[OT] Windows dying

[Tony]

On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 at 08:49:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 at 00:16:19 UTC, Mengu wrote:
>> On Monday, 30 October 2017 at 13:32:23 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't know how intense your data analysis is, but I 
>>> replaced a Win7 ultrabook that had a dual-core i5 and 4 GBs 
>>> of RAM with an Android tablet that has a quad-core ARMv7 and 
>>> 3 GBs of RAM as my daily driver a couple years ago, without 
>>> skipping a beat.
>>>  I built large mixed C++/D codebases on my ultrabook, now I 
>>> do that on my Android/ARM tablet, which has a slightly weaker 
>>> chip than my smartphone.

How does the performance compare between an i5 laptop and an 
Android tablet?


>>
>> Why do predictions about the future matter when at the present 
>> Windows dominates the desktop and is also strong in the server 
>> space?
>
> Because that desktop market matters much less than it did 
> before, see the current mobile dominance, yet the D core team 
> still focuses only on that dying x86 market.  As for the 
> future, why spend time getting D great Windows IDE support if 
> you don't think Windows has much of a future?
>

The concept that you are proposing, that people will get rid of 
ALL their desktops and laptops for phones or tablets, doesn't 
seem to be happening right now. At this point, were they do to 
that, they would end up with a machine that has less power in 
most cases (there are Atom and Celeron laptops), and probably 
less memory and disk storage. That solution would be most 
attractive to Chromebook type users and very low end laptop 
users. And while people buy low spec laptops and desktops, there 
are still many laptops and desktops sold with chips that aren't 
named Atom and Celeron or arm. If phones and tablets try to get 
chips as powerful as those for the desktop and laptops they run 
into the chip maker's problem - the more processing power, the 
more the electricity the chip uses. Phones and tablets don't plug 
into the wall and they are smaller than the batteries in laptops. 
And in order to use a phone/tablet as a "lean forward" device (as 
opposed to "lean back") and do work, they will have to spend 
money on a "laptop shell" that will have a screen and keyboard 
and probably an SSD/HD which will cancel most of the cost savings 
from not buying a laptop.

In the case of trying to court Android development, I read that 
95% of Android is done on Java (and maybe other JVM languages 
like the now "officially supported" Kotlin) and 5% in C or C++. 
But that 5% is for applications that have a need for high 
performance, which is mostly games. Good luck selling game 
developers on using D to develop for Android, when you can't 
supply those same game developers a top-notch development 
environment for the premier platform for performance critical 
games - Windows 64-bit.

>> I have seen conflicting reports about what OS is bigger in the 
>> server market, but Windows is substantial and the more 
>> frequent winner.
>>
>> https://community.spiceworks.com/networking/articles/2462-server-virtualization-and-os-trends
>>
>> https://www.1and1.com/digitalguide/server/know-how/linux-vs-windows-the-big-server-check/
>
> I have never seen any report that Windows is "bigger in the 
> server market."

I linked one that said:

"And what OSes are running in virtual machines and on physical 
servers around the world? It turns out like with client OSes, 
Microsoft is dominant. Fully 87.7% of the physical servers and 
VMs in the Spiceworks network (which are mostly on-premises) run 
Microsoft Windows Server."

> Last month's Netcraft survey notes,
>
> "which underlying operating systems are used by the world's web 
> facing computers?
>
> By far the most commonly used operating system is Linux, which 
> runs on more than two-thirds of all web-facing computers. This 
> month alone, the number of Linux computers increased by more 
> than 91,000; and again, this strong growth can largely be 
> attributed to cloud hosting providers, where Linux-based 
> instances are typically the cheapest and most commonly 
> available."
> https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/09/11/september-2017-web-server-survey.html

Web-facing server is a subset of servers. Shared web hosting 
services are probably a harder target for native-code 
applications than internal IT servers.

But regardless of whether Windows is dominant, or just widely 
used, you haven't made predictions that Windows servers are going 
to die.

>
> Your first link is actually a bad sign for Windows, as it's 
> likely just because companies are trying to save money by 
> having their employees run Windows apps off a virtualized 
> Windows Server, rather than buying a ton more Windows PCs.

I would say that is an unlikely scenario. Companies use virtual 
machines for servers because it allows for the email server 
and/or http server and/or database server and/or application 
server to be on one physical machine, and allow for the system 
administrator to reboot the OS or take the server offline when 
making an upgrade/bug fix, and not affect the applications 
running on the other servers.

> Meanwhile, your second link sees "Linux maintaining a 
> noticeable lead" in the web-hosting market.

Don't know why I linked that as it doesn't even have a percentage 
breakdown. My intent was to show a web server breakdown but I 
will concede that Linux is bigger for web servers. However, 
Windows is still big and you aren't predicting it will die.

>
>> And if desktop OSes were going to go away, the MacOS would go 
>> before Windows.
>
> Oh, Apple wants that to happen, one less legacy OS to support, 
> which is why all the Mac-heads are crying, because macOS 
> doesn't get much attention nowadays.  Do you know the last time 
> Apple released a standalone desktop computer?  2014, when they 
> last updated the Mac Mini.  They haven't updated the Mac Pro 
> since 2013.

Why do you think it is that they haven't come out with an iOS Mac 
Mini or iOS MacBook?

>
> They see the writing on the wall, which is why they're 
> lengthening their release cycles for such legacy products.
>

Do they want them to go away, or do they see the handwriting on 
the wall? The fact that they still make them, it appears that 
they don't want them to go away. They can stop making them at any 
time. And by them, I mean their entire macOS (i.e. their 
non-mobile) line. I think that the Mac Mini/Mac Pro pale in sales 
to the iMacs as far as Apple desktop sales go.


If you look at the graph in this article, the iPad has declined 
more as a percentage of Apple revenue than the macOS line has in 
the last five years.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/


There is a case to be made for supporting  Android/iOS 
cross-compilation. But it doesn't have to come at the expense of 
Windows 64-bit integration. Not sure they even involve the same 
skillsets. Embarcadero and Remobjects both now support 
Android/iOS development from their Windows (and macOS in the case 
of Remobjects) IDEs.