Is Microsoft dying?

That article is from August

 

I don't follow it, but I'm pretty sure a lot has happened since August.

 

Not much; there's an appeal in process. I bet nobody gets any money from anyone else, save for licensing of the patents, like Apple and HTC agreed to.

The funny thing about Apple is that Steve Jobs was the guy who wanted to go nuclear with the patent wars. Tim Cook would rather just license and be done with it. But the legal system has a lot of inertia going on, so they're still moving from one mode of attack to the other.

If you're a fan of the local tech economy, you might want to hope Apple keeps succeeding. There's at least three local companies benefitting from Apple's patronage right now.

 

Seriously? Mags did you climb under a rock after the summer? Apple lost its lawsuit in England and had to post a public apology to Samsung on their website.

Samsung is also bending them over and jacking up the price on the processors that apple buys from them by 20%. Not very smart to piss off one of their principle parts manufacturers. Guess you iFans will be eating that extra cost.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

Samsung denied that report, by the way.

http://gigaom.com/apple/samsung-official-denies-raising-prices-on-apple-processors/

 

That's too bad. Should have made it 100% markup. Fuck apple.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

Yes yes, you hate Apple. But my father works for a company whose main client is Apple... can you not hate them too much until he can retire please? kthxbye.

 

I just don't get it. From either side. Why do you hate Apple? Why do apple fans hate Microsoft? I have my preference, but I just have never gotten the animosity between the groups.

 

I look at it like this (though I've since grown out of my own hatred for Microsoft): The big player is always looked at as kind of being the Yankees... and everybody except Yankees fans hate the Yankees. Nobody is indifferent. For a long while, that was Microsoft, and Apple partisans were vicious little anklebiters about it. Then, with the iDevices, Apple took the fore, and Android fans became vicious little anklebiters about it.

...now, Android is taking over, and are starting to act like Red Sox fans. They still hate Apple; it's kind of half of what has defined them. But now, they are definitely the big dog, and once again, you'll see Microsoft Windows 8 partisans being vicious little anklebiters about Android... the cycle continues forever. Your side is a collection of individualists and stylish folks with good taste while the other side are a bunch of mindless sheep doing what they're told by the man, whether the man is Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Verizon Dealers Pushing Android Phones To Get A Bigger Commission.

Microsoft might be waning, but they'll survive in various forms. Same with Apple; the bloom is off the rose, but they're not going to die any time soon. Diminish? Probably. Even the Jon Grubers of the world saw that coming. And Android will have its peak and slow decline too. Nobody can be so great that they can disrupt themselves multiple times and be on the forefront of technology. All things fade, shift, and change. And in general, we win.

Think about it: we have a tiny computer in our pockets that handles all the media and computing a full room of stuff did 20 years ago. For a 35-year-old like me who was raised on a VIC-20 and Commodore 64, the smartphone generation is literally the embodiment of a notebook full of pencilled dream schematics from 6th grade. We live in the future because these companies are so cutthroat with each other. Losing too many of them will be bad for us.

Fight, but don't die. Come back harder and stronger. That's the way of it.

 

And you could say Android chose Good and Cheap. Updates aren't fast on their devices, but the software that comes on the device is getting beter and better as the generations go on. I love that they're pushing the spec part of the tech forward, forcing the others to keep up. It's good competition!

 

Believe me, I'm an Apple fanatic, especially now that it is feeding my parents and sister. But the little Galaxy 7" tablet is pretty good, and the OS market share is growing in Android's favor (and yeah, the stats there are so sketchy; you know Apple sells through their shipments 100%, but do any of those Android makers? And what about Android basically being the default OS on a ton of shitty free phones? Why does that even count?). Apple still owns phones in the US and tablets overall, but they have to take Android/Samsung seriously to keep ahead of the bear on that little running exercise. It's nice to see Apple double down on upgrading their hardware to keep their lead in the 10" space up. Hopefully it'll trickle down to the 8" space soon. I want to cross-grade to a retina Mini with an A6X.

On the whole, I don't see Apple dying, Microsoft dying, or Samsung dying. The companies that are dying are the ons with bad software and a bad value proposition (Sony, RIM, et al). Sony had good hardware looks but bad price for a Windows machine. And RIM is... *sigh* they're so fucked.

 

Yeah, I love how stable OS X has been from 10.6 on. 10.8.2 is pretty dreamy overall, even though I'm too old fashioned to go in for all of the iCloud stuff. iOS6 is a bit rough though (that data bug is a killer, where audio streams and podcast downloads are overlapping so that one download is actually happening three or four times at the same time, with 3-4x the data load). Hopefully a new focus without Forstall will help... but I do worry that they'll focus too much on the new coat of paint and not enough on the body work that needs to be done.

 

Ok, so this is not my area, but a lot of you seem to have a good grasp on it, so, where do you see all this technology heading over the next five or ten years?

 

True integration between the TV space and the Device (phone/tablet) space. Right now, nearly half of all tablet/phone owners use their devices to supplement TV watching (checking imdb, for example, to figure out what movie that one guy was in). That is an emergent behavior that will be exploited in the future.

I see less emphasis on the "standard web" and more emphasis on app-based internet experiences. The desktop will become a work tool only, and niche in the home. The Laptop will get thinner and thinner, and lighter as they try to compete with the tablet space on portability.

The space where technology can still grow at Moore's Law speeds is in the device space, and after 5 years of doubling in speed/power, most of the gains will be in keeping battery life consistent or steadily getting better as processor speeds improve more gently, like in the desktop space.

I see dedicated, "one use" devices like gaming consoles going by the wayside (catering to an ever shrinking niche crowd of t3h h4rdc0rez), being superseded by that integration between device and television. A perfect world would be where you game on your TV until you want to go somewhere, then you play the exact same game on your always-with-you phone or tablet. As devices increase in power, this will become more prevalent.

Basically, the device space is a green field, and users are making trails in their own usage patterns. As those patterns are recognized, they will turn into roads. It's really an interesting time because we have these neat devices with nearly no rules on how they should be used (unlike a one-use device like a Nintendo DS where the road was pre-paved).

 

Thanks. It should be a fun ride.

 

Say goodbye to hardware. At least what we've come to know of it.

 

apples rock. don't have an iphone....still on my droid....i will buy an ipad mini...and this is from someone who's been big on computers since the early 90s. I don't get frustrated with troubleshooting them really like i used to with PCs.