[OT] Windows dying

[Tony]

On Friday, 3 November 2017 at 09:16:42 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>
>>>> 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.
>
> To begin with, I never said they'd "ALL" be replaced in the 
> paragraph you're quoting above, but yes, that's essentially 
> what will eventually happen.

You said 99% would go away. So "almost all".

> And of course it's happening right now, why do you think PC 
> sales are down 25% over the last six years, after rising for 
> decades?  For many people, a PC was overkill but they didn't 
> have a choice of another easier form factor and OS.  Now they 
> do.

There are others reasons for PC sales declining beyond someone 
just using a phone or a tablet. Some find their current PC fast 
enough and see no reason to upgrade as frequently as they did in 
the past - only a hard drive failure will trigger a PC upgrade 
for them.

Some have cut down from a desktop and a laptop to just a laptop 
as the laptops got faster. Or a family replaces some combination 
of laptops and desktops with a combination of 
laptops/desktops/tablets/phones.

That 25% is not indicative of 25% of homes getting rid of ALL of 
their PC/laptops.


>
>> 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.
>
> You seem wholly ignorant of this market and the various points 
> I've made in this thread.  Do you know what the median Windows 
> PC sold costs?  Around $400.  Now shop around, are you finding 
> great high-spec devices at that price?

You said 99% are going away. You need to talk about a lot more 
than median prices. But nevertheless, $400 laptops have better 
specs and performance than $400 tablets and phones. And you are 
good to go with a laptop. People who want to go down to the 
coffee shop and work on their term paper on a laptop just take 
the laptop. People who want to go down to the coffee shop and 
work on their term paper on a phone or tablet, have to bring a 
keyboard and monitor (phone) or a keyboard and tablet stand and 
squint at their screen (tablet).


> The high-spec market that you focus on is a tiny niche, the 
> bulk of the PC market is easily eclipsed by mobile performance, 
> which is why people are already turning in their PCs for mobile.

I don't think that phones/tablets can compete performance-wise 
with $400 and up machines, which you claim is over 50% of the 
market.

> Battery life on mobile is already much better than laptops, for 
> a variety of reasons including the greater efficiency of mobile 
> ARM chips.

That is a common belief, but it is referred to as a myth in many 
places, including this research paper after performing tests on 
different architectures. It ends with:

"An x86 chip can be more power efficient than an ARM processor, 
or vice versa, but it’ll be the result of other factors — not 
whether it’s x86 or ARM."

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188396-the-final-isa-showdown-is-arm-x86-or-mips-intrinsically-more-power-efficient/3


> And the Sentio laptop shell I already linked in this thread has 
> a screen, keyboard, and battery but no SSD/HD, which is why it 
> only costs $150, much less than a laptop.

I see that 11.6" screen setup with the small storage of a phone 
as competition for $150 Chromebooks, not $400 Windows laptops. I 
would prefer to be on my Chromebook and take a call on my cell 
phone, rather than having my cellphone plugged into a docking 
station and have to unplug it or put it on speaker phone.


>
>> 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 don't think the numbers favor Java quite so much, especially 
> if you look at the top mobile apps, which are mostly games.  I 
> don't know what connection you think there is between the AAA 
> Windows gaming market and mobile games, nobody runs Halo on 
> their mobile device.

I am assuming that game developers work in both spaces, if not 
concurrently, they move between the two.

It also may be incorrect to assume that D  would be acceptable in 
its current incarnation for game development due to the 
non-deterministic activity of the garbage collector. In which 
case, it would have little rationale for Android development. As 
far as iOS, there are two native code languages with a large 
lead, and both use Automatic Reference Counting, rather than 
garbage collection which would presumably give them give them the 
advantage for games. But D could potentially compete for non-game 
development.

>
> btw, the mobile gaming market is now larger than the PC gaming 
> market, so to think that they're sitting around using tools and 
> IDEs optimized for that outdated PC platform is silly:
>
> https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/pc-market-grew-in-2016-led-by-mobile-and-pc-gaming/

Are you suggesting they are developing their games for iOS and 
Android devices ON those devices? Apple has XCode for developing 
iOS apps and it runs on macOS machines only. There is also the 
Xamarin IDE or IDE plug-in from Microsoft that allows C# on iOS, 
but it runs on macOS or WIndows. For Android, there is Android 
Studio - "The Official IDE of Android" - which runs on Windows, 
macOS and Linux. There is no Android version.



>
>> But regardless of whether Windows is dominant, or just widely 
>> used, you haven't made predictions that Windows servers are 
>> going to die.
>
> I don't think about niche platforms that hardly anybody uses.

It is the dominant internal IT platform. That is not niche and 
not something that is "hardly used". But what you could say is 
that given your prediction that Windows sales will decline by 
99%, Microsoft will go out of business.


>
>>> 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.
>
> I see, so your claim is that process or software isolation is 
> so weak on Windows Server that they run multiple virtualized 
> instances of Windows Server just to provide it.  Or maybe that 
> Windows Server needs to be patched for security so often, that 
> this helps a little with downtime.  I doubt they are running 
> many WinServer instances like you say, given how resource-heavy 
> each Windows Server instance is going to be.  But regardless of 
> how you slice it, this isn't a good sign for Windows.

They use virtualization for Linux for the same reason I stated - 
so the application/http/email/database server can be on an OS 
that can be rebooted to complete upgrades or a VM can be used as 
an isolated "sandbox" for testing upgrades of a particular server 
or some in-house developed software.


>>>> 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?
>
> The Mac Mini is easy, they're just winding down that legacy 
> form factor, like they did with the iPod for years.  Their only 
> entry in that market is Apple TV running tvOS, which is more 
> iOS than macOS.
>
> As for the iOS Macbook, it's out, it's called the iPad Pro.  
> Their CEO, Tim Cook, is always boasting about how it's all he 
> uses these days:
>
> https://9to5mac.com/2012/02/14/tim-cook-ipad-80-90-of-tim-cooks-work-is-on-ipad-work-and-consumption/
> http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/11/09/apple-ceo-tim-cook-says-he-travels-with-just-an-ipad-pro-and-iphone
>

A CEO is a baby user of a PC. What would he do besides email? He 
has people to do his powerpoint and documents. Not a good 
endorsement. And the iPad Pro is twice the price of what you say 
is the average price of a PC laptop. You could buy a Windows 
laptop and an Android Zenpad tablet and still have paid less than 
an iPad.

I'd like to be there when Cook tells all Apple employees they 
need to turn in their MacBooks for iPads.


>>> 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.
>
> Simple, they see the writing on the wall, ie much smaller sales 
> than mobile, so they want the legacy product to go away, which 
> means they can focus on the much bigger mobile market.  The 
> only reason they still make them is to milk that market and 
> support their legacy userbase, the same reason they were still 
> selling the iPod Touch all these years after the iPhone came 
> out.

Why did they fund development of a new iMac Pro which is coming 
this December as well as the new MacBook Pros that came out this 
June? That's a contradiction of "milk it like an iPod".