I know I promised that my next 2016 prediction would be Apple’s big acquisition, and I will publish that prediction soon as my #10, but right now I just have to say what a perilous position Intel is in. The company truly risks becoming irrelevant, which is an odd thing to say about a huge, rich outfit that would appear from the outside to pretty much dominate its industry — an industry the company created. Intel won’t go away, I just think there is a very good chance they’ll no longer matter.
The same can be said of operating systems. Do you go buy 10 million licenses from Microsoft, Apple, IBM, or..? Or do you go get a blanket license for Android from Google?
The interesting questions that will determine the future are:
Will Intel start making ARM chips? They’ve done it before: remember StrongARM? If Intel doesn’t re-embrace ARM for at least some of their line they will be a much smaller company in a few years.
Microsoft’s CEO seems to be quite smart and a good visionary. I am more optimistic about Microsoft’s future now than I’ve been in years. Will Microsoft start making Android products and applications? Porting Office to Android/ARM will be a better strategic decision than when they ported Office to the Mac.
Back to Intel, the company made a lot of news recently by laying-out a new corporate strategy based on data centers, Internet of Things, and memory — explicitly de-emphasizing both personal computers (in decline) and mobile (where they haven’t had much success). I think this is smart but unless Intel follows it up with better tech in the very areas ARM has come to dominate the strategy won’t work.
Just to take one example, there’s a huge opportunity in data centers, which is to say building clouds. Most commercial clouds are based on free, very cheap, and/or open source technology. They use a low cost hypervisor. The disk storage is not as fast, secure, or reliable as it needs to be. We’re going to have some technology burps along the way as these deficiencies both become known and are taken advantage of by the bad guys. When that happens we will start to question our needs — question the cloud.
Intel can fix these problems and move on to even greater heights, but I don’t think they know how.
If Sat Nad is such a clever visionary why is Microsoft pushing ahead so determinedly with it’s plan to force all Windows users on to Windows 10 with all it’s data slurping phone home “telemetry”. This is really upsetting Windows users. Not only is Windows update re-enabling Windows updates that push Windows 10 onto Win 7/8 machines when the user has disabled them, MS is also reversing Registry hacks that should stop these updates. These are not the actions of a company led by a visionary but a company that seems to have become more evil and determined than when Bill G was in charge.
Sorry OT compared to Intel but had to take issue with that point.
Actually Microsoft new operating system strategy makes perfect sense. While I have issues with some of the things they’re doing I have to respect the plan. First they are supporting too many versions of operating systems and have too many more versions still running out in the wild. Now a big part of this problem was their own doing — Vista, Windows 8, making upgrades prohibitively expensive. Getting everyone on a fewer number of versions of Windows will be beneficial to both Microsoft and its customers. The upgrades are now FREE!
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I prefer the old Windows (pre-tablet) interface. It was optimized for devices with keyboards and mouse’s. The new interface is probably better for tablets. The devices are different. The interface needs to be different and optimized for the device. I think its wrong to force the same interface on two very different platforms.
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Microsoft’s consumer pricing of its operating systems has always been flawed. The best value was to get the right version from the PC OEM. OEM prices have always been a lot better. Consumer prices have been too high and upgrade pricing has been a joke. At least for now upgrades to Windows 10 are free. Microsoft would be wise to rework their pricing models and become more consumer friendly.
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Here’s an idea Microsoft….
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Start licensing Windows direct to the end user. The OEM’s pay nothing for the operating system. Anyone can download and install the operating system. During activation the end user pays the license fee. I recommend it be in the neighborhood of $25. Version upgrades within 3 years of purchase are free. Version upgrades after 3 years are $10. When I replace my hardware let me transfer the license for $10. As part of the transfer require me to go to the current version.
Well, the problem for Microsoft is that Windows still makes up too much of their income for them to slash prices that much.
True, upgrades from Win7/8 to Win10 are free. Upgrades from WinXP, Vista are not. I would love to get my wife’s computer off Vista, but it’s not worth the money. The free Win7 upgrade didn’t give me an equivalent – she has Vista Ultimate and it would not have gone even to Win7 Pro, so we skipped it.
Until Microsoft sees a major hit in their $1b/month income, they won’t change their pricing.
I do think their tactics in pushing Win10 upgrades is rather sad. If it were really something users wanted then they wouldn’t have to resort to such tactics, and *that* is very telling of the future of Windows.
The simple fact is that even a 2010 PC is now for the bin, regardless of the OS and/or upgrade path options. Peripherals are not supported by the manufacturers. Graphics have to be much more powerful, to support Google Chrome and many third party applications. I keep a spare XP box just to run older peripherals such as a scanner and an HP printer, which are incompatible with Windows 10. Linux is now also an issue, since Gnome 3.14, requires an up-to-date OpenGL capability.
You have actually just made John’s argument stronger.
Yes, a lot of revenue comes from OS pricing and upgrades. But if people are using different versions then it costs you more in support, patches and compatibility. Also – and this is the bit you help out John with – would you rather have $10 every 3 years from 90% of your install base, or $XXX from 10% of your install base? You yourself claim you would have upgraded for the right price if you got an equivalent version. How many more people would have flipped MS $10… or even $50 to upgrade to a new OS which was advertised as being better, more secure, well supported etc?
If you look at Apple (which, for the most part, is the alternative when looking at home/office installations), they offer free upgrades (sure, they make money on the hardware and the AppStore) and most of their user base upgrades to the latest version within 12 months. MS would KILL for an upgrade rate like that. And this is why they keep trying to get into phones and tablets. If they can diversify their profits into other streams then they can stop charging huge sums for software/OS which others are giving away for free already.
With limited exposure to this kind of thing, I think Satya Nadella is aiming to get as many people onto the latest OS so they can drop support/upgrades for anything before it. Think about the coders, testers, project managers etc etc etc that they could lay off if they didn’t need to support/patch 5 different OS versions. Think about the bottom line that could prop up. It could buy them some time to work out the “next big thing” they want to do. Maybe 🙂
It might make sense but only to Microsoft.
They are supporting many versions? Win 7 and 8/8.1 primarily. If anyone is still on vista they have just over a year. The only reason they moved from 8 to 10 so quick is because 8 bombed – so they increased their support burden from their own making. Anyway people paid for that support when they bought their Windows license so fewer versions may be beneficial to Microsoft but only because they shirk supplying what people paid them for.
If Windows 10 was such a great proposition why are they having to use such devious methods to get it on the computers of people that don’t want it? I paid full price for my retail Win 7 Ultimate license yet Microsoft are determined to take that off me in exchange for an inferior product I don’t want.
Windows and Office are Microsoft’s biggest businesses by far – and they suddenly decided to give away Windows 10 for free? Really? You should ask yourself why. If it’s free to you use then you’re not the customer you’re the product. They’re not doing it out of philanthropy.
OEM Prices are below retail because of the different licensing terms – they’re only licensed for use when bought with a new PC (also Win 7+ OEM locks to the HW).
Microsoft already license to end users through retail versions. If you’re arguing against OEM pricing then you’re defeating your own argument as Microsoft used OEM pricing structures to ensure the dominance of Windows by making OEMs pay MS for each computer sold whether they installed Windows on it or not.
All these shenanigans are hurting Microsoft’s reputation with the very techies that get called on as free tech support by parents, siblings, neighbours, even those who were ardent Microsoft supporters. Those techies will push alternatives if only because they refuse to support Windows 10.
I agree with the below – Bob has remained incredibly quiet on this Windows 10 pushy-ness. Why? I ask as a loyal reader and fan of ~20 years!
PS – plural of mouse is mice, not mouse’s.
Cringely still silent on this subject.
Cringe has been out of touch with tech for a long time.
The problem with intel has always been the software industry holding them back. Look at every time they tried to innovate away from x86. Microsoft refused to support the new chip, or dragged their feet so long it lost all momentum. Look how long it took the software industry just to support 64 bit.
Intel should buy a major software company and put the silver bullet into Microsoft’s decaying brain. Make redhat or some linux dist the consumer friendly OS it always should have been, but still is not.
To stay relevant and grow, intel needs CPU-sucking software. More than ever they need to be proactive and not have to be subordinate to someone else’s timetables.
While I agree regarding Win10, Nadella has done quite a bit in getting Microsoft into being a more platform agnostic company with other stuff – they even have a version of Visual Studios that runs on Windows, and they’ve “ported” Office to Android (I say “ported” because it’s really just a small wrapper around Office365, kind of like Google does with their productivity Android apps).
So yes, there’s a lot of good Nadella has done to start reinventing Microsoft as a company that is not simply a Windows company; but at the same time he burns a lot of that good with how they’re pushing Win10.
not off-topic as the Wintel 9/10 of Intel have just been question by Cringe. GWX is a morphing malware. that is Microsoft’s corporate strategy. they are now black-hat hackers.
You think a free OS is upsetting people? Everyone I have talked to is pleased with the decision to give away Win10. If a free product is going to upset you, there probably isn’t much that will make you happy.
If a “Free” OS makes you happy you’re clearly a very shallow person; the kind that can’t understand the reason Microsoft has suddenly started to “give away” one of its two biggest revenue earning products isn’t due to a sudden outbreak of philanthropy in Redmond.
Perhaps you only talk to Microsoft shills?
I think Intel will definitely start forging ARM chips. They need to do it even if they don’t want to.
Intel is getting more and more irrelevant in the mobile market. Laptops still use Intel CPUs, but Intel-powered laptops seem to me to be on their way down thanks to “the cloud” (and to the lack of solutions to the battery problem).
There’s no way to fix it today. Maybe there was one twenty years ago.
Well, Intel could buy ARM Holdings plc with all its IP …
They just did the next best thing — buying Altera, one of the few ARM architecture license holders.
“Porting Office to Android/ARM will be a better strategic decision than when they ported Office to the Mac.”
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A big difference, though, is that when boxed software was still as significant a thing, Mac users were actually decent customers for it. Android users, on the other hand, are more akin to the few people who were actually using desktop Linux. Google, of course, likes it this way. They don’t get the majority of their money from actually selling any software or hardware, and they have little incentive in helping anyone else do that, either.
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Anyway, Microsoft already ported the desktop version of Office to ARM for the Surface RT, and wound up taking a US$990 million writedown on that product. They didn’t even stick with it through to their customary “3rd generation finally gets it right,” since the Surface 3 switched from ARM to Intel processors like the Surface Pro line.
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Since then, they already *have* released Office for both iOS and Android. Not sure how you missed that.
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Strategically, really Microsoft’s best bet is to move away from dependance on Office and Windows in general. There are many times more people on mobile computing devices than desktop/laptop PCs, and the vast majority of them just don’t care about Office. The question for them to answer is “What takes the place of the word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, and other components of Office for people to get their jobs done using only mobile devices?” Then hope they can figure that out and be there with the different kinds of software that people are going to want. What they probably should be doing is trying out a whole lot of different things on mobile that they themselves know will make Office obsolete. Try to fill all the possible niches themselves, before someone else beats them to it, knowing that they’re sure to have a lot of misses along the way, but ready to write them off and focus on the ones that hit. They’ll piss off their Office team, but isn’t internal competition the name of the game at Microsoft? In fact the Office team should be given the same challenge, too: “Prove to us you’ve got what it takes to build the future software that will obsolete your own product!”
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As far as Intel and ARM, you should take a look at the numbers for the margins per unit that Intel gets off of x86 vs what they’d get for making ARM chips. I think Ben Thompson/Stratechery or one of the guys at Techpinions did a piece on this in the past couple of years.
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One thing about both Intel and Microsoft is that they’ve been best frenemies for so long and their destinies are so intertwined it’s really hard to see how they can avoid dragging each other down as the world is moving to mobile computing and neither one has any kind of a good foothold, there.
“One thing about both Intel and Microsoft is that they’ve been best frenemies for so long and their destinies are so intertwined it’s really hard to see how they can avoid dragging each other down as the world is moving to mobile computing and neither one has any kind of a good foothold, there.”
I would say Intel has been less of a frenemy for Microsoft and more of an enemy.
Yes, they still have a decent working relationship, but Intel does a lot more in Open Source, Linux Kernel development, etc than they do with Microsoft any more. That relationship has certain tarnished, and Microsoft sticks with x86 because they can’t really move to anything else due to their legacy software.
Regarding Microsoft and their ARM ports…the Office for ARM didn’t fail because of ARM – it failed because Windows on ARM (aka Windows RT) failed, and Windows on ARM failed because of the lack of legacy applications. The fact that Microsoft can’t grab traction where they don’t already have a large existing base of application software is a troubling sign for the future of the company since so much of their income depends on Windows and Office and related backend Server applications (Lync, Exchange, SharePoint, etc). Fortunately most of that really draws from the Enterprise, but their Enterprise customers will put up with it for only so long, and as major applications vendors (e.g Adobe, AutoDesk) start moving more towards providing Cloud functionality that can be accessed regardless of platform….those Enterprise customers will see less need for Microsoft.
Windows on ARM failed because the apps were code-locked to a set of hooks in Windows. Microsoft is not going to stay big and relevant until their baby, Office, is platform-independent. when it is, the Wintel Alliance is gone, gone, gone. they seem to have forgotten how they had it all in C for a reason 20+ years ago, so whatever “competition” popped up, all it took was a tiger team to recast MS applications into the competitor’s operating system, and release it. that’s also why they bought a Unix license and cast their own version, but that’s 25+ years ago trashed.
The point isn’t WHY Windows on ARM (aka Windows RT) failed, it’s that Microsoft have already tried what Cringely was saying, “porting Office to Android/ARM.” They’ve done it both with their own OS on ARM, which they failed at, and now they’ve already got it on Android, whose success remains to be seen.
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In fact just today they released updates for Office on iOS, with specific support for features that are unique to the new iPad Pro/Apple Pencil combo, and “3D Touch” on the latest iPhones 6S/6S+. This only weakens Office on Android, as there are no comparable standardized hardware features there, and is a knock against Cringely’s assertion that “Porting Office to Android/ARM will be a better strategic decision than when they ported Office to the Mac.” Android just isn’t a very strong market for Office, right now, and there’s no good evidence that this will change any time soon.
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Also, I was going to mention it earlier: Microsoft Office *wasn’t* ported to Mac! It was actually available on Macs first, in 1989, before it came out for Windows in 1990! Up until Office 4.x Microsoft actually was a leading edge Mac developer. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint all came out for Macs first, and were ported to Windows *later*. Excel 3.0 was the first application to support Apple’s System 7 operating system. Excel 4.0 was the first application to support Apple’s AppleScript.
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The problems with Office on Macintosh started with Office 4.x, when Microsoft stopped being a leading edge Mac developer and made their Mac version of Office just a warmed over version of their Windows version, which was highly unpopular. They finally reversed course on that with Office 98 for Mac.
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“The fact that Microsoft can’t grab traction where they don’t already have a large existing base of application software is a troubling sign for the future of the company”
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Agreed. They really don’t show a lot of competency with big initiatives when there aren’t external factors giving them strong leverage. On a level playing field their fundamental “Windows everywhere” business model hamstrings them, and their flaws and mediocrity are widely apparent. It’s only if/when they can get away from that that they might have a chance, but it remains to be seen whether anyone will even care any more about their core products of Office/etc. That’s why I was saying that they should be the ones trying to come up with the next software on mobile that will do the same jobs as Office, in a different and better way, and obsolete their own products.
“Intel does a lot more in Open Source, Linux Kernel development, etc than they do with Microsoft any more.”
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Yes, this has absolutely demolished Microsoft’s Windows business. Redmond must be furious that Intel does anything with a competitor that has approximately 1% of desktop business, and that Intel doesn’t let all the data center linux business go to AMD.
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sheesh.
IMHO the “problem” is always the same : the cost of HW is expected decreasing more and more… Moore and Moore… it’s tragically ironical since we are speaking about Intel 🙂
ARM has discovered only a new cheaper way, selling the license instead of the real HW, to decrease price.
If the problem is this one, why you are speaking about MS which is a software house?
Are you really sure that if ARM finally controls the world – I strongly doubt that anyway – MS won’t be already on ARM with the Windows OS itself?
If you consider Windows only for its role of platform able to execute programs and apps, you can imagine a Windows version for ARM.
Until now MS not needed to invade ARM world with its OS, but in the future why not? At the end Android is a poor OS while W10, apart for the updates problems, is a good multiuse OS. The only lacking thing is the cost… it should be free, shouldn’t it?
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/02/02/windows-10-coming-to-raspberry-pi-2/
So, the Win10 on RasberryPi is useless as a desktop – it’s their Win10 IoT edition which requires having a regular Desktop/Laptop with a full Win10 on Intel to program (using Visual Studios nonetheless) and manage.
Windows on ARM will continue to be a failure unless Microsoft can figure out how to rebuild all the existing software from x86 to ARM automagically. As was shown with Windows 8 RT (Windows 8 on ARM) their customers really do expect to have the legacy software access – Windows 8 RT completely flopped since it didn’t have that access, and the APIs (JavaScript+.NET+an extremely limited Win32 API) were so limited (the Office team got an exemption) that developers weren’t willing to commit resources either since they would have to port all their Windows applications to the new and improved APIs – at which point the cost is no different than moving to a true multi-platform API (like Qt, Gtk, WxWidgets, etc) and then they gain the Android and iOS access (both supported by Qt at least) as well as Linux and Mac desktop users.
Windows8 RT was a smart move – they needed it to succeed – but its failure shows how locked in they are to the binary compatibility of legacy Windows and DOS software (yes, there are still many companies that use DOS software under Windows, and often no vendor to make a upgrade to the software).
The ARM model works for ARM because they’re not taking a high margin for each unit. Instead they’re hoping for vast quantities of them to be made by someone else and a tiny amount of a very large number is sufficient for them to survive. The only option for Intel is to look at the embedded world and come up with a common specification, plus a few extras, and bundle it in to a new processor chip done on one of their latest fab processes. Take the advantages of both and then sell it to whoever is willing to pay the premium.
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Microsoft, however, are in a more difficult position. They’re moving Office to a higher price bracket, or certainly for home and small business users, at a time when computing is getting cheaper and cheaper. You look at Office with the Ribbon and it’s like a stripped down version of what was previously known as Office. Experienced users are having to use the Help options just to find what they previously easily did! And with no menu system to back up the Ribbon, even just looking for those previously loved tools is a nightmare. The pricing has got more professional at a time where the product became more child-like.
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For some people I’ve helped set up new computers for I’ve installed Libre Office. Completely free! No cost at all, and none of those I’ve installed it for have missed Microsoft Office. It does everything a home user needs, and is easy and clear to use. That is Microsoft’s biggest challenge because Free is hard to argue with; especially when Free does everything you need it to!
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Finally, Windows 10. Sure, it’s free just now, but how will Microsoft make any money from free? As they wish to become a “Services” company, at what point will you start having to pay just to use your own computer?
When are you going to issue an updated prediction for the Mineserver project? Aren’t you proud of telling all of the backers to promise their kids that while delivery would miss the Christmas delivery commitment, that delivery would just be delayed a “few days”. At least you have taught your kids to “fake it until you make it”.
You got scammed. Yes, it was obvious from the start.
AMD recently announced an ARM chip: https://www.anandtech.com/show/8362/amds-big-bet-on-arm-powered-servers-a1100-revealed
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Yes the world is changing and the firms that don’t embrace the new technology and platforms risk being left out.
….which is sort of a pity, as AMD had a strong ARM solution in Imageon, which they ended up selling to Qualcomm in order to help fund the (overpriced) purchased of ATI.
Qualcomm ended up using the technology for Adreno and their Snapdragon processors, a market where AMD could have seen a lot of success. Internally to AMD, this exit of the mobile GPU business caused a lot of gnashing of teeth.
It’s fashionable now to predict doom for the desktop PC market, BUT:
When I walk into my bank, I don’t see anybody using laptops, tablets or smartphones – they’re all using desktop PCs, which will need replacing at some time.
A client of mine has 35,000 employees, just about all of whom use desktop PCs. Its IT Director told me that it extended its PC renewal frequency from 3 to 5 years so in a couple of years from now it will be in the market for 35,000 replacement PCs, given that tablets and laptops are quite unsuitable for serious office work. (As for BYOD, he has banned it completely.)
There is no way I can do my work, which includes editing 300+ page documents, on a smartphone, tablet or even a laptop. I’ll be replacing my 6 yrs old PC this year with another desktop.
Just a few examples, repeated ad nauseum just about everywhere. If the PC market has slowed down, it’s more likely because people are extending their replacement frequencies, not because they’ve stopped using PCs.
Exactly. What’s happening is that in the corporate world the time to update has shifted. Partly because the existing computers are still working sufficiently well enough that a speed boost isn’t required.
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I’m sure that Moore’s Law isn’t being followed, and certainly I can’t type any quicker than I did 18 months back.
Exactly. We can’t afford to upgrade as often, but sure not going to downgrade.
Thank you! I was waiting for someone to make this (obvious) observation that, as Mark Twain said, “the reports of my (the PC’s) death have been greatly exaggerated!” Do we not remember what was the foundation of the original PC revolution’s main success and, IMO, once again continues to still be their main market today after all these years?? It’s BUSINESS! PC’s took business processing off of mainframes….and this was do-able because (among other things) the desktop PC basic form factor of keyboard, monitor and (later) mouse was similar to that of a mainframe terminal.
But still nowadays what business is going to move their business processes….transaction processing, large database management, accounting applications, order fulfillment, financials…completely off the traditional client/server PC environment (sitting at a desk with a monitor, keyboard and mouse) and onto smartphones and tablets? I don’t see that happening anywhere in the near future….the nature of that work still requires and, in fact, is better to sitting down at a desk and doing your work on a PC (whether your desk is in the office where the hardware’s located or at home where you’re remotely connected to your business’ on-premise system).
And yes, yes, I understand that the cloud may eventually take over this type of business processing currently handled by on-premise (in the multi-millions thruout the world) systems of PC’s/servers, but I believe that’ll happen alot slower than pundits predict due to the the conservative nature OF businesspeople (i.e. the cloud means you don’t get to posses/own your own business data anymore), as well as bandwidth issues.
So yes….PC’s and desktop OS’s may very well be on their way out and less-and-less significant in the world of personal use, but they’ll continue to be significant for a long time to come in the world of business. And that’s where Microsoft and Intel should consider changing their licensing/pricing model or they’ll alienate the one market they’ll have left.
Hunh. All this time I thought form factor, OS architecture and hardware support were orthogonal to instruction set architectures.
Android is uniquely positioned to lead the exodus. All those precious client-server apps, likely coded in Java, can be ported to Android relatively easily, without much change in the business logic or interchange code and without Apple’s “Your doing it wrong” mantra endlessly hanging in the background. Android can be deployed to all those fielded x86 boxes without excessive tomfoolery and with a greatly reduced risk of malware. When those PCs come to their end of life, ARM-based systems that are smaller in price and power consumption will drop right in. As for DOS and simpler Windows code, anything that old can likely be emulated or transpiled with adequate performance by any one of those smartphone SoCs. The harder of the remaining Windows apps can be livestreamed from a terminal server.
I will grant you that touch computing is mostly incompetent at content production, and it’s unclear whether controlling wage labor’s ability to produce independently of (i.e. compete with) the rentier class is, as far as the latter are concerned, the intended effect or just a happy side-effect. Likely there will still be non-touch workstations in content-production spaces, but not necessarily so ubiquitous elsewhere, and they might be called something else as the PC recedes to a position more like a machine tool. Unlike the X servers of yore, the “fixed-installation Android desktop” has the supply chain momentum of the “smart”-device “revolution” at its back.
In sum, the pieces and the tools are out there, but personal users’ prior subsidies of business PC component volumes (and costs) are largely shifting to mobile outside of high-end gaming. Serviceably equipped ARM desktop-ish devices of adequate performance and peripheral support already undercut Wintel by whole factors; the question is whether or more likely when the TCO curves cross for a particular line of business. There only needs one modestly adventurous CTO who’s not a bedwetter, kaffeeklatscher or used-car salesperson to pull the pieces together and reap the rewards.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2014 (with keyboard and mouse borrowed from my x86_64-Linux desktop). 🙂
Explain to my why ARM?
I know ARM is a popular chip architecture, but why should it matter if Intel produces an ARM chip? In this day and age all operating systems are written in high-level languagees. ARM would be used for non-technical reasons because all popular OS’s run on a variety of CPU architectures.
The x86 architecture is Intel property requiring a license (AMD has one as do others). Early in mobile, x86 was performance focused (power hungry). ARM gained traction as they were a good low power focused choice that made mobile as we know it possible.
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The ARM and x86 instructions sets are incompatible (no copying without a license). Programs written in languages delivering end user code in intermediate binary form (Java, .NET) are architecture insensitive as the language run-time translates the intermediate binary on the users system.
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The big problem is applications written in languages producing architecture specific binary code (all early, some current programs, the majority) which run only on one architecture (x86 or ARM). Users must get a different binary copy when changing CPU architecture (x86 to ARM) and most vendors don’t support this process.
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There are cost issues as well since ARM is sold as an intellectual property license allowing the holder to customize and build their own ARM chips.
[…] buddy, Robert X. Cringely predicts that Intel will start to be irrelevant. I predicted that in 1999 when I walked out of the door in 1999. It started a few years earlier […]
I’m not sure Office for Android is worth the bother. For an individual user, there are free or cheap alternatives that are good enough. If you’re a business that’s a Microsoft shop, you’re probably paying for a site license, so is MS going to squeeze harder to recoup the costs of Android development?
More significant, Office’s killer apps are the communication tools, Outlook/Exchange/Lync. After 20+ years, the Mac versions are still significantly gimped. The chances of MS rolling out a decent Android version are about nil.
Intel tried getting into data centers back around the turn of the century. They didn’t have the stomach for building that business and exited it.
As far as questioning the cloud goes, here’s a prediction for you: in 5 years people will be flocking to LinuxONE for precisely the reasons you cite.
I guess the operative word is “starts” to become irrelevant. I think it is definitely true that Intel doesn’t have the choke hold on CPUs that they once did (basically just by virtue of being Microsoft’s chosen CPU supplier), but I think they will be around for quite some time. ARM has gone nowhere on the server side. It is basically still just a mobile chip.
A lot of people talking on here about ARM vs Intel. It actually goes way back and to a time when the ARM processor was a desktop processor with the Acorn Archimedes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes
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It was a home computer with fully 32-bit WIMP OS.. Quite something and it took years for Microsoft to catch up with Windows. It was the first RISC desktop, before Apple claimed the title
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Now there’s also the Raspberry Pi and similar educational boards to encourage youngsters in to programming. They have enough functionality that you have to start questioning if they’re not powerful enough for the majority of users? After all, most people just use their PC to browse the internet. Some have created guides on how to use it as your desktop:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/use-your-raspberry-pi-like-a-desktop-pc/
Android licences aren’t free if you want Google Play and other Google services. Google removed almost everything from the free part.
Her yaştan gruba özel eğitimlerimizi iki şubemizde devam ettirmekteyiz. Üstelik 2016 yılına özel fiyatlandırma seçenekleri ile çok uygun ve nezih ortamla sizlerleyiz.
Bakırköy resim kursu sizlerin çalışma alanını bir çok değerlendirme ile yönlendirmeye çalışmaktayız.
http://ruyaavcisi.com/bakirkoy-resim-kursu/
[…] We’re approaching the end of the closed, proprietary, single source technology era. ARM processors… […]
Was not there a prediction here, may be 3 years back that Qualcomm will buy Intel. And Qualcomm will control the combined giant. Strangely Qualcomm is mostly out of the discussion. Intel is still relevant. See you 3 years down the line on who is relevant.
[…] ARM is being used in more and more devices. According to technology commentator Robert Cringely, device makers are starting to look at cheap ARM chips over more expensive Intel or AMD chips. Even Microsoft (please don’t strike me down) is thinking of porting some of its software to ARM. […]
[…] ARM is being used in more and more devices. According to technology commentator Robert Cringely, device makers are starting to look at cheap ARM chips over more expensive Intel or AMD chips. Even Microsoft (please don’t strike me down) is thinking of porting some of its software to ARM. […]
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[…] […]
[…] ARM is being used in more and more devices. According to technology commentator Robert Cringely, device makers are starting to look at cheap ARM chips over more expensive Intel or AMD chips. Even Microsoft (please don’t strike me down) is thinking of porting some of its software to ARM. […]
I hope Intel – The Gouger, dies a natural death.
[…] What should Intel do? They definitely have big plans, because spending ~$17B on Altera was well thought. Though is FPGA & IoT strategy well aligned with keeping datacenter hegemony? Good ruminations are assembled in the post by Cringely. […]