Posted on 01/06/2015 8:51:33 PM PST by Swordmaker
The long reigning king of the desktop OS is in trouble. Microsofts 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.
Apples 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.
Apples 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.
Nadellas Microsoft is showing little resistance to Apples 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 Redmonds 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.
Itsahoot is strongly in the Mac users camp, Learns. He was being very ironic and sardonic. . . not to mention sticking his tongue firmly THROUGH his cheek.
It’s already happening.
More and more Hollywood types are ditching their ‘smartphones’. Privacy.
Samsung has quietly updated its flip phone. It’s selling again. Between data rates and privacy, people are asking whether they can live without big brother in your pocket.
The hilarious part of that is that Big Brother is getting HIS information at the carrier. . . tapping in at the cell tower. . . not at the phone or at the cloud. It is far easier to tap the carrier signal from these dumb flip phones than it is a smart phone which can encrypt the data being sent beyond the capability of even the NSA to decrypt in any reasonable time for the data to be usable. By reasonable time, I mean any time in the next few billion or trillion years.
If MS could drop the price of the Surface 3, these numbers would flip. It’s a great machine, but it is way too dear.
From what I understand, it’s because of the deals they made on components and hardware licensing.
I’m not sure they’ll ever be able to drop the price of the S3. I’ve used both computers extensively. For graphics work, the Air is better, for everything else, the S3 is better.
The old metaphors still apply - Apple’s like a poodle, and MS is like a German shepherd.
While what you are saying is true, what isn’t happening is texts, photos, and web posting anymore. Just talk.
This is what is going to drive the legal discussion going forward, because when FedGov decides to snoop on an actual phone call at the tower, and not some webposting, or some sext sent to a boyfriend, the 1st Amendment problems are going to be very clear to SCOTUS if they choose to take the case.
That’s the thing - Hollywood is getting away from everything but talking on the phone - no digital data trail. That is the new orthodoxy among the beautiful people.
Zuckerberg actually started making please to parents to stop barring their kids from using Facebook. The problem is that KIDS are leaving FB in droves for snapchat and instagram.
Privacy is a new gold rush in tech.
Smart daughter :)
I am loathe to throw out my old flip phone... It's on it's very last legs, and when it finally goes will be a very sad day.
“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.”
Oh, really?
Go to the QNX webpage:
At the bottom you see this:
“Copyright @ 2014 QNX Software Systems Limited, a subsidiary of BlackBerry.”
Oh yeah, they were merely contracted by Apple...Like the thousands of employers in the U.S. who routinely hire millions of illegals, and then say, "It's not us, it's our contractors". It's a very convenient relationship and great alibi.
I've heard it all before, over and over...All these corps are just innocent bystanders. Yep...
And it's not just privacy, it's the whole time consuming latest and greatest whizbang phone, pad whatever, spending their days gawking at a screen and endless menus etc...
BTW, not just Hollywood types either, most of this technology quickly becomes a short leash so the fatcorps can monitor and track their lackeys every move...
Remember the pager craze? You weren't cool or important if ya didn't have one. But it got to the point where the CEO's and those at the upper food chain wanted nothing to do with them...Give those things to the staff and the gofers, and we can pull their chain every day and night...
You are right. They are no longer licensing QNX but now own it. Sorry. I was wrong about that. Thanks for the correction.
Apple and Google are killing Microsoft, the same way Microsoft killed IBM. In other words, they aren’t.
Swordmaker, you are the only source I can find that says BB ever licensed QNX prior to purchase. I have never heard that before.
I believe you are also incorrect on that assertion.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem, dragnet2?
The suicides did not occur at a plant building Apple products. How hard is that to understand? The company involved does build Apple products under contract. . . but the suicides in question did NOT occur in plants being used to manufacture ANY Apple products. HERE IS WHAT THE PLANT WAS MANUFACTURING:
Those are FACTS, dragnet2. Sergeant Joe Friday would be ashamed of you. You aren't interested in "Just the facts, Ma'am." You seem to want to go with hyperbole over facts, emotion over truth. . . you are as bad as a Liberal Democrat (sorry for the insult, but that's the way you appear, when you choose to ignore facts and love hype!).
In 2010, when the majority of the 18 suicides occurred, FoxConn employed 750,000 workers at its various assembly plants. The suicide rate among all their plants was 2.4 per 100,000, a rate that is ~1/3 of the rosiest suicide rate of the Chines population in general from a UN report placing it at 6.8 per 100,000 and may be as high as 33 per 100,000. It was also noted that older people in China commit suicide at a far higher rate than do younger people. In the SAME COHORT of 18 to 28 year old's the suicide rate among workers at FoxConn was EIGHT TIMES LOWER than in the general population of Chinese of the SAME AGE. They were safer working at FoxConn than if they were working anywhere else. . . at least from suicide!
As I told you, the suicide rate among AMERICAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS enrolled at IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS is TWO TIMES HIGHER than the suicide rate of the factory workers at FoxConn in 2010. . . and now it is almost FIFTEEN TIMES HIGHER since FoxConn's suicide rate has returned to its historical rate which is now 4 per year in a company of 1.2 million workers! That translates to a rate of 0.33 per 100,000! So you are again WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!. Workers at FoxConn are far safer from suicide working there than they would be going to school at Yale, Harvard, etc.
In the United States, the suicide rate hovers around 11 per 100,000 every year. . . so the workers at FoxConn are FAR safer from suicide than living in the United States! This is a case of YOU, a citizen of the United States, criticizing China for something for which we are in far worse shape, you hypocrite!
Facts are such dangerous things when they don't support your pet beliefs, bias, bile, and hate, aren't they, dragnet2? You keep running into those inconvenient facts in your deranged hatred of Apple which keep proving YOU wrong. In this instance, it was NOT an Apple factory where people killed themselves because of terrible working conditions. . . nor was it huge, terrible numbers that should shock anyone because they were so far outside the normal, expected numbers for a large population of people who react like normal people. FACTS, dragnet2, "Just the facts, Ma'am" and you have not got a leg left to stand on.
You apparently would not know a fact if it were a 2x4 hitting you right between the eyes. You are smugly, arrogantly, and stubbornly ignorant. . . and choose to stay that way. That is NOT a pretty sight. In fact, it is pretty pathetic.
??
Or are you just disputing conditions haven't caused suicides yet in Apples Communist Chinese "contract" factories?
I wonder why Microsoft, HP and Sony along with Apple are producing their products in Communist China?
Is it to give Communist Chinese peasants good jobs?
I've noted you show up on nearly every single Apple thread attempting to discredit the stories and article which depict Apple doing business in Communist China while taking total advantage of that dirt cheap peasant labor.
What is your connection with Apple? Why the inordinate amount interest in this particular company?
There has to be some conflict here or big interest.
By the way slick, the moniker is not from the TV shows ya watch, but the definition of the word. You fail at assuming.
What a hoot!
You seem a bit hysterical slick.
How come all the emotional hyper sensitivity regarding this company? What's the deal hurrying from thread to thread running defense for them and their Chinese Communist friends?
Hmmm... Very interesting. I especially like the idea of the 1440 vertical res. I have a Dell 24” 1920 x 1200 and like it quite a bit.
True, however, my experience has been that the half-decent and better TV’s seems to have better tuners than the typical inexpensive separate tuners. Still, it’s a thought. Brand and model of yours?
That’s interesting too. I can’t fit in a 34” monitor, but the existence of a 29” ultrawide w/ split screen is... interesting.
Thanks to all for the suggestions!
True, however, in the back of my mind is the knowledge that a 32” with 1080p vertical is almost ok for my usage, so 1440 would likely be fine (again based somewhat off a 24” 1920 x 1200 I also have.)
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