card. Maybe high-end used.
As for actual performance, there is a huge gap between what you need for gaming and what you need for office work.
A low-level graphics card from few generations ago with 1GB of VRAM would be fine even (like Quadro 2000), except that it will only be able to drive the display at 30 Hz.
The biggest gotcha with a 4K display is actually your host RAM. If you try to run anything like GIMP, Photoshop, or vector editors in particular, it will gobble up much more memory than usual. Your regular web browser will as well, though to a much lesser degree.
Getting something just a little better, like an RX 560, might be a good idea though, this gives you enough GPGPU power to run most expensive video filters and scalers at native 4K[2].
[1] My Apollo Lake netbook with an entry-level iGPU can handle a 3K display easy
[2] Your source material might be 1080p but you end up postprocessing it at 4K. This might surprise some people.
Linux on the desktop has always been a niche experience for a niche audience. ChromeOS and Android (both based on Linux) are mainstream desktop experiences, as are MacOS, iOS, and Windows.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProced...
Someone should tell Ubuntu that this is no longer needed.
When is that end of the day? Over the last decades it would have been extremely difficult making money with Linux dekstop software. Windows and Mac were the only viable options to run a business.
"One of the things, none of the distributions have ever done right is application packaging ... making binaries for Linux desktop applications is a major fucking pain in the ass. You don't make binaries for Linux, you make binaries for Fedora 19, Fedora 20, maybe even RHEL5 from 10 years ago. You make binaries for Debian Stable…well actually no, you don't make binaries for Debian Stable because Debian Stable has libraries that are so old that anything built in the last century it doesn't work. …and this [“Don't Break Userspace!”] is like, a big deal for the kernel, and I put a lot of effort into explaining to all the developers that this is a really important thing, and then all of the distributions come in, and they screw it all up. Because they break binary compatibility left and right."
--Linus Torvalds, DebConf 2014
Let me ask you a quick question: How can I distribute an application in a way that will work on all Linux Desktops?
It's a trick question without a clear answer.
Many people tried, noone has ever succeeded.
Linux is a very large family of operating systems, with hundreds of members and variations. It's really a meaningless term.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1504-QHX...
AppImage/Flatpak/Snap/Docker is mostly the same idea, just executed differently.
Oh, you meant that they package the libraries with the application? Yeah. If it isn't part of the base system, they do. That's how it should work or you get DLL hell.
Problem with Linux Desktop is if you put any two of its community in a room you'd have 4 different incompatible base systems within a week.
There is also work towards a more modular approach with Flatpak and Snaps, but those require support from the distro side. AppImage doesn't need any specific distro support.
It's 2018 and the Linux Desktop still doesn't have a consistent way to... well do anything now that I think about it, but that you can't even reliably distribute an application is pretty insane.
Flatpak and Snaps are a typical Linux Desktop solution: Over-engineer the shit out of it.
Beyond that, AppImage is really just a container. It is still up to the developer to bundle the necessary dependencies (libraries, runtimes, VMs, data files, etc), but this is something they'd need to do with Windows too.
What problems do you have with it?
> It is still up to the developer to bundle the necessary dependencies (libraries, runtimes, VMs, data files, etc), but this is something they'd need to do with Windows too.
Only for libraries not present in the base system. Problem with Linux Desktop world is that they seem to actively loathe the concept of a consistent base system.
Usually the only ones willing to pay for Linux software are enterprise shops.
Most are though.
Try to get a mortage, pay a monthly rent, pay the kids school,.... just with donations.
One needs a regular source of income.
Desktop users are usually not keen to pay for consulting, trainigs or documentation. Rather just paying once.
Vendors that have pushed for web solutions get a constant revenue, but that solution makes the desktop irrelevant thus regular users see no benefit in running e.g. Chrome in other OS that wasn't already installed on the hardware that they bought.
Additionally such hardware is as proprietary as it ever was, even if built with a FOSS stack, as no one gets the sauce running on the server.
At work, we have a big TV screen showing an alert overview (a Grafana dashboard). A Raspberry Pi with Raspbian and Firefox would be enough to do that, but if we were to connect one to the LAN, its MAC would be blacklisted within less than a hour. (I've heard a report from a contractor plugging his own notebook into Ethernet, who had said cable ripped out by the local admin a few minutes later.) We ended up using an old notebook from one of our colleagues running Windows 7 Enterprise. Every few days, we have to RDP into it to click through app updates or restart the browser or something like that.
How do you reconcile Adobe Linux for After Effects/Photoshop/Premier with Autodesk Linux for Maya/...?
There's small UI affordances I miss, there's no MS Office (which is becoming less of a problem for sure), Spotify is iffy, etc etc. So many small things that add up.
Finally - Windows Susbsytem for Linux, or whatever it's called, has really made CLI work on Windows painless. With oh my zsh and CMDer I can do just about everything I can on my Ubuntu machines. Even though Windows 10 or MacOS aren't perfect, the pain isn't quite great enough for me to seriously make a change.
For the last year I ran a x200 (c2d p8400, passmark 1458) + below average ssd. Win10, almost no cruft, some cortana disabled etc.
It's ok but became worse and worse (regular pointer lag for a minute, pointer lag is very very sad and indicates very low level perf issues)
I don't use full fledged linux Desktops, if at all. I run a bare i3wm + emacs + $browser + mpv setup.
Last week I booted my old x61 (c2d l7500, passmark 967) on old intel 80GB SSD linux machine. I was stunned ..
chromium and firefox are seriously more reactive. They're only slower for graphics/video/intense workloads. emacs and git flies. Everything is tiny and leaner. Even on an older, slower cpu.
It's even mentally easier since I have less things to handle under linux (still too much to my tastes, but windows has so many components and moving pieces..)
I have to run that archlinux/i3wm setup on the x200 to get more data.
Well, it's Linux; unless you're running Gentoo, you can probably just swap the hard drive :-) Unless of course the SSD is an important part of this test.
X220/8Gb/xfce4 runs fine for my modest needs.
At one of my employers they are using Windows 10 for Education. We had some atom based small form factor desktop PCs that worked really nicely with Windows 10 just after the upgrade, but then as great grandparent post says began to become noticebly slower as the weeks and months went by. They have been replaced with i5/8Mb machines now which seem fine.
ps: btw I just did ssd swap. I'll see how the x200 does. First difference, wifi nic has a much stronger signal/bandwidth.
I highly recommend Linux Mint with Cinnamon to anyone just starting out.
The problem is that when you hit one of these issues it's infuriating and often costs a lot of time. It also has a way of happening when you really don't want it to, since when you're traveling or in a hurry you're more likely to be doing "different" things with your machine and thus are more likely to hit a problem. Linux desktops are like a car that runs great for your daily commute but blows up on road trips.
IMHO the reason for this is that the remaining 5-10% of the polish that's required to reach excellence in software often takes >50% of the time and is by far the least fun part of programming. As a result people generally have to be paid to do it. Free software rarely does unless it's heavily sponsored or incubated in-house by someone with resources.
This is why I still like Mac. I think Apple as a company is a little past its prime but Mac still offers by far the most reliable and consistently productive desktop experience. Windows has improved but they've decided to encrust it with advertising. Ads in a paid app or OS are a total deal breaker. Windows also still has more edge case issues than Mac, mostly due to driver issues.
(I exclusively used Linux on the desktop from 1995 until I bought my first Mac in 2002).
In all honesty that's been my impression of Windows since its inception. The only time I can recall ever feeling like Windows was deserved market leader was with Windows 2000: Linux wasn't mature on the desktop, OS X wasn't yet released or literally only just released and OS 9 was god awful (worse than the Win 95 in my opinion). The only platform that really competed in technical merit was BeOS and we all know how that ended up.
Win 3.x felt like a huge step backwards from what Atari, Amiga and Apple were doing. Windows 9x was an improvement but slow and buggy. Windows XP took a long time to mature - years and two service packs in fact. And before then it was basically just a slower (bar start up time), uglier version of Win 2000. And by the time Microsoft recovered from the cluster fuck of Longhorn OS X and Linux were both streets ahead in terms of stability, usability and even just basic features.
There are obviously people who genuinely warm to Windows and prefer that as a platform - good for them; variety is the spice of life and all - but from a technical standpoint Windows has always felt like it's had a multitude of low hanging fruit which aren't trendy enough for Redmond to invest development time in (case in point: why did it take until Windows 10 before shortcut keys were added to cmd.exe? And then why did MS stop there? The terminal emulator still totally sucks compared to nearly every other ever made!)
So, interns work on 'old' stuff (like office apps, Windows, tools). And they always look pretty rough.
Whew, that turned into a rant quickly. I've just seen plenty of strong, smart developers get screwed because they don't do flashy work.
Source: Microsoft employee
[1] The goal is still to build features that ship, but because they get new, shiny stuff, sometimes it’s speculative development and the winds shift before it goes out the door.
This morning I noticed I have a 3D Objects folder pinned to the This PC item that I can't remove. I also have Mixed Reality Portal and Mixed Reality Viewer that I can't remove.
Why on earth are those apps part of the default install? Worse though - why doesn't Microsoft make it easy to uninstall them? I don't want their crappy news, weather, contacts, maps, music, and other default apps. They should make the apps so good users want them, not force install them and make them uninstallable.
In the same vein, I don't know what they intent to mean by their AI division (esp as a platform, service, whatever) and probably neither do they, but hey, you got to make the speech of the boss somehow vaguely believable, even if the whole earth know it is just for show.
An OS should be stagnant. Its job is to get out of the way as soon as possible, not to constantly wow its users with cool stuff. Any user-facing change will break existing workflows and force people to learn new habits.
Change is bad. That goes for every piece of software, from OSes to web browsers to libraries. Stagnation should be your goal.
Microsoft can't do things properly. Without constant pointless novelty they couldn't convince people to buy a new version every few years. That business model has made them a lot of money, but making money and making good software are nearly orthogonal goals.
EDIT: Maybe I've misunderstood you. It sounds like you're talking about bugfixes, which certainly something Microsoft should work on.
I still don't understand how anybody gets any real work done on a smartphone.
Has work suddenly gotten so simplistic that most people really don't need a keyboard? They're dragging and tapping and writing IM-like sentence fragments riddled with autocorrect typos? And this is acceptable? Seriously?
Microsoft should have recognized that, recognized they were late to the party, just let Google & Apple have it, and instead focus on integrating with their products and doubling down on the "home & professional computer" segment they already lead in. But they were late to that as well because of Ballmer's mistake, which gave Apple the in to position the iPad as an up-and-coming product in this segment.
This is demonstrably wrong. The home computer market isn't even a market that exists in many parts of the world. To see that phones can supplant the home computer market almost entirely in Africa and India and say it has no effect here is crazy.
You can already watch it happen. Will people need a computer to do long form typing? Maybe, although for many a tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard will suffice.
Will an average family of 4-5 need more than one though? Will many people just get by sharing a laptop one family member got from work, or an old clunker they use just to edit essays for school? Absolutely.
Will smartphones and tablets kill home computers? No, not for a long time. Will they pretty much cap any growth in that market, and turn them into trucks when they were formerly cars? Without a doubt.
That doesn't make GP's statement demonstrably wrong. The home computer market isn't a market that exists in many parts of the world because it never existed there in the first place.
The smart device market may have affected the growth of the home computer market, but I also believe that it hasn't supplanted its existing users by any meaningful measure. At least, not yet.
"Management" needs email + spreadsheet, spreadsheets are not good enough on phone screen, but on tablet I think those would do. Just like reading code files with a lot of lines.
I think most of the work is thinking about meat and core of the problem. Writing it down with typos or not is not a problem. You do not write corporate communication statement that will go to millions of customers every day. I do not mind getting email from coworker with typos. When I ask my boss about 5 mins conversation I am not going to write "Dear sir or madam can I have 5 minutes of your time. Sincerly, O.". More like "Hi, Can we talk for 5 mins?". Work is not simplistic writing it down or improving later depends on context. You have great idea and phone, write it down, if you have to show it to millions of customers, then at least 2 other people have to read it anyway.
People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10.
Android devs are to blame, given the little effort to adapt phone apps to tablets.
I know what I see when I go into a store, travel across Europe and look around for what the other passengers are using.
If you feel vindicated by posting some random link asserting you are right, so be it.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...
And yet they still account for the majority of tablet sales.
>People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10.
The W10 tablet market share is so low they barley even register. In fact, Microsoft Surface tablets aren't even visible on the following graph:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...
any major players? entire healthcare industry is married to microsoft, at least the big names. same for lots of major enterprises that i know of
Get rid of CAL's. Charge a fixed price for a certain # of simultaneously running Windows instances, no matter how you run it. Even charging an ongoing subscription for this would be acceptable. Simplify the licensing situation for SMBs wanting to run an on-premise redundant systems, without needing diagrams to explain the difference between running, standby, CAL's, virtualization, etc.
If you're developing software for a platform, trying to figure out how to optimally license that platform should be the least of your concerns, so you can focus on your product.
I've supported several Windows-centric SMB accounting platforms, including QuickBooks and trying to figure out the right way to license just Windows, in order to support High-availability or redundancy is headache-inducing at the SMB-sized server level.
The work that you need to do in order to unwind from legacy Windows stuff like fat apps, IE-optimized websites, and legacy Office-based workflows makes it pretty easy to move to an iPad to Google, etc. The only thing that Microsoft has going for them is that every other vendor is also fucking up client computing in different ways.
I haven't seen any issues with apps though, so I have to dispute this claim. We just moved 5,000 employees from Windows 7 to 10, and it went far smoother than anyone really expected - everything just works. It's a wide range of apps too, everything from in-house WPF apps to CAD and engineering software.
IE11 support will go away at some point. Many of those apps are now being updated to work on Chrome -- I know of a few large shops that aren't testing IE or Edge anymore for internal apps!
I do agree that they did a heroic effort on making the update process incredibly reliable. Most non-prehistoric applications transition seamlessly.
Note that I personally equate Windows 10 and the subscription "Office 365 ProPlus". The layers of complexity are astounding. I present to you what I call the "Office 365 ProPlus Build Decoder Ring" - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Version-and-build-n...
Windows 10 itself has about 8-10 releases that an enterprise needs to think about. Transition from release to release has gotchas and additional Windows-Office gotchas. (For example, the way Office authenticates changes in certain builds) (See: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows-10/release-inf...)
Tablets are rapidly taking over the market for cash registers.
Or the restaurants or cocktail bars that happen to have tablets instead of paper menus.
They started with iPads, but as their chains got bigger they moved to a mix of Android and W10 tablets.
Source, personal anecdote getting out of the menu app into the OS.
Most of the tablets I've seen in stores and restaurants are actual iPad hardware, the virtual keyboard used when entering information is the iOS keyboard, and the Square app follows the Apple design guidelines.
And the rare occasions when I encounter an Android tablet, I recognize it from the virtual keyboard. Case in point: the food hall I mentioned in my above post. When you buy something, it asks you if you'd like to enter your phone number so they can text you when your order's ready. When I chose to enter my number, I instantly recognized the keyboard for that as the Android 4.x keyboard.
On top of that shop owners tends to rely more on local vendors for cash machines, and many of those still heavily built atop of the Windows ecosystems. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if W10 surpassed Android for this kind of appliance. Here in France I often see waiters use device with old school stylus on UI with really small buttons. I'm not even sure what OS this is to be honest.
Or as alternative go to a local games developer meeting group.
There were plenty of them in San Jose at GDC, from what was shown on the live streams.
Businesses that started before the advent of cloud software will continue to use QuickBooks because that's what the owners know, and why fix something that isn't broken? But newer businesses that started in the last few years will be much more likely to use cloud software because it's so much more convenient.
One of the accountants I know considers herself computer savvy (she's not, but that's a different topic) and she's pretty young (30s) and she insisted I build her a server for her business to run Quickbooks off of. She won't trust a cloud solution, or even a remotely hosted server. Some of this fear seems to be based on the seminars she goes to which are either held by or attended by FBI special agents. They are pretty good at telling you all the ways you may be hacked, and precious little practical advice on how to avoid that while staying sane.
I evaluated a bunch of other products, like QuickBooks, Curdbee, etc. but always ended up coming back to FreshBooks and have been with them consistently since about 2010.
Their customer support team is also great. I've only had one or two issues with the system, but in each case, they were quick to respond and help me resolve the issue.
The hardest part of running a small business for me is collecting money from customers, and FreshBooks makes that easy. FreshBooks allows me to connect with my customers in ways I wasn't able to before and it has reduced the process of billing to just a few clicks I have to do once a week; allowing me to focus on the services I provide instead of data entry and invoice tracking.
I hope that helps.
- windows domains - group policy - roaming profiles - drivers written for in-house equipment, ranging from machining to mass spectrometry, done over decades, and basically compatible back to NT 4, until M$ screws everything up...
They just don't know where their bread is buttered, and their bean counting practices are evidently obscuring it, as they keep doing stupid crap decisions like Office365.
They should stabilize and streamline what they already built...
Their continued dominance in business is contingent on them preparing their products for the next wave of workers. The generation that grew up typing papers out on their phones is going to have a different expectation of what productivity means. They’re going to have to scramble to meet it. Since Salesforce is not so quietly buying a modern productivity portfolio to take it from them.
Without the "we need to dominate the market and be everywhere" people pushing devs to implement feature nobody wants and have to deactivate anyways, Windows will get better for the people that love (and need) to use it.
The article itself implies the same. It's very clearly a case of putting the cart before the hearse.
This should be good for Windows as it will focus on what it's good for.. being the base system for drivers, windowing, app launching, etc. While the services/cloud gets decoupled from it allowing more flexibility for their developers/programs to work across multiple platforms.
Similarly, this just marks the maturity level of Windows, where there really is no significant innovation in operating systems release after release. Nothing like win 3.1 -> win 95 etc. Its been that way for a while. Obviously its cash that motives this move from Microsoft, however I wouldn't want Microsoft changing the location of the start menu every release just to stir up the market and justify a release (for example) every year.
I remember a cherished time where the next operating system release felt like an upgrade to myself as well as my PC. I could do more than before. No longer. We have it all nowadays and have became spoilt.
"The End of Windows" = "The End of Windows as the core foundation of the various Microsoft divisions/services/apps"
It does not mean the end of Windows as an important part of Microsoft...at all.
Rather it's about decoupling Windows from the rest of the other divisions to reflect the reality of today's non-PC centric world where Window's is merely one client among other mobile/cloud/AI/IoT/etc clients.
As others have pointed out, the perfect example is how Ballmer didn't want to release Office for iPad until Windows had a touch screen version to compete with it. It means more flexibility for both the company and for Windows, which is win-win for Microsoft consumers and Windows users.
Headlines like that make some people less likely to actually read the article, especially on HN.
You're going to need to convince your channel partners this is a thing that has to happen, and you're going to expect a revolt because so many tertiary industries are contingent upon Windows and its licenses. The tear-down for everything from the Windows app-store to the ballmer-era brick and mortar "windows store" is going to be significant. There are also laboratories, power plants, hospitals, and prisons that all rely heavily on Windows, so expect to be on the hook from state level government for quite a while...the "end" of windows also confirms the wastefully squandered effort to get Germany to obsolete its massive and very functional Linux deployment.
You'll also need to have a substantive marketshare in, say, cloud in order to start deprecating Windows. Outside of Redmonds own inflated reporting, Azure isnt exactly a competitor. Most devs would rather walk off a cliff than learn a new API --one that only Microsoft uses-- for cloud that is not EC2 compatible in any way. Conversely there are more than 40 providers of cloud services that all managed an EC2 api for objects.
Windows isn't going anywhere, and they're accepting the reality that it might just be a "portal" into web technology in a similar vein to Chromebooks. This is a reality Apple refuses to accept, for better or worse. But, Windows still comes with those massively powerful internals that enable more powerful professional experiences for the users that need them.
This is, really, the only platform in the world that champions both. MacOS obviously has those powerful foundations and can run webapps natively, but its not something christened by Apple. iOS is the same way, but with less powerful foundations. ChromeOS? Android? Linux Desktop? They're not even considerations in this world.
Then you consider the massive success of their Xbox and Azure divisions, and I think anyone who bets against Microsoft right now isn't doing it cogently. They have a lot of legacy and Ballmer's strategic mistakes to get right, but I legitimately think they'll come out of the next 5 years in a better financial position than Google.
I'd honestly love for more portions of Windows to become open source and slowly work up to the full repository. I think there would be an immediate influx of 0days as people find holes but I would hope they would close quickly. It's still a very big gamble to let go of something you've literally built your foundation on but I do hope that instead of Windows silently going into oblivion that they'll open it up for the masses, even if they would no longer have the resources to support it. I feel like someone or company would step up.
Having said all that, I'm going on 4 years in mostly macOS. The missteps in High Sierra are pretty abysmal but not the end of the world. I hope Apple really changes their processes to keep the OS stable but I see this downward trend in just about all PC-like operating systems. It's like everyone sees the end of the line coming and they're just half assing every move they make. I think Meltdown/Spectre was a major blow that has probably single handedly slowed all momentum to a standstill. Granted my sample size is very small but I really hope I'm just looking at this big lull right before an evolution/revolution.
This interleaving strategy was okay when they were the only market player, but now that there's actually good competition in the computing space (read: smartphones and chromebooks), it's not so good. All of the little sacrifices that Windows has to make to move itself forward are cuts that make people reconsider using it in the first place.
I honestly wonder what world it would be if every Windows release had "stuck the landing." If we had a super solid Vista and a super solid Windows 8, would Microsoft even be in remotely the same position as they are now? Probably not, because it would actually have been the preferred choice, and not just the default.
She just doesn't understand what is happening anymore, and how to exit this mode which she never asked for. What helps here is that all those apps are absolutely useless.
It's a disaster disaster disaster.
If you meant a specific game to run, well then you need to weight your pros and cons and stop whining when you make your decision.
Alternatively, dual boot.
GP is the one who said he'd move to linux if there were games. I didn't imply he was wrong for using Windows. I think you (and all other siblings) are reading more into my comment than there actually is.
Last time I tried it a few years ago, it was ~10fps on linux, and a solid 100+fps on windows.
It's a bit of a reach to say this, but it's a little bit similar to McDonald's selling toys with meals to entice children.
However Microsoft capitalised on their position in the office, and it was far cheaper to buy a fully functioning computer at home with a copy of windows and office from work. Then schools were under pressure to provide what was normal.
Piracy made windows what it is.
Amateur tech punditry at its finest.
While I'm not exactly a fan of Microsoft, there is nothing I dread more than a closed platform controlled by a single company, and Google is moving more and more aggressively in that direction. There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products on devices Google does not approve of.
>There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products on devices Google does not approve of.
I think you meant to say there was until Google closed that loophole.
Microsoft should just accept that they sell a commercial product for businesses and make a good solid product that needs little attention and gets the job done. Like Mack trucks.
But yeah, the overall point still stands. If you have a particular game that you don't feel like you can substitute and it's not available on a platform that you'd like to switch to, you're probably not switching to that platform.
I've also seen enough people that are quite skilled with a controller that they perform better than the average keyboard/mouse player, that I think we'll see less people worry about cross-modal play.
I love having the option to game with an Xbox One controller on my PC, and I love that keyboard/mouse preferring players sometimes have that option on the Xbox. Let everyone play what they find fun.
I've been playing a bunch of Sea of Thieves lately, and it's almost surprising there isn't a controversy about cross-platform/cross-modal play, and yet it is open PvP. I don't feel like it matters if I'm using keyboard/mouse or controller, much less if an opposing player is, and that's a weird sort of magic. (It matters more if the opposing players are jerks that don't follow the Pirate Code.) Props to Rare for pulling that off, and maybe that will be increasingly a thing. (The Gears of War cross-platform/cross-modal playlists have gotten good reviews as well, from what I've heard, though I've not specifically tried them.)
(edited to fix a typo)
Microsoft has not really been in hardware space before (except consoles, otherwise it was mostly accessories). I believe they jumped to laptops, tablets and desktops to have full control of the user experience.
Microsoft started building mice because they wanted to add a wheel to them to make working in Office applications better.
Microsoft started building 2-in-1 tablet laptops (Surface) because they'd been calling it the future for a decade and no one was paying attention.
For the most part Microsoft's hardware strategy is at its best in "if you build it, they will come (and copy it as soon as they understand why you built it)" mode.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/08/apple-will-show-off-its-move...
https://stratechery.com/2017/apple-and-the-oak-tree/
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/03/22/apple-services-revenue-...
Never again will one app be compatible with others without a business agreement between them ... because that just can't be allowed (dixit $100 million per year+ managers at these huge companies, and I'm sure it's 100% coincidence that this would allow small companies to compete with them. Totally unrelated to this decision). Can't work in the cloud, can't work on android, can't work on IOS. And for that matter, can't work on UWP.
And of course let's not forget that the massive cost, that everyone's data is now 100% accessible to law enforcement and civil courts (and thus to anyone with the money to sue you) is just acceptable damage. After all, that doesn't affect $100 billion plus companies much at all.
Their argument is that it can make web banking unsafe. Yes ... that's true. It can.
What is does 99.999% of the time however is enforce the market dominance of really large players.
But, like people walking into a camp during WWII, nobody holds a moment of silence when they enter the compound with the large barbed wire. Nobody regrets what's happening when they lock the gate. Only years later, when all the bodies are found ... then we stop and think.
This is them locking the gate. Now comes years and years of really really bad applications, and exploiting the lockin.
And yes, the only system not in a locked ecosystem is the PC ecosystem (needless to say, this is the ecosystem that ALL of these large companies use, MS, Google and Apple, for themselves. And now they're locking it for the rest of us)
"Today, I’m announcing the formation of two new engineering teams"
"Windows: Joe Belfiore will continue leading our Windows experiences and will drive Windows innovation in partnership with the PC and device ecosystem"
How does this exactly means they are giving up on Windows ?! Seriously, wishful thinking much ?
I know it's not the same market circumstances but this feels alot like the decision to stop development of ie6 after Microsoft beat Netscape.
I think this article better explains things http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-and-why-microsoft-is-...
Between it's spyware and its tendency to just do things without telling you, without giving you an easy way to stop, it is just not something that feels comfortable enough to use anymore for power users.
It feels like whatever I gain in convience, is lost when trying to figure out what windows is doing with all that CPU/RAM/Network usage or how to disable some new service that I have 0 interest in.
If you’re not using the PC, can we have it back?
— General Purpose Computing
Which lock down version of Apple or Google systems do you prefer?
-- Microsoft
Sure, install Linux and feel free.
The forces against general purpose computing are to be found on 1 infinite loop and 1600 Amphitheatre parkway.
1. The "home" computer boom: ZX Spectrums, Acorn, Commodore, Atari with maybe an Apple II or a CPM machines for more serious use. 2. The Atari ST or Amiga wave. WIMP and productivity software as well as gaming and content creation 3. At this point I did switch to Windows but I could just have easily switched to Mac. Apple didn't cease to be a force at any stage. They maintained a strong base in home use and content creation only losing the enterprise.
In our alternate history there was also room for Next or BeOS. You never know.
Now what MS/IBM did enable (accidentally to some degree) was an open hardware platform. However if they weren't around then other players might have stepped in. Maybe CP/M succeeded in going 16bit, GEM might have caught on or the Apple clones might have found a way to legally survive.
On final reading I realise you might have meant "PC" in the narrow sense. If so then you're correct in a trivial sense. If not then I disagree.
They almost went bankrupt around 1994.
If it wasn't for Microsoft money and the merge with NeXT bringing Jobs back, they would have been gone.
Up to iPod's success Apple was meaningless pretty much everywhere outside US.
That also makes me well aware of how much a fully decked out computer cost before IBM released a hardware spec that allowed companies to compete and the vast economies of scale this involved brought prices down to where mere mortals like myself could afford very powerful machines. Unlike the various 8 bit offerings of the time, which were relatively expensive for the computing power and storage options they provided.
Even though the initial PCs were expensive and anemic and did not even have the same capacities as many other machines aimed at the home market of the time it had staying power because of IBM's formidable manufacturing and marketing capabilities and Microsoft made it useful enough that non-technical users would dare to make the jump. Tandy/Radio Shack tried - and to some extent succeeded - to do this too with their TRS-80 models. Competition by the clone builders then did the rest.
So I'm sure there would have been a 'computing scene' without Microsoft and IBM, and it likely would have been an interesting one. But the machine under my desk would likely not have existed in that world, other than maybe as manufactured by DEC, Apollo, SGI or some other player of those days and it would have been marketed as a scientific workstation and cost North of $10K instead of 10% of that.
General purpose computing for the masses rode in on the back of economies of scale that IBM and Microsoft enabled.
(And trust me on this: I'm not exactly a Microsoft fan but that bit they did actually made the world a better place.)
Now that you mention it, I kind of wonder what would have happened if Steve Jobs had never left Apple in the first place.
Jobs leaving Apple was in a very roundabout way the best thing that happened to Apple because it forced him to learn a bunch of tough lessons which he could then apply to Apple when the time was right.
Can you clarify that statement? My memory of computing history include other types of personal computers during and around that time.
The economies of scale engendered by the standardization of the PC platform really made things move.
The modern version is trying to copy closed ecosystems, instead of building on historical strengths in stable APIs, backward compatibility, diverse hardware and ISV licensing models.
Some good exceptions exists (HTML5 and AV1), but many things are as bad as they were for a long time (Outlook, DirectX and etc.).
Docker/containers and Linux (WSL) have modern ecosystems that intersect with Azure. There’s also a Microsoft open server hardware design for Open Compute.
What are some modern/emerging standards where Microsoft is actively involved?
For other lock-in examples, check who holds patents (and charges for them) on exFAT and its usage on common Flash storage like SD cards.
Microsoft missed the mobile revolution in just about every way they could have, so now they have to make a number of forced moves.
it's more likely that some other player just releases a completely new OS to replace Windows. just like Chrome replaced IE (and not Firefox).
Exactly.