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:Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see Apple shoving a grand unified UI down the throats of its tablet, laptop, and desktop users.
Really? Every time they update OSX it becomes more like iOS.
Re:Le sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest Intel chip will help considerably with x86 battery life.
It is strange he talks about things being "integrated" when they've announced SEPARATE x86 and ARM tablets. And neither is binary compatible with their gaming platform (PPC).
Except for Intel probably costing more, why should they need ARM at all? If Intel is now viable for mobile, it would have made more sense to switch the phone to Intel.
Their eco-system is incredibly fragmented.
The PC is not dying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people browse the web on iPads now. This is approximately the only piece of evidence I've seen that the PC is "dying".
We all still have a PC in our office to do real work. People write code, write papers, design things, run simulations, SSH into servers, work with complicated spreadsheets and databases, run custom software applications, etc. When there's any sign at all that most of that work is moving onto tablets, then it'll be reasonable to start saying the PC is dying.
Hey, Look! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like that time in the 1990s when Bill Gates discovered the Internet several years later than everyone else...
But it's Bill Gates, so some people listen and think he's said something profound!
What about developers? Real gamers? (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to that, if PC gamers wanted a braindead machine they'd get a handheld or a console. The sort of games I enjoy need a mouse, keyboard and very large screen. Tablets have their place but they're no substitute for a real computer.
Re:Why is this man allowed to keep so much money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, running a massive charity that helps eradicate disease around the world and improve education? What a selfish jerk.
Yeah, running A strongarm for big pharma that pretends to eradicate disease without being able to get into every country where it is an issue because of regressive IP policies and attempt to shape education in a way that results in more sales for Microsoft, using money that he effectively stole from the entire computing industry by illegally abusing a monopoly position in such a way that it held the computing industry back at least half a decade, and probably a whole one? I call that a selfish jerk, but I guess that's just because I own a dictionary.
Re:Why is this man allowed to keep so much money? (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" are just empty words to you?
Are you aware that the original words were "life, liberty, and the pursuit of profit"?
Methinks the Founding Fathers felt a need to be less crass about what we stood for. Though maybe we should reinstate the original words, for the post-1980 era when greed is considered the highest civic virtue.
Re:Hey, Look! (Score:2, Insightful)
Bash him all you want but he is a brilliant and great CEO.
He almost owned the internet too with IE 6 by taking it proprietary and halting to encourage client/server apps instead. Evil for us but great for his company. Balmer was the one who made MS from a tiger to a paper tiger in 10 years since he left.
Gates was not that slow with the internet. By 1996 he saw how serious it was after spending an all nighter in the computer lab browsing the web with Netscape and seeing how it can be used for apps. No one was even talking about a browser as a platform yet. He had the vision and IE (you may hate the browser today) invented AJAX to win over Netscape.
Is he right now? I do not know. My guess is he doesn't do much at Microsoft anymore besides lecture Balmer every now and then and focuses on his charity work. If he were still CEO I bet you Windows 8 would not be so hostile to desktop users and METRO would be much better.
Re:Why is this man allowed to keep so much money? (Score:2, Insightful)
For one, the parent was a troll. Get real. Your eagerness to see a socialist around every corner tricked your mind into ignoring the little details that make the troll nature obvious. Secondly, you don't believe in taxation at all, then? There really is not much socialist rhetoric out there in the mainstream press right now...there is just argument about the degree of regulation and tax rates. Again, get real.
Changing? Not willingly. (Score:5, Insightful)
I get it now. He says the PC is changing. Because he (well, Microsoft) is going to MAKE it change. Change to a locked down environment that can only run Microsoft approved OSes. And do things the Microsoft way. And you are going to like it because they will spend bazillions in marketing dollars making everyone think it is the best thing since sliced bread.
Count me out.
Fortunately Windows 7 has lots of life left. (Score:4, Insightful)
Keyboard or gamepad on shirt-pocket computers (Score:5, Insightful)
The very near future beings shirt-pocket computing more powerful than Star Trek tricorders and communicators. It frees us all from being bound to one spot in order to compute and game and browse.
One thing I don't see very often on shirt-pocket computers is a keyboard for entering large amounts of text or a gamepad for controlling a video game character. A completely flat touch screen is no substitute, as Intellivision II owners learned in 1983 [wikipedia.org].
Backed into a corner (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to put out our own tablet, because our OEMs can't build a competitor to the Kindle Fire and sell it for 199.00 if 80.00 dollars out of that 199.00 is for our OS.
Microsoft can't release a 700.00 tablet. Anyone going to spend that much money would go for an Apple product. The logical entry point to sell a lot of them is on the low end, and guess what...the OEMs can't meet the low end price point and use Windows 8.
This may not be the year of Linux, but it could be the year it backed MS into a corner.
Re:Winning! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what happens when you spend too much time defending your market and not enough time 'innovating'.
Apple didn't just put out more and better hardware, they created a unified approach to handing all their customers a market in a box. The iPhone and iPad apps market, the music on your device(s) market, the internet as a TV show market, the eBooks market...
BG was a visionary, but you can only get just so much productivity out of your Office employees before the hardware improvements are lost on those who are moved primarily by the ROI arguments. And the web is a great platform to deliver services, but again, how long does it it take before the western world is saturated with sales opportunities and M$ had to start targeting the 3rd or diminishing marginal returns.
Apple is riding the tide of people who believe that the most portable device that gives them everything, everywhere all the time with slick engineering reliability built in is worth a premium. It's a good thing Steve Jobs came back and rescued us from the inevitable degradation that the Mac clone wars would have ultimately delivered, as evidenced by Microsoft taking back their hardware in an effort to combat the crap that's marketed in the PC world.
Thanks Steve!
(I really enjoy my Swiss Army knife of markets in a box!)
Re:CAD: I still need a good desktop computer (Score:2, Insightful)
yea go fire up solidworks and make something and watch it drag a dell precision with an i7 down pretty quickly, you thing your little pussyfoot P3 era powered tablet is going to get anywhere close to that?
Re:Why is this man allowed to keep so much money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than Xperia Play? (Score:5, Insightful)
I DON'T WANT A TABLET (Score:4, Insightful)
I DON'T WANT A TABLET
I DON'T WANT A TABLET
I DON'T WANT ANYTHING LIKE A TABLET
I don't care if the marketoids think it's the future
I DON'T WANT A TABLET
Have I made myself clear?
Re:Apple? (Score:3, Insightful)
Emails, Facebook posts, sharing photos & videos... they're creating kinds of content.
No.
Superior technology don't always win (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is what you call a figure of speech. It encapsulates in a few words what will probably take a paragraph or more of explanation. Perhaps it's better phrased as "the PC is dying" or more prosaically: "The phenomenal growth in the market for personal computers is levelling off and is expected to go down. It's even possible that the total number of PCs will go down in the near future."
So is the PC dying? What we have are a few indisputable trends. There are now more cellphones in the planet than there are PCs. The percentage of cellphones that can somehow connect to the Net are increasing. Smartphones today are more powerful than the typical desktop from the Windows 95 era, arguably the turning point when the PC migrated from the office to colonize the home market.
The only thing missing for the smartphone to replace the PC is the consistent ability to connect to input-output devices that are taken for granted in the PC world. Support for keyboards and external pointing devices is iffy at best. Support for printers and large monitors is even more dismal. But these issues are being addressed (some of the pricier smartphones now have HDMI output).
Developers and hardcore gamers don't count in the post-PC world. Developers weren't a large breed to begin with. For them the PC will become a niche product, just like mainframes. Hardcore gamers will always have their consoles.
Yes, the tablet is no substitute for a real PC. But superior technology don't always win out. Microsoft should know this better than any other gigantic tech company.
Re:Le sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Winning! (Score:5, Insightful)
I never said or meant it was "a knee-jerk reaction to one Apple product." Clearly Microsoft has also been paying close attention to OS X, the iPod, the iTunes Store, as well as iPhone/iPad/iOS, and they have had their own innovatives. But perhaps I should have said Microsoft hasn't had a workable or successful strategic vision for a while now. Sure, they have new ideas, they just don't seem to work out. Microsoft makes money, but from long-existing products. Even their relatively recent success of the Xbox may not have yet turned a profit, given the billions they sank into getting it going.
(I don't consider the fact that their old pen and tablet products have been subsumed into the current version of Windows means they were successful or even very noteworthy. In history they are footnotes, not milestones and game-changers.
I'm not sure how going from "make phone look like tiny desktop" to "make desktop look like big phone" counts as a "consistent long term strategy," though. Is this "coming full circle" or "going in circles"?
Re:Winning! (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when has MS been on the offensive?
Over the past several decades they have always been highly defensive. Every offensive move (aggressive pricing of Office to outcompete WordPerfect; developing a web browser to kill off Netscape; hostile take-over of other competing companies) have always been to defend the status quo which includes Windows on the desktop. MS never innovated much, instead they have bought up many small companies with innovative products, sometimes including the product in their own offering, usually killing it off (by making it suck).
MS makes money by selling Windows and Office to the desktop computers. Anything that threatens this status quo they will defend against.
Now the mobile computing has quite suddenly matured and become popular, and that's what keeps MS scrambling. They don't have an easy answer to that. It's too big to buy (and Apple and Google are not for sale, anyway), and most devices are using hardware that Windows doesn't work well on (ARM processors, touch screens, small screens, no keyboard/mouse).
Add to that the notorious slowness of MS and the company has a big problem. The first iPhone, that set off the revolution, was released five years ago. The first Android release by Google followed two years later. Another three years later and MS still doesn't have a viable competitor, and is by many considered a few years behind Android and iOS.
MS is on the defensive, still, while to survive they must be on the offensive. The Surface proves that they are trying to do just that now. An interesting concept, I wonder if it will be released as product before competitors take over the ideas and release their own. When the first iPad was announced by Apple it was mere weeks before the Chinese manufacturers started to churn out 7" iPads - running Android but looking exactly like the real thing. Just smaller, and cheaper.
Re:Why is this man allowed to keep so much money? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Keyboard or gamepad on shirt-pocket computers (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I don't see very often on shirt-pocket computers is a keyboard for entering large amounts of text or a gamepad for controlling a video game character.
One thing you often see on shirt-pocket computers is bluetooth.
Re:Le sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
please, Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
...stop trying to be a visionary - you aren't. Your record on future predictions equals that of the world cup animal oracles.
Sure the PC will change - it always does. But the world isn't "moving to" tablets, it is adopting tablets. Most tablet owners also own a PC and for that reason alone don't want the two to be identical. One tool for the one job, another tool for a different job. Some people are happy with just one of the two, that's fine, too. Yes, some people now use a tablet instead of a PC because what they used to use the PC for is better done by a tablet, there just weren't any.
MS more than anyone should know this. Their second cash cow is MS Office, after all - something that nobody really wants on a tablet for any serious work. Sure, the iPad office apps (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) are bestsellers - because people want to read and update their documents on the road. But it is not only my own opinion that serious office work doesn't get done on a tablet. And if you need business numbers, look at the sales figures for notebooks and netbooks. Not exactly dead in the waters, are they? So even in the mobile computing market, there's still an interest in real computers in addition to tablets.
MS is missing the boat - again - because they are so out of touch with what the users want. That's the true secret of the Apple success - the give people something they want, sometimes something they didn't even know they wanted. Sure, it's a "our way or the highway" offering, but MS still thinks they dominate computing so much that they can get people to follow them anywhere - and that hasn't been true for a decade.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Le sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all part of the game to KILL PC's. Everyone wants part of the action of devices locked to a captive audience. Metro, Markets... no thanks. I'll retain control of my own devices. If anyone ever creates a tablet device that I don't have to hack to make it mine, then I'll buy into the hype. I just wish more people understood what they are losing with these types of devices.
Re:Winning! (Score:3, Insightful)
With Metro, they have come full circle with their efforts to make their phone interface the same as their desktop interface.
Microsoft is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying desperately to find a way to stay relevant.
Re:Le sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, I played a lot of PC versions of Xbox 1 titles on a Celeron OC'd to 464 MHz, a Geforce 2 MX, though I did have 256 MB RAM. Ran games great on XP.
Please stop with the FUD and utterly made up garbage.
Re:Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Every time they update OSX it becomes more like iOS.
They are pulling over individual features that (mostly) make sense on laptops with small-ish screens and large, multitouch trackpads, plus some cosmetic/layout changes that are not really tablet specific. Most of these features can either be ignored or turned off in Preferences.
What they're not doing - unlike Microsoft and some Linux distros - is forcing everybody to use the iOS "desktop" with the traditional desktop a second-class citizen. Yes, they've added "launchpad" and "Full Screen" mode (which would be better described as "tablet mode") but you can just ignore them if you have a huge monitor. On an 11" Air, they make sense.
Plus, Macs are uniquely set up for using gesture-based interfaces - all their laptops have, for some time, featured the biggest, nicest trackpads in the busines (the first time I've not felt the need to carry a mouse around) and, for the desktop, there is the Magic Trackpad (which, provided you turn on the three-fingers-to-drag option, I find excellent for everything short of gaming and graphics work).
Re:Winning! (Score:3, Insightful)
You are an idiot!
1) Ok so who made MacBook Air competitors before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
2) So who made notebooks with great than 2K resolution on the screen before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
3) So who made SSD's popular before Apple came out? Oh yeah ZERO!
Do you see the pattern here you turd! Does Apple charge more? Heck yeah! But do they deliver on better quality and better hardware? YEAH! Did you notice in Tim Cook's keynote address where he slammed the competition on Ultrabooks saying, "its not so easy is it?" Essentially he was saying what Apple has been preaching. To make hardware as sexy as theirs is not cheap, nor easy as typified by the prices charged by the Windows people.
@AC 1:18 - Re:Winning! (Score:5, Insightful)
BG was a visionary
Yes., he saw what others were doing, and copied it.