PC Plus Packs Windows and Android Into Same Machine 319
jones_supa writes "At the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January, it is expected that multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and Android, two different analysts said recently. The new devices will introduce a new marketing buzzword called PC Plus, explained Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies. 'A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well', Bajarin wrote recently for Time. 'They are doing this through software emulation. I'm not sure what kind of performance you can expect, but this is their way to try and bring more touch-based apps to the Windows ecosystem.' Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, suggests that PC Plus could get millions of consumers more comfortable with Android on PCs. 'Just imagine for a second what happens when Android gets an improved large-screen experience. This should scare the heck out of Microsoft.'"
Screen resolution for laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not new and not news, either. (Score:5, Insightful)
Woohoo more experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone else taken a skeptical view of the word "experience"? I don't want to "experience" a computer. I just want a functional computer that works.
'Just imagine for a second what happens when Android gets an improved large-screen experience.'
I don't need to imagine much. When you use any system for something its not designed for the only thing that it will experience is its own demise.
Role of the PC changing (Score:3, Insightful)
This wont really work. It tries oh so very hard to have the PC do what the market wants tablets and phones to do. This is not the direction the PC market needs to chase.
The role of the PC is changing; It has competition in the market, because tablets and phones are reasonably powerful, and ultraportable.
For casual data consumption and small-scale gameplay (casual games and such) the PC has basically lost out. It needs to remember what it actually is: a consumer version of big iron. (Like it or not, the differences between a small server and a desktop PC are academic for the most part.) You dont carry big iron in your pocket. Big iron is for storing large quantities of data on, Big iron is for doing grunt processing that smaller, more dedicated devices are not suited to. Big iron is intended to provide services to a small fleet of lesser connected devices.
What do people use their home PC for these days, exactly (ordinary people, mind)--? They use them to download and store large archives of digital music and movies. They use them to preserve their digital photo collections when their phones get too full. They use them to manipulate data and files that arent well suited to processing on a mobile device. (writing wordprocessing documents, managing spreadsheets, etc.)
What do people do on tablets and phones? Basically anything else.
With that in mind, what kind of crack are these people smoking, to think that they can make a device that requires 120vAC constant power, and weighs 10lbs, needs a seperate discrete viewing hardware appliance, and bulky keyboard and mouse inputs-- be in any way comparable or desirable for software that is intended to be used on devices that weigh less than a pound, run on a 300mAh battery for hours, and have everything all together conveniently, and portably?
PC makers should understand that there are now 2 very different markets. The tablet/phone space, and the home server market, where PCs still sell.
If the home server marketplace isnt lucrative enough, then instead of wasting precious resources on boondoggles like this, they should be encouraging app store gatekeepers like Apple and Google to allow apps that are basically a front end for a network service running on a home server in the user's home, over the public IP network. (Oh, but that would make the ISPs so very sad, wouldnt it?) That would allow the raw torque of a home PC to be better utilized, a home internet connection to be better utilized, bring functionality not realistically possible to the tablet/phone space, and keep everyone mostly happy.
Instead, you have gatekeepers like Apple and Google wanting to cement their exclusivity as gatekeepers by preventing competing server services from being run exclusively for and by the end user, since that would cut into services like google's cloud storage platform, Chrome OS paradigm, and pals. This is because if they remain the gatekeepers, they get to hoover up all the delicious user profile information and use pattern data about that user, and sell it to advertisers and market analysts. (If the end users ran their own instances of a service on their own platforms and hardware, it would make doing that basically impossible to guarantee.)
But, because this is just another attempt by a market segment who's business model has shriveled up in the winds of change at resisting that change, I fully expect it to fail like the boondoggle that it is.
PCs will always have their uses; Fancy touch interfaces and pretending to be a big bulky tablet simply isnt the use that the market has chosen for them. Given the availability of superior offerings in the ACTUAL tablet space, this is NOT going to win anyone over except perhaps corporate idiots who respond only to buzzwords.
Re:Screen resolution for laptops? (Score:3, Insightful)
The PC market is hardly dying. That's a tired old trope by now. They said the same thing about mainframes. Guess what? People still buy them. The landscape is changing for sure, but the PC market is not even close to 'dying'.
Re:Dupe Plus Packs Two Articles into Same Subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm kinda reading this as something along the lines of...
Exec: So, based on the Ouya's wild success since its launch... ...we'e decided Android has proven it can work outside of mobile devices and that it's time to implement an entire PC around it. And since people love dual booting... ...we expect it to be a smashing success!
*crickets*
Exec:
*crickets*
Exec:
This product idea is basically a shot across the bow to Microsoft from the hardware manufacturers, telling MS that they're actively looking for alternatives and that MS had better do something about it. But they're not as clueless as the executive I painted above. They know that this product will flop, because normal people don't want to deal with wondering why they can't use their app unless they reboot or why their data isn't accessible from where they are, and the decision makers know that Android is not ready to be run as a desktop OS.
I predict that we'll only see a handful, if even that, of these come to market, and that most will be killed before they ever get close to launching, since it isn't about selling them: it's about sending a message to Microsoft.
Offline reading, platformers, and remote desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
For casual data consumption and small-scale gameplay (casual games and such) the PC has basically lost out [to tablets].
Both my Dell Inspiron mini 1012 laptop (running Xubuntu) and my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet (running Android) have 1 GB of RAM. The Firefox web browser on the laptop keeps a dozen tabs in memory at once without dipping into swap, partly thanks to my use of the Flashblock extension. I can load all of a day's Cracked articles in tabs, board the bus, and read them on the commute to and from work. Both Chrome and Firefox web browsers on the tablet, on the other hand, will forget a tab when I switch away from it and have to reload. Because I'm not willing to pay another $500-$600 per device per year for mobile broadband on top of what I already pay for Internet at home, the tablet will end up displaying an error message "You are offline" when I switch back to a tab.
And as for gameplay, point-and-click games work well, but other genres don't. I've tried to play platform games (similar to Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man) on a tablet's touch screen, and it's painful.
[Ordinary people] use [a home PC] to manipulate data and files that arent well suited to processing on a mobile device. (writing wordprocessing documents, managing spreadsheets, etc.)
Where "etc." could include running a compiler for a high school or college student's "introduction to computer science" homework. This is something that tablets have traditionally been lacking, even when docked to a Bluetooth keyboard.
[PC makers] should be encouraging app store gatekeepers like Apple and Google to allow apps that are basically a front end for a network service running on a home server in the user's home
There are already plenty of remote desktop viewer applications for mobile devices. SSH, X11, RDP, VNC, take your pick. One problem is that using them requires paying $500-$600 per device per year for mobile broadband on top of what the user already pays for Internet at home. The other is that for any service running on a home server, once you've added a Bluetooth keyboard and a stand to hold the tablet, you might as well be using a small laptop.
Re:All maximized all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
That is so disingenuous. Windows 8 was also all maximized all the time, until they realized that users by and large considered this a bad model for a laptop and switched to the current maximum of two windows, which is still a broken paradigm for a laptop and unnecessary on a tablet. In trying to be all things to all people Windows 8 does nothing well.
I understand, really. This Android API is trying to make up for the lack of a rich enough native app ecosystem for Windows 8. Trying to market it as "manufacturers revolting against Microsoft" tries to appeal to geeks. Shameless marketing erroneously repeating blatant falsehoods like "packs Android and Windows in the same box!!!" tries to appeal to people who are thinking "hm, I was interested in that Samsung Galaxy notepad, but maybe with this I can have the best of both worlds!" When all the get is Windows 8, a fundamentally broken paradigm, that just happens to also run some Android apps. If people fall for this, they deserve all the frustration their new purchase is going to give them.
Re:Trojans (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean after choosing to download a malicious application, choosing to install it, and choosing the grant it permission, Windows allows me to use software that DOES things to my computer that I may consider detrimental?
Yeah but for some sites you really need to have Adobe Flash installed.
Re:If the user can't install applications (Score:4, Insightful)
So can iOS, if you jailbreak. But that involves a user actively smashing apart the security that this discussion is about.
That's like saying "you realize someone can totally steal your shit if you remove the front door from your house, right?"