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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#261

Post by thriftwy »

Shank wrote: post #46

Early Windows was a great platform for the users that it served. But every few years, the Windows product itself had one of those "off years." It arguably started with NT 4.0 for workstations, then again with Windows ME, then Vista, and then arguably 8. This interleaving strategy was okay when they were the only market player, but now that there's actually good competition in the computing space (read: smartphones an…

Unarguably 8! My mother owns Windows 8 laptop and she is still stuck every time she falls into "blocky start" menu or or any of Metro apps.

She just doesn't understand what is happening anymore, and how to exit this mode which she never asked for. What helps here is that all those apps are absolutely useless.

It's a disaster disaster disaster.

Re: The End of Windows

#262

Post by plopz »

isostatic wrote: post #78
mrisoli wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people underestimate this issue. One of the reasons Windows is so dominant in the business landscape is because it's the OS people are used to since early years, mostly because it's bundled with most PCs people buy, but kids love to play games, and while a lot of games also come out for mac these days, Windows is still dominant in the PC gaming market. It's a bit of a reach to say this, but it's a little bit…

The reason windows is so popular in the home market is because it was in the 90s. businesses bought windows/office, and people brought the floppies home, which led to schools following suit, which lead to a generation thinking windows = computers.

I grew up in the 90s and 00s and schools were all Apple but homes and businesses were all Windows

Re: The End of Windows

#263

Post by dumbfounder »

dboreham wrote: post #219
amyjess wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take a guess and say that these are all older businesses. Businesses that started before the advent of cloud software will continue to use QuickBooks because that's what the owners know, and why fix something that isn't broken? But newer businesses that started in the last few years will be much more likely to use cloud software because it's so much more convenient.

There are non-technical reasons to prefer locally hosted accounting software. Privacy is one if them.

Do you mean privacy, or security? It would be a massive breach of trust if SaaS accounting products were harvesting your business data a la Facebook...

Re: The End of Windows

#264

Post by notafxn »

bhauer wrote: post #243
cpeterso wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...

That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popula…

I will hope this post is ironic and move on.

Re: The End of Windows

#265

Post by dizzystar »

bhauer wrote: post #243
cpeterso wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...

That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popula…

There's always been a strong impedence between users and developers. Calling a website "Apple first" isn't a compliment.

Websites become a problem on slow internet, which is surprisingly common in companies. This is because they are often located in cheap rent areas with little infrastructure.

Re: The End of Windows

#266

Post by zamalek »

remir wrote: post #220
justaaron wrote: post #129

Microsoft is squandering the decades of work humans put into drivers, an OS codebase that is unique and omnipresent, and if they can't see how useless and crap all their other services are without the conceptual core that powered their rise to sucess, then they will die. - windows domains - group policy - roaming profiles - drivers written for in-house equipment, ranging from machining to mass spectrometry, done over…

It's not the end of Windows. The title of the article is a bit click bait-y. Without the "we need to dominate the market and be everywhere" people pushing devs to implement feature nobody wants and have to deactivate anyways, Windows will get better for the people that love (and need) to use it.

> The title of the article is a bit click bait-y.

The article itself implies the same. It's very clearly a case of putting the cart before the hearse.

Re: The End of Windows

#267

Post by badsectoracula »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #224
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...because Microsoft is good at marketing, has no ethics, and successfully leveraged its advantages in the 90s to kill all the competition? Is this a trick question?

Possibly, or maybe that's an excuse the community uses because they're unwilling to see how openly hostile they are to proprietary software on their platform. Let me ask you a quick question: How can I distribute an application in a way that will work on all Linux Desktops?

A way to do that in a cross-distro way with (almost) no dependencies is via AppImage[1]. This creates a single executable that contains your application and all the necessary libraries and data files.

There is also work towards a more modular approach with Flatpak and Snaps, but those require support from the distro side. AppImage doesn't need any specific distro support.

[1] https://appimage.org/

Re: The End of Windows

#268

Post by rb808 »

bhauer wrote: post #243
cpeterso wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry: https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architectu...

That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways. * In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is still 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category. * In 2018, the most popula…

If you look at Chromebooks, most are 4GB, often 2GB. These are the mainstream new laptops that people will expect to run for 5 years+.

Re: The End of Windows

#269

Post by Joeri »

Micoloth wrote: post #221
blinkingled wrote: post #156

It isn't really the end of Windows - it's the end of Windows' dominance of Microsoft mindshare. Windows 10 was the giant step in that direction - an always updating, maintenance mode, single OS that MS will need to support. Arguably until Win 7 dies out they won't be entirely there but once they are, maintaining Windows is a much simpler affair than yesteryears. None of this means Windows itself is dying - it only me…

They also will never drop windows because it's probably gonna be an extremely useful platform when the next generations of devices will come up, think of AR. The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too. They will have an entire ecosystem up and running, and windows 10- level flexible t…

The fact that they dropped the mobile market (where windows could not fit as very different hardware was involved in the beginning) doesn't mean they will miss the next shot too.

Every single incarnation of windows mobile / phone was well tailored for the mobile hardware of the day.

What sunk windows phone was not that it was slow, it was that it was late to go touch-first and failed to differentiate enough to make up for it. That and tightly controlling the vendors while up against android made the quality of windows phone itself irrelevant.

Re: The End of Windows

#270

Post by willtim »

p0nce wrote: post #123
maxxxxx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of Dev work unfortunately Linux is not that much fun. If you need to do accounting, graphics or other work there are options on Linux but they are usually way behind what Mac or Windows are offering.

Even as an desktop developer, often Linux is 2% of the user base, very vocal, used to software being free, and with infinite OS variations. That's not very compelling.

If I was in the market of workstation software such as CAD, Music DAWs, industrial automation etc. I would much rather have control over the base OS by shipping a customised version of Debian or similar. This would be very compelling for professional users also, who don't want the consumer-oriented cruft and bloat associated with Windows and Mac OS.
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