Bill Gates: the Traditional PC Is Changing 552
Billly Gates writes "Bill Gates, in an interview with Charlie Rose last night, defended the move to Metro-ize Windows 8 and focus solely on the tablet experience (here's the video — tablet talk starts around 28 minutes in). When asked how traditional PC users will react, he explained that the world is moving into tablets, and a new PC needs to have both experiences integrated together. Also, he defended the move to build the Surface while charging his competitors a bundle for Windows 8. He says users have access to both experiences, whether it is a signature Microsoft one, or from an OEM. Is the a sign the desktop is dead or dying?"
Gates stopped short of saying the traditional PC is dead, but dodged direct questions about its future. This is a big change to the stance he has advocated in years past.
Le sigh. (Score:5, Funny)
Mobile computing is the future -- just ignore the battery life.
Re:Is the a sign the desktop is dead or dying? (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's a sign that /. needs editors.
Slashdot's editors are actually AIs that battle each other deep inside the Gibson. The stories are chosen by the one that survives 17 rounds of gruelling competition. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the crunch of cheetos and the pounding techno music as hot girls in glowing costumes introduce the contenders. Malda didn't retire, he just returned to userspace.
Re:Apple? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Winning! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but ....
Asking Bill Gates about Microsoft's platform direction is like asking Mikhail Gorbachev about the future of Russia.
Re:He doesn't get it (Score:3, Funny)
> We just need to make sure cars have a safety interlock so you can't drive with your smart glasses on.
Why? The cars will be driving themselves by then so we will need something to do while travelling.
Re:Win8 is problematic however you slice it.... (Score:5, Funny)
Not having a touch device, can't comment on how the interface changes, however:
of course it defaults to apps, since the Start Screen is all about listing and launching apps.
What I referred to was how I, in Win 7, will type a string in the 'search' and it will highlight "applications", "Files", and "control panel settings" (and probably other things) and present all results it finds, space allowing. In Win8, I wanted to do an update, I typed 'update' to search for windows update. It said no results. I stumbled over that, since "Windows Update" has always shown up there (in fact before Win 8 it showed up as an 'Application'). It took me a minute to realize I needed to click the "Settings Category" to get more results. When I pondered that a bit too long, the side bar even giving me the hint that 'Settings had 9 results' auto-hid, leaving the entirety of my screen real estate dedicated to the task of telling me it found nothing, and hiding the dozen or so hits it got out of site.