I believe I have a right to computing freedom, and actively try to use free software on my personal computer and on servers I develop on and deploy to. I have EOMA68 laptop and desktop housings[0] coming, hopefully in the spring. I am also about to build a server with a motherboard that is supported by Libreboot[1] and processors that work fine without microcode updates. I use Android phones and tablets, but as long…
I wonder what their end user is here. Android is clearly the winner which Windows Phone has lost to. Perhaps they are aiming for productivity based use that requires windows toolsets? Sort of like a Bring Your Own Work Device to work that will inherently tie the worker beyond the office?
If they are emulating Win32 x86, surely they can end up emulating Android, complete with a Google Play Services replacement?
Windows Phone was always smoother, just suffered from absolute shit app store and no clear commitment to devices.
It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. My PC is configured with terabytes of slow storage, gigabytes of fast storage, a fast CPU, a fast GPU, and applications that need lots of storage and a fast video card and big screens. I'm unconstrained on size and power consumption and optimized for…
I disagree. Most people can get what they need done on something like a Chromebook which have comparable specs to the devices in their pockets. It's more so that the interface of the app, which is based on the screen size of the device is inconvenient. For instance, you wouldn't want to type a paper or do spreadsheets on your phone.
Most people don't write papers or create spreadsheets. Their phone is their computer.
The market that Microsoft seems to be after seems small to me. You already can do Chromebook like stuff with a phone and bluetooth keyboard and I do see people using that combination, just not very often.
What are the applications that have an interface that will scale well between a 4" handheld display and three 28" desktop 4k displays?
It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. My PC is configured with terabytes of slow storage, gigabytes of fast storage, a fast CPU, a fast GPU, and applications that need lots of storage and a fast video card and big screens. I'm unconstrained on size and power consumption and optimized for…
> It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. Probably not the world, but the customers I deal with, surely yes. Laptops with docking station have been my work tool since 2006.
I'm not saying the market doesn't exist, just that it's probably not going to take off.
I too use a dock (or port expander) but haven't had a lot of luck since I started moving to high-dpi displays a few years ago. Do you have a laptop that can drive a couple of 4k displays?
I'm more than a little confused about MS "mobile" strategy. Continuum sounds like a good idea, in theory. For enterprise I can kinda see it be attractive to just give your employees mobile phones and hook the office up with continuum docks. But it seems problematic in more than one aspect. For starters it's based on the fact that people are going to want to use a windows mobile as their primary device to start with.…
Personally, I like the idea of having one compute device that is always with me BUT only if it can be both a good phone and a good PC. Windows Continuum made no sense to me because Windows is a niche platform on mobile so it wasn't a good phone, and it didn't run my favorite Windows apps in PC mode either! With Windows 10 on Snapdragon, however, it could be a decent desktop PC (assuming a good dock with KVM and connectivity) but will it also be a good phone? That remains to be seen but I won't be surprised if some people start buying the new devices as low-end PC replacements (then using them as phones). If enough people do that, then developers might be persuaded to port native apps to Snapdragons, thereby enticing more people to buy these devices (iteratively)...
I really gotta wonder if this was a long term plan or in response to Intel leaving MS in the lurch with the changes to x86 strategy on mobile or a bit of both.
Greatly agreed. Being able to dock a phone and turn it into a fully functioning desktop is a phenomenal idea and feels like the natural progression. I don't think we'll ever see that with the Mac though unfortunately, and I suspect Apple would never introduce a cursor and windowing system into iOS either.
If they bumped the storage options, I see no reason why the phone couldn't run iOS and the plugged-in desktop-phone run macOS. Photos, email accounts, chat logs, etc could easily point to the same data on disk so you have two operating systems working off the same user data. A lot of the UI infrastructure for this is already there in the form of iCloud shared photo libraries and iCloud drive, which lets you access fi…
> It seems like a task that the Apple of yesteryear could have easily pulled off. I'm not sure the current Apple has the vision or ability to pull this off though.
I don't think you can count Microsoft out of entering a market. They have the capital to startup and launch in probably any industry, including big pharma. I also think it'd be dangerous for Apple or google to count Microsoft out. Furthermore the economist in me wants to see many more options in the IT industry than just 2-3 so adding one more is welcome.
> They have the capital to startup and launch in probably any industry, They tried that more than a few times and failed. X-box worked, but portable music players, mobile and search would be things they pumped massive amounts of money into and didn't get very far with. But yes, I would like choice above all. I am not a big Windows fan, but Android is really starting to annoy me and iOS (or at least the rules around i…
So, Microsoft finally solved the Windows on ARM puzzle. Did it take them more than five years to write an x86 emulator, or did they only decide to try this after Windows RT had failed?
On a Microsoft scale, it's always been trivial to write, I think it has a lot more to do with the gap in phone vs laptop performance shrinking significantly. Mainly because laptops have been stagnant. Using any kind of desktop software on a 2011 mobile phone would have been horrible, even if the ARM translation were free.
That's true, but Windows RT was for tablets. Could a 2012 Windows RT tablet have run x86 software passably?
I think maybe it could have, but the problem was that Microsoft believed the Windows Store and Metro was the future.