h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think it is going to be the way people work driving them to give up PCs though Pastey. So the linux problem might not apply.

Increasingly business' are moving toward web-based solutions for their programs. Gmail/Google Docs in particular. If a business is doing 90% of its work based computer stuff via web based services the necessity to have an expensive bespoke physical machine which requires individual software licences will be reduced over time.

I was very sceptical about Chromebooks and the like. But the idea that the phone you have anyway could also just plug into your monitor and be a functioning PC. I reckon that will appeal to the "bottom line" argument.

I guess it depends on the utility that Apple and Google can provide from their respective ecosystems. But i'll be honest my bet is that software for IOS and Android that can do increasingly difficult and specialised tasks will increasingly be coming.

We shall see on Win8 and how much of a success it will be, I think it will be a massive (relative to Win 7) failure. And I think it will be the last full version of Windows to sell in significant quantities if they don't manage to get some penetration in the phone and tablet markets.

FB

Good points FB, but I think that one thing that Windows has in its favour of iOS and Android is the developers. The majority of code for the .NET platform is done by good programmers, people who study for years and make sure that their work is free of bugs, and works as expected. The problem with iOS (not the Mac OS) and the Android platforms is that the developers are people like me

I could teach pretty much anyone to develop iOS and 'droid apps in a weekend, and to a standard where they'll get accepted into the relevant stores, but it takes longer to learn .NET. As such, I've been finding that generally the code standard of Windows is a lot better. Which is bizarre when you think of all the bugs and viruses.

The Chrome platform is a bit of a different matter, simply because it's not really a platform it's a web browser. But then, there's even more really bad web developers than there are 'droid ones.

This is pretty long, but has some interesting stuff to say.

It is frankly a little hyperbolic mind...

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/12/android-won-windows-lost-now-what-the-battle-of-the-century-is-decided-microsoft-relegated-to-ever-s.html

FB

I think I've read stuff by this person before, and whilst they talk quite a bit about what's happening, I'm not sure they actually *get* what's happening in the real world.

They go on a lot about convergence and consumption, these are two very big buzzwords in the web industry at the moment (regardless that Douglass Adams was talking about them years ago). What's the writer's missing at the moment though is that consumption is one thing, production is another. It's easy enough to use Google Docs to read documents with, but to actually use it as a replacement to Office or the Mac equivalent. It's doable, but it's a shift. It's not easy enough yet. Plus there's software that is needed for quite a bit of production that you can't get on the mobile/consumption devices yet. And I think it's this that the article misses out on.

Yes, Android is taking over the consumption market. But saying that'll kill off Windows because of consumption is a bit like saying that desktop PCs were going to kill off television back in the early 2000's because of TV tuner cards.

Android is spreading so quickly because of how incredibly cheap it is. Not just the operating system, but the hardware needed to run it. The majority of the 2 billion Android phones quoted aren't Google Nexus or HTC Ones, they're makes we'll never see and do very, very little in the way of mobile interwebbing. For a start, most of them will be running on networks that aren't capable of supporting mobile internet over in Africa.

So yes, Android is growing *very* fast. But it's a different market place and the figures often quoted are out of context.

Back to your points (And I hope I am not coming across as over argumentative. Planning a blog on this my self so having someone to argue the points with is really helpful Pastey).

On the Development platform bit I think it would be a big mistake to confuse the complexity of a platform with thw quality of the software it produces. I have used some terrible software made by professional software companies, jaw droppingly excellend Android and IOS apps and vice versca.

What I would say on this though is from an "end user" perspective (and lets be honest it is "end users" that drive platform adoption and take up) simplicity of use trumps back end programming skill every single day of the week. The app market is massive becausev IOS apps were so easy to use that ordinary "tech muggles" whop had owned PCs for years but never bought software suddenly found it easy to use software. And Apple pulled off a trick that Microsoft had never managed, they convinced ordinary people to pay cash money money for software.

What I mean by all this is that in terms of how software is likely to drive the personal computing market, it is ease of use, and ubiquity that will power the winning ecosystem/systems. That isn't to say Microsoft can't get back in the game but I think i will be exceptionally difficult for them to do so.



For me the biggest single problem for Microsoft is that because they have yet to make any meaningful inroad into the smartphone/tablet market they are having a huge part of what their business model was eaten away.

Five years ago pretty much any computing you needed to do had to be done on PCs. But for a large (and increasing) part of the population loads of those tasks are now done on Smartphones and Tablets. I do most of my banking, shopping, casual web browsing, social media even youtube viewing from my phone or tablet.

This year will be the Xmas of tablets, iPad's, iPad Minis, Nexus 7s, Kindle Fire HDs will sell by the metric sh*t load (I very much doubt Surface tablets will sell in anything like the same quantitites). This then becomes a virtious circle for IOS and Android as their user base increased development for their platforms (because of their profitability and ubiquity respectively) becomes increasingly attractive to developers.

At the same time the increasingly power of the hardware means the barrier to whatr kind of software that can appear on phones and tablets is getting lower. Lets be honest 3 years ago the idea that a tablet could effectively run something like Adobe Creative suite, or triple AAA games would have seemed slighlty ludicrous.

But you know next year there will be system on a chip stuff based on 28nm architecture running 4-6 core processors clocked at north of 2ghz, 16 core and quick mobile graphics processors are already the norm andm ost top end mart phones and tablets will soon be packing 2gb upwards of RAM.

Now as well as being soft porn to tech enthusiasts tthat also means that increasingly complicated and professional software can and will run on IOS first, then Android. And the barriers to business's using these platforms principally will increasingly decrease.

And unlike Linux, when it was starting to make inroads against Windows, IOS and Android already have massively installed users bases. People are used to these platforms, they know how they work. If it got adopted at their workplace it would be a little different and hard to start with but nothing like a tech muggle trying to use Ubuntu for the first time.



My central point though is this has to be seen against a backdrop of what enterprise will do in the short/medium and long terms. The truth is most of us at work don't use a PC for high end graphics work, most work pcs are used for:-

Email
Word processing
Web browsing
Spread sheets
Presentations
Instant messaging
Video conferencing
Front end for mainframe type information systems

Of those, it is only really the last that needs client side infrastructure (which increasginly is moving to web based for cost/easy of use). Most of the stuff we do on our PCs *at work* doesn't really need to be run from programs stored on your PC.

And lots of that stuff is already moving to the cloud an the internet in business's. I can access my work email for example from my phone. And this is a private phone not a work provided one.

Five years ago you *needed* windows to be able to meaningfully work, now you dont. And that is going to have an impact on how this plays out.

Microsoft is a massive company and I agree it would be foolish to write them off, I am being a little hyperbolic myself for rhetorical purposes. All the same I don't think the writing on the wall looks great for Microsoft. I can't beleive their prospects have looked bleaker at anytime in the last 20 years.

FB

Oh and i'd take your point about like google docs. It isn't there yet, but it will be soon. Really soon i'd say. Gmail and Calender are already good enough, as evidenced by the really large number of enterprises already moving to it.

And similarly the spread argument are spot on. All the same the Google figure for activations (Android devices that connect to Google apps) which are much more likely to be high end HTC/Sammy type devices are still mind boggling! And IOS penetration, especially on tablet is massive.

I don't think we are there yet, but I think the current direction of travel is clear.

FB

Also skewed figures, every Android device "connects" to Google apps even if you never do. It's very annoying to say the least, and it's a lot of work to get rid of it.

I'm pretty sure the Google activation figures only covers the handsets and tablets that are certified as part of Googles rules and the open handset allaince.

Things like the Kindle Fire, and non approved Android devices dont have the crucial vendor.framework apk or any of the backend for the Play store.

Makes it a right hassle sometimes to Googlefy Kindle fires or cheap chinese devices.

FB

I'm pretty sure I had Google's App market (before the name change to "play") on my Notion Ink Adam. It didn't come with it though. I had to side load most apps before it was allowed on it.

Certainly on post 3.0 devices there are a whole range of apks that need to be sent to the system partition to be able to connect to google stuff. It is hard, on the Fire HDs for example to even get things like Gmail and Gtalk working without a little tinkering.

You can't just sideload the play store APK now.

Though it weas pretty easy on Gingerbread devices. Like with the Adam getting the Market on the Vega wasnt difficult.

FB

I'd like to be able to get them off. A lot of the test devices we have here have so much rubbish on them that we sometimes struggle to get test apps to actually fit.

That is presumably usually more due to bloatware or ridiculously small ROM on devices though isn't it? The vending.apk and play.apks are not actually very big in of themselves.

When you have a purely vanilla android system ROM, maybe one compliled direct from AOSP they are usually pretty small.

FB

Yeah, a vanilla rom is tiny really, but our testing devices are "as is" from the vendors, which means they're full of utter junk. The amount of bloatware being added to phones these days makes the old OEM PC installs seem slim.

What annoys me is most often, the bloat ware from the vendors can not be removed without root access.

And you can't even ignore the bloat ware apps because you keep getting periodic reminders as they try to update (and further bloat).

For sure vendor bloatware is a nightmare.

Though luckily for me i don't think I have ever owned an Android device I didn't invalidate my warentee by rooting and stripping out all the crud inside 10 minutes of opening the box!!!



FB

I rooted my current phone, an Motorola Triumph, but I haven't bothered replacing the OEM Gingerbread ROM (yet) as my father has the same phone and it comes in handy to be able to walk him through any issues he has.

That said, right now we're both having the same issue with Google Sky Map not orienting correctly. I suspect the compass needs to be calibrated but so far this morning I haven't found how to do so.

I'm thinking about going ahead and swapping over to a new ROM and if that goes smoothly dragging my dad's phone over as well.

My main phone is on ICS, and it's really good. We've got a couple of JellyBeans in the office and they're incredibly slick.

Google Sky Map? Not heard of that...

It's awesome, when it works. See a planet, but not sure which one? Just pull out your phone and hold it up in front of you and it will label the planets, stars and constellations in that part of the sky.

Okay, day after Christmas convos -- I'll start, shall I? And TIA, for any pointers.

I got a really good price on an entry level smart phone, and have been playing with it...although I'm not activating it until my current month is up, since I don't want to lose the time/money left on this month.
It's an Android 4.0.4 ICS, from Virgin Mobile -- called a Kyocera Rise -- have no idea if it's available over there or what it would be called. Are there pitfalls I should be aware of, as I set it up? Tech-muggle here.

I'm not sure of what pitfalls to watch for, but I can recommend a few high priority apps.

First app you should get is a security app. I recommend LookOut mobile security. It will guard against viruses and also allow you to track or find your phone if it's lost or stolen.

The second I recommend is Juice Defender. This one simply maximizes your battery life by powering down things when their not needed like your wifi connections when the phone is idle.

After that, I highly recommend Google Sky Map. Last night I used it to identify that the planet >1° from the moon was Jupiter. You just hold the phone up to the sky to identify stars, planets and constellations.

Another that I recommend is Google Goggles. It has a lot of uses, from scanning bar codes to check prices, to identifying various other things like logos or even works of art. I believe it will also translate text.