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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#461

Post by bitmapbrother »

cptskippy wrote: post #197
mschuster91 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently. And with every shift towards ads or trying to force a mobile-first UI on a desktop/laptop, they alienate users off of it. I switched to OS X as soon as I saw the writing on the wall with Win8 (and Wine on OS X got stable enough to play GTA San Andreas, tbh). Also, I won…

> And with every shift towards ads You mean like Apple asking me to use iCloud every single time I unlock my Mac? Or every time I power on my test iOS devices? Or do you mean up I have to open the App Store to apply MacOS updates and click past the ads? Windows 10 adds some shortcuts to the start menu during the bi-annual updates, they're annoying but once they're deleted they don't come back. They also have an add i…

>You mean like Apple asking me to use iCloud every single time I unlock my Mac? Or every time I power on my test iOS devices? Or do you mean up I have to open the App Store to apply MacOS updates and click past the ads?

I don't get asked to use iCloud every time I unlock a Mac. Additionally, I don't recall a Mac ever displaying ads in their file explorer asking me to upgrade my SkyDrive storage. Nor do I ever recall Mac OS ever installing third party bloatware apps and games and making them front and center in the Start menu. I also don't recall ever having to proactively prevent the mass collection of "telemetry" data when installing Mac OS.

Re: The End of Windows

#462

Post by ozim »

candybar wrote: post #438

I'm surprised no one mentioned this but the biggest takeaway for me is that it moves Windows one step closer to becoming open source. We're still many steps away and it's going to be more like the hybrid model of Android or even OSX/iOS/Darwin and but it seems much more feasible now, even if it starts with baby steps.

I think that started when Ballmer finished his reign. Even with his developers, developers, developers mantra, .NET ecosystem was not as awesome as now it is, open source with .NET Core runtime on Linux and MacOS.

Re: The End of Windows

#463

Post by cm2187 »

ryandrake wrote: post #339
asveikau wrote: post #33

I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle. One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. Even though Win10 attempted correctiv…

As a developer, the Windows target is baffling. I briefly considered porting a few apps I wrote over to Windows just to re-learn the platform again. Might be fun! Back in the day, the choice was easy: MFC/Win32 Now, I have no idea where to even start! C#? C++? .NET? Win32? MFC? WPF? XAML? WinForms? UWP? What a rat’s next! How did MS let the development ecosystem get so muddied? I know I can go online and research all…

You forgot Universal Web Apps in your list, which like UWP is the least universal of the Windows ecosystem.

Re: The End of Windows

#464

Post by bitmapbrother »

pjmlp wrote: post #27
SonicSoul wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're thinking about desktops. think servers/mobile. that's a highly competitive space you won't compete in by making windows 10% better every 2 years.

Currently Android seems to have lost the tablet war on consumer electronic shops. People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10. Android devs are to blame, given the little effort to adapt phone apps to tablets.

>Currently Android seems to have lost the tablet war on consumer electronic shops.

And yet they still account for the majority of tablet sales.

>People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10.

The W10 tablet market share is so low they barley even register. In fact, Microsoft Surface tablets aren't even visible on the following graph:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...

Re: The End of Windows

#465

Post by cm2187 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #432
ryandrake wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, the Windows target is baffling. I briefly considered porting a few apps I wrote over to Windows just to re-learn the platform again. Might be fun! Back in the day, the choice was easy: MFC/Win32 Now, I have no idea where to even start! C#? C++? .NET? Win32? MFC? WPF? XAML? WinForms? UWP? What a rat’s next! How did MS let the development ecosystem get so muddied? I know I can go online and research all…

Here's how simple I think it is: Out (but not gone/forgotten): Win32 (hand-coded C, C++ MFC, C++ ATL and related alphabet soup [aka back in the day the choice wasn't easy, either], VB6, .NET WinForms, etc), WPF/Silverlight (a .NET only XAML platform) In: UWP (C++ with XAML, C#/.NET with XAML, JS with HTML/CSS) Just three UI platforms to consider (Win32, WPF, UWP), two of which are mostly deprecated and not recommende…

Except that with Win7’s dominance your UWP isn’t going to run on most of your clients for many years. In a corporate environment it sorts of kills it from the outset. I think Microsoft made a big mistake by not making UWP win7 compatible.

Re: The End of Windows

#466

Post by bitmapbrother »

pjmlp wrote: post #145
SonicSoul wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

citation needed http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

So what, if I find a source that contradicts your's would you just put yet another link? I know what I see when I go into a store, travel across Europe and look around for what the other passengers are using. If you feel vindicated by posting some random link asserting you are right, so be it.

Here's another link that contradicts your anecdotal stories:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...

Re: The End of Windows

#467

Post by cm2187 »

noir_lord wrote: post #251
kamaal wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During a AWS demonstration at work. The Amazon guy specifically mentioned, AWS is a more lucrative option for large companies than small ones, simply because it was an easy one time way of culling large teams in big companies who were adding very little to nothing in return in value.

Hmm, not convinced about that. My Boss is smart and he'd wonder what the business plan would be should say 5 years down the line you want to move away from the cloud for some reason. You threw away decades of accumulated knowledge about the company and it's systems to save some money upfront. He thinks on a longer scope than most bosses I've known though (largely because his family own the group so he doesn't have to…

But if your business is to produce, say, cars, why would you want to maintain this knowledge in house. You certainly want to understand your systems, but do you really want to deal with physical datacentres, updating the underlying OS, replacing drives, etc. You kind of want it outsourced to specialists.

Re: The End of Windows

#468

Post by BuckRogers »

mjevans wrote: post #452
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…

I would __much__ rather have TWO 1080p or 1920x1200 displays than a single 4K display. For me, the quantity of visible 'glass' matters most. It's surprisingly difficult to drive double 4K monitors. Maybe as the price comes down and more transistors end up in basic chipsets we'll see 2 and 3 heads of 4K displays become common.

Agreed. I've been using a Commodore or PC desktop since ~1986. Been through lots of hardware iterations, seen and pondered many different configurations. I found the 24" 1080P display is the best and the more, the better[0]. And no larger than 24" either, that's crucial. I've downsized from larger panels to 24".

I wouldn't trade my three 1080P 24" panels for 4K panels, unless the goal was to sell the 4K panels and rebuy the 1080P 24" panels. I don't do a lot of gaming anymore, but they're hardly a horrible experience in that regard either.

[0]https://pcpartpicker.com/b/dFmqqs

Re: The End of Windows

#469

Post by khedoros1 »

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…

> Can you imagine the user experience of today's modern over-JavaScripted web pages on such underpowered hardware: not simply slow because of their grotesquely large transmission payload but also because they caused your computer to start swapping memory pages to disk?

Yes. The laptop I keep by the TV has 4GB of RAM, a 1366x768 screen, and a quad-core Celeron, that I think is some descendant of one of the Atom families. I tend to keep 10 or fewer tabs open, avoid sites that use really heavy Javascript (well, I do that anyhow...), and usually don't have much else besides a Bash window running. It's got a spinning-rust drive, and swapping would be very obvious. With my usage patterns, it doesn't swap. Performance-wise, it's a fair bit nicer than my phone, at least.

Re: The End of Windows

#470

Post by cm2187 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #171
ynniv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.

> Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. No, established enterprises (both private and government) are, in the real world, important customers for cloud offerings like Azure, GCP, and AWS.

With the developed world being increasingly dependent on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, the next big fuck up is going to be interesting. We have seen multiple datacentres from the same cloud provider going offline simultaneously in the past. And it is safe to assume that hostile foreign state actors took notice of this critical dependency. Whether it is because of malice or mistakes, I can’t help thinking that this massive concentration is like a snowball increasing in size while it’s going down the slope.
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