Inside Steve Ballmer’s fondleslab rear-guard action Windows 8 is going down like a bucket of cold sick - but you're going to have to get used to it. It's not going away. If Microsoft has a future, this is it. Worse still, if you're a pro, you're going to have to support the thing. Microsoft had to make this desperate, poorly integrated attempt to foist a Version 1.0 touchscreen …
Too right, as I sit here with two high end laptops and three screens, creating interactive lessons, editing audio and video, I wonder how easy it would be to do on a slab. No, really, I don't :-) I've been knocking out stuff for people to consume for a couple of decades (or so). It doesn't really matter what on, dead trees, no problem, big screens, got that covered, slabs and phones, hell yes.
I'm not sure that it will be possible in the near future to do all this via a slab using cloud/server-based software and storage, there's a little too much latency and unreliability involved for my taste. I believe (so will probably be wrong given my prognostication record) that there will still be a market for desktops/laptops, just a much smaller and more professional one.
Basically, consumers and many professions don't need the traditional computer, as they don't actually "compute" - we still do.
Did I say cloid apps can't be productive? Where? I just made a video using goanimate.com. The past two days of my life have ben spent being productive in the cloud.
My issue was with the inpit methods. Precision pointers and keyboards are critical for making quality work in a reasonabke timeframe.
You CAN create on a fondleslab. It just takes 10x as long. Maybe in the future we'll have apps that make up for the inherant assness of the input type. We don't current have such tools today, nor any real hope of them in the near future. What we have instead is 6 years of touch being useful for nothing more than consumption and no notable forward motion beyond marketing and broken promises.
Want to convince me touch and voice are good enough to go toe to toe with the keyboard, stlyus and mouse? I've laid out above what's required. Repeated assertions won't change my mind. Anecdotes mean nothing. Only concrete scientific evidence that has been reproduced and addresses the diversity of human thought and perception will change my mind. That is what it takes to alter a lifetime of personal experirnce, decades of professional experience and years of dedicated research into the topic (which I have done.)
Whrere the app lives is a separate argument. How we use the damned thing is all that I was addressing. As for convincing me of the wonders of touch...
...proof.
@Trevor_Pott
It is evening here (early morning where you are?), and I am tired, so I don't know if you are taking the piss or not. One of your worst spelt posts, perhaps you did it on a tablet? :-)
If there are any mistakes in my post, I wrote it on an iPad Air...
It was typed from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 while in bed. I'm unable to sleep (anxiety) and thus trolling the interbutts.
I can type 100 WPM on this thing. It's just not all that accurate. I always have to take anything I try to "create" on fondleslabs to a real PC for post-processing. But hey, the downvoters think I'm fulla shit, so obviously I'm just holding it wrong.
Oh well.
the point is most users will use touch. USERS
people doing the work will stay with interfaces that let them work but consumers will move to touch and leave WIMP as the niche for those of us that need it. the same way that when I want to really use my server or delve inot network dignostic tasks I use cmd or now powershell but users use windows. in the future users will use touch and artists and developers will have developer machines that have mouses and touch pads and they will get the same look Users give me when I open cmd prompts
I am not ready for a post-productivity input paradigm. I am too old and set in my ways to make the jump. Touch is a consumptive design method. I can't think of myself as "just another consumer." So I'll keep keyboards and precision pointers around. I'll use old tech if I have to. I'll even exit IT and look for a new career as a writer.
You are irrelevant and these machines are not for you, in the same ways as automotive car programming tools cannot be found in the standard home.
"BUT I AM A TECHIE"
Yeah so what.
I said nothing about being "a techie." I said "I'm a content creator." Far bigger group.
But yeah, yiu knwo what, you're right. It's okay to just write off hundreds of millions of peoplle around the world. Fuck those guys and their not liking touch.
Hipsters forever. Amen.
+1 from me! I love my tablet for reading ebooks, surfing the web, watching a video or playing the odd game. All consumptive as you say. At work I'm got a windows 7 laptop docked to dual monitors and a full size keyboard and mouse. I'm a data architect and so regularly write code, compare data between multiple sources, produce data models, write documents etc etc. I can't imagine a more productive setup for me than the one I have now, at least until direct brain connections are on the market!
No further progress is planned, as that is plenty good enough for desktop use and more would compete for server chips. 8 core chip, $200.
True 8-core fondleslabs (not that embarassing Exynos Octa) are on the way for next year, so both seem to have arrived at the same "good enough" in the same epoch.
You are absolutely right ... for consumers and other lightweight users. However for business users who need to do actual work I don't see mouse/keyboard/multiple monitors going away. If you plug all that extra stuff into a tablet then it becomes a desktop.
I work in IT and I regularly use all the power that my desktop has and need more, I have 3 monitors and could use more. I create documents that run into tens of pages and write code, I wouldn't want to do that on a virtual keyboard (and don't even go into the issues of voice input in an open plan office).
As for the cloud, call me again when none of the major cloud providers have had an unscheduled outage for a year and reliable, unmetered data connections are everywhere. Microsoft even had an outage on Xbox One launch day for heavens sake.
I absolutely agree.
Fondleslabs for time-wasting (YouTube viewing, Twittering and Facebook updating). I'm sure billions will do nothing but that.
Proper PCs with a working UI for actual work. And high-level gaming. There's only a few hundred million of people doing that, but that is still one heck of a market.
And don't get me started on the cloud...
Maybe you are not seeing the bigger picture here. You and me are a small part of a minority of the 2bn people who already have a computer (or several). We are essentially a static market and only a disruptive product or replacements generates profits. The article is looking at the next big growth area of the 5bn who don't. They need technology as well, but it has to be affordable etc. That new (growing) market will drive changes in the existing one.
Keep your multiple monitors, as Trevor says there will always be a place for specialist kit, just not used by the majority.
I don't dispute that fondleslabs will be big.
I absolutely do dispute that they will "kill" the desktop.
Fondleslabs aren't a replacement for the PC. They're a replacement for the television and print media. Content consumption. Not creation.
Where I get uppity is the suggestion that "an established market" such as "professionals who need professional tools" is somehow going to disappear in a puff of fondlefucking. It won't...and the companies who abandon the professional in favour of chasing Sally Slanted Forehead will be pissing away a huge market - and margin - even if it is a static market.
Fondlespanking devices of all flavours are an and not an or unless you happen to be very, very poor. In which case - and pardon the bigotry for a pragmatic moment - who gives a fuck? Poor people are getting poorer. Rich are getting richer. The wealth gap is widening, not shrinking. So the money is at the top, not in a race to the bottom.
Despite not wanting to rub myself all over some glass and orgasm loudly to the brand name du jour I still do belong to a cohort of individuals whose money is valuable, even desired.
Imagine that. Or is an app required to do so? I don't know how it works these days...
How powerful does your PC need to be able to that though? If we move away from the iPad which can only really be considered a consumer device there are an ever increasing number of tablets coming out with HDMI and USB sockets, Bluetooth etc, especially the Win8 tablets like the Asus T100. These tablets have more than enough power to handle most end user requirements and the connections to make it a terminal.
Thats one possible direction the market could take, instead of PCs at your desk there's a docking station connected to the monitor(s), keyboard, mouse and network and you just dock your tablet in, that tablet is then taken with you if you need to hotdesk or work out of the office.
The problem with the hotdeskitng tablet idea is that gets you into a fundamentally new paradigm of device. That's not a tablet. Tablet's are monotasking, consumer-driven with interfaces that are great big fat touch targets with terrible screen real estate usage. They are optimized for consumption with no thoughts given over to productivity.
How do you use a mouse with an operating system that refuses to recognize the mouse, treat it as a first class input device if it does recognize it, or not speak to a significant number of features (such as more than one mouse button) in the very rare instances an App is aware that more than fondlebuggery exists?
What you are trying to describe is what Windows 8 should have been but wasn't and likely never will be. An operating system - and applications - that work in portable, fondlestroking mode and in a stable, precision, multitasking productivity mode.
Nobody is interested in building that. That takes innovation, resources and a lot of effort. It requires two full UIs. Not just for the OS, but for every app!
Creatives and the productivity minded just aren't a big enough market to continue supporting in the mind of people who chase "growth" over actual revenue. So they get shafted. It will be a decade - probably more - before that pendulum swings 'round again. When it does, we'll be talking about post-tablet devices.
A tablet with a keyboard and mouse is as like a 500 button universal remote for a television with one channel...and so far the only effort to build a digital multitool gave us Windows 8: the spork of the new millenium.
A Trevor the Troll is at it again.
Remind me to tell Lenovo, Sony, Fujitsu,... that the units they offer for sale actually do not exist because "nobody will build them". Strangely their shops insist I can buy those units.
And they are multi-tasking systems that can be docked or used as a tablet pc. Touch/Pen/Keyboard/Voice - you want it, they support it. Out of the box.
Go to the store, download an application for the deprecated multitasking UI. What's that, can't do it? Monotasking fisher-price bullshit apps only? Where's the hierarchical application list that allows you to have something else on the screen to help guide your selection when choosing an application? Where's the ability to run all applications in multiple overlapping and arbitrarily sized workspaces?
Funny, seems to me to make 8.11 for fondlegroups actually productive you need to use third-party tools. Otherwise all you have is a television. It can display one goddamned thing at a time, no matter how many buttons are on your remote control.
Microsoft have utterly abandoned the desktop. They've zero commitment to it and Windows 8 is less functional and productive than Windows 7 was. It's a consumption OS. Pure and simple.
Hardware does not a transformable system make. Your OS and the applications need to work well both in fondle mode and in productivity mode. And no, "full screen-grabbing, one-maybe-two-things-at-a-time, context switching, search-crutch-dominated" fuckery is not "working well" in productivity mode.
Microsoft have made it clear that Metro and Metro apps are the only future they give any fucks about whatsoever. That, however, isn't creating a productivity-friendly OS or app ecosystem. It's a consumptive one, no matter how they - or fanmonds like yourself - try desperately to convince the world otherwise.
It is of interest to me, however, that you have a bizzare compulsion for others to accept Microsoft's piety and technical "superiority" in order to quell your inner demons. Why do you tie your self worth to a company?
I have no such loyalty - except to Ninite - and never will.
Productivity = profit. Anything that gets in the way of productivity is out the door. Anything that can prove it can do better than what I already have will be eagerly used.
--Typed on my Lenovo X230. Bought in June because it came with Windows 7.
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I have 4 monitors attached to my work PC and often 12 apps open with multiple instances of many and in the multiple instances of the two different browsers I use many tabs in use on each. The only thing I'd like at work is larger monitors so that I could have eight apps opened side by side, and the print be large enough for me to read it.
My eyesight not being what it once was is one of the pitfalls of aging, in my case.
"The word "intuitive" gets egregiously overused in computing, but touch interfaces are a step forwards. Don't believe me? Just watch a video of an infant playing with an iPad and their bafflement when tapping and swiping doesn't work on dead-tree media."
The problem with this argument is that what you are actually saying is "When we teach a baby that the world works one way and then provide them with a version of the world that doesn't work the way they get confused." Nothing more, nothing less. To claim that teaching a baby that flat pictures are interactive so that they get confused when you provide them with a non-interactive flat picture is a sign that touch is somehow the natural order and therefore "intuitive" is lazy and fallacious thinking.
Many people used the same video to claim that it showed iPads were the natural way of working because after using one babies try to swipe static images - these people have clearly never had children or spent time around babies. Babies touch, feel, lick, suck and generally paw at their environment whether they've had a go on a touch screen or not. It's how they bloody well learn about the world!
The problem with this argument is...
There is no problem with the argument. You are off mass shell.
If you give an infant a fondleslap that says
COMMODORE BASIC V7.0 122365 BYTES FREE<br>
(C)1985 COMMODORE ELECTRONICS, LTD.<br>
(C)1977 MICROSOFT CORP.<br>
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<br>
and then just dumbly blinks at it, it will throw into the corner.
That's what "intuitive" means. You can use without opening the manual. In this case, you can even use it by just relying on a little bit of hard-coded knowledge in the eye-hand-brain system. That's pretty good.
The problem with this argument is that what you are actually saying is "When we teach a baby that the world works one way and then provide them with a version of the world that doesn't work the way they get confused."
As I follow the argument, it's that babies don't need to be taught a touch interface because they do explore the world through touch and naturally form inferences about how it works. This extends to touch screens. (Does touch work with a tongue?)
As DAM says, all other systems requiring "training". They may well be superior in many ways, but that superiority comes at a price.
--Typed on a real bloody keyboard.
Read what I said again. The argument being put forward hinges on this sentence "Just watch a video of an infant playing with an iPad and their bafflement when tapping and swiping doesn't work on dead-tree media"
The claim is that touch is intuitive because a baby taught that flat images respond to touch gets confused when then presented with flat images that do not respond to touch. I say that this doesn't say anything about whether touch is intuitive or not. Merely that when you teach a baby one thing it gets confused when you then present it with a case that opposes what they have learned.
Both yourself and Destroy All Monsters have somehow confused me taking issue with the argument that the video shown shows that touch is inherently intuitive to somehow mean that I don't think touch is intuitive. Read my post again and you'll see I made no such statement. I've said nothing about whether I think touch is intuitive or not.
In the words of the dear departed Eadon:
REG COMMENT SECTION READING COMPREHENSION FAIL!!!1!one!
(that last bit tongue-in-cheek before you get too offended guys)
Perhaps all those people saying "well a baby can use a touch screen" or "a 3 year old can use Windows 8", should put their money where their mouths are, and get infants to work for them...
As for tablets being better than desktops for everything, my TV incidentally is better for content consumption than my desktop too, maybe the tablet mafia would like to start writing Excel macros using a telly remote control, as after all it is a perfectly decent way to navigate said device.
I'm a middle-aged guy who's been using computers in the form of a keyboard connected to a box connected to a screen since I was 9 years old or so. In other words I'm your typical geek bloke.
I was given an iPad for my birthday about a year and a half ago. In that time, well, more like in the first 3 months, it almost completely replaced my 2 desktop machines at home.
The only thing I use my computers for now is big-screen gaming and 'downloads'.
When the iPad launched, like many, I scratched my head and thought "who the hell is that designed for?". Now I know. Like it or not it's a hell of a disruptive technology
Yet my experience is the opposite: I have much the same experience and age, but the Nexus 7 I bought mostly gathers dust.
I've written a book over the last couple of months. I used a DSLR camera to take the required pictures (about 90 in the final book) and I typed in all the words on a keyboard. I used photo software to change the images. I used a proper typesetting program to put things in the right order and laid out properly. I used a laptop with a couple of internal drives and an extra external screen to keep an eye on what I was doing.
I never even *thought* of reaching for the Nexus to do it.
And the book is paper, too.
So you bought the wrong tablet. That's all.
I use LaTeX on my tablet pc if I need to set lengthy text. Than mostly coupled with a BT keyboard also in a pinch pen input works. If I write drafts / take notes I do this with a pen in Journal or OneNote. Annotate lengthy Word documents or PowerPoints. And the T-Series convertible is, when docked, my primary workstation (M-Series CPU and 16GB, all that with 7+h on battery)
The end product will be an electronic format. 12+ inch tablet pc or tilt-able monitors for reading save useless waste of paper.
Similar type of person totally different experience. I've had a tablet for about 4 years now, it is used for reading, playing games, casual pre snoozing browsing, and that really is it. For anything requiring extensive use of a keyboard, I dig out my laptop at home or get my backside in front of a desktop. Tablets are just no use to me for productive work, wonderful for wasting time and for leisure though.
Didn't happen here. I bought one because I need to test things work on an iPad too, and although I found it useful for quickly sketching ideas, to me it's more about consuming content than creating so the laptop is certainly not threatened. It's a good tool to create a platform for a sales person to take an order. It can present, and it has enough input to take small amounts of data but the relation is asymmetric - LOTS more data is presented than is accepted, and that works.
I think this is key to the debate: we're debating a universal statement whereas its validity really depends on your use.
That Kids Can't Use Computers... article is fscking epic stuff. I now feel both old and sad.
Stop fixing things for your kids. You spend hours of your time potty-training them when they’re in their infancy, because being able to use the toilet is pretty much an essential skill in modern society. You need to do the same with technology. Buy them a computer by all means, but if it goes wrong, get them to fix it. Buy them a smartphone, give them £10 of app store credit a year and let them learn why in-app-purchases are a bad idea. When we teach kids to ride a bike, at some point we have to take the training wheels off. Here’s an idea. When they hit eleven, give them a plaintext file with ten-thousand WPA2 keys and tell them that the real one is in there somewhere. See how quickly they discover Python or Bash then.
Yes.
PC's have failed because of MS Windows. The act of rolling NT and Windows 98 into one OS has effectively killed them off because unlike a tablet, the OS is too difficult to learn for newbies because it has not been solely designed for the Home market. Add to that the continual virus problem which doesn't plague iPads and Android and it's clear why they are losing ground.
Microsofts late to the party answer to combat this was to release the most humungous turdnova ever seen since The Britass Empire - Vtech 8.1.
How long will it be until we must have an Xbox Live membership before we can remotely connect to an RDP server?
Microsoft is looking at the future while being utterly incapable of running two production lines of a consumer-grade OS, one for the old bum doing his work on the PC and one for the rest of the population that wants to play around with cat videos and show off their mating prowess (no, the delta between "Standard", "Pro", "Ultra" and "Extra Retarded" does not count).
They are toast.
It is mostly due to the fact that everyone has a PC now, and they buy a new PC when the old one breaks rather than to get the latest shiny.
Give me a list of things you can do on a Windows 8.1 PC that you can't do on a Windows XP PC. There isn't really anything. Windows XP lets you read things on the web, communicate via email and Skype, play games, run Word, Excel and Powerpoint, run accounts software, run photoshop or other photo editing software, run your line of business applications. Basically it does everything people want a PC to do, so getting a new PC is like getting a new washing machine.
Good point, after racking my brains the only things that *may* have any relevence to consumers off the top of my head...
1) Run some games.
2) Run Metro "apps" (well Microsoft thinks they are relevent anyway)
The first is dealt with by installing Windows 7 (or even Vista for that matter), and a serious PC gamer is most likely using 7 anyway, and most people have consoles. As for the second, a Muttley laugh is the only appropriate response.
For me, (on my 2 yr old mid-range laptop with 8.1) it is the ability to switch between contexts. So if I am creating multimedia I can use desktop. If I want to watch a movie or fb I can use modern apps. Both are different but good at their different usages. Modern apps tend to be a little smoother.
PS. 8.1s biggest achievement over 8.0 was making it more seamless between contexts. (So I believe... You don't have to believe though)
Fondle slabs are just 'another device' not a replacement for all computers.
I agree that slabs/phone are better for content delivery and causal surfing etc. There're simply more convenient and powerful. For instance, my win 7 laptop has got bluetooth, but do you think I can get it to simply connect to a pair of bluetooth speakers? Not a chance. But from my android phone it's just two swipes.
However... I work in a business where there are hundreds of people constantly using excel to manipulate and model data, and that's not by any means unusual. Ever tried handing a 50mb complex spreadsheet model on a tablet, or coding VBA? No, you haven't, and you wouldn't.
The article has answered itself, but I'm not sure you realize. You base all future use on current sales, not current useage. PC's have simply become so good that they don't currently need to be replaced, whereas everyone wants to get a shiny new tablet to play with. These devices will replace some of the functionality of PC's, but just can't replace them altogether.
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