“Many PC OEMs are dissatisfied with what Microsoft has done with Windows 8 and the way the company has handled the negative response to the operating system. Privately, one OEM source told me that Microsoft is ‘destroying’ the PC industry, while another claimed that Windows 8 has ‘handed over millions of customers to Apple’. Other OEMs are making their displeasure known publicly. Both Lenovo and Samsung have released Start button replacements for Windows 8.” Windows Phone isn’t the only thing not catching on. I’m really happy with my Surface RT – warts and all – but there’s no denying the response to Windows 8 has been Vista-esque bad.
Both the links are messed up.
This item was posted using Opera on my Nokia E7, and I forgot it didn’t automatically added http like Chrome does :o).
Fixed.
See, and this is why people prefer iOS or Android
.
Adrian
People seem to constantly claim that the death of the PC is near, that tablets and other mobile devices will be the future and that there is no more room for the PC. I have to disagree with that assessment. The old, regular PC in all of its various forms is still by far the most flexible general computing device, one that can take almost any computing-related role whatsoever and one that may not always be the best fit for the job, but one that can be altered to fit it. That same cannot be said of the more-rigid platforms.
Whether or not Windows 8.1 will be able to turn all the sour grapes to something edible again is, truthfully, irrelevant in the larger scheme of things: there’ll always be other operating systems to assume its place should the impossible happen and the development of Windows was stopped. There will always be millions of enthusiasts willing to work with what they’ve got and these same enthusiasts will eventually step in if everyone and everything fails. Not to mention that even if Windows 8.1 also became a massive failure Microsoft still wouldn’t be dead — just look at their quarterly profits! — and they would still retain their massive amounts of name-recognition and technical knowledge; it wouldn’t be far-fetched for Microsoft to then go through a serious re-arrangement of their Windows – development departments, bringing new, daring tactics to the table and jumping back to spotlight with the best Windows developed to date.
TL:DR? Well, as always, doomsday prophecies will wither and falter and the world will crawl on, and the PC may transform, but it will never die.
The only people claiming that are fools, click-whores and obvious straw-men. Of course it’s nonsense. The PC will not die for exactly the reason you describe: it is a general-purpose platform that can be turned to almost any task. What intelligent predictors are saying is that the size of the PC market is going to shrink by a large percentage until the only people who still own PCs are those that actually need them. Ordinary consumers used to buy PCs not because they were the best platform for performing their desired tasks, but because they were the only platform available.
Vendors like MS and Apple were all too happy to market PCs and PC OSes as ‘consumer’ products, even though they really weren’t appropriate to consumer needs (e.g. the fortress wall security model, which is fine on professionally administered servers and locked-down business networks, but has not surprisingly proven utterly unsuited to the home market. It’s very easy for geeks to blame “stupid lusers” for infecting their “stupid computers”, but really it’s the vendors’ fault for selling mad-bad Zondas to ordinary folks-off-the-street who only need a Lacetti to putter down the the shops and back every day. It’s no surprise they frequently leave holes in the wall: those high-end supercars require considerable skill and experience to drive safely. And most folks have far more pressing and productive stuff to do in their lives than devote the next two years to professional race-driver school just to pick up a carton of milk.
And now we do have proper consumer-oriented OSes on the rise, it’s only a matter of time before regular consumers find that they no longer need to purchase a PC when a cheap, lightweight platform that’s much better optimized to their particular tasks takes care of all their day-to-day tasks. Phones and tablets have already usurped PCs as the aspirational good for mass-market consumers, so those consumers will no longer buy PCs simply because they want them, only when they need them. Which is far less often and in much smaller numbers.
BTW, the PC vendors can kvetch all they like about the PC market’s decline, but they are the ones who commoditized the product in the first place, reducing it from glamorous must-have gizmo to just another boring white good. So a good chunk of this sea change is actually their own doing.
Sooner or later, businesses are going to follow consumer trends: after all, why buy a clunky power-sucking $200 desktop hog for every one of your employees when a simple, robust $30 PC-on-a-stick can do everything that 90% of those employees’ jobs require. It’s just a matter of time until MS or some other vendor builds out the necessary infrastructure to make the whole kaboodle – network servers, user terminals, local software, remote desktops, administration tools, etc. – a slick turnkey product that medium-to-large business can drop into their networks with minimum fuss.
Memories of green phosphor terminals start coming back to my mind…
🙂 Except a 30 dollar stick now has enough processing power that you can push down a complete chunk of front-end functionality to run on it, avoiding the old constant back-n-forth between terminal and server, or even put full applications permanently on it, e.g. for tasks like word processing.
The old beige box with its CD drives, spinny disks, chunky PSU and board full of wasted slots is essentially obsolete tech where general business computing is concerned. The problem is that the software has yet to catch up with hardware advances. But as with traditional consumer computing, a lot of folks are using those boxes not because they’re the best option but because they’re the only option, so once better options do eventually arise then expect them to bail quite quickly too.
You really are a moron, aren’t you? Those 30 dollar stick are good only for things like Rabbit TV and other devices aimed at delivering crappy TV shows and other crappy “entertainment” programing to losers like yourself.
You aren’t going to see them anywhere near places that do anything remotely demanding.
I think you are wrong and here is why…billions in Windows software that everybody uses. trust me running a little shop i see it every day, from the Windows games (which made over 20 billion last year and has helped Valve to double their profit every year for 7 years in a row) to that software your aunt uses to make the flyers for the church social it ALL runs on Windows.
But if you would have talked to me or any other shop owner or worker back in 2007? We were ALL saying that there was gonna be a major slowdown NOT because people didn’t want computers or were throwing out that 27 inch screen for a 7 inch tablet, no what happened is that PCs became more powerful than what 90% of the masses needed. I mean I haven’t even built anything less than a triple core in over 4 years because the chips are so cheap, but what software has kept up?
Other than a few tiny niches like CAD none, even gaming doesn’t stress that $45 USD Athlon triple and again I should know as I have built several nice gaming HTPCs using the Athlon triple and it plays the mainstream games great. heck look at me, from 94-07 I built myself a PC every year and a half and built my boys something every 3 years, why? because thanks to the MHz war and how easy it is to take advantage of a faster clock speed on a single core the PCs would be struggling on the latest and greatest after a year and by two years they were seriously laggy. I mean check out my current specs and remember i built my system on the cheap so I have MAYBE $650 in the whole smash..X6 1035T hexacore, 8GB of DDR 2 800, 3TB of HDD space and an HD4850.. You could now build a similar system for around $450…who is gonna stress that monster out? Heck who is gonna stress that Athlon triple out doing their day to day tasks, even with heavy multitasking?
So I can tell you its not about the consumer switching to a tablet, in fact its just the opposite as nearly everyone I know, no matter how poor, has multiple PCs and see no reason to replace them…which is kinda the point. When you can fricking pick up dual cores sitting on the side of the road and RAM is so cheap why should you buy a new one before the old one dies? During the MHz war all the software was keeping up with the hardware so you really had no choice but to buy…tell me what software that normal folks use daily wouldn’t run quite well on that AM2 Athlon X2 I’m using as a netbox at the shop? There simply isn’t any “killer app” that will make someone go “Well I gotta toss my PC” anymore.
Oh and you can give up on ARM friend, they are gonna be in the same boat as X86 in less than 2 years, Samsung is testing a hexacore, Nvidia is shipping pentacores, ARM just doesn’t scale well. Not to mention there is ALWAYS at least one program that is mission critical that requires Windows, this is what I can never seem to get FOSS advocates to understand. Sure if you are talking about a coffee shop or library then a Linux plug will do the trick, everybody else? not gonna have it if it can’t run their software, just as MSFT about their WinRT sales.
Correct,
The hardware requirements for windows has flat-lined/slightly-declined since Windows Vista. So hardware sales must slow in response, that’s logical.
Add to that pretty much all useful work/ecommerce/web browsing is still done on PCs (Windows/Linux/Mac) despite the fact that these Smartphone/Tables outsell PCs by multiple integer multiple.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/02/01/1-simple-chart-tha…
The perception that tablets and mobiles are taking over is just a bubble.
Edited 2013-04-19 12:11 UTC
I think when most people say the PC is dead, they aren’t saying it will completely go away. PCs sales are slowing, and that is impossible to deny. Of course PCs will still be needed for many industries and tasks, but for many others the PC will effectively be dead. I’m typing this on my first work laptop, 3D CAD needs too much power and software is too locked to Windows for that to go away.(Brand new PC with W7 BTW) However it looks incredibly stupid in 2013 to see a nurse carrying around a laptop with patient files on her palm like a waitress, fuddling on a trackpad, when that function would suite a tablet 100 times better.
And of course there will be the curmudgeons that cross their arms and let everyone know they don’t need a tablet/smartphone/horseless carriage.
TL;DR Nobody said they’re going to disappear, just dwindle in market share.
Nobody is claiming the PC is “dead” it is just no longer the area where the majority of growth is happening. This should not be a surprise in a sector which is all about faster, smaller, cheaper…
For casual content consumers only – sure. For the good majority of content creators – no way in hell. Also don’t forget hardcore gaming stations. I don’t think next-gen (still un-upgradable) consoles can totally replace the sheer power of some crazy sli/crossfire systems with liquid cooling and all that jazz.
Werecat what everybody seems to be missing, especially the press, is that from 94-07 the PC was in a bubble caused by the MHz war. The reason PCs don’t sell now the way they did then is NOT because everyone is tossing their PC for an iPad, its because they are up to their ears with insanely fast PCs that do more work per cycle than they can come up with.
Heck i have a couple of customers still using Pentium D 805s, for checking your email and basic websurfing even that 8 year old chip does more per cycle than they do. Even I am not immune to this, the netbox I use at the shop has just now had the Sempron single core replaced with a ULV Athlon because even with the Athlon I chose being 6 years old it does more than I need in the shop.
As for Windows 8? If the rumors are true I’m gonna have to accept I made a bad call as I said Win 8 would be a flop and it looks like Ballmer may actually pull off a win. How you might ask? Simple a sub $250 tablet with an Atom dual core and Windows 8, if they sell it with an optional keyboard/second battery like the Transformer it could be the next hot new gadget, a tablet that gets all day battery as a laptop and runs all your Windows programs? Heck I can’t stand Windows 8 and I’ll be first in line, that would be totally awesome for service calls or when I’m stuck at the doctor’s office.
If the rumors are true the new Atom will be out of order (thus boosting performance) while having a similar GPU to Haswell while using less than 2w of power, and of course a sub $250 tablet that runs all your Windows programs would be an easy sell.
TLDR? Atom dual core tablet under $250 equals big win, PCs not going anywhere but not gonna sell like before, and no cheap tablet equals Win 8 being the new MS Bob.
I sincerely believe that the manufacturers are excessively diversified building:
– Android tablets (ARM)
– Parts for Apple, Google
– Computers and laptops (Windows, ChromeOS)
– Phones some of them
They have in the pipeline:
– Android computers (x86)
– Random combinations of the above
And they simply cannot or will not cope up with designing and building Windows 8 specific tablets/laptops. They are ignoring also all those customers that want Windows 8 cheap laptops without touch screens.
Look at the manufacturers, it’s a clone war! A customer confronted with a $800 Windows Tablet or a $200 Android Tablet that look exactly the same, will go for Android, forgetting some of the requirements in the process.
On hardware-side of things we’re actually doing pretty damn well these days, especially if you take into account the explosive growth in cheap, ARM-powered boards that are really only lacking more connectors, some more standardization and neater cases before they could be considered PCs in the same sense as the x86-based ones are.
It’s the OS-side of things that’s at the moment stumbling around, with Linux still not quite being in the position to take over Windows, with OSX being locked only to Apple’s devices and with Microsoft’s management caught with their thumbs up their asses wrt. Windows. There’s a potential slot for even a complete newcomer to enter the field and take the world by storm if Windows 8.1 fails, just as long as someone with the resources and future-proofed insight was willing to step in and take command of things. I doubt it would be Linux, though, in any of its current forms and Apple is seemingly content with wielding full vendor-lockin.
But I strongly suspect it will be Linux in yet another remix.
Windows will never die. DOS is still kicking, for that matter. But the Wintel monopoly is toast. Choice with a web core appears to be the new computing platform, and the open technologies such as Linux and Qt provide a lot of fodder for the computing gene pool.
That’s exactly why I phrased it as I did. I don’t feel comfortable predicting whether it will be a Linux-kernel + modifications + some new userland or not, but that would be the easiest path forward.
Show me the web counterparts to Visual Studio, 3d Max, Full Featured Photoshop, Maya, Autocad, WoW, Guild Wars 2.
Ah, yes, the tired Photoshop and AutoCAD canards, the Last True Hope for those who believe in the Eternal Wintel Monopoly.
Hate to break the news, but most people don’t use Photoshop, and most have never even seen AutoCAD; but an iPad and a Galaxy, those they’ve seen! In the meantime, you might look into which operating system is used to render professional movies nowadays. You might also check into which operating system is used to run real 3D design software such as Catia.
I clearly stated that Windows will never die, but the future does not belong to Windows. The Wintel monopoly is toast, and neither Photoshop nor AutoCAD nor your other favorite programs can save it.
Though the latest incarnation of CATIA, V6, supports only Windows on the client side… (yes, this kind of software has long support cycles and so pre-V6 versions are still alive, but…)
I don’t see any explosive growth in such boards. The CPU in an ARM board or ARM tv stick is how many times slower than a core i7? Maybe 50x?
I don’t see ARM CPUs running heavy tasks in the near future. Even the upcoming ARM64 will probably be much weaker than x86.
A significant portion of the consumer market does not run “heavy” tasks and has no use for such systems. The typical low end x86 system nowadays is way overkill for what they’re using their systems for. An ARM based whether Cortex A15 or ARMv8 system would provide enough CPU power. ARM systems will start eating away at the low end market just as Intel GPUs are eating away at the low end market for AMD / NVIDIA GPUs.
The reason Intel GPUs are eating away at the low end market for AMD / NVIDIA GPUs is because the people who are buying the Intel GPUs *AREN’T* idiot gamers like yourself and the people you hang out with. They aren’t about to shell out $800+ for a Desktop or Laptop setup with a AMD / NVIDIA GPU when a $300-$600 machine with a Intel GPU will meet their needs just as well.
The “failures” of both Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 are definitely related. They share a basic core and they share a basic interface that has been pretty much rejected by the buying public, plain and simple. They just don’t like it, for various reasons, but they are the same for both products.
Microsoft had set itself up for huge success if both these platforms had been successful. With both featuring the same interface, the synergies would have been huge, sales of one would compel sales of the other since customers would have been familiar with how each one worked, but that just has not happened to any sort of great degree. Face it, both products are failures overall. The phone OS has lost to both Android and iOS, and by extension the desktop OS has as well.
Hi,
I’m not convinced. As far as I can tell, Windows 8 is failing because they screwed up the user interface (e.g. user interface designed for small touch screens being used for large screens with keyboard/mouse); and Windows Phone 8 is failing simply because the competition had about 5 years to get established/entrenched before Windows Phone 8 was released.
– Brendan
> Windows 8 is failing because they screwed up the user interface
No doubt on that. Win Metro is touch-optimized not desktop/workstation-optimized. More so Win8 is complicated like hell with its two totally different concepts, classic and metro, combined into one UI. Not enough most important elements from classic where removed.
It is what it is. An unfinished intermediate state and when they had to deliver they put both together just to get it working and have something to ship.
That it has in common with Vista except that the deadline was this time more important then the resulting product. Vista had glitches, so many of them that it was not a pleas sure to use it. But it was never ever in an unfinished transition-phase.
Microsoft says so itself. Blue is supposed to finish the transition. Yet the first reviews I read so far show its not doing so. Its still the classic with the total incompatible Metro combined into one desktop.
They and us fail to realize that this isn’t about a missing start menu. This are the sympthons. Customers like to go back before Metro. Reason is also not Metro even in its unfinished and unpolished desktop version. Reason is that they combined both worlds in a horrible way. They could have done classic with a theme-switch to all-Metro, with changed concepts for input-methods (mouse, keyboard) and output-methods (large screens, multiple windows or split-levels), etc. But just taking that Metro small-screen, touch, phone optimized UI and connecting it with a switch to classic while removing most central classic functionality is failed as designed.
This is not classic and it is not metro. It is clatro missing the advantages of both and combining the disadvantages. That’s what it is. Complicated, inconsistent, half-done, under construction. Not something I would exchange my working desktop for to get sh*t done but something to look at as a preview-candidate.
Solution is the combination. Either make it perfect so both worlds are not constantly switched and each world works for its own. Or work on unification. Take classic concepts to Metro, optimize Metro for desktop. It will not be the same Metro like on phone but it could still be similar to some degree.
Microsoft needs to decide if desktop is still the most important business for them or if mobile is. If its desktop then deliver for desktop else you fail like on mobile.
Edited 2013-04-19 14:39 UTC
That’s an easy one: it’s mobile. Desktop is a completely mature market with no more potential for growth but lots of potential for shrinkage as mobile platforms increasingly handle average users’ daily wants and needs.
Those users used to buy desktops not because they were the best tool for the job but because they were the only one available. That is no longer the case. A household that might’ve owned two PCs might now own one PC and a couple Android devices. And instead of buying a new PC every couple years to stay fashionable they buy new Androids every year and only replace the PC when it finally gives out after 4 or 5 years. Furthermore, the more popular Android becomes the more motivation there is to expand into additional areas that were once the sole dominion of PCs.
Figuring how all this impacts PC sales is simple math. Microsoft failed to get a completely new mobile platform (e.g. Courier) to market before Android ensconced itself as The Official Mobile Platform for Windows Users. That’s their fault for being complacent after living on top for so long, spending all their time fighting internal threats instead of external ones. Even with the writing on the larger wall, I wouldn’t be surprised if the old internal power structures are still fighting to hold control – it’d certainly explain why they’re still not getting their act together on Metro.
Because MS missed the boat for building a new mobile users base from scratch, its task now must be to translate its existing Windows user base into its new mobile user base** before those customers leak away to Android instead. Not because it’s their best option, but because it’s now the only viable option they have left.
The approach that longtime Windows geeks would have MS take – keeping traditional Windows forever as-is – would guarantee MS a very long, slow future slide into niche vendor status. But Microsoft is a business, not a product, and can’t afford to be sentimental as users can. So Windows users can howl and cry all they like, but at a very fundamental level MS understand it’s better to sacrifice the product to save the company than lose the company just to save the product.
FWIW, I think there’s a useful lesson in all this:
– As long-time PC underdog, Apple boldly and deliberately burned the established desktop platform (which it had already lost) in order to drive growth in its new mobile user base (where it stood a good chance of winning big). While iOS may not have captured the monopoly Apple might’ve liked thanks to Android doing a bit of a Win95 on them, they’re still in a far stronger position than they were before.
– As established PC top-dog, Microsoft sat on their laurels for years, willfully suppressing any internal disruption or change even after the writing was on the wall. As a result, they’re now left with no other choice than to cannibalize their existing PC platform and users in the hope they can build their new mobile base faster than Android can steal away their existing desktop users. This is not to say they can’t do it, but it’s riskier and definitely a lot more painful for everyone.
– As established mobile top-dog, Nokia also burned its existing aged platform once they saw the writing on the wall – but made the awful amateur error of doing this before its new platform was ready for sale (see: Osborne Effect). That made its existing users jump to competitors when they should’ve jumped to its new platform instead.
Assessment? Fortune favors the canny-planning forward thinker who is not afraid to disrupt themselves before somebody else does. Maybe the likes of FOSS/Linux could learn from this too.
I also don’t thinks it’s as simple as a UI rejection.
I haven’t used Win myself in years, but I was excited by there concept when it came out. I like the tile concept (it’s better than a menu) and I have littleuse for a desktop (moet userdesktops ar either a few static program launchers, or a cluttered mess.)
Now that I’ve had a chance to use it for a while, I reject it t for poor quality, and some missing UX (windows switcher sux’, and the IE experience is horrible.)
Windows 8 is failing for pretty much the same reasons Gnome 3 and Unity has/is/will fail.
You’ve got a bunch of arrogant pricks deciding that they’ve got the right to tell people how they should should be using *THEIR* computer hardware.
Not a recipe for success.
They should’ve learned the CueCat lession….
You are wrong. Windows Phone doesn’t lack sells because of its interface which is a very good fit for a phone, but mostly because lack of applications and cheap (like in $100 android phones cheap) devices.
Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7, so it would have been a better version of Windows if someone hadn’t stuck the Metro bit on it and removed the Start button.
I’ve been using Windows 8 for a while now, but I still feel like using 2 systems, the classic Windows one and Metro. The last one feels like a tablet emulator stuck on Windows.
Why not boot Windows 8 in to classic desktop mode, put the Start button back and use Metro as a service to run Metro/tablet software.
The Metro apps on Windows 8 don’t make any sense. They are limited versions of classic desktop ones sporting big buttons.
But I don’t think fixing Windows will sell more PCs. If a PC runs Windows 7 fine it will run Windows 8 fine, why not just install Windows 8 on it then? Hell, Windows 7 even runs fine on most Windows XP PCs.
And Pigs might fly.
for MS to re-instate basically the Win 7 desktop will be a mega admission of failure on their part. Heads will roll in Redmond.
I think such an admission would work in their favor. It would show the customer that they are willing to listen and provide what we want.
Not fixing this situation will just make it worse.
The rumor is that they’ll add boot-to-desktop as an option, disabled by default. If they do the same for the start button/menu, they can talk it down by saying something like “while Windows 8 was mostly a consumer-targeted release, the new Windows 8.1 has value-added features for the business market, such as options to enable certain legacy behaviors to ease transition”.
This option is already available today using a registry hack. They’ll probably just make this option visible in the UI instead of requiring someone to navigate the registry.
There isn’t a boot to desktop/start button registry setting. It was in the dev preview and removed from later builds.
They’ve done it before. Just look at the history of MS BOB for a parallel (not a perfect parallel, but close).
> Heads will roll in Redmond.
And so they should.
Actually the main head behind that Metro/Classic thing got promoted and is heading the whole Windows-devision now…
I for one think windows 7 was the best windows release of all time. To me Windows 8 is simply going backwards. I will stick with Windows 7 untill I absolutely need to upgrade. Otherwise I may jump to a Linux / BSD based os if MS does not get their shit together.
The OEMs allowed themselves to become totally dependent on MS, now they get to reap what they sow.
The only laptop/desktop maker that isn’t dependent on MS is doing well, with a strong brand and fat margins. Others could have differentiated themselves, but chose to remain entirely dependent on MS.
Can’t for the life of me figure out why you got modded down for this, unless we’ve got more ms trolls than Linux lovers around here these days.
The sad thing is that while you are correct, and the OEMs did bring it on themselves, I’m not sure which would have been worse. Look at what OEMs have done to Android to try to “add value” to their platform. Remember what happened with the various Linux netbooks? The Windows bloatware situation was bad enough, and I’m not certain that having multiple OEMs with “value added features” to any operating system would have been better than what we got. At least, when you did buy a PC, you did know that your applications would definitely run as long as they ran on Windows. Can you imagine the disaster we’d have had if some OEMs customized with Linux, others with FreeBSD, and all incompatible with one another because of “added value?” It would be the Linux fragmentation situation multiplied across the entire PC industry. Had that happened, as bad as classic Mac OS was as a platform, we’d probably have ended up with that being the dominant system in use today for the same reason Windows ultimately dominated.
Been a long time using windows 8 and windows phone 8 on my Lumia.
I have no idea why a minority of people (including Thom) still likes it. I got used to both interfaces by this time, and they are clearly much more counterproductive than Windows 7 or Android.
Windows 8 I just never use the tiles, ever, and trying to start apps is an annoyance. The built-in search does not work as well as with Windows 7 and misses things it used to find. The fact it opens my pictures on the Metro UI pisses me off to no end. The fact that Skype is a Metro app pisses me off even more. The feeling is that such stuff is unnecesary and has no reason to be there.
Windows Phone 8 is a disaster, and it´s full of bugs. Multitasking barely works, the live tiles are never enough to display all the notifications since each tile has it´s own so i have to shrink everything and then it becomes kind of like Android, just a poorer experience.
I don´t know, I just think neither is really good as a product. I know Microsoft improves stuff over time, but to me this is a dead end.
I’ve gotten used to it on Win8, but can’t say I care for it much. The only thing I like about it is the Facebook integration. When I get an IM on Facebook, a little window pops up on the top-right of my desktop, and I can ALT+TAB to respond. Same with the calendar. I don’t use it for day-to-day stuff, but it pops up a reminder of birthdays and such.
I think Metro works well for these types of apps that should stay ‘frozen’ in the background most of the time. They just need to find a better way to integrate it.
Adding a start button to Windows 8 isn’t enough. The Elephant in the room cannot be ignored with a simple botch job.
Microsoft needs to throw out the Metro UI and come up with a better an refined GUI. Forced fullscreen apps for the obtuse and inconsistant control issues due to the malplaced focus on swipe gestures are just some of the many painfully obvious flaws that need to be thrown in the trash can.
“Our business model is failing. Quick! Blame someone else.”
Microsoft tried to cover its failure in mobile devices by forcing its vast user base to adopt its mobile OS as well. It failed. The company is used to wielding its monopoly to push around its users, but found that it has no monopoly in the handheld space.
Build a decent PC nowadays and it’s good for four, six, eight years or more. You don’t have to buy a new computer every two years just to use the internet or run household software titles. And the hardware seems to be lasting longer than ever, with fewer failures. Upgrading and replacing parts is easier and cheaper than ever too.
The PC’s advantages, durability and standardization, is a leading cause of it’s sales decline.
If the PC is dead, somebody should really tell the hundreds of millions of people a year who keep buying them.