Political Crossfire Forums

Still love my Windows 3.1. But, might upgrade to 95 soon.

It wasn't even about innovating. it was about ecosystem and creating a platform for app sales. Metro is a platform to sell apps and media, and hopefully Surface tablets, not something to make your computing experience better.

What kind of a technophile wants a touchscreen on everything? The landslide majority who do serious work on computers, ie design environments and such, couldn't care less about touchscreens. Too cumbersome, too imprecise. Like eating soup with a fork. Maybe I don't count as a technophile, but I view touchscreens on a PC as a hopeless gimmick. And I don't believe for a minute they thought it would be a better experience. I tend to think the old men sitting around board tables at MS bought into the "post-pc" thing, saw desktops as a dead end, and tried to drag them in the tablet direction. Win8 is clearly a tablet OS with a little bit of desktop DNA glossed on top, as opposed to a desktop OS with some tablet functionality. These people are slaves to the "next big thing" unicorn hunt, not consideration for their customers' desires. They're trying to pull a classic Jobs angle, where people don't know they want it until they see it. Steve Jobs had the gift of pretty much telling people what they wanted to buy. MS doesn't have that. MS needs to listen to what its customers actually say they want.

Its a nasty example of function following form. "We need a tablet OS...but it needs to also work on the desktop. It needs to look like a tablet OS...and we don't care how aggravating it is to actually use...because tablets are the future. Derp."

Meanwhile, tablet sales begin to level out, and PC sales rebound a bit.

Touchscreens are pretty annoying on PCs. However I could understand the appeal if they were perfect.

I think the computer market is ripe for an all in one device. That is what needs to happen... A device that can work as a phone, that can simply be jacked into a monitor, and act as a full-fledged PC. Ubuntu tried to make a phone like this but I don't think they hit their fundraising goal. So if you want a screen that is tablet size, you just buy the screen and attach your device to it. Or you hook it up to your television. Or you use the touchscreen.

I'd hate to see the market instead continue making different sized computers. We need one computer to do all the tasks and be modular.

I gotta admit, I am pretty excited for it to happen. The cost savings for consumers will be huge, and the modularity of the device would allow you to add more power if you so choose. So if you wanted your device to really have gaming power, attach a graphics card module. Want to compartmentalize your device? Have a separate storage module.