5 ms·

> What makes you think windows is in a death spiral? They still have a good 75% market share and while that fluctuates, it doesn't seem to really drastically de

by blagie 4y ago

> What makes you think windows is in a death spiral? They still have a good 75% market share and while that fluctuates, it doesn't seem to really drastically decrease. Of what? Most of what I see normal consumers doing is in Android, typically on ARM. I think my observations are a little biased, but not a lot. According to statcounter: Android 41.56% Windows 28.29% iOS 17.29% OS X 7% Unknown 3.05% Chrome OS 1.32% Critically, it's no longer a monopoly; there's a lot less lock-in than there once was. Even Microsoft Office is gradually moving to the PWA model. Most servers and embedded systems I see run some variant of Linux as well. The market Microsoft has 75% share in seems to increasingly by a niche market within a much larger ecosystem. Microsoft seems to have pivoted, and as someone pointed out, no longer cares too much. However, the Wintel monopoly is dead. If Intel is tied to Windows, they'll increasingly be swallowed alive. TSMC manufactures most of those ARM chips. There's no way a smaller player can keep up in fabs and manufacturing technology.

itsoktocry 4y ago
>Most of what I see normal consumers doing is in Android, typically on ARM Comparing cell phone OS to a desktop OS is a bit silly. Nobody in the corporate world is doing work on Android.
- blagie 4y ago
  Intel is in the CPU market, not in the "corporate desktop" market. If you'd like to see how well trying to focus on that niche works, have a look at DEC Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, Itanium, Sparc, PowerPC, etc. At the end of the day, it comes down to manufacturing volume. Volume leads to investment in next-generation technologies. More investment means, at some point, competitors can't keep up. Manufacturing doesn't care too much about who the ultimate end user is.
- shortrounddev 4y ago
  Why not
- josteink 4y ago
  His point was trying to measure OS market-share by checking desktop-only is no longer a valid approach. Even big players like Microsoft are forced to offer their software and services on non-Windows platforms (like mobile and tablets!) if they want to remain relevant. So counting desktop only paints a false picture, wrt where users are and where computing is happening. And that last bit is what is relevant from a Intel POV. An increasing amount of compute is now done outside the Intel-chip arena of desktops, like it used to be before.
whynotmaybe 4y ago
The "niche" market is corporate and gouv. These industries won't buy macs as they are too expensive to maintain and to integrate into their existing active directory domains. (With a few exceptions for jobs where the Mac is the optimal device like graphic design) No idea about percentage but windows won't disappear soon from those. The android market share is mainly mobile devices and Microsoft gave that market up a few years ago, focusing on azure and office. Here again, focusing the corporate/gouv world. The corporate/gouv world has many windows only app and processes that would cost a fortune to replace. Windows is here to stay, just like mainframes.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  (Not sure if your last sentence was a joke meant to undermine your argument preceding it? Maybe by mainframe though you're referring to servers.) I generally agree with your point though but I am seeing that as more and more of office work moves to living within a web browser, it is becoming more hardware agnostic.
  - blagie 4y ago
    > (Not sure if your last sentence was a joke meant to undermine your argument preceding it? Maybe by mainframe though you're referring to servers.) No. It's reality. Mainframes are here to stay. IBM continues to develop and sell plenty of mainframes. Several other manufacturers do as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Z#IBM_z16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Z#IBM_z16 Where I work has applications dating back decades with complex data analysis algorithms developed by very smart people. Strict backwards-compatibility is critical. We have mainframes. There are many other reasons to run mainframes. For example, mainframes offer pretty incredible features with regards to redundancy, and making everything hot-swappable in case of failure without interrupting workloads. That's especially useful in places like the financial industry. There, a single failure or error can cost much more than a mainframe. They're a niche, but a big enough one to support a multi-billion dollar business. It shrunk for many years, but it's currently even growing.
  - danaris 4y ago
    I was doing work on an IBM AS/400 mainframe in my previous job, just over a decade ago. It supported Java and Tomcat (which was fairly current at the time) out of the box. The only oddity I needed to deal with was making sure I had a proper JDBC driver for its DB/2 database. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I don't have to deal with it anymore, but mainframes are definitely still around.

by blagie 4y ago

itsoktocry 4y ago

>Most of what I see normal consumers doing is in Android, typically on ARM Comparing cell phone OS to a desktop OS is a bit silly. Nobody in the corporate world is doing work on Android.

blagie 4y ago
Intel is in the CPU market, not in the "corporate desktop" market. If you'd like to see how well trying to focus on that niche works, have a look at DEC Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, Itanium, Sparc, PowerPC, etc. At the end of the day, it comes down to manufacturing volume. Volume leads to investment in next-generation technologies. More investment means, at some point, competitors can't keep up. Manufacturing doesn't care too much about who the ultimate end user is.
shortrounddev 4y ago
Why not
josteink 4y ago
His point was trying to measure OS market-share by checking desktop-only is no longer a valid approach. Even big players like Microsoft are forced to offer their software and services on non-Windows platforms (like mobile and tablets!) if they want to remain relevant. So counting desktop only paints a false picture, wrt where users are and where computing is happening. And that last bit is what is relevant from a Intel POV. An increasing amount of compute is now done outside the Intel-chip arena of desktops, like it used to be before.

whynotmaybe 4y ago

The "niche" market is corporate and gouv. These industries won't buy macs as they are too expensive to maintain and to integrate into their existing active directory domains. (With a few exceptions for jobs where the Mac is the optimal device like graphic design) No idea about percentage but windows won't disappear soon from those. The android market share is mainly mobile devices and Microsoft gave that market up a few years ago, focusing on azure and office. Here again, focusing the corporate/gouv world. The corporate/gouv world has many windows only app and processes that would cost a fortune to replace. Windows is here to stay, just like mainframes.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
(Not sure if your last sentence was a joke meant to undermine your argument preceding it? Maybe by mainframe though you're referring to servers.) I generally agree with your point though but I am seeing that as more and more of office work moves to living within a web browser, it is becoming more hardware agnostic.
- blagie 4y ago
  > (Not sure if your last sentence was a joke meant to undermine your argument preceding it? Maybe by mainframe though you're referring to servers.) No. It's reality. Mainframes are here to stay. IBM continues to develop and sell plenty of mainframes. Several other manufacturers do as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Z#IBM_z16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Z#IBM_z16 Where I work has applications dating back decades with complex data analysis algorithms developed by very smart people. Strict backwards-compatibility is critical. We have mainframes. There are many other reasons to run mainframes. For example, mainframes offer pretty incredible features with regards to redundancy, and making everything hot-swappable in case of failure without interrupting workloads. That's especially useful in places like the financial industry. There, a single failure or error can cost much more than a mainframe. They're a niche, but a big enough one to support a multi-billion dollar business. It shrunk for many years, but it's currently even growing.
- danaris 4y ago
  I was doing work on an IBM AS/400 mainframe in my previous job, just over a decade ago. It supported Java and Tomcat (which was fairly current at the time) out of the box. The only oddity I needed to deal with was making sure I had a proper JDBC driver for its DB/2 database. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I don't have to deal with it anymore, but mainframes are definitely still around.