The End of Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: The End of Windows

#381

Post by bayindirh » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #375

bayindirh wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Most of the tasks in the real world doesn't need multiple 4K displays, including…

As someone who reads text all day, going up to a 27" 150 PPI monitor was huge . There is a tangible improvement in how that text looks, especially on an accurately colored monitor. The other footnote should be that display prices have been crashing recently. You can get an IPS 24" FHD monitor for like $90, and a QHD version at 27" for about $150. Those would have been twice as expensive a few years ago. That being sa…

> As someone who reads text all day, going up to a 27" 150 PPI monitor was huge.

You're right, however not everyone has the same desktop space to accomodate a 27" panel. I can barely fit a 24" on my desk. 1440p monitors start at 25".

> The other footnote should be that display prices have been crashing recently.

When I was in the US at the end of 2014, one of my friends said the same thing about flash drives when I pointed out a $44 PNY 128GB flash drive. Unfortunately, other parts of the world doesn't work same way. Because EUR or other currencies are not fixed against US$, and prices fluctuate at most parts of the world if not increase. So, no, technology doesn't become cheaper as it matures at some parts of the world unfortunately.

Addendum: BTW, you are right about the 768p screens are generally found in entry level laptops or netbooks. These devices are most feasible ones when they first came out. Now they are bottom end cash cows which are virtually free to build.

Re: The End of Windows

#382

Post by mediocrejoker » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #273

mediocrejoker wrote: post #86

What I don't understand is, with Apple and Microsoft moving to "services" business-models, who do they see as providing the hardware for this future they envision? I don't think we are near the point where either laptops or phones are a commodity. If nobody want to make hardware their first priority, how is anyone going to ensure the best experience for the customers using their serviceS?

Is there any evidence that Apple are moving to a services model? More than anyone else, they have succeeded at making services add-ons for their own hardware. (edited to fix a typo)

Not sure how true it is. It's been a popular narrative recently, including discussion on Stratechery[0]. Some say that Apple has been pushing the idea as a way to distract from slowing hardware sales for the last 2 years or so.

[0] https://stratechery.com/2018/apples-middle-age/

Re: The End of Windows

#383

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

dralley wrote: post #290

pishpash wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satya is having enormous financial success in chasing much needed markets, but the jury's still out on ditching MS's strengths in large software development in favor of a no-support permanent beta culture at a moment when the latter is showing its ugly side.

I kind of expect that the "let consumers be the beta testers and fire all our QA" approach is going to majorly bite them in the ass at some point and lose a lot of goodwill.

The thing I don't fully understand about Nadella's strategy is what Windows is supposed to be any more. Clearly if all these whizzy subscription-based online services are going to be useful, people need a device to access them. For simple communications and information consumption, the modern generation of devices like smartphones and tablets works just fine, but for anything more involved or with a significant creative element you still need something more like a PC.

However, it looks like Microsoft is isolating the online services from the client platform in order to de-prioritise Windows, which inherently makes Windows itself more replaceable. That creates a huge potential gap in the overall tech market, particularly once Windows 7 reaches end-of-support and a lot of people are going to be wondering about what they can do if they don't want Windows 10. (After all, if they did want Windows 10, why are so many people still not using it?)

There obviously aren't that many businesses that would be in a position to exploit such a vulnerability and start building not just a viable alternative client OS but a viable alternative ecosystem around it, but there are some. Apple could be a threat from one direction. Traditional big tech companies like IBM could be a threat from another. With the foundations available with modern OSS stacks, an unexpected alternative from (or sponsored by) the likes of Red Hat might be less likely but not totally out of the question either, or even a curveball from the likes of Intel.

So, what if one or more of them really did produce a compelling client platform and moved the whole industry back in the direction of local software and in-house operations? If the current focus on Cloud everything wanes, but Microsoft has voluntarily given up its long-standing dominance of the more traditional parts of the industry by neglecting Windows as a platform in its own right, where does that leave their online services five or ten years from now?

Maybe the likes of Satya Nadella are just much better connected in the big boardrooms than a mere geek like me, and they're confident that the emphasis on Cloud everything isn't going anywhere any time soon. But now we've been doing that for a while and the gloss has worn off a bit with all the real world problems of reliability, security, leaks, costs, and so on, I can't help wondering whether Nadella is mostly playing to Cloud-obsessed big investors and at some point those investors will prove to have been throwing good money after bad because they didn't know any better.

Re: The End of Windows

#384

Post by vetinari » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

badestrand wrote: post #302

bhauer wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750). To me, the hardware report shows technology is quite stagnant on display resolution and memory. 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. 4GB was common in desktop computers in 2005. ~15 years have passed and consumers in the $750 price range are still hamstrung with 1366x768 and 4GB of memory? I would expect better from a $750 phone , let alone a compute…

My 1-year-old MacBook Air runs 1440x900 with 8 GB and it cost >$1.000 IIRC. So neither "very old" nor $200-$400 range.

MacBooks Air, Macs Mini and Mac Pro during last few years were ancient as soon as manufactured. Apple is being criticized for not updating these model lines.

So yes, the innards of your 2017 MBA are very old. It has Broadwell generation (circa 2014) CPU/GPU, and one optimized for power draw at that (i.e. a slower one).

Re: The End of Windows

#385

Post by ckaygusu » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

nulagrithom wrote: post #124

ckaygusu wrote: post #87

Earlier 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 can agree with the stability of the tooling since Office products have become the de-facto standard of "enterprising" and MS doesn't really sweat herself to keep OSX tooling pristine. The original statement sounds like it is a statement about the stability of the operating system itself, which I'm sure it is good enough to support personal and business computing needs.

Re: The End of Windows

#386

Post by bluGill » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

ynniv wrote: post #366

bluGill wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Linux on the desktop has some specific list of pros/cons. Windows can be better by enough, even if inertia is the only advantage.

Isn't that my argument?

You seem to be arguing that is enough to make windows not a commodity.

Re: The End of Windows

#387

Post by majewsky » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #362

majewsky wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That KB entry is misleading: Steam works on most distros (at least all the ones that I've tried) because it includes its own runtime (glibc etc.) and thus avoids most of the idiosyncrasies of distros. AppImage/Flatpak/Snap/Docker is mostly the same idea, just executed differently.

Yeah, it speaks volumes that the best way to ensure applications work on your platform is for the dev to bundle their own version of the platform in a container with the application.

Well, it's also how OS X apps work, and have worked for a long time already.

Re: The End of Windows

#388

Post by DanBC » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #288

dannyw wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to assume a large portion of users are software engineers or tech people. You may consider a 16GB ‘bare minimum’, but not everyone needs that - nor can even afford that (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750).

> (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750). To me, the hardware report shows technology is quite stagnant on display resolution and memory. 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. 4GB was common in desktop computers in 2005. ~15 years have passed and consumers in the $750 price range are still hamstrung with 1366x768 and 4GB of memory? I would expect better from a $750 phone , let alone a compute…

> 4GB was common in desktop computers in 2005. ~15 years have passed and consumers in the $750 price range are still hamstrung with 1366x768 and 4GB of memory?

If anything it's worse now because the RAM is soldered in and they're using BGA ICs which makes it impossible for most people to upgrade.

Re: The End of Windows

#389

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #81

ynniv wrote: post #48

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they…

I agree. I wish Microsoft would focus on Windows 11 and not think of Win10 as the last Windows, thereby flooding it with adware non-sense. There are still a lot of tech heads and gamers that depend on Windows and will continue to buy into the platform. I even know hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server. With Android being a clusterfuck of vend…

> hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server.

What's the use case for a "hard core Linux dev" and WSL? I've tried it. It failed miserably for Rails development when it was released. I logged bugs. I went back to what I was doing. Maybe it's gotten good now?

Re: The End of Windows

#390

Post by majewsky » Mon, Apr 02, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #365

majewsky wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows Server has been irrelevant for some time. Most definitely not. There are a ton of Microsoft Certified Somethings that will refuse to administrate Linux servers unless their life depends on it. Source: I work at SAP's internal cloud unit. We have to support Windows VMs (begrudgingly, if I may say), even for payloads that could run on Linux.

Inflexible workers will be separated from their jobs eventually, its just a matter of time.

What makes you think that? Those inflexible workers are also those who make the purchasing decisions. A shop full of Windows admins will not switch to Linux unless forced to (and vice versa).