Yesterday’s Windows 10 hardware launch event was without question the best Microsoft in ages – and arguably the tech launch event of the year. Microsoft unveiled its first-ever laptop, showed off an updated Surface Pro 4, and announced a new lineup of phones, all while articulating a confident, aggressive strategy of turning Windows 10 into the underlying software service and platform for virtually everything in your life.
That huge bet might not pay off – Apple and Google are still formidable competitors, and the road back to mobile relevance will be a long one – but it’s more vision and purpose than we’ve seen from Redmond in years. So I sat down with new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the soon-to-open Microsoft flagship store in Manhattan to ask him how he’d changed the entire vibe at Microsoft in the past 18 months, and what he hopes to accomplish in the next 18 months. We also talked about how he plans to keep his Windows OEM partners happy even as Microsoft’s Surface Book laptop competes directly with their high-end products, and just how he plans to get back in the phone game.
I like Nadella, and I like what Microsoft is doing right now. Even though I can’t really put my finger on it, I have a fondness for the Surface line-up, and if it wasn’t for Metro being useless, I would not have opted for a MacBook Pro. I’ve also always liked Windows Phone, and even though I don’t believe it’s going anywhere, and despite the many, many stumbles Microsoft has made along the way, I still think it’s definitely the most unique of the three major mobile platforms.
By letting go of ‘Windows everywhere’ and instead focussing on making great products for everyone – no matter your platform of choice – I think Microsoft has a real shot at getting back in the consumer game.
I felt like I was reading something I could have written (apart from the fact that I don’t own a MacBook; my reason for never buying a Surface Pro is simply the cost). However, Microsoft’s bullish approach to tracking and monitoring has broken the trust they had been forging over the past few years. I simply can’t stomach using an OS that, by its very design and with no way to get around it, treats the user as if they are a commodity and not the other way around. It’s the main reason why I stopped using Android and have severely scaled back my use of Google services, and now with Windows 10 tracking “features” being backported to Windows 7, I’m seriously considering dropping the platform altogether.
And it’s a shame too, because Windows 10 is a few bug squashes away from being the best Microsoft OS yet.
If your list of ‘bug Squashes’ includes the removal of all that telemtery and the constant slurping of your data in an OOTB setup then you might have a case.
Then there is the Start Menu, search for everything (yeah right, as if I don’t know where my apps are) and Metro on a non touch screen.
Oh, not forgetting the forced updates.
I do appreciate the new direction that Sataya is trying to head MS in but I just get the impression that all their old habits are nothing more than a Patch Tuesday away from rising out of the swamp.
Your concerns are surely understandable – even with all the possibilities to filter and/or configure the amount of shared information, there is no definitive guarantee that your data will be completely secured.
This, however, is a problem on any major platform. That is, where will you flee if you don’t accept to disclose something to at least one among MS, Apple, Google, etc.?
As far as I know, there is no full open-source replacement stack to choose that is completely free from ‘spying practices’ and of top-level commercial quality – and probably there will never be one, since it would prove financially unsustainable in comparison to the other big players.
And ultimately, my point is: do you really think you have/we have a truly ‘safe’ choice? If not – as I think – then your rationale for avoiding, say, Windows 10 becomes a lot less sound…
Edited 2015-10-08 08:08 UTC
A Linux desktop and a webbrowser gets you a long way.
I’ve been doing that for at least 5 years and my parents too.
With less issues than on Windows.
By the way: I had a Mac but the hardware broke much sooner than the HP laptop I bought after that. Maybe my data point is an exception, but people keep saying Mac hardware is good. I’m less confident about that.
With Linux I was able to keep using the same hardware as well. Something which Windows can only do more recently (I attribute that mostly to hardware getting faster and cheaper, probably has less to do with Windows improving).
If I want some real indepence I can run my own server with web-applications, etc.
I really do believe we can make the management and update process of server applications much easier now than we could in the past.
Just look at things like Docker and the amount of automation people are doing.
So I think it might be possible to get to a point where the average person can run their own ‘server’.
Pretty much what the Freedombox project was thinking about.
Edited 2015-10-08 09:03 UTC
This can be a great possibility, but only for the future, maybe – right now, the technologies you mentioned are not as widespread and easy to set up as an average user would want (in my knowledge, at least). As I implied in my original post, nowadays there will always be some form of controlled service/platform that average users (i.e. non-tech-savvy) will resort to.
If you’re speaking strictly of mobile phones, then yes, it’s difficult to carry one (even a “dumbphone”) that doesn’t track your every move, so there are always compromises there.
In the desktop computing space, however, I think it would be difficult to argue that Slackware, vanilla Debian, or OpenBSD are tracking your every move. Granted, hardware does come into play, but given 100% open hardware (Intel hardware without Management Engine or most AMD hardware, both with Coreboot/Libreboot and open networking hardware) you can be reasonably sure your desktop PC isn’t reporting on you to someone somewhere.
And honestly, it’s not so much the tracking itself in Windows that bothers me (though to be clear, I don’t like it on any platform), it’s the broken trust. For the past few years they made a big deal about Google’s well-known tracking and metrics, purporting that Bing (and by inference, all Microsoft products) was free from such shenanigans. Then it comes out that Windows 10 is far worse, with no way to turn it off for most users. That’s my beef: “Trust us because we don’t do what the competition does! Except yeah, we really do, and in a worse way.” They don’t have to track you in their search engine, because the entire OS does it, and they think that absolves them of any hypocrisy. That’s a slap in the face to every one of their customers.
I have been using Windows since the ‘ 80s, still use it at work. At home I’m Linux only, since many years. Comparing Windows and Linux: a well polished Linux distro such as Mint, openSuse or Fedora is of a higher quality than Windows. Less downtime, more efficient use of hardware, smaller footprint, sane update policies, faster…. Should I go on? Maintenance is simpler as well. Linux to me is the least sucking operating system, but as usual YMMMV. SO the professional quality is fine.
Now let’s look at your other demands: fully open-source and completely free from ‘spying practices’. On the software front this is possible. Of course, this means you will have to give up on some (questionable) software, such as Skype.
On the hardware/firmware front being fully open source is hard however (regardless of the operating system). BIOS is virtually always a closed source blob. I don’t know what it does and what it sends to who. Graphics drivers: closed source. If this is a problem for you, your hardware choice gets extremely limited.
PieterGen,
+1 I’d upvote your post if I could.
It’s more than questionable, the wiretapping of Skype was in the leaked NSA documents.
http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-docs-boast-now-we-can-wiretap-skype-vi…
To be honest though I think it’s a risk with all major US service providers. Statistically, I imagine obscure companies are less likely to be compromised because they hold much less strategic intelligence value. I favor the services that you can run yourself over commercial “cloud based” services that hoard everything into centralized stores that are ripe for abuse.
Edited 2015-10-09 14:46 UTC
Absolutely agree, but consider that you’re probably the tech guy-type who is able to fix that little quirk that your favourite distribution might have raised now and then in the past (consider that most people aren’t even able to properly look for a solution). I know that distributions such as Mint/Ubuntu – which are very desktop-oriented – are surely less-prone to unexpected situations but it happens all the same, only more rarely than with other ones. I experienced this myself with a relative’s PC where I installed Linux to attempt getting less “help me!” calls that were due to malware infesting his old WinXP, and I didn’t succeed like I hoped – ‘malware problems’ just turned into ‘hardware/software support problems’. On Windows, the latter is honestly less frequent according to my experience, if only because of the more controlled, less-fragmented nature of the OS…
And even if you might still consider all of the above as debatable, my point stands still: there is no full open-source, fully spying-free, mainstream-oriented stack (that is, desktop OS and mobile OS and online mail/chat/mapping etc. services) that you can adopt at present – at least, not yet.
And again, IMHO nowadays the best bet is simply to diversify: adopt open-source and spying-free whenever possible, and for anything else try to pick from different vendors (i.e. Google Mail / MS cloud storage / Whatsapp mobile chat / <put your choice here>) – so to at least make ‘crossing of your personal data’ hard or impossible for them…
Edited 2015-10-11 00:24 UTC
I completely agree. I am in the process of giving up on my macbooks and imac for Linux again. Actually I have numbers of linux servers but it felt nice to have a good app support for Skype and others (mostly for meetings and reports). But I cannot accept it anymore. How can someone just use these products anymore knowing you are being treated as a data generator for them. Ignorance in this time about these issues is going to have a grave cost.
You either trust your OS or you don’t. If you trust it with your banking software, financial data, private e-mail etc…but you don’t trust that they will not sell your personally identifiable information to third parties you are having strange thoughts.
All parties like to improve their software with telemetry and turn that on by default while giving you options to turn it off. The same for many other “connected” features that require sending information online. But somehow people are now starting to think that all of their personal files and information is analysed (it is) in a personnaly identifiable way (it isn’t)
The things you write and post and transport through so many internet providers are far more worrysome to think about, yet nobody is distrusting their ISP for snooping on their data (while they are)
Sounds bad already. Hardware should not be tied to an OS.
luckily, being fully fledged PCs, their not
Does “hardware that fully unlocks the potential of Windows 10” sound better to you, or did I just make you throw up a little
I hope you realise that all of these devices (except for the Band 2?) are sold with Windows 10 and are designed with that OS in mind. If you want to run another OS on it that might be possible but you are on your own there. (Good luck trying to get iOS running on an XBox or Android on a 950XL)
With Surface devices you might actually succeed to run another OS on it but if those OS’s would support all the components is another question (switching GPU’s on the Surface Book comes to mind as a first challenge)
Basically all hardware that is sold has a very limited amount of supported OS’s that run on it. Even tinker boards like a Raspberry Pi have only 1 or 2 officially supported OS’s (https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#softwareOS)
Thom, how dare you post anything even vaguely complementary about Microsoft. Don’t you know this is OSnews?
Slowly but surely they are working to motivate themselves again. Ballmer was the era of technical stagnation (by which I mean, once he won a battle he left the solution to die on the shelf). I think the new microsoft understands that things are more fluid. If microsoft suddenly brings out the best phone with the most compelling OS then the upgrade cycle of the user base is only 2 years. Think about that for a second. Look how quickly blackberry and nokia fell. Apple and/or Android can easily do the same. Microsoft plan is to be there when it happens.
Why does Microsoft exist ?
Let’s be frank about it.
Well, because it’s publicly traded I think that makes it pretty clear -> to make money.
Continuity is probably also a goal.
Obviously they need a vision to attract customers, but it’s not their goal.
Let’s be real, advertising isn’t going great (that is why you see more and more tracking) and selling software isn’t a great business to be in.
So they are trying to sell services and subscriptions.
The Windows OS is just a way sell to does.
Office is also starting to loose it’s dominance:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/its-time-for-microsoft-to-reboot-office…
Part of the reason is the software paradox:
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/06/03/software-paradox/
Edited 2015-10-08 09:27 UTC
It is when you are Microsoft. Plenty of billions of extra dollars every 3 months
You’ll probably be disappointed when you look at the numbers. Why do you think Windows 10 is a free upgrade ? It’s cheaper to move everyone to the new version than having to keep patching the old version.
Do you really think Windows and Office are the cash-cows they used to be ?
Why do you think Microsoft wants to move to a subscription model ?
Just have a look at the numbers of Oracle:
“In the latest Oracle quarterly report they state that new license revenue was $1,982 million and sales and marketing expenses was $1,839 million. So 92% of your license fee goes towards the sales and marketing expenses needed to get you to buy the software, and the remaining 8% doesn’t even come close to covering the rest.”
https://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2015/06/05/the-software-paradox-by-…
Edited 2015-10-08 14:53 UTC
Yes, I really think Windows, Office and all the server products (software) are the cash cows they always have been. For example: Traditional Office is going down a few percent the last year, but that is only because Office 365 is growing by 35%. Think of it this way: Office only used to be for business on Windows (and Mac), now it is for every platform so of course revenue grows here.
Proof? https://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/TrendedHist…
Microsoft doesn’t want to move to a subscription services, they have been on subscription services for a decade. In the consumer market they can rely on the OEMs to keep buying Windows licenses but much more importantly is the business market where Software Insurrance basically rakes in all the money they will need for eternity.
Please don’t think that Microsoft cares about individual software sales. They care about growing their business just like in the Oracle example that you gave. If you have to invest 1.8 billion to grow by 2 billion that is awesome…because you also get the renewels from existing customers and that 0.2 billion profit for this year will be 2 billion of profit next year
Is it becoming the Android alternative in those countries where not everyone is rich enough to get an iPhone and doesn’t want to get an Android device.
If Microsoft doesn’t screw it up, it will at least keep its third place well beyond any other competition for the last place.
Jolla, FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Phone combined don’t reach the market share that WP already achieved in those countries.
You forgot to mention Tizen.
In countries where it is being actively marketed, Tizen has gained considerable share.
In Bangladesh, the one single Tizen device (Samsung Z1) in the first 6 months on the market gained about half of what Windows Phone has in that country. In the other launch country India, it has around one third of WP’s share, again within 6 months of arriving on the market with one single device.
And that is without Samsung pouring billions into developing and marketing Tizen.
Because they take for free the work of others.
If I would need to make a bet, I think Samsung is the most active company working on the development of Tizen (they also pay some Enlightenment developers).
Intel is second.
I’m genuinely impressed with the market success such a little startup as MS has been able to achieve with its indie OS.
/s
True, but mobile carriers are not even selling Ubuntu phones yet:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/06/why-it-will-be-2016-before-mobil…
You should update yourself.
http://www.amazon.de/Aquaris-E4-5-8GB-Schwarz-C000071/dp/B00U80JX3C…
If you hurry up there are still two available.
raison d’e price
What I wish they would do is two-fold:
1) Take Visual Studio back to the days of 2005 where the product was actually good. The current UI is atrocious as well as the speed is horribly slow.
2) Take the desktop UI back to the days of Windows 7 where the windows are easy on the eyes plus a more standard UI model as a whole.
To me, the UI for 8/10 is a throwback to Windows 3.0 with how the windows look and feel.
The latest Visual Studios have all been much faster (both to install, start, run, compile) than the 2005 version. Maybe you are using some extension/plugin that is causing problems?
avgalen,
Last I used was VS 2012. I am not fan of the GUI, but meh, whatever. It was really the terrible performance that led me to resent when clients wanted to do the upgrade because the sluggishness was so noticeable compared to the versions that were reaching EOL (circa ’03 and ’05). They didn’t give developers the best computers, so it could be that on higher end hardware this was less of a problem, but I certainly see where dekernel is coming from. And maybe VS2015 is better, I wouldn’t know.
Edited 2015-10-08 15:31 UTC
VS2015 is not better (when it comes UI responsiveness). And even those VS2003/2005 versions you mention were dogs compared to VS98.
But then its also not a fair comparison because a modern Visual Studio does so much more analysis (“intellisense”) on the source code compared to earlier versions. And the compilers optimize a lot better and support much more complex languages.
On a modern computer VS2013 runs more than fast enough for me. I’ll take the new features any time over any of those old versions.
dpJudas,
Maybe it’s more features, or maybe MS just didn’t bother to optimize it as much because of faster hardware – it’s difficult to tell.
Intellisense was quite capable in 2005 and to be perfectly honest, for us the upgrades were driven by the obsolescence of the early .net frameworks rather than something we were benefiting from in VS 2012. Some of the upgrades were actually a big headache, but compliments of the network effect, vendors left us no choice but to upgrade. Alas, who am I to complain about progress
Personally I use compilers directly from the command line. They have gotten a little slower over the years, but hardware is improving faster than compilers are getting slower. If you’re upgrading for .NET versions and don’t find value in the IDE, it’s definitely an option.
(Just my 2c.)
malxau,
For this company we were building UIs, but I know what you mean. For linux I’m quite happy to build things with makefiles, the one feature I insist on is syntax highlighting, but many editors do this now. Autocompletion is nice. Other things like refactoring are neat, but realistically I don’t think I use them more than a few times a year and even then the “poor man”‘s find & replace are usually good enough.
Edited 2015-10-08 17:40 UTC
If your coding requirements are so low you should try one of the Express Editions. They are limited functionality and therefore much smaller and seem faster.
Express Editions used to be more popular before the Community edition (also free but more features) became available.
I personally prefer productivity from Community to Speed from Express. There are so many features in Community (and up) that save me hours of work (Team, Test, Analyze basically)
The only thing that you need for a speedy Visual Studio is a decent SSD (90%), and enough cores and mem if you are compiling bigger projects. If you are using Visual Studio but not using an SSD you know where to invest 100 dollar now
avgalen,
Haha, yea I know that’s the usual advice: experiencing slow software? Throw more hardware at it!
Sometimes I wonder how much faster software would be if software vendors didn’t have fast hardware themselves. Think about it, if MS devs had to use outdated hardware themselves, their software would probably perform much better on it. Probably true of many kinds of devs actually.
Edited 2015-10-09 08:19 UTC
Not MORE hardware, different hardware! Just a 64 GB SSD for the OS+Programs+Codefiles will make a gigantic difference. I get 3 seconds coldboot startup times on VS2015 Community here on a 3 year old laptop
And we know what devs do when they have less power available…they put less features in. I like features because they make my work easier, faster and better
Well I’m more of a C++ developer, so I’ll answer it from my perspective.
The Intellisense in VS2005 was borderline useless to the extent that I personally had to buy Visual Assist just to have a functional “Go to reference” feature. Contrast that with VS2013 where I can live see where there are syntax errors in my code as I’m typing it. You could say the feature was also there in VS2005, but the key difference is that it actually works now. And it works with every language I’ve tried in VS: C++, C#, Javascript, HTML, XML, and so on.
I’m not saying that VS2015 couldn’t be better than it is. Or that some things shouldn’t be optimized. But I personally object to the idea that VS2005 is a superior product to their newer offerings.
dpJudas,
That’s not quite what was said, but you are right the C++ support in 2005 was just terrible. I think MS put all their work into VB.net and C++ was just an afterthought(*). To me this doesn’t explain why VB/ASP.net development became so sluggish under VS2012, but it is what it is.
* Actually, putting on a conspiracy hat, I wonder if this could have been a deliberate attempt by MS to discourage developers from using C++, and by extension using Visual Studio for building highly portable applications.
And this is why I’m in the camp of people not still willing to forgive Microsoft. And its why I tend to comment when certain people around here applaud how great Microsoft is to C++. A significant part of that company would murder C++ in a cold minute if they got the chance.
I would agree that 2002 was slower than VS5 & VS6, but I thought it had a good balance between responsiveness and functionality.
For me, I think I could handle the 2012 lag in speed, but the darn UI is painful to me. Like I said, Win 3.0 all over again.
The real news from this event? After the main show, engineers showcased a phone, attached to an external 1440p monitor keyboard and mouse – all wireless.
And what’s on the external screen? Yup, a full Win10 desktop.
This is a revolution happening and is the real reason why Microsoft might actually succeed with their phones (because it can also be your desktop pc.)
Can’t believe how the big media outlets is missing this… give MS two years and Apple might have a problem with their OSX/iOS split.
Microsoft is betting big on this. It all comes down to “Universal Apps” and “One Windows”. If they can make it work it is a gamechanger.
* Monitor, Mouse, Keyboard on the desks
* “Work mode” and “Private mode” on the phone
* Profit
I just connected my new Nokia 1520 (running Windows 10 mobile tech preview) to a Miracast enabled screen. It was incredibly easy and quick. Adding a bluetooth mouse and keyboard is now possible as well. It isn’t as seamless as full blown Continuum will be, but this is a (2 year old) phone that I just picked up for 110 Euro (new) and that is awesome.
They need developers to adopt it.
So far I think developers are just annoyed by all the changes every couple of years. I’m not so sure they will adopt it.
Change every few years…for a developer…that is hardly any change at all. There is a new JavaScript framework every week and developers gobble those up. There are new iOS and Android features that really change the way you develop and those get widely adopted. We got cloudpower now….yummy.
New programming language (Swift)….okidoki.
NoSQL/JSON/etc….sure if that makes sense for the task.
Universal App development (win10) is not significantly different from 3 year old Windows Phone 8 development but has a much broader target audience and now much nicer development tools. There is only significant Win32 work going on in maintaining legacy applications. New software is almost always developed for web, or as a store app so unless you want to keep patching/rewriting/updating legacy code it is time to update your skillset
avgalen,
My own opinion is that MS really botched the uptake of their new platforms just by being so greedy. MS baited the waters with a lure that had no appeal. I think MS saw apple’s success with the app store model and wanted the exact same thing for windows. But it was a strategic blunder for MS to be so greedy with a 30% cut in the new windows store while they still faced such strong competition with “legacy” windows. Had they focused on gaining market share first, with introductory rates < 5%, and making windows 8 less obnoxious, they would have actually snagged up a lot more users and devs. Once they had converted a critical mass of users and developers, that’s the time to exploit them, demanding more income and adding OS restrictions, because by that point network effects will have kicked in and people will have a difficult time escaping it.
Personally, as a developer I probably would have embraced a win32 replacement, but I want platforms that are free (as in liberty) over ones that control me and my users and I think many developers feel this way as well.
The difficulty that MS faces with the store has nothing to do with 30%. On Android and iOS you only have apps (and websites) as a target platform. On Windows you have so many other ways of developing that also work on older versions of Windows that have 90% of the marketshare. So you can:
1) Develop a (responsive) webapp that can be used by everyone on every platform
2) Develop a “Desktop” application that can run on every Windows version including WinXP
3) Develop a “Store” app that only runs on Windows 8 and newer
The 30% only bothers makers of really expensive software that have their own way of marketing and distributing to their customers (Oracle, Adobe, etc). For people that make gratis software it doesn’t matter and “a few dollar” software probably is okay with the 30% if they get no bandwidht issues
I think their biggest problem has been that a “Desktop” app cannot be easily converted into a “Store” app. Chicken and egg. When there’s no interesting apps in the Store people stop looking there.
I think it is also worth mentioning the OS X App Store doesn’t seem to be doing too well either. Taking that into consideration I don’t think its really one specific problem that is the showstopper. It is the combination that caused (virtually) everyone to stay away.
dpJudas,
I agree with this. It require developers to invest their own resources to build/port these apps, even in neutral circumstances there needs to be a compelling motivation to commit to a new platform. But to actually forfeit 30% of income when the alternative already works, is more popular, has fewer restrictions, and MS does not collect 30% off the top, that a difficult sell. I know win32 devs (mostly corporate) but none are doing this move, where are the rewards for devs? Whatever they are, it’s not enough, and that’s why MS has a dev problem.
1 of the 4 bridges is specifically aimed at this problem. Package a Win32 app as a store app.
The rewards for devs are in install/deploy/update scenarios. With Win32 you got different versions on every pc, that is why you either write complicated deployment packages (internal use) or every program has its own update functionality.
The 30% isn’t a problem for corporate devs (making a store app for your own enterprise) because these apps are side-loaded.
MS doesn’t really have a dev problem. Devs still use Visual Studio for Web/Win32/Store. But Store did have a big dev problem which is why Win7 also got the free update to 10. With 110 million users in a few months (> 90 consumers) and maybe businesses and many more millions of users in the next year following their will finally be a reason to develop store apps (or at least that is what MS is betting on)
I’d say the bigger problem is, excuse my French, that when it comes to Windows Store? The GUIs are absolute dogshit!
I’m sorry Win dows 8 fans, but if you are on a non touch enabled desktop? They are inferior in every single metric compared to a pure desktop program. Try VideoLAN for desktop and for Windows Store and compare the two..how do you change a setting in the desktop version? Simple its right there on the easy to use drop down bar, with handy labels like media/playback/audio/video, its VERY easy to figure out…how do you change settings in VideoLAN on Windows Store? I honestly have no clue, it frustrated the hell out of me trying to watch a movie so I went and got the desktop version.
And that has been my experience with pretty much EVERY Windows Store app, they try to go for this “apple style” ultra minimalist design but even apple does make finding basic controls relatively straightforward, Win 8 Store style? Nope, in fact it kinda reminds me of Windows 3.1 as everybody does everything differently and NOTHING is easily intuitive or discoverable, its like its all made by art students that know jack squat about how people use computers!
So they can throw money and devs at it all they want, but until I can throw somebody like my wife who doesn’t know squat about computers and have her perform basic tasks without getting frustrated at the lack of UI options or prompts or help? Its just not gonna work.
Ironically the one place they seem to be getting it close to right? Windows Phone, she is able to use it OOTB with most basic functions either obvious or easily discoverable, but then again most phones are used as passive media consumption devices, desktops need a LOT more functionality and that they just can’t seem to figure out.
Sort of. It isn’t x86, so it isn’t going to play games – the only reason to run Windows anymore.
To me, this is just a gimmick that most people don’t care about in the slightest.
Which proves you’re just a troll, so I can safely ignore the rest of what you wrote.
But it might be nice if they brought out some phones running X86. Maybe not the latest games, but there’s a lot of X86 games out there! I really like that I could have one computer and it is in my pocket.
Oh, and there are millions (billions) of non-game programs written for X86. I like games, sure, but I also like Photoshop and music workstations and other stuff.
Hey, I could even run Visual Studio and make apps on my phone. The recursion boggles at that point.
It wouldn’t matter… Universal apps only. Unless it was built to run on a phone it won’t work – x86 or not.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s more likely that Canonical Ubuntu will get further along than Windows in the short term.
You are entirely correct…probably
In the short run Canonical’s solution already exists and Microsofts solution is entirely beta with no released hardware.
Roughly januari (a month after release) there will be roughly 10 people who have used Continuum and 9 who have used that Canonical solution. I believe the expression for that is “peanuts comparing size”
Every single site I saw that covered the event wrote about this, not sure where you were looking…
All of these are non-issues to the average user. In fact the vast majority of users would be totally unaware that the command prompt even exists.
Maybe, but that was only one of three things I listed, the other two being a bit more of an issue…
I’m just saying – everyone pretty much hated Windows RT because they couldn’t run desktop apps on their tablets.
Windows Phone Continuum is Windows RT. It has exactly the same limitations – except now you can’t run desktop apps on your desktop…
I still think its neat, let’s just keep things grounded in reality is all I’m saying. Some of the posts in this thread were talking about running their old windows games and Visual Studio and whatnot on it.
I’m simply making sure the facts are known – it doesn’t and won’t make that possible.
Your comparison to Windows RT is entirely correct. The Surface (RT) tablets didn’t go anywhere because they looked like laptops but didn’t function like laptops.
The phones will not suffer from this though because:
A) They are primarily phones and using them as a “desktop” is only a nice-2-have function
B) The target market for developers is now much bigger
C) The universal apps that Microsoft itself is bringing out are more and better
D) Thanks to “the 4 bridges” you might actually be able to run Android apps, slightly modified iOS apps and “Med-V packaged Win32 programs”
I completely agree with a, b, and c. My point was only that people saying it is a “a full Win10 desktop” are just setting themselves up for disappointment…
As for d… Android and iOS apps recompiled/repackaged for the windows store? Sure, ok. But win32 apps? That isn’t happening in any meaningful way. Yeah, you will be able to publish them in the windows store – but only for use on x86 windows desktops – no xbox, no windows phone. Project Centennial doesn’t magically convert win32 apps to universal apps, it simply makes them “safe” for store distrubtion (i.e. it sandboxes them). Med-V is virtualization, not emulation – all existing win32 apps are x86. Not going to run on ARM… Even if they added emulation, ARM is simply too slow to be able to do it effectively.
Maybe well see x86 Windows Phones at some point and this becomes possible, but they don’t exist at the moment.
Edited 2015-10-09 10:56 UTC
You are entirely correct about point D. I had actually written a part about that only becoming available on the “Surface Phone” and messed up reordering stuff and copy/pasting.
And just like you I do believe that ARM could technically emulate x86 but I don’t think there will be a market for “older programs that don’t require a lot of performance but will only run on new phones” so I would rather that MS focusses on making it run perfectly as a store app. (easy to add/remove and nicely sandboxed and secure)
This whole feature is basically a non-issue for the vast majority of users.
The desktop has not been the fastest growing sector of the computing market for a while. That is something that Microsoft and their fans seem to refuse to grasp, they still keep seeing desktops everywhere…
Sigh, say it with me boys and girls “correlation does not equal causation” and the reason why Windows desktops aren’t growing I would argue is VERY simple, its because the PC has become an appliance like a fridge or dishwasher and is simply not replaced until it dies!
We can thank AMD and Intel for this, when they switched from the MHz War to the Core War PCs went from “good enough” to “insanely overpowered for all but the top 2%” REAL quick, now users simply have no reason to replace until it dies. Hell this is even true for video games, with my wife playing big 3D games like World Of Warships just fine on my hand me down Phenom II 925 and my oldest taking my old Phenom II X6 from 2009 and paired with an R9 280 able to play the latest shooters with ease.
The reason why Windows isn’t growing like it was is simply that everybody who wants it has it and in fact most folks in the west are absolutely saturated with Windows PCs. What can a new PC do that somebody like my wife would notice to make it better than her 925 for the tasks she has? For that matter what laptop has a “must have” feature that would justify replacing her 2008 C2D laptop or even my circa 2011 E350 netbook I use for service calls? There really isn’t any, which is why PCs just don’t move like they used to, folks are happy with the PCs they have now.
In your rush to use an unrelated witticism, you totally missed my point. I didn’t say anything about the causes, I simply stated a fact; desktops are no longer where the growth in the consumer computing market is happening.
Not bother to actually read this site much? There was an article right here recently on how low cost smartphones are exploding everywhere and on the tablet front even the iPad has seen sales dry up so those “happening” markets? yeah those are going the same way as PCs, they simply aren’t gonna get the quarter century of growth that PCs had.
Which again proves my point users tasks haven’t kept up with hardware so there is less and less point in replacing their hardware. What new feature on the latest $400+ phone will be worth me replacing my $100 quad core smartphone? None that I have seen as I have no desire for 3D games on such a lousy input. Same goes for the new tablets, we already have quad core sub $100 tablets that do all the tasks a good 95% of users have for these form factors.
While they will always sell more simply because they are easier to break, just as laptops will nearly always need replacing before a desktop, its becoming obvious that pretty much all computing will go the way of the PC. this is why you see corps like Apple pushing dumb ideas like iWatch, only finding a new programming language that makes using all these resources or new form factor will keep the gravy train going at this point.
We know that well and I do not.
“I’ve also always liked Windows Phone, and even though I don’t believe it’s going anywhere…”
If you ignore the already saturated English speaking market WP is doing very well.
http://www.gsmarena.com/windows_phone_market_share_rises_in_several…
I’d be very scared about the future if I was an Apple Inc shareholder.
This new vibe they are putting off scares me even more than the vibe Microsoft gave when Gates/Ballmer was running the company.
That being said I still won’t trust Microsoft. They’ve had their chance. Even under Nadella, they’ve been caught astroturfing again.
Their data mining program makes Google look like a saint by comparison. Google only bothered searching for keywords in your browsing for ad purposes. Microsoft roots through your entire hard drive and removes whatever it thinks you shouldn’t have.
At this point, there is just no way I could ever see anything positive coming this company.
Edited 2015-10-11 17:02 UTC