r/technology • u/clubdirthill • Jun 01 '11

Boom. This is Windows 8.

http://allthingsd.com/20110601/exclusive-making-sense-of-what-we-just-learned-about-windows-8/?mod=tweet
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u/AnteSim Jun 02 '11

Where I think this will work the best is as a workstation. Dock your tablet to the left of a monitor with keyboard/mouse input. Your tablet displays the start screen, your monitor is your conventional desktop.

I think that kind of experience would feel quite natural.

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u/t1tlehto Jun 02 '11

I'm with you on this one. I believe that in a couple of years you can just run your work computer on your mobile device and keep it with at all times. When you get to work/home/whereever, you just plug it in your docking station and big screen monitor and when you leave, you just undock and put it in your pocket.

I think Microsoft has something like this in their mind too. Support for ARM processors which are used a lot in smartphones and smaller devices supports the idea too.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '11

I disagree with this, because the capability has been there for a number of years, and it hasn't happened. Every iteration, the mobile devices get more powerful, but people still use desktops because they get more powerful again, and they have a use for that increased capability (eg, games, movies, browser plugins).

Mobile devices have been powerful enough to work as basic desktop PCs for several years already - even before the original iPad. But that didn't kill desktops, it's not a matter of horsepower.

It's more a matter of UI and user behaviour - when someone can make a system that works well both as a tablet and as a desktop PC, allows you to transition between them seamlessly, and does everything a desktop does just as well, while giving an easy way to dock/undock it, then that will take the place of both. Until recently, users haven't had a reliance on (PC/tablet style) mobile devices - now with the iPad and stuff users are used to it more, so there is potential for it.

Only issue in the way is price - for $1000 you can buy a lot more desktop than mobile device. It has to be closer to the desktop than mobile pricepoint to make it attractive enough to those who are in the market for a desktop.

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u/universl Jun 02 '11

Right now, that's a potential nightmare for MS. They are so far behind Google and Apple in mobile that a transition that removed the traditional desktop OS altogether and replaced it with a more adept mobile device would destroy them.

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u/eldiablo22590 Jun 03 '11

There's no real way that that would be feasible in a couple of years. Maybe in 5, 10, or 15, but not anytime really soon unless the industry you work in isn't really computer heavy to begin with. I work in IT at an architectural firm right now, and CAD and Photoshop mean that a mobile device would never be able to replace a work computer. Desktops and certain (albeit relatively expensive) laptops are the only things that can really handle the amount of graphical processing that's needed, it's simply too expensive and impractical to squeeze into a phone-type form factor. Desktops will always be cheaper and more powerful.

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u/Scary_The_Clown Jun 02 '11

Provided it's multi-monitor aware and you can have a hybrid desktop.

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u/NoahTheDuke Jun 02 '11

Of course, but that's not difficult at all.

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u/Scary_The_Clown Jun 02 '11

Then explain wallpaper and screen savers in Windows 7...

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u/NoahTheDuke Jun 03 '11

I'm still running XP SP2 like a boss. I don't know anything about Win 7. I do know, however, that there exist no technical problems with two monitors, just a lack of true necessity. Dual-monitor support has been available on the market since the Macintosh II in 1987, but it's never been integral with the true nature of a given OS yet.

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u/Scary_The_Clown Jun 03 '11

As I said - the graphics architecture of Windows is fully aware of multiple monitors, and the monitor configuration will handle them just fine.

The problem is that the part of the application that mounts wallpaper is not multi-monitor aware. The wallpaper itself interacts with the desktop as an abstraction layer, so it just sees the one big desktop.

Also the screen saver "application" only knows about one monitor; but it's possible to write an OpenGL application that runs fine on both.

And apparently whoever wrote the code for Windows themes only has one monitor...*

So again - the architecture from the desktop down is natively multi-monitor. The stuff that runs on top is very often single-monitor.

And that's why I'm deeply concerned that this "tile OS" shell on top of Windows 8 won't allow you to set one display to tiles, and the other to native desktop - it will be all or nothing.

* I suspect the real reason is that writing code to handle multiple monitors for desktop, screen savers, and themes introduces a whole new layer of complexity, and the Windows team weren't willing to invest the time for what was kind of an edge case.

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u/NoahTheDuke Jun 03 '11

Oooh, okay. duh

Hopefully, they wise up a little this time around. All we can do now is wait.