Why Windows Blue heralds the death of the desktop

[Greybriar]

The title of the article caught my eye.

[jomni]

The comments make more sense than the article itself.  ;D

[ArizonaTank]

I don't know, I don't see the desktop / laptop killer platform yet.  Tablets aren't versatile enough to handle many business tasks yet. 

But I do believe that the desktop as we know it will be a mere hobbyist's device in 15 years.

I suspect the cloud will be where the future is for us gamers.  Win9 won't play your games?  Log on to GOG's or Steam's virtual Win7 cloud and have fun...  Heck, you could even do that from a tablet.

[LongBlade]

Interesting article. Thanks for sharing it.

What is a desktop?

It is a computer that outputs to a screen and has inputs in the form of a keyboard and mouse.

What the author is attempting to convey is that the keyboard and mouse interface will be combined into a touch-based monitor.

In other words, the inputs will change.

I'm not so sure that's the case. More likely is a possible revolution in haptics, where motion sensitive devices read our gestures and respond accordingly.

Even then, I'm not sure I can gesture half as fast as I can type, though if someone has some data comparing sign language to typing speeds that's probably the best place to start a discussion of this type.

[Zulu1966]

Interesting stuff - and kind of dovetails with my views on where microsoft are going. I happen to be of the view that it is microsoft that has created the landscape we see today and not that it has been driven by the general public - most of whom dont care how it works so long as it works - and can quite easily see microsoft creating the landscape in the future.

The more interesting thing is the link to the story about their app store in the article itself - which is what I see as one of the primary drivers for microsoft. The big thing microsoft have missed is the fact that the app store was driven by the fact that apple gave small developers the tools to create content. That is why the app store is so populated with content and the big trick microsoft just dont get. Saying to people - develop in C++ as the only route is simply not going to work - its a complicated language that people will not learn. Microsoft need an equivalent ot XCode. Until they hav that their appstore will remain the ghost town it is no matter what incentives they offer.

[jomni]

I don't know, I don't see the desktop / laptop killer platform yet.  Tablets aren't versatile enough to handle many business tasks yet. 

But I do believe that the desktop as we know it will be a mere hobbyist's device in 15 years.

I suspect the cloud will be where the future is for us gamers.  Win9 won't play your games?  Log on to GOG's or Steam's virtual Win7 cloud and have fun...  Heck, you could even do that from a tablet.

I think the Desktop PC will still be there but the UI will be radically different in the future (touch oriented).  The desktop screen may be removed. 

Cloud? That means we won't own our games.

[LongBlade]

Cloud? That means we won't own our games.

The cloud is the latest swing in the pendulum of fat-client thin-client distributed development.

Microsoft's PC growth has previously been driven by two things: gaming and business. They have successfully captured the console market but at the expense of their PC gaming market. My household may be the exception - everyone in the family has a laptop.

There are smartphones for the entire family and two tablets to share between us.

Personally I don't find either the iPad or the Fire to be a solid substitute for a laptop. On the contrary, tablets are an intermediary device: something to quickly turn to for an update on the news or email, a light game, or reading. For serious work they are unsatisfactory.

Even the Windows tablet + keyboard is currently a losing formula: For ~$600 you get a tablet that has no memory. OTOH ~$300 will buy you a low end laptop with far more power and memory. Given the relative disparity of cost and power I don't see any immediate compelling reason to abandon a PC-like "desktop" (granted I'm speaking of laptops, but they behave largely like traditional desktops in terms of input devices).

Tablets have a place. They are lighter than a laptop and boot more rapidly. For fast transactions or uses that don't involve major typing they are great. But they can only partially substitute for a laptop/desktop. They don't have the power or the memory for heavy lifting, but networked and employed in limited uses they're great.

[republic]

My 2 cents.

It seems like every time there is something new I read about the 'death' of something old.  I remember when games were put on CD Rom it was widely advertised that we'd never need large hard drives again!  I snicker at those old ads every time I download something large...like last night Arma 3 at 7+gb.

People will always be able to type faster on a mechanical keyboard, and will always be more precise with a mouse type device.  Mouse/Trackball/Pen.  The power many of us need will never be able to fit in the power/thermal envelope of a tablet.  The sales of expensive ultrabooks and ultrathin laptops are proof that while tablets are nice...they don't do what many of us need to do.  And often what they can do, can be done faster with a legacy device.  My iPad is great for surfing while doing something else...but inevitably if I actually want to do something...like post a long forum post, I go to my laptop or desktop.  :)

All that is to say, there are new markets for technology devices, but that doesn't mean old markets disappear.

[Al]

My 2 cents.

It seems like every time there is something new I read about the 'death' of something old.  I remember when games were put on CD Rom it was widely advertised that we'd never need large hard drives again!  I snicker at those old ads every time I download something large...like last night Arma 3 at 7+gb.

People will always be able to type faster on a mechanical keyboard, and will always be more precise with a mouse type device.  Mouse/Trackball/Pen.  The power many of us need will never be able to fit in the power/thermal envelope of a tablet.  The sales of expensive ultrabooks and ultrathin laptops are proof that while tablets are nice...they don't do what many of us need to do.  And often what they can do, can be done faster with a legacy device.  My iPad is great for surfing while doing something else...but inevitably if I actually want to do something...like post a long forum post, I go to my laptop or desktop.  :)

All that is to say, there are new markets for technology devices, but that doesn't mean old markets disappear.

I agree.   :)

[Barthheart]

My 2 cents.

It seems like every time there is something new I read about the 'death' of something old.  I remember when games were put on CD Rom it was widely advertised that we'd never need large hard drives again!  I snicker at those old ads every time I download something large...like last night Arma 3 at 7+gb.

People will always be able to type faster on a mechanical keyboard, and will always be more precise with a mouse type device.  Mouse/Trackball/Pen.  The power many of us need will never be able to fit in the power/thermal envelope of a tablet.  The sales of expensive ultrabooks and ultrathin laptops are proof that while tablets are nice...they don't do what many of us need to do.  And often what they can do, can be done faster with a legacy device.  My iPad is great for surfing while doing something else...but inevitably if I actually want to do something...like post a long forum post, I go to my laptop or desktop.  :)

All that is to say, there are new markets for technology devices, but that doesn't mean old markets disappear.

I agree with this too... but always remember... reel to reel -> 8-track -> cassette -> CD's.... or Beta -> VHS -> DVD's... sometimes the old does get run over by the new....

[Longdan]

If voice recognition technology comes along like it should we will just be talking to a screen in the sh*thouse.

[Anguille]

Image life in offices in the future:

People dancing like crazy in front of their computers while shouting out loud to them.....i think i am going to be much more productive in the future  :o

[Keunert]

my father told me that when the first tv sets arrived en masse, there was talk that soon there will be home education in front of television and schools will disappear and what not.
a lot of this promises were wrong and sound funny by now. but if i imagine how life has changed in some aspects since the 50's it's dramatic. the access to information, the ease of information exchange, mobile phones, mobile net... that stuff sounded like pure s/f not very long ago.

[Longdan]

Sesame Strasse.

[Nefaro]

It seems like every time there is something new I read about the 'death' of something old. 

Yep.

"Wargames are dying!", "Flight sims are going the way of the dodo!", "The PC will be replaced with consoles!", "The seas will rise 100ft in the next decade and destroy all coastal cities!".  People love their "DOOM! THE END!" prophecies whether they're reasonable or not.  Hell.. didn't we just have the Mayan 'end of the world' ridiculousness that, supposedly, 1 out of 10 people believed? 

As long as the desktop PC still retains it's cheap cost relative to it's computing power and ease of modification, it'll be around quite awhile yet.   Sure.. it may get smaller (as everything electronic does) but people buy value.  Also.. I'm not sure how many others here have taken apart & fixed notebook computers before, but it's not near as fun (and definitely not as flexible) as a desktop, and that also translates into higher costs if something goes wrong. 

There are still numerous advantages to desktops and until they don't have any, they'll be around.