New Windows 8 marks impending death of the desktop as we know it

If I can keep my current deuced Mac(hina) running long enough, my next one may be implantable.

When it comes to looking to the future, Microsoft may not be the place to seek predictions. I have to think that, as long as there are graphic artists, or people who need to view large spreadsheets, blueprints, et cetera, there will a need for a viewing surface larger than portable devices offer.

And, yes, it can be argued that a person only needs the portable device coupled with a large screen but that's effectively the same thing as occupying the physical space with a desktop computer.

Interestingly, the article mentions: "Microsoft’s biggest problem isn’t any particular flaw in Windows 8, but rather that the operating system itself is less a cohesive unit and more an awkward Frankensteining of two wildly different operating systems."

It appears that Microsoft isn't even able to learn from their own history. When they decided that the Mac operating system was something to emulate they came out with Windows - which was essentially an operating system stuck on top of an older operating system - and we all know how well that worked.

but at a savings of many dollars.

I suppose....if you're going to own both a laptop and a desktop. And, if you only need the desktop, I'm sure it would be cheaper than a laptop and a screen.

And yet that's exactly what OS X is as well.

I'm not any sort of expert but, just applying my simple-minded logic, it's seems there's a key difference.

The original Mac OS was a "from the ground up" GUI system. Microsoft took a system that was not and plunked something on top in order to emulate the GUI.

The OSX system, while it may be "on top" of the original, is a continuation of a GUI that has solid roots in the first system. N'est-ce pas?

My analogy would be car transmissions. One company decides that people may not want to clutch and shift, and might like "Just put it in D and go." When that becomes popular, the second company instead sticks a transmission on top of their first transmission to pull all the levers. It's sort of works, but not nearly as well as the first company's automatic.

Later the first company thinks that customers might like a three gear automatic rather than the old two gear. So they build on what they have - simply modifying something that has has all the wrinkles ironed out.

The second company continues down its original path.

not much, actually. new Macbook Air is $949, a new iMac is $1149. you can get a good, large monitor for $200.

I was referring to Mac OS X being a GUI running on top of a UNIX-based operating system, not unlike Windows being a GUI running on top of DOS.

Ah...perhaps my turn to . I had always thought of OSX as being the existing "ground up" GUI with Unix added (the two gear to three gear analogy).

But isn't that an apple and an orange? The basic MacBook Air and the basic iMac are quite different in terms of memory, storage, processor, et cetera. What's the cost of the equivalent MacBook Air?

Yes, but there is no comparison between the Unix kernel underlying OS X and the MS-DOS kernel underlying Windows. MS-DOS wasn't even original, it was a rip-off of the earlier CpM (Control Program Microprocessor).

I think you mean MacBook Pro, but I get your point. The basic MacBook Pro and the basic iMac cost the same, so yes, there would be an added cost for a large monitor. however, it's not that much, and the point of the article is that mobile, portable machines with a common OS seem to be the coming thing. there will likely always be a market for those that want (dare I call it) a brick-and-mortar desktop, but having the flexibility to grab your computer and take it with you, and just hook up to a big screen when you need it seems to make sense to me. I don't think it will be long before tablets and phones compete with laptops and desktops on a processor/memory level. I'm sure that bluetooth (or similar technology) monitors exist, and just by placing your tablet or phone in proximity to them they become the main monitor.

> I don't think it will be long before tablets and phones compete with laptops and desktops on a processor/memory level.

As for memory, I wouldn't be surprised if at least part of the ultimate purpose of "The Cloud" is to eliminate the need for all but minimal memory, electronic, and, therefore, physical, in devices.

Combining that with the implantable Mac you alluded to above, it looks that 'all' you're really waiting for is the brain interface-cloud link to become a puppet beyond a string. A deuced Mac(hina) indeed...

good point, though the infrastructure of the net will need to improve before that can happen, though I don't doubt that's where we're headed.

Man, does that conjure up a hideous ~ Kafkaesque situation should that brain develop schizophrenia or Alzheimer's or ....

Remember that supersmall also costs extra. It's not just $200 vs a display. There's also an SSD in there. I think a batter comparison would be SSD+supersmall+$200 = big display. Solving that with numbers pulled completely out of thin air, I could translate that to $150+$150+$200 = $500.

Don't be so quick to , don't be surprised by the length of the line at the Apple Store on day one of "OS X Adam," and don't expect to find me on it!

Steve is on record as having said that the next ten years of Apple are rooted in "The Cloud," and I don't doubt that research into at least some aspects of your "brain interface-cloud link" has been underway for some time, somewhere on Infinite Loop.

I'm a little confused by what you're saying, but here's what I see: in the not-too-distant future, we will carry around our "phone" which will actually be the "head" of our computing system. it will have plenty of local storage which we won't necessarily need as most things will be cloud-connected (I think I just read that some chip manufacturer had just achieved a terabyte on a square inch), and the processor will be ample enough for nearly any computing job that most people and businesses will need. at home, I walk to my desk where there is a large monitor and wireless keyboard/pad and I don't even need to take the phone out of my pocket. the same is true for work, or Starbucks... big screens on the wall, keyboards, all connect wirelessly to my phone. add in a headset, SIRI, etc., and sure, the "phone" could be implanted in my arm.

there will always be a need for larger, "main-frame" type computers, but a separate desktop won't be necessary.

it will be sooner than you think. and I should add, I certainly don't think any of this is my original idea, I'm no seer.

The App Store really bugs me. Just launch and take a gander... what am I? 12 years old?

It's a freakin' toy store... and they still don't even have a single chess program worth beans.

R.I.P “Σ” (sigma) Chess.

> [...] they still don't even have a single chess program worth beans.

It's in the works, along with the iTunes plugin that accommodates classical music listeners.

Edit: It surprises me that "Chess" is still a bundled app...or is it? (It's been four years since I bought a new deuced Mac(hina).)

In Lion Chess.app came bundled.
Version 2.4.5, 8.3MB; created in June 2011, modified in Feb 2012.

If it's anything like Snow Leopard, that's not gonna cut it.

The 2-D view is useless... we have to play 3-D. No list of moves, no opening book, no collections (or a library of past tournaments), can't step back-AND-forth through a saved game, can't take back ONE move when playing against computer (must undo both moves). It's just a toy. Follow the link for Sigma Chess to see where a program should start feature-wise.

There are actually a few halfway decent games on iOS. What's needed is a package that covers both MacOS and iOS that has those useful features (and more) which also shares a common database of saved games.

My point in asking was only to find out if Chess is still bundled with OS X, as opposed to the assorted computer games that no longer are (on low end deuced Mac(hina)s, anyhow).

Microsoft is never a good place to look for predictions. In 1995, Bill Gates wrote a book called "The Road Ahead" that was his predictions about the future of computers. It didn't even mention the Internet in its first edition; a second edition was rushed into print a short while later talking about the Internet.

More recently, Microsoft released a movie on YouTube about where they think computers are headed. I think they got it horribly, and somewhat hysterically, wrong; I even posted the video with commentary in my blog. Microsoft's vision has never been particularly good.



I don't think that's really true.

When you look at Windows versions at and before Windows 3, you see a basic windowing system and a primitive program manager running on top of DOS. From the windowing manager, you don't really have access to the file systems. Icons in the Program Manager are links to the applications; documents don't appear in the Program Manager at all; you can't open a window onto your hard drive and see a graphical representation of the files on it. Essentially, what you had was DOS, then a windowing API and a windowed program launcher.

That's not the case with OS X at all. While there still is a Unix kernel underneath it, it's *just* a kernel. You can run OS X without a Unix terminal at all. The APIs, libraries, window managers, and so on represent more than just a graphical shell running over a command-line operating system; you can strip out the command line operating system altogether, if you so desire, and OS X and its apps will still run.



They are the coming thing. I suspect that what we currently think of as computers, cell phones, and laptops are headed for a merger, and devices we'll be using in fifteen years won't bear a lot of resemblance to any of those things we use today.

But here's the thing--those mobile devices will probably still be an adjunct to some kind of larger machine, either sitting on a desk (or perhaps *in* a desk) or living in a server room somewhere. The realities of the laws of physics are that you'll always, with any given level of technology, get more processing bang for your buck when you don't have to worry about form factor, battery life, and so on.



That was the idea behind dumb terminals and mainframes back in the early days. That model has a lot of limitations.

The problem with a cloud-based approach to computing is that shuttling bytes over a large distributed network will always be slower than shuttling bytes over the bus inside a computer. That's not a big deal when you're shuttling around l ow-res graphics or text files or whatever, but some tasks simply can't be done that way. As Net connections get faster, computers also get beefier, and people want their computers to do more.

You can keep your music in the cloud, or your word processing files in the cloud, but can you imagine working on large Photoshop files from the cloud? Editing feature-length movies from the cloud?

Plus there are a lot of social and legal problems we as a society haven't sorted yet. Say you store files in Google Docs. The police can subpoena them from Google, and compel Google not to even tell you that they have been turned over to law enforcement. Is that a good thing? What are the ethical and legal ramifications? If you keep files in the cloud, and someone breaks into your service provider and steals them, who's legally liable? If your competitor steals your client records from the cloud, can you sue your provider? What level of security is a cloud storage provider legally obligated to provide?



There are a lot of problems with that scenario.

With any given level of technology, smaller systems will likely always cost more than larger systems of the same capacity. Laptops cost more than desktops of similar specs, because there are additional problems with power, heat dissipation in a small form factor, and so on, and so on.

So a desktop will always be less expensive than a laptop of similar capacity, which will be less expensive than a tablet of similar capacity, which will be less expensive than a palmtop of similar capacity. Or, put it another way, for any number of dollars X you spend, you will be able to get a larger, more powerful system for X dollars if it isn't portable.

Whether the processors in small devices will be ample for any purpose we put them to is a bit of a pickle. As processors get more powerful, average users put them to uses that would have been unthinkable only a few years before. I think that it will soon be the norm to interact with computers with voice and gestures, and we will expect computers to become very good at figuring out what we want from ambiguous information. That takes a LOT, and I do mean a LOT, of processing grunt. Siri is still appallingly primitive and it requires a supercomputer-class back-end infrastructure to work. As we get computers with more and more ability to interact with humans in a natural way, the lag of offloading that grunt onto the cloud may become less acceptable.

Computers that are implanted in our bodies sound neat, but there are two big problems: upgradability and medical ethics.

Upgradability is an obvious one. A less obvious one is that, right now, in the United States and some other countries, any medical procedure intended to "augment" human capacity is considered medically unethical, and is forbidden by law. For example, it is legal to make a retinal implant to help blind people see; it is against the law to give it capabilities that normal humans don't have, like the ability to see infrared or ultraviolet.

It is legal to give a deaf person a cochlear implant to help her hear; it is illegal to make a cochlear implant that would give her better hearing than a normal human, or to wire that cochlear implant with BlueTooth so that a deaf person can use a cell phone with it (the latter has actually been tried in the US).

> Computers that are implanted in our bodies sound neat, but there are two big problems: upgradability and medical ethics.

"Upgradability" is a problem that will be solved; "medical ethics" is an oxymoron.

Can you cite the law(s) and/or point to documentation prohibiting such 'augmented' medical devices? I haven't seen any such prohibitions in the literature.

I just snagged NeverWinter Nights 2 on the app store for $0.99
an older game but can't diss the pricetag.

As a matter of fact, i blogged about it a while back, with a link to a Ted talk that has that information. Short version: Augmentation is a violation of AMA guidelines; doctors who do it risk losing their license, and therefore the legal right to practice medicine.

> [...] here's what I see: in the not-too-distant future, we will carry around our "phone" which will actually be the "head" of our computing system.

Apple's newly upgraded FileVault supports that by encrypting entire installations against the loss of the portable device on which they are running.

RE Augmentation is a violation of AMA guidelines; doctors who do it risk losing their license, and therefore the legal right to practice medicine.

Mayhap, but if it's only a guideline, it does not have the force of law, and it would only apply in the US.

In past I've gotten prescription lenses which were well beyond my appropriate prescription (ie, augmented vision), so augmentation is a matter of interpretation and opinion.

So the earlier comment that "it is against the law to give it [eg, retinal or cochlear implant] capabilities that normal humans don't have" is overstating the situation.

The Brits have been trying out lens implants (following removal of cataracts) which have the advantage of being 'tunable' with a laser following surgery, thereby providing perfect (if not augmented) vision at the flick of a switch. I'm waiting for those to hit North America.