Valve’s Gabe Newall on Linux and Windows 8: “We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.”
If Win 8 fails, the most likely scenario will be a repeat of what happened with Vista —
+ MS will extend the life of Win 7
+ OEMs will preload Win 7 instead of Win 8
+ Corporations will stick with Win 7 instead of upgrading to Win 8
+ We’ll have a lot of goofiness with Windows upgrade/downgrade privileges
Win 8 is all about Microsoft’s need to get a toehold in the handheld space. They expect their desktop users to pay their entry fee.
Users need to figure this out and act to protect their own interests, ’cause MS sure isn’t going to.
MS domination is deteriorating, and it’s natural. Their particular failures just speed up the issue.
Windows 7 sold 400 million licenses. If that’s deterioration, I think we’d all like to deteriorate.
Its a big number, but will that translate into Win 8 sales? Corporations that didn’t buy into Vista finally got their migration from XP to 7 completed, they wont want to move again so soon.
And outside of companies, people still need computers.
Since its rare to buy them without Windows, thats how we arrive that those numbers…
I don’t think its as clear cut to say Windows 8 is going to be a sure thing.
That detested “failure” of Vista (which also had not bad sales at all… ) is still the 3rd most used OS in web stats, ahead of all OSX versions, and an order of magnitude more than Linux.
So NVM Win8 probably doing quite well – in particular, don’t be surprised about Win9 / Metro 2.0 being adored, just like Vista SE is.
Plus, I don’t think XP to Vista SE migration is quite yet complete.
ArsTechnica covered this too:
That, I think, is a fine journalism. They not only present with “boo boo window 8 suxx”, but also give an opinion that Microsoft’s App Store will take a lot of Valve’s money.
And I know that I’d rather have Live integration than that POS steam client.
So, yeah.
Edited 2012-07-26 00:58 UTC
Pity that GFWL totally suck ass compared to any other alternative I can remember.
No, it won’t. You are severely underestimating PC gamers’ love of Gaben and hatred of GFWL.
You are in the severe minority. Live integration on PC exists, it’s called Games For Windows LIVE, and it’s universally reviled as an ungodly abortion of a system. Look at all those people that were clamoring for a PC port of Dark Souls claiming they would buy it in a second; most of them are now whining and back peddling after the GFWL integration was announced.
GFWL is utter dogsh*t, MS completely fumbled the ball on that one. Frankly Steam is far better. And you can install games on whatever system you want (I have games that are installed on osx AND on windows and soon on linux).
Frankly Steam has a lot of goodwill from the community because they don’t nickel and dime the users and developers, like MS tends to do on Xbox Live and probably will do with the windows app store (the temptation is to great).
Edited 2012-07-26 07:22 UTC
You know that Steam sells GFWL … works fine btw.
Why did he get modded down? Its a fact. Sure we all know GFWL sucks the big wet titty, that the PC isn’t an oversized Xbox so what works in one space doesn’t mean it’ll translate to another, that MSFT makes about the most user UNfriendly UIs of late and have been treating PC gaming as the red headed stepchild, but that don’t change the fact that Gabe has a horse in the race folks.
Of course he may have gotten modded down on account of being hit with a case of the crazies, seeing as how he actually thinks Live is better than Steam, has to be an Xbox guy that doesn’t actually play PC games as I’ve had nothing but trouble out of Live and I can’t think of a single gamer I know that has a nice thing to say about the service.
In the end though I think the whole thing? tempest in a teacup. I mean think about it logically folks….Both Intel and AMD have already come out with figures saying their sales are DOWN thanks to a global recession that has belts being tightened, so the answer is….to RAISE prices on PCs and laptops by giving them touchscreens? Really? Look at the price of touchscreens folks, even with economies of scale they sure ain’t free and the good capacitive ones are still pretty high. we ALL know that Win 8 is lousy without touch and the OEMs are hurting, so MSFT expects them to raise prices?
Win 8? The new MS Bob. It bombs HARD, I’ve had one sitting in my little PC shop for customers to play with and so far NOBODY has liked the thing, the OEMs will either demand (and get) the right to do the same trick they did when Vista bombed, where they call it a “Win 8 PC” while shipping win 7 and a Win 8 DVD nobody will use, or they will get together and pick a version of Linux they can control and give MSFT the finger. I’m sure Google will be happy to give them a PC version of Android.
More likely the WinVista trick lets MSFT pretend they didn’t have a flop and old Gabe has nothing to worry about as Win 7 will be the new XP. I only hope this billion dollar failure finally gets the board to stand up and fire Ballmer, I mean how many billions has he flushed now? 20? 30? You could literally take a monkey and let ’em throw poo at the stock page and would see a better ROI by buying the stocks that get covered by caca than what MSFT has seen under more than a decade of Ballmer. Forbes is right, worst CEO by a mile.
I am just happy that it is coming to Ubuntu.
Yes, I haven’t used Live for Windows (only on xBox), but if you all say it’s buggy and so on…
The reason why Steam is POS because it’s part of a fragmentation. And if I would play a game with Steam integration, that doesn’t help me to be in touch with my friends who are playing Battlefield (hello Origin!) or Diablo (hello Battle.net!).
Now when any of my friends play anything on xBox – we still can form a party and chat away, join each other’s game within a two clicks, etc. I just thought that Live integration would bring all these features into poor PC gaming world…
Edited 2012-07-26 13:49 UTC
Steam isn’t perfect by any means, but that’s a terrible argument. Just because Battlefield and Diablo 3 aren’t available on Steam doesn’t diminish the service. That would be like arguing that Xbox Live stinks because of the fragmentation that doesn’t allow you to play Animal Crossing (Wii game) or Killzone 3 (PS3 game) on Live.
GFWL has been a huge missed opportunity. I haven’t had any problems with it so far (knock on wood), but it has been very buggy for many people. A fair number of users have had problems with their save files being deleted. The idea for the service is good, but I think Microsoft has been reluctant to put in the needed time and resources to make it shine as they’re worried that it will canibalize Xbox sales.
So… yeah. You must be one of those…. masochists.
Microsoft has Windows 7 to fall back on. If Windows 8 is a flop, they’ll go back to the old Win7 interface paradigm for the next version in the interests of maintaining their desktop monopoly. Only this time they’ll brand it as a totally new thing. Maybe they’ll add dynamic tiling support and claim it’s their innovation, I don’t know… They’ll find a way to hype it somehow. Perhaps they’ll split Windows into tablet and desktop editions.
Seriously though – these people did not make money by being stupid. Windows 8 is a bit on the wild and wooly side, but it’s backed up by a solid product that has been a huge success. They’re not going to let one wrongheaded idea eat the company.
It wouldn’t be without precedent though, if it happened.
It wouldn’t, but at this point Microsoft is Too Big To Fail – as in, they are incapable of failing, barring government intervention or the collapse of civilization. They have a self-perpetuating monopoly on general-purpose desktop computing; they will become obsolete when software itself becomes obsolete.
(And yes, that’s a really stupid situation, and no, I don’t like it and I hope it passes. But I’m not going to fool myself into believing that’s likely, either.)
But both you and MSFT seem to be ignoring that big fat elephant in the room friend. PCs? Is a mature market because both AMD and Intel went past “good enough” and into “insanely overpowered” years ago and the average person? Can’t even stress a 5 year old chip. Its a mature market where people don’t replace until they die which with Ballmer flushing billions on his harebrained schemes simply won’t cut it which is why they’ve posted their first loss in history.
Lets use my dad as an example, because while i could use one of my customers frankly my dad is the perfect example of the “typical PC user”. He has 3 PCs, a desktop at work, at home, and a laptop, and his use cases are about as bog standard as they come. He runs quickbooks at work and on both the work and home units as well as the lap he surfs, watches YouTube, chats, reads his webmail, bog standard stuff everyone does.
About 3 and a half years ago I replaced his aging desktop with one of those “ZOMG $199 quad!” Tiger kits, its a 2.1 Phenom I quad with now 4Gb of RAM, about the lowest end quad you can possibly get, what have I found? he has YET to hit 45% CPU usage! I monitored him for over a month recently to see how it was doing and frankly he just can’t come up with enough useful work to stress what is now a 5 year old chip. I found the same when I checked his Core 2 based Pentium dual at the shop, he’s just not able to come up with enough useful work to slam that chip, highest he got was 60% when a tab hung.
So MSFT needs to accept they are the new IBM, a company with a mature market that while it won’t go away will never be the big seller it was in the days of the MHz wars, or they need to spin off mobile, call it MetroOS or whatever, and let them innovate without being tied into the legacy of the desktop.
.
The loss was from writing off an acquisition … it is technical loss not a real one.
Tell me something friend…how much money has Ballmer REALLY pissed away on “bad acquisitions”? 20 billion? 30 billion? The simple fact is we don’t know how much they’ve lost because Ballmer can play 3 card monty with the profits from various divisions and cover his failings.
I mean look at the X360 for example, can you tell me whether they’ve made a profit yet or not? Oh they SAY they’ve been in the black for a couple of years, but did that include the 2 billion plus writeoff from the RRoD fiasco? What about the R&D costs? The costs of the Xbox 1?
That is the problem with MSFT in a nutshell, you simply can’t tell WTF is going on in a giant monolith of a company like that. In a way they remind me of the old AOL when dialup was dying, they had all these products, some did great like WinAMP, some did poorly like Netscape after V4, but since they tried their damnedest to tie everything into “the service” you couldn’t separate the good from the bad until the company was practically DOA.
Ballmer has been spending money like Charlie Sheen on a coke binge at a porn convention but now that PCs are a mature market he simply doesn’t have the revenue to cover it up anymore. How much was the final bill for the Zune? The Kin? Sidekick? Maybe now that he can’t play 3 card monty and hope the Windows and office divisions can cover his gambling maybe we’ll see him have some fiscal restraint, but I doubt it. Be prepared for more “technical losses’ from now on as Ballmer refuses to quit blowing cash trying to be Apple.
Record Revenue this year, 1 bad aquisition years ago.
“Microsoft is Dying” meme is getting old.
Stock value went up.
Edited 2012-07-27 07:29 UTC
The stock on Circuit City went up when the last CEO did a slash and burn on his employees…the company was dead 2 years later.
The simple fact is Ballmer looks to be ready to put the blade to their X86 business…one of only 2 major cash cows they have left, to chase a market where they have less than 6% of the business. Now does that sound like a healthy business to you?
I don’t think MSFT is gonna “disappear” anymore than IBM will, but like IBM they will have to accept they have a mature market in X86 and either spin off the mobile division so they can innovate or they can keep throwing billions down the toilet trying to be a half baked copy of Apple, their choice.
I think that is the nature of the players in any market tbh, the company matures.
It’s a factual loss. It’s as real as you burning a few $100 bills.
nope it is technical, this year they had record revenue.
Yes, they never lost that money. Oh wait…
Profit != money in – money out.
Businesses actually depend on cash flow rather than profit … but oh well … quick easy comments are easy to make.
What!?!?!?!?! Rationalization at it’s best. I am angry because I’m a f***ng shareholder!
Also the definition of profit:
Since you know that to be the factual truth, I call you first statement intentional deception, aka lie.
Small businesses that want to rapidly grow – yes. Large corporations – profit is the bottom line.
Edited 2012-07-29 13:03 UTC
The stock actually went up. Obviously not paying attention then.
But you and the other poster are missing the REALLY scary part JAlexoid and that is we don’t know how much he’s lost since he can simply move profits from one division to cover another. How much did they lose on Zune? Sidekick? Kin? Bing? Does their reports on the “profits” of the X360 include the 2 billion plus cost of the RRoD fiasco?
To me THAT is what is really scary about MSFT right now, in that Ballmer can play three card monty by moving profits from one division to another and make losses look like gains. Hell would we have even seen this “write off” if the Windows profits would have covered it? who knows, but the simple fact is that we just can’t tell how healthy or sick MSFT is ATM because we don’t have the bottom lines from each division.
I’m not arguing the crux of what you’ve written but MS only made a $500m loss due to writing off $6bn from a failed advertising venture.
Also, if you’re measuring total CPU load across all cores then it’s not surprising that your Dad’s mostly single threaded software doesn’t stress all the cores.
I find it hard to believe he only used 90% cpu power. Most of the time starting an app peaks your cpu to 100%. There is a big difference between having enough cpu power and having enough cores. Most users can use 2 cores one foreground and one background. But if you could have a single core 6Ghz i3 most users would notice if you couple it to an ssd.
45% of quad.
Broken logic: they will become obsolete when *desktop* software itself becomes obsolete.
While I don’t see happened anytime soon in office rooms, I see a trend replacing desktop computing with mobile computing in house rooms. Which will lead to a situation where people will not be anymore fluent in office desktop computing as they are today because they have a desktop computer at home running on the same set of softwares.
This could change a lot for Microsoft on the long term.
There is a reason why they want to push the squared Metro framework in the rounded Windows ecosystem, and it’s not for the office customers, which are locked-down since long. The main stream customer, on the other side, seems to move away…
There is no such thing but I’m sure plenty of companies over the years has thought exactly that. It is usually followed by spectacular, although not necessarily fatal, failure.
No, they will become less and less important as desktop computing becomes less important. It might even happen faster if they alienate their customers.
It’s unlikely that they’ll go away any time soon but plenty of once powerful companies have been reduced to small players.
But you see that is where you and the pundits are wrong. its not that “desktop computing is becoming less important” its that everyone and their dog and their dog’s rubber bone has a PC and since the rise of multicores frankly users simply can’t come up with enough useful work to stress even a 5 year old chip.
I have many a customer on first gen Core duos and Phenom I triples and quads and frankly they just can’t redline even these 5 plus year old chips, they just can’t do it. There hasn’t been a “killer app” in years and frankly the jobs most people use a PC for will feel the same on that Phenom I triple or the latest Intel monster, so why buy a new one? It certainly won’t “feel” any faster, or let them get more work done when they aren’t even pegging the chips they have, it’ll just cost money.
So while I believe Win 8 is MS Bob the second coming I seriously doubt computers are going anywhere. Its just that the OEMs got spoiled by the crazy money they were making during the MHz wars, where a 2 year old PC would struggle to run the latest software. That just isn’t the case anymore and without the thermal cycling that comes with pegging the chips these desktops and laptops are lasting longer than ever, that’s all.
Yes good point. It’s not becoming less import as much as it is becoming stable and people aren’t buying new PC’s every other year. The money previously spent on PC’s are now going to other markets.
Either way, it’s bad news for MS.
Exactly. Tell me, if you are Intel or AMD how would you sell a customer that is perfectly happy with the unit he/she already has? it already runs all their software just fine, surfs just fine, does everything they want a PC to do just fine, so what is the selling point?
The OEMs simply got spoiled by the MHz wars which came to an end with the rise of multicores. There is not one single task the average user does that doesn’t run just fine on a first Gen Core Duo or Phenom I triple or quad, there just isn’t. They have plenty of RAM, plenty of HDD space, there hasn’t been any upgrades to the backbone to make their 100Mbs Ethernet too slow, the units already do 1080P which is the standard everyone has settled on, what’s the selling point?
The ONLY reason Apple sells the way it does is because its fashion, no different than those Air Jordans or Prada pumps. I know plenty of people that went right out and bought the new iPad when they weren’t even stressing the iPad they had!
Sooner the OEMs realize its a mature market and they need to be selling services as well as units the better off their bottom line will be. There are still niches needing to be filled, the wireless home and HTPCs for examples, but just throwing new units on a shelf and expecting them to move like they did during the MHz wars isn’t gonna cut it, and the ones that don’t realize that will be going the way of the 8-track.
Last I checked, ~1.3 billion PCs in use, ~2 billion PC users …quite a few billion people left to “everyone and their dog and their dog’s rubber bone”.
OTOH there are already 5+ billion mobile subscribers, and large part of them might be very receptive to ~tablets (or largish phones, I think, just without the ridiculous price premium such models command now in ~western markets) in the next decade or so, possibly much more than they are to PCs – so yeah, that would be kinda “post-PC”…
I’m guessing that might have more to do with longer-lasting capacitor types …many older chips didn’t even really thermal-cycle that much, they were relatively bad at saving energy when idle.
+1 internetz to you sir!
As an Archlinux user, I’m quite happy about Steam’s decision to support linux in case Windows goes all Down’s syndrome on them!
Let’s face it, for a lot of us, Windows is taking up valuable space on the HDD for games!
The Linux graphics stack is going to have to shape up a bit first. And I sure as heck hope that doesn’t mean forcing Wayland on everyone.
Sure Wayland needs work, as it’s still a WIP, but it WILL be the default instead of X in the coming years, that’s non-debatable.
The Linux graphics stack is going to have to shape up a bit first. And I sure as heck hope that doesn’t mean forcing Wayland on everyone.
Strange reasoning. The graphics stack needs to shape up. Agreed. What I don’t understand is the dismissal of Wayland. Wayland is the shaping up of the Linux graphics stack. X in its long, long years of existence has become unwieldy and bitrotten here and there. Plus it carries years of undiscardable legacy. No amount of polishing is going to save it.
Wayland takes the lessons learned for X and implements them in a modern architecture, with as much reuse of the more modern “X” code as possible. On top, Wayland can host a nested X for legacy compatibility. What is not to like?
What does it matter if it’s Wayland, X or something else as long as it works?
Edited 2012-07-26 12:32 UTC
There is “works” and then there is “works better”…
I do hope you realise that there is more to the graphics stack besides just Wayland.
Would you mind moderating your language? Down’s syndrome is not really available as a way of expressing your pejorative feelings about an OS.
That’s right, they didn’t. Steve Ballmer was not in charge yet.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/07/10/the-poetry-of-steve-ballmer/
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-e…
It’s whether metro will fail to catch on with Windows 8.
And it will fail spectacularly.
The Windows 8 desktop experience is amazing. There are so many things they’ve done right including getting rid of the start menu. The whole desktop experience is the best Windows environment I’ve used.
Where they’ve fallen over is everything related to Metro is:
Terrible.
Unfinished.
Useless.
Absolute garbage.
It might take another 5 or 10 years to move away from the desktop. But as it stands the NT desktop can’t leave yet. Microsoft would have to be Nokia to think that Metro only is a good idea.
Edited 2012-07-26 02:27 UTC
Just once, it might be nice to read a post from you that you haven’t completely pulled out of your ass.
i only use debian at home but windows 8 is good.
fact
I’m sorry to say but you’ll be waiting a long time for that to happen – a very long time.
Well, Xbox platform is closed, totally controlled and very profitable.
I think that turning Windows 8 into a gaming disaster is a really smart business decision.
+1
I would like to question: How do we know that it’s very profitable?
Also I would like to remember that there are some products that aren’t profitable at all (Bing comes to my mind now, but it’s difficult to know exactly how much does it costs yearly to Microsoft). Those cases happen for reasons like “market presence”, “advertisement”, “branding”, “leave the impression that we are also there”, “don’t leave the others get all the market”, etc.
There are signs in the Xbox case that tell us something: there is 3DS and PSVita, but there is no portable Xbox. If xbox was a successful product, would we see portable Xboxes? They would not let pass the chance to earn money.
Edited 2012-07-26 06:01 UTC
Dedicated portable gaming devices are a dead end. Mobile phones take on that role now. WP7 has Xbox Live integration.
I dunno, my hacked PSP does a far better job of running games and emulated consoles than my touch screen phone. It has hardware buttons and an analogue stick – something a phone can only dream of. The only games I tend to play and enjoy on my phone are those designed for touch.
Edited 2012-07-26 10:26 UTC
And that is the kicker for me. I like dabbling with my little touch screen devices, but for gaming I WANT the real buttons and the textured feedback. Virtual buttons on a flat screen makes the endeavor far less appealing. Gaming on a PC with a mouse/trackball and keyboard is infinitely more entertaining to me than a touchscreen.
Having said that, for non gaming stuff, my 5″ mini tablet gives me a world of information and opportunity at my fingertips. And that I really like.
Buttons vs. screen-buttons, sure (when it comes to games designed for buttons) …but then you jump to praising mouse/trackball on such basis? Mouse is quite feedback-less – it feels always the same, all mouse games are built around the simplistic mechanic of pointing at stuff quite disconnected from the input device.
(and phone screens have enough of texture to similarly feel movement, when pointing/dragging, and they have ~force-feedback built in)
I agree 100% with you, but we’re in the minority. For most people, an iPhone or Android device can easily meet their on the go gaming needs. They just want to be able to play Angry Birds or Words With Friends for 10 minutes. They enjoy gaming, but not enough to spend a couple hundred dollars on a dedicated portable gaming unit and $30 – $50 per game. For them, the smart phone they already own and a handful of $0.99 to $9.99 games does the trick. The Nintendo DS and the PSP sold a ton of units, but they came out before smart phone gaming took off. Sales of the Vita and 3DS have been terrible in comparison.
Which is why those two devices were released with a lot of smartphone-like features built in. Unfortunately, those touch screens, cameras and built in programs didn’t seem to help the sales any.
As for gaming on the go, well there’s a reason I still have my ancient (by gaming standards) Gameboy Advance SP. No matter how compelling the games for smartphones get, nothing beats a dedicated device with 12+ hours of battery life, instant on, and physical buttons. Instead of bringing my phone’s battery to its knees after two hours of gaming, I can keep it alive all day to receive texts, calls and emails — you know, what it was designed for — and still get my game on.
Which phones excel at. Anything touch translates badly to non touch. I’ve played Angry Birds on the PSP and it was horrible!! Words with friends would be nigh on unworkable. But, conversely, touch screen is no place for traditional controller based games. As an example, as much as I love GTA3 on the iPad, GTA liberty stories on the PSP is far, far superior.
Not only smartphones …it’s possibly even much bigger on so called feature phones.
From the aggravated look of Opera (Mini): “The top content for downloading is by far games applications” ( http://www.opera.com/smw/2012/03/ )
And look what are its world’s top 20 handsets: http://www.opera.com/smw/2011/11/
Furthermore, probably billions users of simpler handsets (those which have the capability to install j2me games, or even just include a few… why not count the latter?) are much less likely than ~western smartphone users to get a portable console, of current or previous generation(s), but already passing some free time in j2me games – or even Snake and such – back then.
So I suppose the dreams of Xperia Play come true… scary, in a The Lathe of Heaven kind of way ;p (yes, its two sticks are not quite physical, but a) I find it quite an intriguing approach b) they could be, with some modification of form-factor – maybe making a recessed place for them, maybe something close to… PSP)
Overall, yeah, games made for buttons or sticks don’t quite work without them (though BTW, you would have issues playing an emulated first Ape Escape – Xperia Play, not so) – but then, not a long time ago joypad was a novelty, likewise games built so much around mouse and keyboard & the dynamics of pointing at things …OTOH, hardly anybody plays on joysticks now. Times change.
Someone should mod you +100, because anyone that has used that abortion known as Games For Windows Live knows what a terrible POS it is. Its buggy, easily screwed up by an update, its just not good software and certainly not something I’d trust my CC to.
If it comes down to Linux and Steam, or Windows and GFWL? I’ll dual boot Linux as THAT is how much I can’t stand GFWL. If I wanted a fricking Xbox I’d buy a fricking Xbox, quit trying to sell me XBox games in Games For Windows Live MSFT!
we need more OSes (like we need more programming languages).
Hardware vendors should help in this way. for example the IOMMU movement helps uKernel OSes.
But ACPI must be shortened/simplified
HW specs must move things inside the chipset and simplified more
More OS friendly/independent HW standards should be produced (e.g. GFX / GPGPU )
In any case the HW vendors should help the OS ecosystem by simplification/standardization and driver replacement by stacks.
Where is the UEFI driverless promise????
Normally, I would expect a monopoly to use their existing established product (Windows 7) to force themselves into a new market (real tablets, not old stuff).
They they seem to be doing it in the other way around. Windows 8 is effectively pushing their unfinished tablet interface into existing stable desktop monopoly.
Nobody would complain if Metro was tablet only. But they force it so much into the desktop that they even disabled hacks that brought back regular desktop and start menu in the latest releases.
Good going, whoever is in charge of decisions at Microsoft!
Same with the ‘Ribbon’. They have to force it upon us because if users were given an option they might vote with their feet.
The ribbon was forced onto us because people are by nature resistant to change. Personally however, I think the ribbon was a fantastic decision for Office and works well in many other apps now too.
As to Metro. I don’t see why people think it’s as disruptive as they do. I am a full-time Windows8 RP user at present and probably only see the start screen a dozen times per day at most, and I don’t consistently use any metro apps. Even if metro isn’t as polished as it could be, you barely have to interact with it.
Seemingly significant but mostly aesthetic UI changes are par-for-the-course in this industry anyway. The move from Windows 7 to Windows 8 is nowhere near as big an interface shift as MacOS 9 to MacOS X, but even that left the majority of usage patterns in-tact.
Hi, I’m a Mac, and because Mac OS X (like most other operating systems prior to the rise of Windows) has a global menu I get to keep the menu and have ribbon – the best of both worlds!
You can blame Microsoft and their decision to throw convention out the window in favour of bolting a menu onto each application resulting in the perennial clusterf–k that is Windows usability or there lack of.
Edited 2012-07-26 15:43 UTC
Now, I’m not even really willing to consider which way of doing menus might be better…
But it is quite hypocritical on you part to blame Microsoft for supposedly “throwing convention out the window”, to point out their different and supposedly worse UI conventions when – during the years in which MS UI was maturing – Apple tried to litigate on the “look and feel” basis (and lost BTW), like they’re trying to do now.
“I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.”
I would love to see some explanation for why he thinks this. It’s a great soundbite, but I would love to see it qualified.
“I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market.”
I would like to see this explained too. Even dismissing the lack of qualification on the statement, I don’t see how this is catastrophic? That reads to me like there is more room for smaller players to step up. Maybe a power shift with the rise of some (currently) second tier players?
“I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people.”
Here he’s unlikely to be referring to the Windows app store and the shift towards a price driven market like that which has seen so many 99c games appear on iOS, as Steam has proven that there’s real flexibility available there on the desktop.
If it’s more to do with return on investment in specialised hardware like Surface then I guess we’ll see. But margins have been shrinking in IT for decades so I don’t see this as being a singular catastrophic event either.
I think he means margins in the PC business.
The great white hope of PC hardware has been the Ultrabook. They hoped to get away from wafer thin margins with that. It hasn’t worked. Acer for example just had to make a few bad moves and they slumped down the rankings, like HP to an extent.
There is desperation for the PC business to get out of the race for the bottom. By hacking in touch and all that in the next great White hope is in Software, Windows 8. The OEMs are hoping against hope that they can get ahead by enhancing the market they already exist in. Dell, HP, Acer and Lenovo have either failed or just not done well in the expanding mobile market.
They want some high margins to give them a buffer against the odd strategic mistake.
If Windows 8 fails, it will be another generation of Windows where the race to the bottom is still in place in a shaky global financial market. It is not unreasonable to think that an Acer or HP PC business could full on fail.
Yahoo was at the top once, everybody needed search and Yahoo was search. The desktop PC market doesn’t owe any OEM or OS maker. It just has to do what people want.
Each of the vendors also ignore why Apple can command the margins they do – because they actually are different. What is the difference between a HP, ASUS and Acer? they all run Windows, they all pretty much have the same hardware inside, all their call centres are located in Timbuktu and serviced by a person whose 5th language happens to be English, there is nothing that really makes a user want to stay loyal to that company so is anyone surprised that the only aspect left of their product is price?
The great saviour to the PC industry is consolidation and each vendor developing their own in house operating system – with an ecosystem around that operating system which gives the customer a uniquely HP, Dell or Lenovo experience. When the vendor can control the experience they can ensure that the customers are happy and become repeat customers rather than viewing their products as interchangeable with any other product out there.
Edited 2012-07-26 15:48 UTC
Somehow I have the feeling this will mean HP Linux, Dell Linux, Lenovo Linux, OEM Vendor XYZ Linux, all with its own quirks and bloatware. Or some other cheap alternative OS.
Because having a standard OS distribution regardless of which OS, is no different than the actual situation with Windows, in differention terms.
The only way to properly differentiate, like it used to be before the IBM PC was introduced, leads to bigger development costs.
The bloatware is a byproduct of the race to the bottom rather than the cause – if they have their own operating system with a uniquely HP/Dell or Lenovo experience then the customer will see that yes they’re paying more but they’re getting a superior experience. Right now customers go in, they see a row of laptops that are all running Windows so can you blame them just going for the cheapest one? they all run Windows, they all pretty much look the same so what makes one stand out from the others apart from price? what makes the NZ$400 laptop visibly different than the NZ$600 or NZ$800 one?
Regarding different operating systems, why not a FreeBSD based distribution with work done by HP? A Linux based one from Dell? a NetBSD distribution from Lenovo? As for the cost of development – given the volume they sell the per-unit cost would be minuscule especially when you consider that they can easily create open/closed source hybrids that take an open source core such as FreeBSD, graft a ground up proprietary display technology then work with something like KDE to integrate the desktop into the underlying operating system. Personally I can’t see it costing an astronomical sum for the operating system itself but the biggest challenge would probably be getting an ecosystem up and running which would cost a bit at least in the short run by long term it would halt the race to the bottom which would allow them to make back any money from the initial investment.
As a developer you would be in a territory similar to the complaints some developers now have about Android.
Either make use of OS agnostic deployment tools, which are not able to take advantage of the platform uniqueness, or resort to choose a selected few as the target platforms.
In the Amiga days, for example, I only cared what was available for the Amiga. The Atari ST was not even in my radar.
But if your code is properly abstracted and modularised then it shouldn’t be too much of an issue – if there is an issue then it tends to be a programmer who wrote code first then wondered how on the hell they’re going to target other platforms once they’ve written 50,000 lines of code. Yes, there are some platforms you might just say, “screw it, it isn’t worth the effort I can’t be bothered targeting that platform” and thus an opportunity opens up for a competitor who might see value in targeting that platform. That competitor might see it as important to ensure compatibility with your software and ask whether he could licence technologies off you to make that possible thus you’re making a small stream of money off a platform you aren’t targeting but still supporting by proxy.
Each platform means:
– one compiler more to test;
– one more platform to setup the continuous integration system;
– one more system to test before getting the green light from the test team;
– one extra module in the abstraction layer to maintain;
– one more system to document the installation process;
– one more system to create packages for;
– one more system that the technical support needs to know about
Unless it really pays off, it is not worth the investment.
Edited 2012-07-28 19:53 UTC
You said it yourself, the ecosystem. Think of the current Android situation only worse, as at least Android versions no matter how different do retain a few similarities at the core. Can you imagine what would happen, for both the users and the developers, if they tried that now? It might have worked out had they done this from the start, but now when everyone’s used to being able to run common apps no matter which brand of machine they buy? How many versions of Office, Photoshop, or insert common workplace app here might there end up being if this were to take place, each with their own bugs and missing features? I shudder to think of it. Twenty years ago they could have pulled it off, but as things stand now one of two situations would come to pass: none of them would take off, or only one of them would and you’d end up with yet another monopoly and this time it would be both a hardware and software monopoly.
What I hope for is three operating systems that span from laptop to desktop to workstation to server with at least some sort of common roots between then so then we can actually have some genuine competition of delivering integrated solutions rather than OEM’s heaping Windows onto a computer, loading it with crapware and calling it a ‘great product for the end user’. What I’d also like to see are vendors that are making healthy profits and returning those profits into making better products rather than simply a race to the bottom that ends up cutting their throat in the long run – a race to the bottom leads to simply a market where there are only 2-3 strong companies with everything else dying with little to no difference between the three of them in the way of operating system, hardware, support etc. to the point you might as well just have the 2-3 merge into a single monopoly.
We have pretty much that… Winphone, Metro tablet, desktop Windows, Windows server. Or, in another camp, Linux kernel spanning from mobiles or routers to supercomputers (hm, perhaps Apple follows that the least, withdrawing from server space, and opting to use NetBSD instead of OSX on their routers or NAS devices).
We have that, just without the more extreme variants, without much chaos – which would take place, if OS was largely done by the same OEMs that load crapware (not really all do that, for some the experience tends to be quite lean, and without doubled costs – like including additional DVD playback soft & license when Windows does it already – which probably covers the incentives from crapware; it’s quite fine with Lenovo for example, and coincidentally they seem to be on the rise)
So be it. Things are much better than they were in home computer era (even if with less “variety” – but not really, only if you limit yourself and not see such inexpensive options like Arduino and so on), and giving better prices is one of the points of competition (on one hand, I can understand why an Apple user might want companies to rip us off more; though on the other, I don’t understand the desire for more variety). Use regulation to ward off abuses.
Now _that_ would be wonderful. Think about all those millions that MS makes from windows and office and put them in the budgets those OEM vendors would have for linux. Now think about all those vendors trying to outpace each other. You would get a smartphone like speed of development. And nobody would be big enough to force anything.
From my experience this would be hell, assuming each one of them would offer different package systems, directory locations, library versions, specific desktop environments and so on.
This is to be expected as history has taught us.
As I mentioned in another thread, around my circle of friends in the 80’s we cared only for the Amiga. Already having to worry about 500, 600, 1000, 1200 was too much effort.
Apple commands the margins they do because its fashion friend, nothing more. Look up the numbers and their failure rates are no different than anybody else and they simply tack on a new feature like Retina (which frankly PC vendors have had high end HD screens for years, its just a niche most never looked at because it was more expensive) and people WILL buy because its not cool to have last year’s Apple anymore than it is to wear last season’s clothes.
Not that there is anything wrong with that, Nike has made a mint off fashion with the Air Jordans, Gucci, Prada, there is high margins and good money to be made in fashion. But you look at the chips in their X86 line and they are always behind the curve, and you always pay more for less than what you get from the other vendors.
So please don’t act like its some “sterling reputation for excellence” that lets Apple charge what they do, its because that Apple logo tells the world you spent more money than the other guy, no different than the “I Am Rich” app that would have never sold in a million years on android or WinPhone. The mistake the Windows OEMs are making is thinking they can slap out a $1500 laptop and anybody will care. Its just not cool to have a Dell or HP logo on the top like it is to have the Apple logo, just like those Payless sneakers aren’t cool like having a pair of Jordans.
Its like slapping a higher price on Mickey D’s and thinking that means they can compete with Olive Garden, or thinking a $100,000 sticker on a Mustang means it can compete with a Ferrari, it just don’t work that way.
Where did I raise any issues relating quality? how about next time, if you’re going to reply, actually read what I post rather than scanning through it in 5 seconds than coming to some off-base conclusion that never addresses a single thing I said.
What makes Apple different is the entire package where as you have this fetish of focusing on one aspect – and you are the perfect example of the kind of mind set of those who run the PC industry, your inability to look at multiple things and ask what is the cumulative effect of all these things combined into a single coherent product. What makes Mac’s different is the operating system itself or to quote Steve “the heard of a Mac is Mac OS X”. That is the biggest differentiating factor hence the reason they guard it so jealously from it being put on non-Apple hardware – it is the one differentiating factor that makes their computer stand out from the rest. Yes, the looks might grab the eye but there has to be something beyond looks to keep a person a repeat purchaser – oh, and calling them ‘morons’ or ‘idiots’ or ‘sheep who follow fashion trends’ simply shows what a superficial moron you are when it comes to understanding purchasing trends.
So you talk about “multiple things combined”, but then you go on and focus on just one, the OS…
And you know, people were using pretty similar arguments when MacOS was quite horrible in its late-Classic years, anyway (plus at least in the first two X versions, especially as far as “cumulative effect of all these things combined into a single coherent product” goes) …it’s also the shared myth narrative of experience.
But “heard” came out curiously middle-ground
(unless just something to do with the usual furry NZ beasts ;p )
I don’t play games and never buy software
Why care to comment then?
Because this is a site open to comments, and that is mine.
Amen and hallelujah!!!
+100000
This is not a comment, this is your fact. If you want to make a true comment, then elaborate a bit about why you never play games and buy softwares. Are you Stallman ?
Kochise
No, it is my comment.
I don’t see you complaining at every one why just posts “+1” or “I agree”.
I don’t play games because I have other things I want to do, and people to talk to. Most of the people i know have children, so do I, the last thing you do when you have children is sit in front of a computer screen 8 hours at a time playing WoW.
Most people I know are sozialarbeiterinnen und sozialpädagoginnen. None of them have games consoles or use computers just for fun. Neither do I. Fun for me is something else – like talking to real people, sitting by the river with friends, talking, laughing, having a picknick. Why would anyone play games on a hot day when they could be doing that?
As for apps, I have no need to buy apps. The ones that I use are either free or they came with my computer.
Edited 2012-07-27 06:55 UTC
Good for you … but I like playing COD and Capcom vs SNK.
That must make you feel really superior. We all know that only stupid people and children play games and buy software.
I never said that… if you feel that I meant that I was superior to you it says more about your own self-worth then it says about me.
Good point. Wanna play with transformers now?
You think you are pointing out free speech. What you are actually doing is trying to get attention for doing stupid things.
A bit like your post
It decreases signal to noise ratio (but then, mostly
twitter-like nothing-telling comments get upvoted through the roof…)
Microsoft will have shipped two major OS updates before Valve has managed to ship Half-Life 2: Episode 3.
I think Gabe should focus his criticisms on his own product teams.
I bet that the Microsoft team and the Valve team do not compare, sizewise. And Microsoft was urged to make people forget Vista ASAP so, yeah, they worked hard on 7.
Kochise
Win7 is just Vista SE “let’s use on people the trick of ‘lucky 7′”