Posted on 09/03/2013 3:13:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Windows is dead. Let’s all salute it — pour out a glass for it, burn a CD for it, reboot your PC one last time. Windows had a good run. For a time, it powered the world. But that era is over.
It was killed by the unlikeliest of collaborations — Microsoft’s ancient enemies working over decades, in concert: Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds, and most of all, two guys named Larry and Sergey.
Late on Monday, Microsoft announced its unsurprising $7.2 billion plan to buy Nokia’s smartphone division. Nokia is the world’s largest manufacturer of phones that run Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system (which is a bit like pointing out that, at 5-foot-6, I’m the tallest member of my immediate family). Microsoft is buying Nokia in order to control both the hardware and software in its devices; this move, Microsoft promises, will improve the phones themselves and make them easier to sell.
But this is the antithesis of the company’s Windows strategy. Though Microsoft insists otherwise, when this deal is done, the thing sold as Windows won’t be what it’s always been — it won’t be software that runs on lots of companies’ hardware, a platform to unite disparate manufacturers’ devices. Instead, Windows will be much like Apple’s operating systems, iOS and Mac OS. Windows will be proprietary software attached to proprietary hardware — Microsoft’s code running on Microsoft’s devices.
In a document that lays out the “strategic rationale” for the deal, Microsoft makes a stirring case for vertical integration: for a single company that makes both mobile software and hardware together. By purchasing Nokia, Microsoft says it will be able to create better phones by reducing “friction” between hardware and software teams that now reside in separate companies.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Let me be the first to observe one thing in this article — This author seems to confuse dominance in the mobile market with dominance in the OVERALL computer market.
Unless someone tells me that Servers, desktops and laptops are going to disappear from the scene in the near future, I find it hard to accept his thesis.
I mean Personal computer usage may be moving on to the tablet and phone, but businesses, where the bulk of serious computer usage continues to reside, are not moving so fast.
And note — Open Source OS and others have been on the scene for over a decade.... I’m not seeing a mass movement towards open source at all...
Apparently, the next Windows product will be cloud based. At that point I’ll say goodbye to Windows.
Sure, Cobol and mainframes were going to be dead, I was told, by 1985.
That's the point.
Mobile now drives the overall computer market, since this is the vehicle (via handsets and tablets) by which the VAST majority of end users will get there computing chores accomplished.
Is that a bandwagon I hear approaching?
People always seem to miss the point. Saying an OS or a platform is “dead” doesn’t mean extinct like the dodo bird. So if your mom has a windows based PC in her sewing room - that does not refute the stated argument.
“Dead” here means - not what it once was - no longer the 900 lb. gorilla that gets to control how the game is played.
Think of Network News. It still exists - sure - but it ain’t what it used to be. This is the way to think about articles such as these.
About a year ago, those toting tablets and smartphones only were about 50%.
Well, I had a meeting last week and not a single person brought their laptop to the meeting. Everybody was on tablets and smartphones and none of them were running Windows. It was either iOS or Android. Bringing laptops to the conference table now appears to be a thing of the past.
In a similar vein, nobody seems to use desktops at my work anymore. Laptops rule the cubicles these days and they go home with the employees at night. Laptops are the new desktops and as BYOD takes hold, more and more MacBook Pros are showing up in the workplace. For portability, people are using tablets and smartphones.
Microsoft still has huge market share but they need to be worried. That's probably why Steve Ballmer got kicked to the curb. They need to make changes and they need to make them fast.
That’s last year’s prediction. This year shows the tablet market no longer growing, those who want them now have them, those who don’t aren’t buying them. In much the same way a lot of the PC market has no reason to switch to laptops they also have no reason to switch to tablets. The power::dollar equation will always favor the form factor that has room to breath, so the bigger the box you’re willing to put your computing power in the more bang you’ll get for your buck.
Yesterday a 49 inch TV was delivered and I had no idea why. Turned out my MIL signed up for a smart phone and that was part of the deal but she didn’t want the TV so she had it sent to us for our daughter. My daughter is 4.
Maybe another example is Blackberry. You can still see these around from time to time. But they eventually will become an historical footnote. But 5,6,7 years ago they were poised to take over the world.
40 inch
AOL is dead, cable killed it.
Cable is dead, G5 killed it.
G5 is dead, “the cloud” killed it.
“The cloud is dead”, the next thing killed it.
The "next thing" was Ed Snowden's big mouth. :)
AOL is dead, cable killed it.
Cable is dead, G5 killed it.
G5 is dead, “the cloud” killed it.
“The cloud” is dead, Edward Snowden killed it.
Edward Snowden is dead, a “car accident” will kill him.
Exactly.
This is a perfectly sane move. They NEED to control manufacture of the smallest devices, the phones. They will never succeed in making a pleasant interface unless they do it like Apple does.
This does not need to have ANY bearing on their desktop OS. There still must be, somewhere, an OS that works with diverse hardware and software. One that is the defacto standard for development. The one that can have anything plugged into it and have drivers and software that can handle anything.
In that vein, the desktop and laptop doing “general” computing must always be with us or there’s no way to create the other platforms we use (like the phone).
So let us not get all crazy about it. It’s like the desktop. The concept of the modular computer will not go anywhere. Sometimes you need to BUILD or CONFIGURE a system for a certain task. Nothing else will do. It may become a niche market but it will always exist... for the forseeable future anyway.
For most folks good enough is just that, and when that is the case price wins.
Why spend a few hundred on a laptop just to tweet when you can do the same on a phone for under 100 or even free.
That carries a tacit assertion that for most people "using a computer" amounts to posting to Twitter (or something equally trivial). I'm not buying that premise.
My experience as well.
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