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The thing that happened with Steam Machines is the same thing that happened with Linux-based netbooks. In the netbook case, vendors needed something that would
by derekp7 9y ago
The thing that happened with Steam Machines is the same thing that happened with Linux-based netbooks.
In the netbook case, vendors needed something that would run on lower spec hardware, and would be cheap enough to not be a major component of the machine's price. Windows Vista was to resource heavy, and expensive. But then Microsoft responded by re-releasing XP, for something like $10, but only for netbooks, so a couple of the advantages of Linux had evaporated.
Steam Machines were a response to Windows 8, and the direction that Microsoft was heading. After Steam on Linux became a reality, Microsoft responded by making Windows 10 more palatable than Win 8.
- digi_owl 9y agoYou also had Intel move in with Atom, and the two of them combined basically put down a stringent definition of what a netbook was supposed to be. This in large part to avoid Netbooks eating into their lucrative ultra-portable platform that corporations kept buying for their road warriors. The fear being that corporations would switch to Netbooks with a mobile data connection and simply access corporate computing resources using Citrix or similar. Note btw that this was much the same idea that Google had when they first started pushing Chromebooks, to the point that one of their big launch demos were the ability to run Citrix. Never mind that this also mothballed any plans for Android beyond phones. As seen with how even the 3.x "tablet" UI, that was perfectly adapted for landscape use, was gradually rolled back.