Microsoft's Dumbest And Smartest Moves Of 2011

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Frankly I enjoy Facebook far more through my iPad than I do through a desktop computer.    That aside, the market for desktops is dismal, it hasn't gone anywhere in years.  The GROWTH is in mobile devices. Yes, Microsoft's 90% of the desktop market will deliver a nice steady return year after year for at least a decade more.  But nice steady return with a fade out possible in a couple decades is what is commonly called retirement and is presumably not the way to run a computer company.

Touch interfaces are here to stay, at least until direct neural input is possible.  On the desktop we'll see traditional keyboards and trackpads/mice augmented by touch.  Nobody wants to do database entry on a touch screen, but what about occasionally touching to get a photo in the right angle?  Or on a browser?  Or in iTunes?

Nowadays, people have multiple computing devices.  Desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.  Some people can live with just one of these, but a large number have more than one.  I love my iPad, it's nice to kick back and surf the web on it.  If I have serious work to do, there's always my MacPro and of course my iPhone for simple quick things there's my iPhone.  Several times now I've found myself just sitting down to eat a restaurant and getting the call from work that one of my servers is having problems.  It's usually a two minute fix, and I can easily do it with my iPhone.  What I'm finding though is my MacBook (laptop) is starting to gather dust.  I now pretty much only need it in hotels during overnight stays.

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@commodorejohn

When mice first came out I heard a lot of people complaining "why would I take my hands off my keyboard to go way over to use the mouse?"  Times change.  Personally I got rid of my mouse in favour of a trackpad  some time ago, and much of the touchscreen gestures are are already present in a trackpad.  I can see times where you'll want to touch a monitor.  Touch takes away the abstractness.

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@Iggy

I think that Microsoft will probably leave some kind of Windows ball for the old folks to play with, but the younger generation will likely never even see a Windows ball or know that it once held a clunky way to access your programs...

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@commodorejohn

Did I say you had only one choice?  Pad/Mouse AND Touch Screen.  They are not mutually exclusive, regardless of what Steve Jobs (PBUH) seems to have said.  The main problem is money.  With an iPad you have one 10 inch screen to have touch sensitive, with a desktop you have 2 or 3 screens, one or more of which may be 27 inches....

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@Smerf

Desktops are currently irreplaceable for a significant minority of computer users.  That group is not growing and will at some point shrink.  There will likely be a significant number of desktops for a decade or two, but their ultimate demise is pretty much certain.

[persia]

Yeah, a flop up button that just basically lists your applications folder is kind of brain dead.  Even AmigaOS realised this decades ago.  The whole MS Windows desktop interface could use a serious redesign with 21st Century GUI principles in mind....

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MS Windows is ok if you like doing everything in the GUI, but if you really want to do something in a terminal/command line you need a Mac or Linux/BSD box.