[OT] Windows dying

[Joakim]

On Monday, 30 October 2017 at 15:46:56 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> On Monday, 30 October 2017 at 13:32:23 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> The decline itself doesn't imply a collapse, the collapse is 
>> coming because the mobile market is looking for new growth 
>> avenues and releasing mobile accessories like Samsung's DeX 
>> dock or laptop replacements like the iPad Pro or this laptop 
>> shell:
>>
>> https://sentio.com
>
> I look at this and just wonder why people wouldn't just have a 
> laptop.

Expense is one major reason, just buy a laptop shell for $150 and 
connect it to the smartphone you already have.  Another is that 
most new apps are developed for mobile nowadays, since the PC 
market is shrinking.

>> Mobile convergence killed off standalone mp3 players, 
>> e-readers, GPS devices, point-and-shoot cameras, feature 
>> phones, a whole host of former mobile single-purpose devices.  
>> They're going after the PC now, with all the massive scale of 
>> the mobile wave:
>>
>> https://twitter.com/lukew/status/842397687420923904
>>
>> Can the PC market withstand that tidal wave?  I'm betting not.
>>
>
> And what does this show, a huge increase in smart phone/tablet 
> shipments and a modest decline in desktop sales. I don't 
> dispute this. Smart phones are leading to a huge increase in 
> the amount of people who use computers on a daily basis. A 
> whole bunch of people who use PCs may switch to just using 
> smartphones/tablets. However, some people do need and want 
> them. And they will continue to use them.

Yes, the question is how big is that group that will stick with 
PCs: do you think it will be 5% of the peak 2011 sales of 350 
million PCs or 50% by 2027?  Right now, it's down to 75%, which 
I'd call more than "modest," and keeps heading lower.  For a 
comparison, standalone, ie non-smartphone, camera sales are down 
80% from their peak and keep plunging lower:

https://petapixel.com/2017/03/03/latest-camera-sales-chart-reveals-death-compact-camera/

I don't see how PCs can avoid a similar fate.

>> As for the average white collar worker in a decade, if they're 
>> using Google Docs on their Samsung S18 connected to something 
>> like that Sentio laptop shell, do you really imagine they 
>> won't be able to get their work done?  I think it's more 
>> likely they're using software completely different than Office 
>> or Docs to get their work done, as those suites are already 
>> way outdated by now, but that's a different tangent.
>
> Okay, but Google Docs isn't supported at my company. Microsoft 
> Office is. We have a huge number of Excel files that use a lot 
> of features that probably can't be ported over to Google Docs 
> without a bunch of work. They might be able to get us to make 
> new stuff with Google Docs, but we're still gonna need Excel 
> for all the old stuff (so why bother switching). There's a 
> reason why banks still use Cobol.

Excel is available on Android and the Samsung S8 too, along with 
multiwindow use on the DeX desktop dock.  Such legacy use will 
indeed keep some old tech alive, but just as most don't use COBOL 
anymore, most won't be using that old tech.

> Now I would love to move everything to R/Python. It could be 
> done. But not everyone knows R/Python, but everyone knows 
> Excel. If I get hit by a bus, then someone can figure out what 
> I've done and get to work.

Sure, and they will likely be able to use it with Excel for 
Android too.  Btw, Python is available as a package in the Termux 
Android app that I use when programming on my tablet:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.termux&hl=en

Some people are working to get R on there too.

>> 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.
>
> I would have gobbled up 4GB using Matlab 5 years 
> ago...Nowadays, I sometimes use a program called Stan. It does 
> Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. Often it takes 10 minutes to run 
> models on my home machine that's got a relatively new i7 
> processor on it. It's not unknown for the models to take hours 
> with bigger data sets or more complicated models. I don't even 
> like running the models at work because my work computer sucks 
> compared to my home computer.
>
>>
>> The latest ARM-based iPad Pro is notorious for beating low to 
>> mid-range Intel Macbooks on benchmarks.  It is not difficult 
>> to pick up smartphones with 6-8 GBs of RAM nowadays.  Unless 
>> you need monster machines for your data and aren't allowed to 
>> crunch your data on online servers for security reasons, a 
>> very niche case, you can very likely do it on a smartphone.
>
> Doing everything on an AWS instance would be nice.

All the low-hanging fruit is being gobbled up by mobile, and most 
of the heavy compute by cloud servers.  That leaves a narrow 
niche in between for beefy desktops, since most PCs sold are 
laptops.  Perhaps you are in that desktop niche, but I contend it 
isn't very big.

>> You may be right that your particular workplace moves slowly 
>> and they're not going mobile anytime soon.  But this is such a 
>> big shift that you have to wonder if many such slow-moving 
>> workplaces will be able to compete with places that don't: 
>> just ask all the taxi companies phoning in rides to their 
>> drivers who got put out of business by Lyft, Uber, and their 
>> smartphone-wielding hordes of drivers.
>
> We certainly have big competitive issues, but they aren't 
> because our competitors are using Google Docs.

No, it happens when they streamline and automate their entire 
workflow much more, to the point where they aren't using 
antiquated document systems anymore:

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/5/21/office-messaging-and-verbs

I've never written a single document in the entire time I've 
contributed to the D open source project.  That's because we 
replace that ancient document workflow with forums, email, 
gitter, bugzilla, git, and github, some of which is also fairly 
old tech, but not nearly so as typing up a bunch of documents or 
spreadsheets.

Of course, the D OSS project isn't a business, but the point is 
made in that linked post: most businesses are also about to 
transition away from that doc workflow altogether, where they 
simply replaced a bunch of printed documents and balance sheets 
with digital versions of the _same_ documents over the last 
couple decades.  It's time for them to make the true digital 
transition, or they will lose out to those who did and became 
more efficient for it.

Lyft and Uber are merely two public examples of the leading edge 
of this wave.

>> There will always be a few Windows cockroaches that survive 
>> the mobile nuclear blast, but we're talking about the majority 
>> who won't.
>>
>> As for you particularly, I can't speak to your situation 
>> without knowing more, but nobody's saying D should drop 
>> Windows support.  I started off this OT thread by saying that 
>> investing more time in getting D somewhere close to the level 
>> of C#/C++ support in Visual Studio or some other IDE is a 
>> waste of time.  I stand by that.  If Rainer or someone else 
>> does it anyway, that's up to them how they want to spend their 
>> time.
>
> Look at the growth of Python. Among the many drivers of that, 
> are people who use Numpy and its ecosystem (SciPy, Pandas, 
> etc.). The work that Ilya et al are doing on Mir is a fantastic 
> effort to provide similar functionality for D. More users using 
> Mir will help build out the ecosystem and hopefully get it to a 
> competitive place with Numpy one day. This requires more people 
> using D. If efforts by Rainer or someone else to make the 
> Windows experience better and leads to more D users and more 
> Mir users, then I consider a positive. I don't consider it a 
> waste of time.

Do those Python/Numpy users have the level of VS or other Windows 
IDE support that D currently doesn't?  Either way, math modeling 
is such a small niche that I'm not sure it makes a difference, 
though I'm glad Ilya and others are pushing D in that direction 
on all OS's.