Microsoft's master plan to beat Apple and Google
money.cnn.com
money.cnn.com
Reads like an ad for investors. Like something that is promised for the future and we will enjoy if we only hold out and believe. Sounds like the tune Microsoft has been whistling for decades now.
> That's the world for which Microsoft is building Windows 8. It can run everything from a touchscreen app like Angry Birds to resource-intensive software such as 3-D games and video editing tools. That sounds simple, but it's an all-in-one approach Microsoft's rivals have chosen not to pursue.
No, actually that sounds almost entirely meaningless.
They haven't persued it because nobody wants an "all-in-one solution". My desktop is not a tablet, and my tablet is not a desktop.
And in most ways they're already there. Angry Birds? Yeah, it has that. Video editing? For the consumer level, iMovie and competitors are as rich as they've ever used. 3D Games? Yeah, that's been there for a couple of years. Maybe they intended for a more intensive example?
A smartphone with enough power to run "regular" applications and a dock I can plug it into for charging, peripherals and a monitor.
Of course the current smartphone OSes are not suitable for that task, as is demonstrated by the Transformer series, among others.
Supporting it in the enterprise environment would be tricky. You don't want users loading their phones with malware and then bringing that infected phone inside the network.
And, really, I'd be happy if the phone was decoupled from the rest of it. A phone and something like Raspberry PI would do me fine.
This happens today even with corporate laptops. If they're allowed outside, they will get infected. Working in information security, I send a few form emails each month telling someone to call the helpdesk and get their computer reimaged. If the company has a good enough network team to know how to properly segment a network (and/or implement a reverse proxy) and a security team with enough resources to monitor network traffic, the risk becomes acceptable.
Basically what you describe is BYOD, and it gives me job security :) For the record, I would totally buy the same desktop on three form factors if the same apps and same data could be synced across all of them.
See: http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and...
Also, another approach is to make your phone start a desktop OS, such as Ubuntu, once connected to a monitor, mouse and keyboard:
http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
Which would essentially be just like regular dual-booting known to geeks, but simplified to make the switch instantly after you dock your phone.
But an all-in-one-solution is soo much more appealing. Now suddenly there is a reason to carry an oversized phone even if you can't call with it.
The vision of mobile devices as first class computers is, in my opinion, what sold Nokia on Windows Phone. Microsoft's approach scales to places with less money and infrastructure in a way in which their primary competitors are unwilling or struggling to match.
Killer apps can and will come out of less developed regions. It's just a matter of time.
I think all approaches are justified, there are so many different users out there that there should be enough place for all of them. For me that's the message of the article, covered under a lot of Microsoft Windows 8 PR.
Of all the things Microsoft does, the one it clearly does better than Apple or Google is support developers. And all that support helps facilitate what is almost certainly the largest development community among them.
Metro turns every corporate developer into a potential mobile developer. I doubt adoption by developers will be the issue.
18 Apr. 2012
;)
we're in a "post-PC" world
in five years, the PC won't be what it is today.
Allow me to be skeptical. Those statements sound just like 'the novel is dead' from the 60's of the past century. It's now fifty years later, and we can still buy books; and desktop PC's, desks and chairs won't disappear anytime soon.
Yeah, this is true. But I don't think that Android, let alone Windows Phone, are any different. Are developers going to start writing apps with their phones? No. At least not anytime soon, and definitely not with Windows Phone.