[OT] Windows dying

[Joakim]

On Friday, 3 November 2017 at 11:57:58 UTC, Tony wrote:
> 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".

Yes, I was simply noting not "in the paragraph you're quoting 
above."

>> 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.

Sure, there are multiple reasons that PC sales are declining and 
many homes still keep a residual PC to get their work done.  With 
the DeX dock and Sentio shell coming out this year, my prediction 
is that those residual PCs will get swept out over the coming 
5-10 years.

But that established PC userbase shrinking is not what you should 
be worried about.  I've talked to multiple middle-class consumers 
in developing markets- they would be considered poor in the US if 
you converted their income to dollars- who tell me that they 
recently got their first smartphone for $150-200 and that it is 
the first time they ever used the internet, with cheap 3G/4G 
plans that are only now springing up.  They don't use the web, 
only mobile chat or social apps.

Now, do you think these billions of new users of computing and 
the internet are more likely to buy a cheap laptop shell or dock 
for their smartphone when they someday need to do some "lean 
forward" work, as you call it, or spend much more on a Windows 
PC?  I know where my bet is.

>>> 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).

No, they'll bring a Sentio-like laptop shell, which only costs 
$150.  Your performance or portability arguments for PCs are 
losers, that's not affecting this mobile trend at all.  The 
biggest issue is that productivity apps have historically been 
developed for desktop OS's and are only starting to be ported 
over to or cloned on mobile, like Office Mobile or Photoshop 
Express.

>> 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.

$400 PCs are vastly over-specced for most of their owners, they 
won't even use most of the compute headroom on a $200 smartphone, 
which is why they're already shifting.  The only issues holding 
the remaining 75% back are the need for mobile work accessories 
like Dex/Sentio and some PC-only apps, both of which are changing 
this year.

>> 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

I'm not making theoretical comparisons about RISC versus CISC, 
but actual power and battery life measurements where mobile ARM 
devices like the iPad Pro come out way ahead of equivalent x86 
PCs like the Surface Pro 4 (scroll down to the sections on Energy 
Management):

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-iPad-Pro-Tablet-Review.156404.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-iPad-Pro-10-5-Tablet-Review.228714.0.html

Now, I initially said that ARM efficiency is only one factor in 
greater battery life, no doubt iOS is much more optimized for 
battery life than Windows.  But all benchmarks pretty much find 
the same results for just ARM chips.  I'm not interested in 
theories about how CISC x86 could be just as good if Intel just 
tried harder, especially since they threw up the white flag and 
exited the mobile smartphone/tablet market:

https://www.recode.net/2016/5/2/11634168/intel-10-billion-on-mobile-before-giving-up

>> 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.

I don't know why you're so obsessed with storage when even 
midrange smartphones come with 32 GBs nowadays, expandable to 
much more with a SD card.  My tablet has only 16 GBs of storage, 
with only 10-12 actually accessible, but I've never had a problem 
building codebases that take up GBs of space with all the object 
files, alongside a 64 GB microSD card for many, mostly HD TV 
shows and movies.

You're right that taking calls while using the smartphone to get 
work done could be a pain for some, I don't see that being a big 
issue however.  Maybe those people will start carrying around 
cheap $10-20 bluetooth handsets to take calls when their 
smartphone is tied up doing work, like some rich Chinese 
supposedly do with their phablets: ;)

https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/25/3915700/htc-mini-tiny-phone-companion-for-your-oversized-smartphone

>>> 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.

I think the overlap is much less than you seem to think.

> 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.

Yeah, I already went over some of this in the other dlang forum 
thread about mobile that I linked initially.  Most mobile games 
would do better if written in D, but we don't yet have the D 
mobile libraries needed to make that easy on them.

>> 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.

Yes, of course they're still largely developing mobile games on 
PCs, though I'm not sure why you think that matters.  But your 
original claim was that they're still using PC-focused IDEs, as 
opposed to new mobile-focused IDEs like XCode or Android Studio, 
which you now highlight.

I don't use any IDEs, so I honestly don't care which ones D 
supports, but my point was that mobile game devs don't need to 
use outdated PC-focused tools when mobile is a bigger business 
and they have their own mobile-focused tools nowadays.

>>> 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.

Yes, Windows is dominant, dominant in a niche, internal IT.  The 
consumer mobile market is much larger nowadays, and Windows has 
almost no market share there.

As for Microsoft, Windows is not their only product, they have 
moved Office onto the dominant mobile platforms.  As long as they 
keep supporting mobile, they could eke out an existence.  Their 
big bet on Azure is going to end badly though.

>>>> 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.

It seems containerization is taking off more on linux now for 
such things, though Windows is trying to get into this too, 
following far behind as always.

>>>>> 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.

Sure, are you saying you can't do powerpoint and docs well on an 
iPad Pro or smartphone/Sentio though?  The iPad Pro aims for the 
high end of this PC-replacing mobile market, with its extremely 
powerful Apple-designed chip, while a $150 laptop shell combined 
with the smartphone you already have aims for the low end.  That 
basically leaves no space for a PC, once all the software is 
ported over.

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

Heh, most would likely rejoice by then. :)

>>>> 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".

Because their userbase was rebelling?  I take it you're not that 
familiar with Mac users, but they were genuinely scared that 
Apple was leaving them behind, since they weren't refreshing Mac 
and Macbooks much anymore and all Apple's focus is on iOS:

"more and more people point to the current Mac Pro’s stagnation 
as proof that Apple is abandoning the Mac Pro market."
https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

Apple threw them a bone, because they're long-time users who 
likely all buy iPhones and iPads too.  Pretty soon, there will be 
so few of these Mac laggards, just like iPod users, that they 
will stop doing so.