Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere

Re:Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @07:35PM (#9965274)

I went on vacation last week and didn't bring a laptop at all...a tablet was good enough. At one time, that was unthinkable to me. My family members aren't upgrading their laptops because they never use them, while the PC was gotten rid of a long time ago for space. Of course, I'm a programmer, so having a laptop makes sense. I'm sure it will make sense to many people, just not everyone like before, and perhaps fewer and fewer people overtime. No one would say it is a growing market. And if you are a company like Microsoft that wants to grow, that's a problem (disclaimer: MS employee but talking for myself).

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Re:Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere by threeseed on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @07:40PM (#9965310)

> No one would say it is a growing market.

Sure. But I disagree strongly that it is a significantly declining one.

Desktops no doubt are disappearing quickly in favour of laptops. But I fail to see how PC computing is going anywhere. Businesses still have 99% of their employees at a desk. People may not be writing Word documents as much anymore but they are interacting with complex web apps which are ill suited to phones/tablets.

IMHO we are moving to a mobile world. Not a purely phone/tablet world.

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Re:Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere by spiralpolitik on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @08:03PM (#9965445)

I think we will see the traditional business desktop replaced with docking station with smartphone as processing unit. Ubuntu kind of had the right idea with the way Ubuntu phone morphed from a mobile oriented OS to a desktop oriented OS when plugged into dock, screen, and keyboard. For 99% of business uses this would be sufficient power. The remaining 1% would keep their traditional desktops.

I'm actually really surprised Apple hasn't gone down this road as it would be a really easy way to increase OS X market share if every iPhone suddenly became a Mac when plugged into a dock.

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Re:Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere by lewisl9029 on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @12:59AM (#9966291)

This is what I want to see happen as well, but the software and the hardware just aren't there yet.

We don't have a well-polished OS that can seamlessly transition from a single-app-at-a-time smartphone UI to a simultaneous multi-app desktop UI depending on the size of the screens attached. Windows 10 comes close in terms of the transitions and polish, but only scales down to a tablet interface, rather than smartphone. The Ubuntu attempts at this just severely lack polish when trying to use it as a phone.

On the hardware side, ARM is too limiting in terms of software availability, and x86 just doesn't have anything that fits in a smartphone power envelop and can also handle a much heavier workload when used as a typical workstation.

We're seeing some rapid progress on both fronts though, so I'm hopeful it won't be too long before someone finds the right formula.

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Re:Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere by aswanson on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @08:18PM (#9965507)

I think we will see the traditional business desktop replaced with a docking station and smartphones as processing unit Laughing. A buddy and I wanted to make a startup based on this back in 2006. "The Flip phone as a platform!"

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Re:Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere by shadowmint on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @08:14PM (#9965497)

> But I disagree strongly that it is a significantly declining one.

...but it is declining. Thats what all the data and consumer reports show. Seasonally adjusted, taking windows 10 into account. The industry is slowing down.

Obviously we're not going to go 'mobile only' overnight, but here are the brutal facts:

- You make more money when you have a greater potential audience of buyers.

- Investors are not stupid. Investment capital will go where the users are going.

For developers and certain technical jobs some kind of desktop machine will probably always be a thing, but there are a lot of people out there finding they dont need a laptop. Even in business.

Windows is no longer 'the' platform.

Wanting something to be true doesnt make it true.

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Re:Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday July 28, 2015 @07:58PM (#9965414)

But there is no point in investing very much in a stagnate mature market to either maintain or disrupt it. So technology action will move elsewhere, like phone (which is almost mature, or cloud, which is still kind of young). Chromebooks were a pretty gutsy move by Google in this regard, but it was really just a services play for them.

People would often mis-understand post PC to mean "death of the PC" but really, it just meant "death of the interesting PC market where new money could be made."

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