Posted on 01/06/2015 8:51:33 PM PST by Swordmaker
The long reigning king of the desktop OS is in trouble. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, is rapidly steering the company into the back office and service spaces, while their nascent mobile and desktop platforms are crumbling around them. Microsoft is putting on a brave face continuing to heavily advertise the 2-in-1 Surface debacle, but Nadella is only buying time, as he must surely know that Apple and Google is the two-headed beast that Microsoft can not stop. In less than a decade, Microsoft will be associated with IBM or Oracle, not Apple or Google.
Apple’s iOS is poised for massive world-wide growth in 2015 and beyond, while Android is finding its way into embedded systems, cars and medical devices. Android is free, it is customizable and is a platform which is easy to develop upon. C for microcontrollers, Linux and variants of, are being replaced by Android. And while Google pushes Android onto smartphone hardware that has no Apple logo on it, its permanent home may reside within your next generation cars, boats, microwaves, ovens and smart-fridge. The adoption rate of Android may be subtle, and Google is not able profit from the solutions their software empower, but it will be almost everywhere without anyone even knowing it is there. Microsoft has no ability to play where Google's Android is headed.
Apple’s iOS and associated devices continue to lead the way as the mobile platform for the world. With over 1 billion iOS devices sold to-date, and 60-70 million iPhones sold in the December quarter alone, iOS has become the consumer, business and general purpose mobile computing platform on a global scale. Nadella appears to be embracing this truth, laying off all but a small remnant of their Nokia team. Microsoft hangs onto the beloved Xbox console franchise, but this endeavor rarely produces the profits that justify it as a long-term solution worth keeping. With Dish Network announcing a near al-a-carte EPSN cable TV bundle for only $20 a month, a revamped Apple TV and available services cannot be far behind. Apple only need deliver UHD (4k) gaming, video playback/streaming, and an Apple TV App store and Microsoft will likely sell or spin off their Xbox entertainment division.
The last area of consumer dominance Microsoft owns continues to slip for the software giant. Apple claimed 25% of the U.S. desktop OS market during the September quarter. Along with an ever growing iCloud and mobile devices that provide a seamless Apple solution, purchasing a Windows OS computer that does not provide a fully integrated hardware and software ecosystem makes less sense by the day.
Nadella’s Microsoft is showing little resistance to Apple’s device dominance. The company could hope for the middle to low-end market, but Google continues to siphon that space with ad sales effectively enough to leave Microsoft less room for costly OS licensing. Without Bing driving dollars, Microsoft is forced to license their operating systems, and Bing by all accounts in relegated to a distant second place, without shiny earnings to show for it's mammoth efforts since launch. The lowest end Windows powered desktops are also getting nibbled on by Google's cheaper Chromebook options.
Nadella is smart to move Redmond’s software giant back into the corporate services market, where margins still exist and trends move far slower than in the consumer space, because Apple and Google are simply killing them on every other front. Microsoft's mobile and desktop offerings have landed squarely in the middle of Apple and Google, and that's a sandwich Microsoft simply cannot live between much longer.
It isn't about what one needs, it is about what one wants. No one needs an Apple product, strangely they have become the worlds richest corporation.
Richest Corp?
Ya, I’ve seen video and read about Apples Communist Chinese peasant suicide factories...
Looking sharp...
You want to send me that iPhone 5 that you aren't using?
Google certainly thinks their software is capable of steering and driving a car. . . The decisions trees having to do with most things running automobiles are not difficult and are well known by the automobile engineers who are involved. Any OS sufficiently robust can handle them. iOS is a subset of UNIX, a sufficiently robust OS. QNX is also a UNIX based OS. . . with a micro Kernel. . . it too is sufficiently robust. QNX is not owned by Blackberry, but merely licensed by them and uses their own varietal of it called BBX. For you to say that the car companies are getting it from Blackberry shows your level of knowledge.
However, we seem to be talking about two different things. My data I provided you is accurate, especially the list of automobile companies that have picked up Apple as their company of choice. But i was not talking about "running the cars" although the Apple software will interface with the systems running the automobiles of these companies that have adopted the Apple system.
Charlie Miller, an expert white hat hacker, has demonstrated the ability to take over automobile operating systems that are already in place. . . using a laptop computer, and in fact, BRICKED his own 2014 Jeep Cherokee to the point that he had to take it into a dealership to have the system computer replaced to be sent back to be re-flashed as the dealer could not restore it either. As I said, these systems interface with the other systems of the automobiles.
The authors of this article are also talking about Android also appearing in other imbedded devices. . . and Google IS intending it for that. What OS do you think steers their driverless car? It is their upgraded proprietary Android they are calling Chrome. . . which is still a stripped down UNIX derivative. Is it robust enough? Hell, I don't know. It has not been tested hard enough in the real world.
The same factories produce 90% of all Windows PCs as well, and Apple is still the richest corporation in the world, whether you like it or not. They manage to do that by selling products that no one except brain addled homos will buy.
I built my last PC also. With my daughter, we had a blast. Built us a cheapie gaming rig to play Battlefield 3 (after we wore out BF2).
And my work box is a windows laptop - dell, windows 7, i7, 8 gig, 256 ssd...nice box. but many of my coworkers are switching to macbooks...I probably will with my next laptop, but that is about 2 years away...dang...
Really? May be time to step back and take a deep breath...
The same factories produce 90% of all Windows PCs as well, and Apple is still the richest corporation in the world
I'm not impressed. But thanks for that bit of trivia.
i was thinking the exact same thing. Also a cluttered desk is the sign of an empty mind. . .
If I had a dollar for every time people thought MS was dieing I could buy an NBA team for a seriously over valued price. MS still has the vast majority of the markets in the vast majority of the tech spaces that matter, and serious numbers in most of the rest.
I mentioned dual is in support of windows7. If we are going to count virtual machines I have every version of windows too. My point is apple hardware is always behind pc’s. I stand by that and anyone not caught up in cute marketing knows this. It is why apple never reached the heights IBM and Microsoft did. Its obvious you, just like apple, liberals and communists don’t like facts, dissent or competition. Your mac is only better than my PC at overpriced coffee shops. Apple is as good as Linux except the proprietary bs I mentioned before. Your hardware doesn’t compare in value, choices or performance. The success apple pc’s finally got was due soley to the addition of some PC hardware.
Microsoft is literally sitting on billions of dollars of cash, they aren’t going anywhere.
Your link is very interesting - but it also makes it quite clear why there are not yet any commercial applications of it.But then, we have to assume that AI will make the work of development easier, probably geometrically easier, over time. So maybe in five years or so, it could become SOP.
I can’t help contrasting the painstaking formal process of writing to provable safety, on the one hand, with the FORTRAN code for the Climate-change models whose outputs we are told to trust implicitly and stake our grandchildren’s futures on. Code with comments in it making clear that it was written by people who didn’t trust it themselves - but who were under direction to “just do it.”
Daughter grabbed it.
Thank you; I find the work in provability/formal-methods to be quite interesting.
but it also makes it quite clear why there are not yet any commercial applications of it.
True — But it also shows that it's (a) feasible, and (b) a matter of time/effort/money.
But then, we have to assume that AI will make the work of development easier, probably geometrically easier, over time. So maybe in five years or so, it could become SOP.
True AI? That's a long, long way off.
Last I'd heard we're pretty much at the level of epileptic chicken
.
This is a bit different: automated and semi-automated theorem provers are in a much easier category than true AI.
I can’t help contrasting the painstaking formal process of writing to provable safety, on the one hand, with the FORTRAN code for the Climate-change models whose outputs we are told to trust implicitly and stake our grandchildren’s futures on. Code with comments in it making clear that it was written by people who didn’t trust it themselves - but who were under direction to “just do it.”
True; just because the internal-logic is consistent (or even proven valid) doesn't mean that the output is truthful — for example, if you put give a fuel-consumption calculator a weight that is 10,000 lbs off, you're not going to get an accurate measure.
Yep par for the course...
I made a lot of money cutting through that BS over 35 years of working for clients who had been chewed up and spit out by the finger pointing run-around. I was skilled at cutting through the petti-foggery of the tech support people who would tell them "This problem is hardware/software, call the manufacturer/software publisher. Go away!" after spending hours trying to get through the phone tree and wait queues. I had phone numbers at each of the various vendors I could call if necessary that went direct. No Phone Tree, no waiting. I could get through. AND, I knew when it was a hardware or a software issue. . . or a combination of both, or as was often the case, loose nut on the keyboard. . . and no call necessary.
Apple's approach was to make the whole widget. They will not send you off to see the Wizard of software, blaming someone else. They take and own the responsibility for their hardware and software. . . and will make a good stab at 3rd party software issues as well.
I sprung for the base model off the shelf, 8G of RAM and 1T fusion drive, $2.5K . I did it “just because,” couldn’t really justify it. But I figured if it ever made sense I could double up on the RAM (or maybe more might be available by then), but otherwise it was mostly just having the best monitor that would ever likely to make any sense to get.‘Course something like virtual reality goggles will come out of the blue and throw that theory into a cocked hat, I suppose . . . we can always HOPE!
Dragnet2, again, you do not have a clue about what you are talking about.
First if all, the 18 suicides at the FoxConn assembly plants of the HonHai Company occurred over a span of 18 months. Except for one (*), all of the 18 suicides out of 27 attempts occurred in plants not associated with Apple products. Eight of the suicides occurred on one year at one plant assembling not Apple products but Microsoft Xboxes, HP Computers, Nokia phones, and Sony PlayStations. Sorry, no Apple products.
Secondly, the suicide rate at the FoxConn plants 750,000 workers was one quarter of the suicide rate of the same age group (18 to 28 years of age) in the Chines Population in general. It was 1/2 the suicide rate of the entire population in general.
"Most FoxConn employees come from the countryside where their hardworking families have farmed the same land for many generations. They dutifully send home part of their paycheck each month.From 1988 until 2009, four Foxconn employees attempted suicide on-site (0.18 per year). In 2010, that number increased almost one hundred times to eighteen. In 2011, it fell again to four. What happened in 2010?
In 2010, embarrassed by bad publicity, the company offered condolence pay packages equivalent to 10 years' salary to families of the deceased. This was widely reported in China and company officials say the incentive served as a call for depressed individuals to join Foxconn and leave life with honor. Foxconn CEO, Terry Gou read this letter to shareholders: "...now I'm going to jump off Foxconn, really leaving now, but you don't have to be sad, because Foxconn will pay a bit of money, this is all your son can repay you now."
In the second half of 2010, Foxconn publically stopped the condolence payments. In 2011, the suicide rate dropped by almost 80%. It is important to note that even at its peak, Foxconn's suicide rate was 1.5 per 100,000 vs. 3.1 per 100,000 in China -- half the suicide rate of society at large.
Maybe the suicides were not about labor conditions.— Source: Foxconn: The Fire That Wasn't
BY Brad Hall| 03/15/12 - 09:41 AM EDT
Thirdly, the suicide rate at the FoxConn plants was 1/8th that of a similar cohort of young people. . . 18 to 28 year old college students in the United States enrolled in Ivy League Universities such as Yale, Harvard, etc. So much for a huge, horrific suicide level.
Finally, they are not "Apple's" factories. FoxConn manufactures 40% of the world's consumer electronics. Among FoxConn's and HonHai's customers are:
Consider your snide remark rebuked and countered with facts. . . again.
(*) The one suicide associated with Apple, was a year and a half before the 18 suicide cluster in 2010 era, and involved a mid-level engineering manager at FosConn who was questioned by Chinese police about the sale of an Apple iPhone manufacturing test prototype to a competitor . . . after the questioning, he went home to his apartment two miles from office and jumped from the fifth floor balcony. The Chinese Police released a statement that his suicide indicated his guilt in the industrial espionage case they were investigating.
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