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.
Re:Why is this man allowed to keep so much money? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, running a massive charity that helps eradicate disease around the world and improve education? What a selfish jerk.
Re:Apple? (Score:5, Informative)
My parents have a Magic Mouse, and it's kind of nice. Most of the features are turned off, so it's hard to say how great it is.
But when I got a new iMac at work last year I asked for a Magic Trackpad, and I think it's amazing. I don't think it would work well for running Photoshop, but for non-image work it's great. Over the last few years I've gotten so used to using the gestures on my MacBook Pro to go forward/back in Safari, trigger Expose, and show the desktop. I use the forward/back gesture constantly.
Being able to do that on my desktop has been such an improvement. When I'm surfing I don't need to reposition the mouse to click on the back button, I can just swipe. When I want to change programs I can just swipe and then click on the window I want. It really is nice.
Re:Winning! (Score:3, Informative)
This is not a defensive move in reaction to the iPhone at all. Microsoft's move to tablet computing began back in the Windows 3.1 days with Windows for Pen Computing [wikipedia.org] as extensions to the OS. It became a version of Windows in its own right with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition [wikipedia.org]. This was merged into the main OS with Vista and is still part of Windows 7.
Their efforts to change the user interface to suit the tablet continued with the introduction of the Ribbon [wikipedia.org] in Office 2007.
With Metro, they have come full circle with their efforts to make their phone interface the same as their desktop interface. Previously they had adapted the phone interface to look like the Windows 95 desktop, including a tiny little start menu (it even ran on the ARM CPU). Now they are making their desktop look like a phone. It was a dumb idea then and it is a dumb idea now, but that is another issue. However, it does show that everything they have done as been consistent long term strategy, and not just a knee-jerk reaction to one Apple product.
Re:Le sigh. (Score:1, Informative)
In my county, half of the food stores install a socket next to the dining table ...
Im my country, the stores that sell food do not sell dining tables. And if the food stores did sell dining tables, I doubt they'd have sockets next to them. Unless you meant restaurants had power outlets at the table, which I've not seen as a regular thing, except for Starbucks, which doesn't count as a food store, but a coffee shop that happens to sell some food-like objects.
Re:Le sigh. (Score:3, Informative)
Except that they don't. If you write Metro apps in C++ you don't use .NET. If you write them in JScript you don't use .NET. They were careful at the //build conference last year to explain that the WinRT API is native C++ but there is a transparent marshalling layer to the .NET runtime. The host for JScript/HTML apps is presumably also native code that marshals the objects.
But yes they must run on all the platforms, of which C++ is the only that will need to be built for every platform.