Windows used to be the biggest market differentiator for Microsoft. What does Azure do that Amazon or Google can't? What would make Microsoft uniquely different if it had no Windows?
The End of Windows
351–360 of 617 posts
Re: The End of Windows
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the more amazing bits of technology in Windows is that which allows the graphics drivers to crash and restart without taking down the system. They've spent so long fighting buggy third parties that this is the solution.
One thing I love about debugging on Windows is that a program being debugged cannot grab the mouse and keyboard. On Linux, if you break a program that has a context menu open, you can say goodbye to your ability to interact with the PC.
I believe this is one of things that Wayland fixes. (Unless, of course, neither your debugger and application support Wayland natively and they both end up running in XWayland.)
Re: The End of Windows
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is worth contrasting with the Steam survey which covers several million gamers (of varying degrees of dedication) -- http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey Of note, 8GB is most popular with 1920x1080 resolution.
Would probably be higher if memory prices weren’t so damn high. Same goes with video resolution. I bet we’ll see a quick bump once video card prices start to drop.
Every time we've said "when video card prices start to drop", we've seen about 3 months of drop, and then the companies come out with some new thing that increases the prices yet again.
Re: The End of Windows
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Personally I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB and 1080p, but people that use a PC like a tablet with a keyboard and a larger screen have different needs. They are the vast majority of buyers. A friend of mine is thinking about buying a new laptop. We were looking together at what's available in the sub 400 Euro range, basically everything is 4 GB and 1366x768. Add some 200/300 Euro and 8 GB and 1080p start t…
>I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB
why would you need that much ram? are you running 3+ VMs all the time?
Re: The End of Windows
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Personally I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB and 1080p, but people that use a PC like a tablet with a keyboard and a larger screen have different needs. They are the vast majority of buyers. A friend of mine is thinking about buying a new laptop. We were looking together at what's available in the sub 400 Euro range, basically everything is 4 GB and 1366x768. Add some 200/300 Euro and 8 GB and 1080p start t…
Those numbers seem out of whack to me. 1080p is pretty bad in this day and age, and 32gb is massive overkill for virtually everyone.
My daily machine at home is still a 2011 Macbook Air with 4GB of RAM, which is admittedly not enough. My work machine was a 2012 Retina MBP with 8GB which was PLENTY for all of my everyday needs except when running VMs. To this day, 8GB is enough for 'most' uses, and my work machines only have 16 to get me over that "8gb-is-not-quite enough" hump. But I've got retina displays everywhere, and a 5k iMac at home. No clue how much memory it has, to be honest, but 32 is insane for not just the average user but even most power users unless they have really specific needs.
Re: The End of Windows
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
I rode a PC wave that nearly completely bypassed IBM/Microsoft: 1. The "home" computer boom: ZX Spectrums, Acorn, Commodore, Atari with maybe an Apple II or a CPM machines for more serious use. 2. The Atari ST or Amiga wave. WIMP and productivity software as well as gaming and content creation 3. At this point I did switch to Windows but I could just have easily switched to Mac. Apple didn't cease to be a force at an…
> In our alternate history there was also room for Next or BeOS. You never know. Now that you mention it, I kind of wonder what would have happened if Steve Jobs had never left Apple in the first place.
There would have been no OS/X (a NextStep descendant) and no iPod, nor would there be an iPhone or an iPad.
Jobs leaving Apple was in a very roundabout way the best thing that happened to Apple because it forced him to learn a bunch of tough lessons which he could then apply to Apple when the time was right.
Re: The End of Windows
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
> macOS isn't business-level stable. Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005 era, and it kind of stuck around.
The enterprise tooling for macOS is woefully insufficient. Windows has provisions for performing all sorts of tasks across a fleet of desktops. I can automate deployment of a Windows desktop to the point where all you have to do is boot it up and join it to the domain (which makes it easier to hire someone to do it as well). What's more is that these settings will work across updates. I've gotten really sick of the s…
I was going to reply to the original thread with [citation needed], but thankfully someone already did it. The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability.
That said, everywhere I've worked the past 8 years, across 3 jobs, was virtually Mac-only. But yes, the valley is an outlier.
Re: The End of Windows
#358When my child gets older and leaves home, I won't be saying its the end of him. He has just matured.
Similarly, this just marks the maturity level of Windows, where there really is no significant innovation in operating systems release after release. Nothing like win 3.1 -> win 95 etc. Its been that way for a while. Obviously its cash that motives this move from Microsoft, however I wouldn't want Microsoft changing the location of the start menu every release just to stir up the market and justify a release (for example) every year.
I remember a cherished time where the next operating system release felt like an upgrade to myself as well as my PC. I could do more than before. No longer. We have it all nowadays and have became spoilt.
Re: The End of Windows
#359I'll be interested to see how this bifurcation of the Windows team plays out. Windows 10 has been a mixed bag - some nice new features but also a lot of half baked buggy stuff. The evergreen nature of Windows 10 feels like the right move, but I'm worried they're going to let the OS stagnate. There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't. I'm not a huge fan of using my tabl…
Linux on desktop is pretty amazing. Haven't looked back in 3 years.
2018 is the year!
(I exclusively used Linux on the desktop from 1995 until I bought my first Mac in 2002).
Re: The End of Windows
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
And even AppImage, a solution I frequently praise mind you, doesn't always work right. It's 2018 and the Linux Desktop still doesn't have a consistent way to... well do anything now that I think about it, but that you can't even reliably distribute an application is pretty insane. Flatpak and Snaps are a typical Linux Desktop solution: Over-engineer the shit out of it.
AFAIK the only issue that could make AppImage to not work is lack of FUSE support, but any modern distribution should have that enabled. Beyond that, AppImage is really just a container. It is still up to the developer to bundle the necessary dependencies (libraries, runtimes, VMs, data files, etc), but this is something they'd need to do with Windows too. What problems do you have with it?
I have only ever used one, personally, but users of NixOS don't seem to be able to use them out of the box.
> It is still up to the developer to bundle the necessary dependencies (libraries, runtimes, VMs, data files, etc), but this is something they'd need to do with Windows too.
Only for libraries not present in the base system. Problem with Linux Desktop world is that they seem to actively loathe the concept of a consistent base system.