5 ms·

I think Gruber is actually missing something pretty important here. Something everyone has traditionally understood, but its been forgetten (and honestly, larg

I think Gruber is actually missing something pretty important here. Something everyone has traditionally understood, but its been forgetten (and honestly, largely irrelevent nowadays): Microsoft sells a boatload of copies of Windows. They don't sell a lot of MP3 devices. Or tablets. Or phones. But they sell a lot of copies of Windows. And a very strong OEM partnership market. With Windows 8 expect on the low-end they ship 200M copies its first year. On the high-end, think 450M. (they did 350M for Win7). This will be the default UI for all tablets and probably laptops (maybe desktops, but desktops are increasingly niche devices). You're going to have a huge market of people now getting touch devices because the default touch experience is actually really good. Sure there's the other experience, but people will be able to largely stay in the default touch experience while doing consumption. They only pop out when doing creation. And those are the times on the iPad that you would typically go get your laptop anyways. And in terms of the appstore... when there are 50M machines using this OS the first month -- there will be apps. Non-Apple devs will love to have an app store ecosystem of this size. To put it another way, Gruber would be absolutely right if they had tried this with Windows Mobile. WP7 would be held back due to it, and WinMo had no marketshare to speak of. But for Windows proper this is actually the right move. It actually harkens back to them shipping IE with Windows and catching and passing Netscape. This is old fashioned MS leveraging their huge market position. It's something they frankly can rarely do anymore, but I think it will actually work for them this time -- maybe the last time. And lastly, note that the legacy experience is really only there for Intel based processors. For ARM there will probably be very few legacy experience apps. I'm thinking Office and maybe one or two others. In a typical world, think Honeycomb, those tablets never build an app ecosystem. But in this world they get the huge installed user base of the Intel platform for app devs to target. So in one generation you may well have a solid app eco system completely sitting outside the legacy experience. They solved the chicken vs egg problem.

jshen 15y ago
"Something everyone has traditionally understood, but its been forgetten (and honestly, largely irrelevent nowadays): Microsoft sells a boatload of copies of Windows." Sticking to a cash cow while the world changes is a sure way to become irrelevant.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  RTFP. Goodness.
  - jshen 15y ago
    Don't bury your lead. Greatness.
itgoon 15y ago
Since hearing about the ARM port, I've been wondering: how hard is it to port a .NET app to ARM? Seems relevant to the topic (if it is easy, that's a whole bunch of apps), so I thought I'd ask.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Depends on a few questions: 1) Is there .NET on ARM? :-) I assume there is since Windows ships with .NET now. 2) Does the app use native code, e.g., COM interop? If so, you need to get the same COM interfaces tareting ARM. 3) Are you using any functionality that was deprecated and likely not carried over to a new platform? If you satisfy all of those then its just like Java. Just copy the binary over and it gets JITted (or NGENed) on the ARM comoputer and runs just fine. No recompile, no extra work needed, besides maybe perf work since perf characteristics likely change.
  - itgoon 15y ago
    That aligns with what I was thinking - I guess we'll all find out soon enough. Thank you.
bruce511 15y ago
So did Microsoft sell 350 million copies of Windows 7 in a year, or are desktops "increasingly niche devices"? I'm not sure the two positions are compatible. Sure some of the win 7 sales are upgrades, but while growth of pc sales has slowed, pc sales are up. Given the number of pc's out there running windows xp, and with no data to suggest that those machines will be _replaced_ by tablets, I think the assertion that desktop machines are "niche" is somewhat pre-mature.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  So did Microsoft sell 350 million copies of Windows 7 in a year, or are desktops "increasingly niche devices"? I'm not sure the two positions are compatible. Of course they're compatible. Laptops outsold desktops for the first time in 2005. See the attached chart for the US, which actually tends to lag the world in laptop vs desktop ratios: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/17/forrester-tablets-outsell-netbooks/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/17/forrester-tablets-outsell-n... Desktops are becoming a niche device. I do friends/family tech support on about 50 PCs. Of those about 10 are desktops. The other 40 are laptops (not saying my anecdote is data, but I don't think its unusual, and the actual data does suggest the same).
  - bruce511 15y ago
    Ahh - ok - I see laptops, and desktops as basically the same thing in the context of the original discussion (which was on the merits of a tablet OS vs a PC OS). So I guess my point is this - Tablets have gotten huge market traction, and of course are all the rage as new models are announced and ship almost daily. but tablets are not great devices for "work". they're great consuming devices, fantastic for web browsing, you-tube, facebook, twitter and so on, but less great for "creation". I'm not sure there are many _jobs_ where a tablet removes the need for a desktop (or laptop) - especially when it comes to the classic office functions (documents, spreadsheets, accounting, presentations, graphic or video creation, software development and so on.) The tablet market will grow as it places a consumption device in the hands of consumers - however there are hundreds of millions of content producers already producing who are unlikely to give up their regular PC's, keyboard, mouse or big screen anytime soon.
Bud 15y ago
There are a lot of empty boasts in ken's comment. 50M machines running Win8 in the first month? Not touch devices, that's for sure. The default OS for all tablets? Tablets have a default OS. Right now, it's iOS. Microsoft will have to beat them in the marketplace. What is there about Win8 that is going to do that? I can't see anything.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  50M machines running Win8 in the first month? Not touch devices, that's for sure. No, I agree. Some subset. But I think it will be substantial. Will it be 25M? 10M? Not sure, but it will be a lot. The default OS for all tablets? I meant the default UI for Windows tablets. Microsoft will have to beat them in the marketplace. What is there about Win8 that is going to do that? I can't see anything. While I can see the future pretty well, I'm not an opthamologist. (Edited typo: OS => UI)
  - AllenKids 15y ago
    Oh yes the default OS for Windows tablets is Windows. Shocking! I know. ^_^
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      Ugg, you're right... it's supposed to be the "default UI". It's correct in my original post, but I took on the language of the responder and said something technically incorrect. Good catch.
- saturdaysaint 15y ago
  Exactly. MS's bread and butter is selling $400 laptops which may or may not even have touchscreens and it remains to be seen if a touchscreen UI makes sense on traditional laptop or desktop formfactor (Jobs convincingly argued "no" before unveiling OSX 10.7). So I disagree that this gives Microsoft any advantage in the tablet space. Look at Microsoft's MediaCenter. It's great software and it's on every PC, but it's nothing like an industry standard because it's just not a normal PC use case.

jshen 15y ago

"Something everyone has traditionally understood, but its been forgetten (and honestly, largely irrelevent nowadays): Microsoft sells a boatload of copies of Windows." Sticking to a cash cow while the world changes is a sure way to become irrelevant.

kenjackson 15y ago
RTFP. Goodness.
- jshen 15y ago
  Don't bury your lead. Greatness.

itgoon 15y ago

Since hearing about the ARM port, I've been wondering: how hard is it to port a .NET app to ARM? Seems relevant to the topic (if it is easy, that's a whole bunch of apps), so I thought I'd ask.

kenjackson 15y ago
Depends on a few questions: 1) Is there .NET on ARM? :-) I assume there is since Windows ships with .NET now. 2) Does the app use native code, e.g., COM interop? If so, you need to get the same COM interfaces tareting ARM. 3) Are you using any functionality that was deprecated and likely not carried over to a new platform? If you satisfy all of those then its just like Java. Just copy the binary over and it gets JITted (or NGENed) on the ARM comoputer and runs just fine. No recompile, no extra work needed, besides maybe perf work since perf characteristics likely change.
- itgoon 15y ago
  That aligns with what I was thinking - I guess we'll all find out soon enough. Thank you.

bruce511 15y ago

So did Microsoft sell 350 million copies of Windows 7 in a year, or are desktops "increasingly niche devices"? I'm not sure the two positions are compatible. Sure some of the win 7 sales are upgrades, but while growth of pc sales has slowed, pc sales are up. Given the number of pc's out there running windows xp, and with no data to suggest that those machines will be _replaced_ by tablets, I think the assertion that desktop machines are "niche" is somewhat pre-mature.

kenjackson 15y ago
So did Microsoft sell 350 million copies of Windows 7 in a year, or are desktops "increasingly niche devices"? I'm not sure the two positions are compatible. Of course they're compatible. Laptops outsold desktops for the first time in 2005. See the attached chart for the US, which actually tends to lag the world in laptop vs desktop ratios: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/17/forrester-tablets-outsell-netbooks/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/17/forrester-tablets-outsell-n... Desktops are becoming a niche device. I do friends/family tech support on about 50 PCs. Of those about 10 are desktops. The other 40 are laptops (not saying my anecdote is data, but I don't think its unusual, and the actual data does suggest the same).
- bruce511 15y ago
  Ahh - ok - I see laptops, and desktops as basically the same thing in the context of the original discussion (which was on the merits of a tablet OS vs a PC OS). So I guess my point is this - Tablets have gotten huge market traction, and of course are all the rage as new models are announced and ship almost daily. but tablets are not great devices for "work". they're great consuming devices, fantastic for web browsing, you-tube, facebook, twitter and so on, but less great for "creation". I'm not sure there are many _jobs_ where a tablet removes the need for a desktop (or laptop) - especially when it comes to the classic office functions (documents, spreadsheets, accounting, presentations, graphic or video creation, software development and so on.) The tablet market will grow as it places a consumption device in the hands of consumers - however there are hundreds of millions of content producers already producing who are unlikely to give up their regular PC's, keyboard, mouse or big screen anytime soon.

Bud 15y ago

There are a lot of empty boasts in ken's comment. 50M machines running Win8 in the first month? Not touch devices, that's for sure. The default OS for all tablets? Tablets have a default OS. Right now, it's iOS. Microsoft will have to beat them in the marketplace. What is there about Win8 that is going to do that? I can't see anything.

kenjackson 15y ago
50M machines running Win8 in the first month? Not touch devices, that's for sure. No, I agree. Some subset. But I think it will be substantial. Will it be 25M? 10M? Not sure, but it will be a lot. The default OS for all tablets? I meant the default UI for Windows tablets. Microsoft will have to beat them in the marketplace. What is there about Win8 that is going to do that? I can't see anything. While I can see the future pretty well, I'm not an opthamologist. (Edited typo: OS => UI)
- AllenKids 15y ago
  Oh yes the default OS for Windows tablets is Windows. Shocking! I know. ^_^
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Ugg, you're right... it's supposed to be the "default UI". It's correct in my original post, but I took on the language of the responder and said something technically incorrect. Good catch.
saturdaysaint 15y ago
Exactly. MS's bread and butter is selling $400 laptops which may or may not even have touchscreens and it remains to be seen if a touchscreen UI makes sense on traditional laptop or desktop formfactor (Jobs convincingly argued "no" before unveiling OSX 10.7). So I disagree that this gives Microsoft any advantage in the tablet space. Look at Microsoft's MediaCenter. It's great software and it's on every PC, but it's nothing like an industry standard because it's just not a normal PC use case.