How far has Microsoft fallen?
blogs.computerworld.com
blogs.computerworld.com
We are working with large enterprise clients (big pharma). Last two years they practically all adopted iPads for their field forces. Went with single device policy, which created a lot of pain for IT - no Office, no deployment tools, no AD, etc.
MS and Intel then start a marketing blitz in those IT departments, hey, enterprise, we love and understand you. Cool, IT guys fall for it.
Problem?
MS wants enterprise to adopt Win8 Pro on Intel devices. Which practically all are around 1000$ and have a battery life of 4 hours.
Enterprise IT wants something similar to the iPad, for even cheaper. They want an iPad with sane deployment tools and MS Office. Cheaper. Because their people in emerging markets have limited budgets.
Enter Windows RT. It is just like an iPad, cheap, better power efficiency on its devices. Awesome, right? Except that it does not offer the deployment and management tools needed. It is practically an iOS device in that regard. The MS Office on it is Home/Student Preview edition, which seem to be upgradeable if you have the right CALs. But it runs like shit. Buzz is that the whole thing was a very late add once they realized that MS' main selling point was Office. Late, panicky scramble.
And now add the fact that MS seems to be launching MS Office on iOS soon.
And then we have Modern UI. Nice for consumer apps. Facebook looks cool. But enterprise tools? On iOS we have freedom. On Modern there are guidelines, horizontal swipe and pagination is key. You're used to high information density, utilization of screen real estate to show as much as possible on one screen to avoid a user needing to navigate away? Forget that on Modern UI. Whitespace rules, it is like the GMail redesign on steroids. No wonder they need Classic UI to make MS Office available - Modern UI in its current strict incarnation cannot scale to offer this kind of functionality.
So yeah. Intel is not in a good spot. Microsoft neither. The next 6 months will be decisive. Lots of pilots going on, Samsung has a good enough Win 8 Pro device out there, Surface Pro still not here. Surface is not even launched in Japan, might not be till late next year.
Whoever is in charge of platform strategy at MS should be made to go away. With access to those resources they should be kicking ass.
Nexus?
availabilty in enterprise is key - can I equip a global workforce with exactly the same hardware? local hardware support? Apple and MS can. Nexus not.
Serious question here; is it that much different in the US? At 'big whatever' I have been in the EU (besides, strangely enough(?), France), the 'IT guys' don't like Windows/MS and would not choose it if it was up to them. I see Ubuntu, BYOD Mac OS X, iOS for management and force-fed Windows (with a lot of complaining).
People working mostly on Excel (or other Office components) would pick Windows, but those are not 'the IT guys'?
It all depends on scale. Once you have 50k employees worldwide, Ubuntu does not cut it. OS X might, but no one has tried so far. MS Office is the killer here, if you can't run it, you're dead. That's why MS was caught so surprised when the iPad took off, against all logic.
People don't even use Excel now - our platform is powerful enough to cover all of the normal use cases in the financial sector.
We also have massive IBM deployments including MVS and Unix (z/OS, AIX, DB2, Oracle, etc.) that run most all of the back-end banking.
Microsoft in the front-end, IBM/Unix in the back. Gotta say, the front end, although more complicated, is more easily managed and deployed. I could never see a replacement for it, not yet anyway.
Edit: No, iPads won't play nicely with this setup.
Once it is no longer tenable to use it, you'd better hope microsoft have developed a usable windows version for offices, because I don't think live tiles updating me on my social network is exactly a selling point in an enterprise solution...
[1] From features that Google Docs and to a lesser extent, LibreOffice, don't have or work poorly, and speed especially vs Google Docs.
If Microsoft decides to kill a feature available in Excel 2010, you still can use it.
Of course also the difference is that I paid for MS Office while I haven't paid a cent for Google Docs.
Individuals with that version installed can use it, but you can't get new licenses for more employees, and you won't be able to upgrade to get new features. You might also be wary of applying bugfix patches in case your key feature gets zapped. Also, user support for your feature will dry up eventually.
Tell that to Google.
> OS X might
For LDAP and Kerberos, OS X is much less configurable than Linux and the number of tools is less. So if Linux is not good enough, how could OS X even stand a chance? Because of Office for Mac? It's much worse than the Windows version, many documents are not rendered correctly, VBA works poorly, especially for Excel, Exchange support is not on par with the Windows version, many features are missing and Mac users hate the program.
The "lower parts" of IT often knows more about the pain points of certain Microsoft products and have more hate then love, or at least are more open to consider alternatives.
Microsoft has a _lot_ of enterprise software that is not easy to replace for a big company, not to mention third party software that runs on Windows. And some of that software works pretty well.
Microsoft screwing up their mobile strategy has now shown the IT departments at most major companies that iOS and Android devices can work just fine, and this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft dominance in the enterprise.
They also botched their enterprise mobile business with the WP7 and now WP8 launch. All my friends working in pretty conservative industries such as oil and banking used to have WM6 or BlackBerry, now they use Android or iOS.
Unless Microsoft pulls out a magic trick, I think they've already lost their dominance. The cat is out of the bag now that all major enterprises allow iOS and Android devices.
Hold it there. They are called guidelines [1] because they're guidelines. You don't have to enforce them! That said, they're there for a reason! The reason is that you use your finger on tablets, not a high-precision mouse device. Seriously, have you tried operating Excel on a touch device?
Second, who says enterprise apps can't be made with this kind of UI? Some guys succeed [2]. You just have to think new. Of course Office in its current form can't be made for Win RT.
[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46542...
[2] http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/14/one-dev-at-least-is-doing-g...
then, let's take a look at the BI app you're using as a reference: http://www.pushbi.com/Videos.aspx
Notice how it is all about horizontal scrolling? Looks nice, right? How does the user know, where he is? Each "page" has a different meaning, function, but they are a fluid horizontal canvas. Notice something else? Surface is a 16:9 device, MS is using this as a standard. this emphasis the horizontal even more than the vertical. I am not convinced this works for complex apps with data entry. The BI app is more for consumption, you flip through your reports. Notice how they shoot you out to their online dashboards?
Discoverability is a key issue I have with Modern UI. Some buttons can be exposed directly, but the guidelines are pushing you into button bars which only appear through swipes (from top or from bottom).
Colleagues have tried it with their kids. iOS, Android? No problem for a 4-year old to figure it out. Modern UI? Frustration. And yes, I am comparing the typical business user to a 4 year old when it comes to patience in learning a new UI scheme.
Not all devices will have 4 hours of battery life. For example core i5 Acer Iconia W700 is reported to have 7 hours of battery life by engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/14/acer-iconia-w700-review/. Also intel clover trail is also reported to have good power efficiency. We will know the truth in next 6 month I hope.
I think this really sums up the long term fate of Microsoft. This happened to Sega several years ago. They eventually gave up on the console business only to focus on software for other consoles. If Microsoft has any chance of long term success, they need to start building apps for iOS and maybe even Android. This is how Sega has survived over the years. They make games for Xbox, Nintendo and Playstation and have even licensed their characters to Nintendo to share the spotlight with their one-time rivals. Microsoft is sinking and they need to start forming some alliances with their one-time rivals.
They're slowly adjusting their products in order to jump on someone else's bandwagon, instead of maximizing their own unique competitive advantage.
Why the hell is Microsoft making an ARM-based hardware platform in the first place?
Same reason as everyone else. People want devices with low power consumption. Until x86 can deliver that I would say it makes great sense to make ARM-based hardware. I keep hearing atom etc will be on par with ARM, however, I have yet to see devices who deliver on that promise.
People want cars with good fuel economy and tasty, nutritious lunches, too, so why don't we see Microsoft Motors or The Microsoft Café?
I'm not focusing specifically on the ARM architecture, but merely pointing out that using ARM is just another quality of this product that fails to make use of any of Microsoft's existing advantages; the broader question is why MS decided to release any tablet at all in the first place
Is that true? I mean, I'm sure there aren't a whole lot of .net people on HN, but I always assumed that there's a pretty large "silent majority" of enterprise devs that use .net exclusively.
And also, MS got some serious love the other day when they released TypeScript (and rightly so). FWIW even though I'm a java/javascript guy I got my start in visual studio and it's a great toolset, and C# really is Java++.
It's a shame how some people view .NET as a closed platform and not open source friendly, when Microsoft has been making a BIG effort to push .NET into the open, especially ASP.NET. Let not forget things like Nuget, which has completely changed the way most .NET programmers work. Then there's Mono, which is just getting better and better every month (Host ASP.NET MVC web sites on Linux... now you can, thanks to Microsoft open sourcing MVC and Mono supporting it)
All in all .NET has become a very embracing platform for open source. I use it for just about any job, with great success.
That is a shame. Because Mono has advanced so far since a few years ago, and software such as Unity prove that robust, fast code can be written for the CLR and be relatively easy to port cross-platform. Its really an amazing feat.
Diving further into the rabbit hole with WPF/WCF, which as far as I can tell hasn't been implemented in Mono, was an absolute awesome experience developing an application. I would take that over iOS/Android platforms any day of the week.
Of course, my first choice would be to see Linux become a major force on more platforms in a power user (not consumer) form. Watching Apple, Microsoft, and major chunks of Linux in a race to convert all platforms to the "I don't understand folders, I just want my Facebook and buttons to poke to buy my entertainment" market makes me wish for someone to target the power user machines for getting work done market that everyone else is getting out of.
As for the prices, people pirated Microsoft, which kept their prices pretty low (otherwise no one would buy it). With a monopole for hardware, Apple can dictate its prices (already very high) however it wants and people can either pay or go for the small non-integrated OSes.
That would be a nightmare.
Same thing with the iPhone or iPad.
Ummm... what about Ubuntu on the MacBook Air or Pro?
Then there was the whole Apple/Samsung thing.
And the App Store policies. I've seen people come crying to HN time and time again because their app got pulled or they can't update it any more.
I don't consider them a nice company and I don't find their stuff nice or usable. So you can keep the rotten fruit away from me, thanks.
Apple is sitting on $100B in cash. If it really wanted to it could do a lot of damage with that much cash (not even talking about equity or assets, just cash). But it doesn't, it selectively invests while the tech journalists write articles about what Apple should be doing with that money.
What's the problem with discussing that issue?
The problem is that Microsoft isn't providing a really good alternative. The buzzed-about products have all followed a depressingly similar trajectory: highly interesting on the drawing board, but then crippled on launch by some element of the product that MS just didn't get right. Windows Phones were hard to find on some carriers, for instance, and lacked apps. (This oversight was understandable for Windows Phone 7; less so for 8.) Surface manages to be too expensive to compete with tablets and too limited to compete with ultrabooks. And so on.
Say what you want about Apple and Google, but they at least know who their customers are and consistently nail the things those customers care about. Apple customers are consumers, so their products are heavy on style and sex appeal. Google customers are carriers, so their products are heavy on customizability and adaptable across a lot of form factors and spec sheets.
Microsoft's non-developer customers are... well, Microsoft doesn't really seem to know, and the products show it. They're a mishmash of interesting ideas and half-baked execution. Which makes them hard to cheer for, or to justify buying.
And they have tried to tamper with my individual rights to use the computing platform I choose. Remember "Linux is a cancer", and bullying of manufacturers not to offer Linux? Where are my Linux laptops, please? I attribute 90% to the blame to Microsoft (and yes, I have a Linux laptop, no Microsoft tax attached. But the choice was very narrow)
For these reasons, even if tomorrow Microsoft announces the cure of cancer, I will despise them with all my strength. For decades to come. For the rest of my life.
There is no undoing the harm they have done to humankind. The only positive outcome, from my point of view, is for them to disappear as a company, and for their products to die (obviously, a very long death). Microsoft will never offer a product I want. It is really that simple.
And Apple is on a worse track.
I must also object to call windows 8 a innovative move forward. I have yet to see any evidence to suggest it's anything but a move backward. The question one should ask here is, if one put the same energy to polishing windows 7 and windows 8, who would come out on top in usability, stability and security? My money would be on windows 7.
That's a very bold statement. The .NET ecosystem is massive. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the PHP ecosystem is even much larger than the Rails ecosystem.
However, in the world of enterprise development for corporate clients you won't see much Rails development. It is all .NET and Java.
No we cannot. Anything non-critical of Microsoft(even a product announcement) usually gets flagged off the front page if it manages to reach it. Same with many articles critical of Google. I agree MS has dropped the ball in regards to Windows RT branding but the HN front page is a joke when it comes to Microsoft related stories.
That being said the writing was on the wall. Microsoft is blindsided by two cash cows and they're not willing to reinvent themselves.
Microsoft has Windows and Office that make them money. Everything else is secondary and helped them control that market. It's a Napoleonic approach to business (read Bill Gates' biography to understand that).
How Microsoft made its initial money was by undercutting everyone and selling a licence for their first OS to IBM so Big Blue had to spend less money per machine sold. It worked so well that MS became the richest and most powerful high tech company.
Now the open source community releases powerful office suites for free, Apple releases an amazing office suite for 1/5th of the price of MS Office and Google releases something essentially free that works online!
When everyone else is moving ahead... it's hard to have anything to say that is positive about the stubborn MS.
I haven't used the Surface. I don't see myself getting one. I have the iPad2. I only use it to surf the web. I don't need a replacement. Maybe in 2-3 years.
I think Microsoft has got a branding problem. The Surface is obviously running something different to Windows 8. I only get it because I know what ARM is... its impossible to explain to my parents. "It runs on a different type of processor so is different" is met with a blank face or "But its runs Windows right?"
There is also a fear, especially with my parents about Windows 8. They have just about mastered Windows 7. A lot of this fear is misplaced. There was a lot of talk of Desktop UI and Metro UI. It would have been simpler to say "The start button has been removed and instead has its own screen making programs easier to find and use."
Instead they banged on about different UI's. Different types of applications. All very confusing. Then you have the lack of branding. I still call Windows 8 app's "Metro". I think it is a good name. I don't know what they are called now. When I enter the store in Windows 8 it isn't obvious what the new name is either..
Microsoft made a big mess of branding and advertising Windows 8. Someone should be fired because it is harming the take up of what is imperfect but pretty good software.
This is called "brand extension". Brand extension is a crime against marketing and against common sense.
The reasoning goes like this:
- we have a strong brand
- we have a new product
- no one will know this new product exists unless we spend huge amounts of advertising to inform the public about its existence
- oh but wait! we have this strong brand! why not attach the new product to the existing brand, to jump start it?!
- (and BTW, our strong but old brand can only benefit from this hot new cool product being attached to it)
At first it seems to work: the new product grows faster with brand extension than without.
But very fast, people become confused about which is which and what does what, and prefer two uniquely branded and well-positioned competing products against the whole "line offering".
The "hot new product" usually ends up polluting, weakening, if not killing the parent brand, instead of rejuvenating it.
This is exactly what is happening with Windows RT.
Microsoft isn't the only culprit however. "Google Play" is a similar move. It hasn't started to hurt Google yet, probably because it didn't catch, and people continue to call the Android app store... well, "the Android App Store".
But rest assured it will come back to bite them.
"Brand extension is a crime against marketing and against common sense" Agreed and it's an example of something Apple has gotten very right. Apple is the banner brand.
What is Apple? It's a hardware device manufacturer with mostly excellent software and services. You buy an Apple X and you're buying (post Mac but still applies):
iPod.
iPod smaller.
iPod much smaller.
iPod with a touch screen.
iPod with a touch screen and phone.
iPod with a touch screen, internet and much bigger.
iPod with a touch screen, internet and slightly bigger.
Some thinner, some fatter, some with cameras, some without.
They've almost never stumbled in extending the brand and creating new sub-brands because the initial umbrella brand isn't 'used in vain' or diluted.
What is Google? Google is an ad supported AI interface with occasionally excellent hardware, and genius software services. You buy a Google X and you're buying? It remains to be seen (although I suspect it's coming) what exactly the 'Google Nexus' is.
What is Microsoft? Microsoft makes Windows and Office, enterprise software and is a sticker on the side of other people's products. When you buy Microsoft Windows X you get??
Totally incoherent. I loved the first few generations with a clickwheel, they were great to use on the go. I have no idea what the point of the latest model is.
It actually is just a cola, and a pretty good one with 100% bio ingredients. People just didn't get that, the caffeine junkies were disappointed and other people didn't try it.
Such an obvious mistake, "Red Bull" is synonymous with the drink.
Then the naming of $(Platform) $(PlatformShort) in MSVC IDE.. Explore for yourself - it's fun, it's even more fun when the windows sdk, dxsdk, and other ms's sdk's use different naming conventions for the same things.
Or the WinDir vs SystemRoot
it's something about Microsoft creating too much confusion with their naming
The problem with Windows RT is exactly the opposite: they've broken backward compatibility, severely, and created a product that bears no resemblance to what the vast majority of users recognize as Windows, yet they've decided to call it "Windows" anyway.
They deprecated every major Mac hardware and software transition into a virtual machine.
* Mac OS 9 to Classic Environment
* PowerPC to Rosetta
Apple brands, changes brands, and moves forward. Microsoft makes Windows proper compatible with the new. They have done an amazing job both from the tech and marketing front.
And yet, computing is now the rest of us, not the "enterprise". We have amazing computers in our pockets. The enterprise changed, allowing and adapting to iPhone and Android devices.
Our phones do more interesting things than our Windows desktops.
The user experience may vary but if we are talking about the .NET world I think it is a very strong package.
The only equivalent I can think of would be the Eclipse/Java combo.
(this was written in jest)
"Microsoft also unveiled a tablet this month. The Surface will have a built-in keyboard on the screen cover and run on the Android operating system…"
Yep, Android!
Source: Maclean's magazine for July 16, 2012, page 47.
Their long-term goal is to provide tablets that look more or less like the incumbents (8-10 inch, light, 10 hour battery life, 9mm thin), but can also run any Windows app you want. But that's not possible for another 2 years or so of advancement by Intel and other hardware suppliers. So what do they do until then? Just wait? No, they release two devices: an ipad competitor that's not a hybrid, and an ultrabook competitor.
They may both have modest sales, but the Windows store will start getting populated with apps, and Windows 8 will become familiar, so that when they CAN actually build a 'perfect' hybrid, all the other pieces will be in place.
Wrong. When I started using Windows 8, I realized it's actually the worst of both worlds. If you want both in the same package, then you have to live with a ton of compromises. Here are some of them:
1) You can't have a large screen, if you want to use it as a tablet, too. Maybe 11" at most, and that includes hybrid devices more like Surface, with light weight tablet parts, and detachable keyboard. The ones like Lenovo Yoga are completely unusable as tablets, unless you intend to use a "tablet" on your desk all the time, at which point, what's the difference compared to just using a touchscreen laptop?
2) Then 10-11" screens are not very usable for real work as a PC, so you have to compromise a lot in that, too.
3) 10-11" is pretty large and heavy for a tablet, and it seems most people are starting to gravitate towards 8" or smaller tablets, which makes it even more likely that people will want the tablet and the PC as 2 different devices in the future.
4) If you want a "hybrid", then you're forced to use x86 chips, and unless you want the performance of a netbook, you need Core chips inside. These have 3 major drawbacks: low battery life, heat/noise, and high price tags.
5) Windows RT devices, while a bit better on the tablet part, because of the ARM advantages (better battery life and more competitive prices), can't seriously be called "hybrids". They only have Office for PC use.
6) 13" or higher "hybrids" are also a joke, as you can't seriously use them as tablets.
7) You're still forced to use or avoid the "touch mode", even when you want to use it as a PC. I consider Windows 8 worse for a PC user than Windows 7. I brings a lot of new stuff that are there to annoy the PC user, not help him. Whatever small benefits it has over Windows 7, they are not worth it for the worse user experience. And this is for the more "techie" of the PC users. For "normal" mom and pop users, they are going to find it even worse, after using XP/Windows 7 for so long, and now having to basically learn and unlearn a ton of new stuff, which is not easy for this type of user.
So whichever way you go, either more towards the PC part, or the tablet part, you're going to run into major compromises, if you want to use a single device as both PC and tablet. So I don't think anymore that hybrids are the future, as they seem to do either one part pretty badly, or be mediocre at both. You're better off keeping these two type of devices separated.
It'll have enough processing power to do what most people need from a machine, and when you need to go out, you grab it out of its dock, and all your programs, files and settings are with you, running on their tablet-optimised version.
This is the end game as I see it and I'm pretty convinced this is what Microsoft is planning for. If that's the way it goes, they have a huge head start over Apple who are insisting on keeping OSX and iOS separate.
Why stop there? The dock will probably have its own processor that can run the tablet apps faster, possibly enabling desktop features. Microsoft could really push this because they own the desktop market but have a weak toehold in the tablet market.
I don't see much of an advantage for Microsoft here. Metro is another world than the traditional desktop, and Metro applications are only really fit for tablets and phones. So, a hybrid will probably keep a desktop/tablet UI separation.
Since iOS and OS X build on the same technologies, Apple could, if they wanted to, release a hybrid system in no time. In fact, the iPhone/iPad simulator already uses Cocoa Touch on the same architecture and platform as OS X.
Besides that, Apple has an App Store filled with tablet apps and desktop apps. Not just tablet apps.
If you want a dock able experience, I think we'll see something closer to the Linux transformer tablets. It is an ordinary tablet, but when plugged into a dock, the dock has a more powerful processor (and more energy hungry) and takes over. In this mode, the tablet isn't much more than an external hard drive. I think it was Lenovo that made these, but I can't remember.
This was what the future looked like 10 years ago until cloud-provided software and storage became an option. This was the videos Microsoft showed us and it all looked fantastic.
Now I'm wondering why on earth would I lob files manually around? It's as old-fashioned as synching your phone via USB and iTunes. You did that 5 years ago. Not now. It's a stone-age solution created by stone-age approach to computing. We demand better now.
Now I have one Google doc document, which is a live document. It's always the latest version, with all the latest collaborations, and I don't need to bring it with me. That's great. I don't know which documents I'll need. And you can't be realistically expected to bring them all with you always, just to be covered.
The "future" you are painting sounds old fashioned and I don't want it. That is Microsoft's main problem now: Their future insist we should keep things which are obsolete (like local files) at all cost, and they are doing it to attempt to keep the relevance of their OS as it used to be.
In services like Office 365 they are very explicit about not creating a "document", you are creating a ".docx-file". This is 100% orthogonal to the way they tried to do things on the desktop (hide the extensions at all cost, because they were "confusing").
Now they are back-pedalling hard. Now people must know that they are creating a MS Word file. In the cloud. As if that makes sense.
They are either confused, conflicted, panicking, a mix of those, or just appearing to be entirely uncoordinated right now.
Even as a .NET developer I am seriously starting to doubt Microsoft's future, at least as far as client-platforms go.
AT&T and Verizon's monopoly on wireless spectrum called, they want their $50 a gigabyte.
Especially not when wifi and wired internet is completely and utterly untouched by it. That's how 99.99% of the business market is deployed.
And you have governments to regulate monopolies. Demand action from your government instead of complaining about it online. That has worked out pretty well for Europe.
Are you kidding? I don't want to sound ethnocentric but what technology has taken off on a global scale that didn't at least work in the US? It isn't even about GDP, it is that the US accounts for between a third and half of major 1st world consumers.
A great example of the inverse is how most major streaming services only serve US customers. The rest of the world can take it in stride and just pirate all the media, though, so progress on that front doesn't really slow. However, if you tried using truly cloud based computing with everything remote, it would never work in America because the internet coverage is way too bad (it is also really bad in a lot of other first world monopoly telecom nations like the UK, Canada, and Australia though).
To keep the government from reading your files at will.
I regularly work with, modify, and generate 50+ GB files at home. I doubt that there's any hardware I can purchase that will synchronize my changes quickly enough with "the cloud".
What Apple is betting on (and what Microsoft is betting on as well with SkyDrive and unified sign-in) is program data and state being synced seamlessly through the cloud, so that you can have a stand-alone high-performance PC on your desktop (maybe like the iMac).
If Microsoft is indeed betting on "all apps and documents localized on one device", they are betting on the past.
Hook?
> a monitor
AirPlay Mirror
> and keyboard
Bluetooth keyboard
So (conceptually, because iOS doesn't allow keyboard-only navigation), you just tell it to zap on the biggie screen and drop it somewhere nearby, and start typing on the keyboard (hell, merely typing could make it zap to the screen, skipping the first step entirely). No cables, ma.
Is this the case? I see OSX and ios slowly merging into eachother. Just look at the launchpad screen or whatever it is in osx, it looks and swipes over just like an iPad, with all your apps right there. I would be very surprised if these worlds didn't converge.
Microsoft, by trying to unify not only power-user desktops but casual tablet and even XBox and phone interfaces under a single banner is making something nobody wants. A unified experience is like one-size-fits-all underwear, not comfortable at all for anyone.
Replace "PC" with "Android-powered netbook" and that works out pretty nicely for me and my Asus Transformer. It's my favourite hack-pad these days.
Not saying the rest of your post is wrong, but it's the OS (Windows) which is the problem and not the transformation of form-factor.
# 1 is Windows' part in the disruptive innovation curve which I think touch OSs are clearly following. In the beginning new technology is not directly competing with other players in the category. It is drawing marketing share from non-consupmtion. That's been most of what mobile has gobbled up to now. Then comes low & mid end consumption come next. We're seeing some of that already. People bringing a tablet on business trips when they would have brought a laptop 2 years ago.
Windows seem to be trying to "catch" tablets on their way to "high quality use" on the disruption curve. "Primary computers" used by professionals, students & such. Current Android/iOS devices are not really ready for these uses so they have some time. If they can get enterprise on to Windows machines, they may be able to build a moat (or at least some basic battlements).
# 2 is Microsoft's lipstick-on-a-pig marketing. Marketing fundamentals like product segmentation, branding, naming, pricing. MS have never been smooth with that kind of stuff. "Windows Home Office for Students (noncommercial use only)" has always felt like a contrived afterthought. I'm sure it's well researched and functional, but it's not elegant. When you don't have the elegance at the more fundamental level of marketing it's harder to communicate. So Windows RT/Metro/Surface/Phone/Touch/8 is not going to be understood by consumers until they start using is.
If it was another company, Id say they're doomed. But Microsoft are stubborn and resilient. They may do it.
No one would have been confused.
I don't believe I've used word "confused" enough times.
If it runs office and IE in the desktop, why can't I install games? What application store? What's ARM? What does RT stand for? Why would anyone want that?
To be perfectly honest this reminds me a lot of the PS3 vs Xbox reporting when they where released. PS3 couldn't catch a break, still sold OK, but nothing but terrible reviews. Eventually it came out of the woodwork was most media agencies where taking money from the gaming industry (and probably MS) to write anti PS3 articles, out right media assassination. My money is on the same tactic being used now.
If not its quite common, thats what PR companies do, usually they just do positive stuff, but when you have a lot to loose it can go negative.
Having worked in big media you learn very quickly that everything is paid for in one way or another. Sometimes quite innocently, free interviews on TV which involve the use of there company name. Other times more sneaky stuff, basically differing levels of bribery.
Generally its not to bad, an interview with a pop star releasing a new album, my friend however gets flown all over the world regularly to review movies and games. Everything paid for, thousands and thousands of dollars splashed on him... as long as he continues to write positive review... he'd hate to loose his free holidays in Germany or Las Vegas or London every 6 months or so. So he writes things in a way that keeps his perks. Judging by the lack of negative reviews I'd say the game industry has almost every game reviewer paid off.
The ones that annoy me the most are advertorials, paid stories about certain topics or companies. PR companies basically come in with the story finished, all the wording the way they want it and are willing to pay money to get it into the prime time news.
I'll admit 90% of the time they get turned down on there first try, but they keep trying, and generally they get there way as smaller agencies and especially bloggers will take the money forcing the larger companies to publish a story as well not to loose market share.
Some blogs have bene exposed multiple times for doing it, I believe engadget went on the defensive after being accused of these practices, and there has been a few other examples involving Google and Facebook I can faintly remember within the last year or so.
If you weren't aware of that going on I hope I haven't shaken your trust in the media to badly. But its all about money at the end of the day, and with dwindling profits more and more agencies are caving to PR money.
I actually think Windows 7 is great, it is the most useful, customizable, business-appropriate, and non-broken version of Windows in a while. I was really impressed with Microsoft when I got my corporate box updated to Windows 7 and Office 2010. I thought they were on the right track. But with Windows 8 they tried to fix something that wasn't broken, and abandoned their core market in the process.
They really should have forked their OS product line. Windows 8 RT should have been called "Windows Touch" for tablets and phones, and they should have continued to iterate Windows 7 as "Windows Desktop" for business/productivity users. There is no need for Windows 8/Metro/Modern/whatever on a desktop computer, because vertical touch screens do not work ergonomically.
Gates seems to be happier and more fulfilled (certainly better-liked) than he ever was while he was at MS. I just don't see the value proposition for him in returning.
I don't see Bill returning to Microsoft being a likely scenario but the value proposition is definitely there if he feels his ability to do things with this foundation in the future threatened.
First one I looked at linked to this, for example: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/03/136920664/gates-foundation-sho...
Which contains the same kind of information they are talking about:
> They're influencing governments in lots of different ways — and corporations, and really everybody else in society, and it's not just about writing checks
So clearly this isn't just a philanthropic effort - it's a political machine with real influence.
More:
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2012751169_gatesmonsa...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson/post_1315_b_788...
If Gates returns, it's because he loves the company and wants to see it live on.
At least I can get work done on it from the recliner and plug it in to an external 24" monitor and keyboard for more serious work.
In my opinion the greatest thing about Windows 7 (other than general stability and being less annoying than Vista) is its window key + arrow hot keys to move application windows around super fast on multi-monitor setups. (and to do exact right/left splits on single monitors)
There is nothing appealing to me about Windows RT/Surface or Windows 8 for laptop/desktop, they both look like they will just get in the way of creating or working on anything.
As an Xmonad user I am simultaneously aghast and amused.
Also, this is available on Mac OS X and I use a utility to make available the same behavior.
=)
Also what app do you have to use in Mac OS X for sane window management? One thing that bugged me about giving a 15" MBP a chance was how "maximizing" windows doesn't actually maximize them and that sort of thing. I guess I thought window management was supposed to be built into the OS out of the box.
Moom people also have Witch for window switching management on Mac. Personally it's not what i was looking for, but worth mentioning.
This is in contrast to Windows 3, which had the "multiple document interface", in which each application had its own single window, with the application's main menu under the title bar, and containing a sub-window for each open document and tool palette.
There are pros and cons for each design. The Mac's document-based style is aimed at making it easier to work with several apps at once. This sort of drifted away with the modern one-window Apple apps. Now they even go fullscreen, which has been a decent way to use Microsoft MDI apps since the 16-bit days.
1.x86 and arm architecture are different and it is not easy to port. 2.No existing desktop application for ARM.
Windows RT seems to be windows 8's partial port for ARM chips as I understand.
The only difference between Windows RT and Windows 8 is that the only sanctioned way to install software on Windows RT is from the Windows Store, where all apps run on both CPU architectures.
From the OP quoted article:
"While Windows 8 and Windows RT can both run so-called “Modern” apps (formerly known as “Metro” apps) designed for touch-sensitive screens, even those apps must be converted, or ported, to Windows RT, and not all Modern apps appearing in the Windows app store have been ported over, compounding compatibility issues."
If you write a .NET/XAML app, by default it will be compiled to a CPU neutral IL that runs on all architectures (you can disable this and target a specific CPU architecture).
If you write a C++/XAML app, by default Visual Studio will compile different versions of the app for each architecture.
For the vast majority of Win8 apps, "converting" to ARM is just a cross-compile. It is only when you are doing very specialized things that you actually need to worry about the CPU architecture your app will be running on.
Also in the Linux world they are working on improving the performance and battery efficiency with kernels 3.7 and 3.8, and they will keep improving them in future versions, as they are only at very early stages of ARM support. I think the 64 bit ARMv8 chips will get great support for Linux from day one, when they come out in 2014, as support for them it's already being baked into the kernels right now.
?!?
I'm a huge linux fan but I've never heard of this outside of some sort of processor-emulation layer and full VM which wouldn't give you the world's best performance.
Have I missed something?
--edit--
Did you mean support for older apps is (comparatively) easy because they can be rebuilt from source?
Also I'm not really sure what you mean by linux support for ARM being in the early stages. I've been running linux on a variety of ARM devices for ~8 years now, since the NSLU2 days. Good support for a huge variety of ARM SoCs has been in place for many years now.
The problem is that when you lose the "lower-end" market, it's only a matter of time before you lose the "higher-end" market, too (5-10 years), according to Innovator's Dilemma.
I know it's not a perfect analogy because it's two companies instead of one, but Nokia losing the leadership in the "consumer smartphones" market, made it even more obvious that RIM will lose its leadership in the enterprise market, too, but with a several years of delay, because the enterprise world moves more slowly.