Death of the PC? You don’t have a clue what one is

Apple, Google and Microsoft have only just finished their events and we are now subjected to the usual fanboi articles from the press. Now, I’ve come to get used to this, articles that feel so unbelievable biased to one of these tech giants over the other two, often stupidly so, but recently, the articles themselves just are not understanding the basics of technology or what’s been going on over the past decade, let alone what appears to be happening right now.

My main gripe though in this post is the lack of understanding what a PC actually is. It seems that journalists and fanbois alike, think a PC is a 1990s desktop PC, that’s simply crazy. In addition, people like gartner and forbes with their market analysis constantly needs to re-asses the definition of a PC in the tech market, simply because PC in its pure form covers the vast majority of devices available.

Mobile is PC

First off, let’s just clarify one thing, a mobile phone or a tablet is a PC. PC = Personal Computer, so mobile devices if anything fit that terminology much more closely than what everyone it seems thinks a PC is, a good old 1990s desktop. Mobile is so personal, and it’s a computer, so it’s a personal computer.

As soon as you grasp this, it becomes clear why Microsoft (who seems to be forever linked with desktop PCs) is starting to make its own hardware, specifically aimed at “mobile” and more importantly, expanding that market away from where the likes of Apple and Google dominate. By that, I mean pure “mobile”, as in more focus on personal, less on the computing aspect.

What’s been going on

Since Apple really turned a mobile phone into a form of PC, the market has been shifting towards smaller, more personal devices, and as such, removes the need for homes etc to purchase a good old desktop machine. What has been a complete success is actually removing functionality and reducing computing power. I for one could do more with an original windows mobile pda device than I could do with an iPhone for example. Hell, I used to be able to control servers from that thing. But, the usability of it wasn’t simple, and to be honest, the vast vast vast majority of users use nothing more than a web browser and a handful of simple applications on mobile devices. Because of this, Apple made another great innovation, and that was simply making the phone bigger, so it was easy to use on the sofa. Enter the iPad.

Tablets really are where the majority of day to day users now carry out their computing (if not still on their mobile phone). The reason is because most tablets again, with the web, and access to good apps provides everything the majority of users understand. However, sales if iPads etc seem to have reached that point of market saturation, and that’s not a surprise, end consumers cant keep on buying, buying and buying the same thing. In essence, the PC market is now moving away from desktops to tablets, but that’s still the same PC market.

Microsoft trying to be different?

With the release of Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface, Microsoft essentially said “yes, we are very late to mobile devices, but we have a vision were these devices are just as powerful as the desktop you used to have”. Now the reason this isn’t that popular is because the vast majority of users doesn’t need that power or complexity. Hell, the tech journalists don’t even understand that’s what Microsoft is trying to do, nor why.

However, the Surface Pro device hit some notes with large chunks of the mobile PC market, and that chunk was focussed around productivity. Though the majority of users out there don’t need to be productive, there is a market for people who are productive and want productivity from their devices. How many people do you know (in business) who turn up with their iPad. They may make some notes on there, but then when it comes to carrying out anything worth doing, pull out a laptop that appears to be a number of years old? Essentially that user is now carrying two devices around with them? That’s not the point of tablet or mobile computing is it.

Microsoft therefore tried to provide for that niche market, in the hope to get a foothold I believe and then expand that to us daily users. It’s taken until Windows 10, and the most recent launch event from Microsoft to really start to show how effective this approach is. With the Surface Pro 3, and Windows 10, Microsoft delivers a device that is Mobile. Its not an old desktop vision for the company or Windows, rather its Mobile and personal first, however with no computing or productivity compromising.

Going forward

Who knows what the market will do. However, Microsoft must be hitting the right notes with sales of Surface Pro devices doing well. You have to just look at Apple and the iPad Pro to see that Apple and Google are aware that Microsoft approach will see them selling devices and potentially taking away market share from them both. After all, why carry an iPad and a Laptop? Or have an iPad and an old desktop machine at home or work when you can have a Surface Pro tablet that is a tablet, your laptop and with a “dock” accessory, replaces your desktop machine too. That’s three devices in one?

For businesses, Surface Pro allows them to provide a single device to their employees, and takes away an utter nightmare regarding provisioning of hardware, policies, security, ISMS etc etc. For consumers it brings the same common sense approach. Why have two/three devices? Why not have a tablet that is my laptop and desktop? Apple and Google have spotted this is a real threat, hence the release of their own “pro” versions of their tablets, though neither has the innovation here or capability to compete with Microsoft Windows 10 or its power on a mobile tablet.

We see that Microsoft is going further with this, especially with Windows Phone 10 and “Continuum” enabling your Phone to replace your desktop with the simple connection to a dock device! That’s your phone powering a real desktop scree,, keyboard and mouse, allowing any user to be productive with just their phone. Enter universal apps from Microsoft Windows 10 and you really see that Microsoft is banking on mobile pcs as actual computing productivity devices, not just personal devices. This theme continues with Surface Book, a laptop first, that can be your tablet (detach the screen) or desktop replacement.

What’s clear, is that the “mobile” market is the PC marketplace, and that mobile appears to be now embracing the need for productivity and computing power. With the market now moving that way, is Microsoft on the right path to take pole position in our computing lives again? Is Microsoft devices along with Windows 10 on the right path, which is all about mobile computing experiences across a range of devices, providing us with real freedom of choice on how to carry out our computing activities while not compromising on productivity or power?

In a recent article in the daily telegraph (Best of luck Microsoft, but the Surface Book isn’t going to save the PC) I couldn’t but think “Oh my God this guy just doesn’t have a clue”. If you think a laptop is a traditional “PC pitch” from Microsoft then you don’t have a clue about what has been going on, what a PC really is or what we are seeing from the tech giants or the marketplace. To be fair though, graphs showing PC sales don’t get it either, they focus on traditional desktop machines, which is a narrow view of the PC market.

One thing we must also remember is that a desktop is easy to upgrade. Many many many consumers out there have old desktop machines and simply update them. The same can be said of businesses, with simple upgrades to RAM, most desktop machines have their life extended quite considerably. Throw into the mix that you can still run Windows 10 on these devices and why do you need to buy a desktop as often as any other device.

The traditional desktop may not be the entire market anymore, but as for the “PC” market, it is simply growing and growing with many more devices delivering personal computing experiences.  Dominating the PC market is still the playing field, the devices just look different!

Is there such a thing as a bad Smartphone?

If you go online and you look for articles on Smartphone’s you will no doubt find loads of reviews of particular phones, operating systems, features etc. and unfortunately you then more often than not get a biased warped view based on the authors preferred device, brand or ecosystem. Unfortunately actual facts and relative information back down to an average user is just lost or not present. Opinion in mobile is, well everywhere, and yet when we think about it, can we really purchase a bad Smartphone these days?

 

Dumb to Smart

It all depends on what you want from your phone, but many more of us now want our phones to be a useful device, be that just for searching the web, consuming some content or actually trying to carry out some small amount of work on them. This is illustrated by the amount of market share Smartphone’s now command across the globe. But if you are moving from a dumb phone to a Smartphone do we really need to know every feature of that device or ecosystem? Probably not…

 

Purchasing

My brother-in-law works for a mobile phone network provider here in the UK, and I always like to get his insight into the kind of people who come in and purchase Smartphone’s. The truth is that the majority of us just want a Smartphone, and because we have heard of the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, that’s what we go in and ask for. We have no idea why we want those phones over another brand or device, just that these are the phones that people are aware of, and that’s great testament to both companies marketing capabilities. It also shows that many of us purchase mobile phones still very much based on brands we have heard of and what our friends have purchased. We don’t purchase a phone like we would a PC, spending time looking at the specification, the pro’s and cons of a particular bundle from the store etc etc. We still see phones as a short term thing which will get renewed in 12-18 months (if on a contract).

Obviously I’m generalising here. There are lots of people who pick their phone based on the quality of the device, the camera, the durability, performance and of course the operating system. But these types of people are the minority (though if you read blog posts or technology articles you would think everyone was a phone expert. We must remember that the majority of phone users do not go near a mobile phone blog or technology magazine).

As a mobile phone manufacturer or operating system, this all means that marketing and relationships with the network are the only way to shift mobile phones. The main audience therefore has to be those moving into Smartphone’s for the first time, mainly because anyone who has had a Smartphone for 24 months is probably attached to that operating system, and therefore more likely to stay with that particular device or brand. (Especially if they have purchased a large number of apps) For the likes of Nokia, RIM and HTC this means all is not too late, since Smartphone users make up just over 50% of the mobile phone market, that leaves another 50% of untapped customers. The battle lines therefore are still being drawn.

 

Consumer education

The problem for all mobile phone manufacturers, with the exception of Samsung and Apple, is that the 50% of potential new Smartphone customers are not that into the real benefits of a Smartphone device. Rather they are getting one because they can send the odd email, surf the web and perhaps use Facebook. Let’s be honest, any Smartphone therefore is a great purchase, and no doubt these customers will just request the phones they have heard of, so the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy.  That’s a problem…Though customers will be happy, they could have been a lot happier potentially with a different device or a different operating system, especially if they were shown or told about all the options.

An example is my own mother. She wanted a new phone, but was told to get an Android Samsung Galaxy, mainly because that’s what the sales guy had. He didn’t take into consideration any of her needs, requirements, what she was looking for neither in a phone nor from the OS. My mum actually wanted an OS that played nicely with her office work, an OS that potentially would tie up with her tablet that she is looking to purchase and something that was really easy to use, real easy. For me, that meant really only looking at the iPhone or a Windows Phone, of which the sales agent didn’t have much in-depth knowledge of. He could talk about the iPhone, but as for Windows phone devices or Blackberry, nothing to say at all….In the end I got my mum to pick based on the UI, what felt easiest for her to just pick up and use, and she went with a Nokia Windows Phone 610, an entry level Smartphone that does everything she wants and more.

The point here is that my Mum would have ended up with a phone that she would have thought was good, but not one that was great for her. I think that’s a problem manufacturers have to overcome with network providers and sales staff somehow.

 

Any Bad Smartphone’s?

Essentially, there are no bad Smartphone’s these days, technically. However, there are bad Smartphone matches for users. The problem is that sales staff don’t marry up what a consumer wants to any given device, rather they let the consumer just real off a phone they have heard of, or sell the device they have themselves. This means that a good Smartphone will feel like a bad Smartphone for a particular user because it simply didn’t fit their criteria, or they have since seen another device that better suited their needs….If sales agents and consumers treated phones like a very expensive purchase, one that needed to match to a consumers requirements, then we would see a very different mobile phone landscape of that I am sure, and there truly wouldn’t be a bad Smartphone….Until then though, status quo…

Will Mobile kill free services?

Sorry to be blogging about Mobile again, but at the moment it’s my main focus of work….In this post I want to have a quick look at the problem mobile presents to companies that live, and potentially die based on advertising revenues.

 

The advertising model

The biggest player in building their business solely on advertising revenue is without doubt Google. Almost everything it does is based around gaining more information on us users, so that it can effectively deliver adverts back to us in a better fashion, so we are more likely to click on them, and Google gets paid. The more clicks, the more Google earns and can even charge. It’s this model that allows Google to deliver pretty much all of their services, and software (Android springs to mind) for free, all funded by charging for adverts. Don’t kid yourself that Google delivers services for free because it’s a loving, don’t be evil company. Most of the things Google deliver for free are there to help Google gain more data so they can advertise more effectively. Mobile is a great example, and one of the reasons Google purchased Android, so they had a mobile presence to locate us and advertise based on geographic locations.

Google isn’t the only company that lives by charging for adverts, there are many businesses out there, small and large, especially online, that make their money mainly from delivering adverts. How many times do you go to a website and there are adverts delivered on it? How many times do you read a blog with adverts delivered on it? Quite a few. Even Facebook only makes money because it charges for adverts that are delivered on the website to us users.

So what happens to companies if they cannot effectively deliver adverts any longer?

 

The Mobile Problem

Currently Facebook is becoming rudely aware of this problem, so much so that its newly floated stock is now trading almost $10 down on its launch. Why? Well it’s all to do with the company’s ability to monetize and take advantage of its 900m user base. You see, on Facebook the website (used from a desktop) we have adverts constantly being shown to us. These are tailored ads, based on what I like, what I talk about, my own personal status, and as such Facebook can charge for these. However, if I use Facebook on my mobile phone, these ads simply aren’t there. The concern is then, with so many more of us using our mobile phones as our primary device to access the web that companies won’t want to pay for adverts if no one is able to see them. This basically means Facebook can no longer deliver ads effectively.

This problem isn’t limited to Facebook. Think of those free apps we have all downloaded that have ads being displayed. They are free because the ads are paying for them. But how much space do those ads take up, and typically you can only see one single advert. The problem is that ads jar the mobile user experience, they don’t fit in well and the user finds themselves scrolling to see the actual content they use the app for. I for one have un-installed 5 or 6 apps now where I simply got annoyed with the adverts.

Don’t think though Google is exempt here. Using search on your mobile is fine, and Google still can display its sponsored links there, however, a chunk of Google’s revenue is displaying ads on other peoples websites, blogs etc. As more of us turn to mobile to access the web, these adverts start to disappear, and therefore so does Google’s revenues from these ads. The next mobile problem is that many of us prefer Apps over a browser experience on our mobile phones. This means we start to not even search using websites like Google.com, rather we use an app. I for one use the Bing app, the user experience is far better than visiting the mobile website version, and it integrates with other tools and functions, such as QR code scanning, voice and local scout (which delivers search results local to me and includes such things as local restaurants, points of interest etc.) This means the only adverts I have any chance of seeing are those sponsored links that come back in a handful of searches.

With all this in mind, can the likes of Google even see revenues falling as it too struggles to deliver ads down to mobile devices? Sure, Google has a big enough market share of search to survive, but can it charge enough to then keep subsidising so many of its ongoing projects, and even worse, the number of failed projects that have cost millions which are raking up?

 

End of free services?

We have got used to so many free services online, Search, Social Networks, watching videos etc. All these things cost money, and currently so many of them are funded purely by the ability to deliver adverts to us online. Mobile really does threaten that model, if you can’t successfully deliver a number of ads down to user’s mobile device, then why will a business advertise with you? If revenues start to fall, then how long is it possible for companies to make losses on all these free services? Google subsidises everything it does based on adverts, but if those revenues can no longer support everything Google does, will we start seeing services getting switched off, or having to pay for them? No doubt Google search will survive, but the question is can Google afford to deliver everything else it does for free?

For the likes of Facebook, the mobile threat is even greater; it really does present a problem. Keep in mind that if this is true of Facebook, a company with some 900m active users, then it will be for any business that is built on advertisement revenues. Mobile really could be the death of free services online, unless companies can figure out a new way to deliver adverts back down to our mobile devices. That’s tough, especially since ads ruin the user experience currently. At the moment, mobile could be the grim reaper for so many free services.

…We shall see….

Windows 8 has got it right

I have read a lot of great things about Windows 8 and a lot of negative things about it too. It seems that Windows 8 has polarized opinion across the media, and this really is shown on blogging sites such as ZDNet and Business Insider. I have noticed with Windows 8 that there are two types of bloggers, those that want to use it, feel it, see what’s actually new and think of it as a new piece of software at beta release (which it is), and those who simply are looking for any reason to say why it will fail and why Windows 8 is the next Vista, or why we should all use an iPad for business or something….What is weird, as yet, I haven’t read a blog that really skews its slant in a biased way towards windows 8 (must be the sign of the times).

So like many things in life, there is no point listening or reading so called journos on such matters (just as I rarely listen to film critics), you simply have to use it, and spend some time with it. So when the CP of Windows 8 was released at the end of February I thought it was time to install it on my work machine and see what it really is made of…

By the way, I am writing this on my Windows 8 machine, using Metro IE 10, which I have to say is the nicest browser experience I have used on any form of device, be that mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop…I really like it….

 

Windows 8 Metro Start Screen

 

Touch

OK, many blogs say Windows 8 is far too focused on touch, and it neglects the desktop and the good old days of mouse and keyboard. This may seem true, when you read the blogs and see some screen shots, but actually use it for a few days (in my case in a hard work environment) and you soon realise that actually, Metro works just as well with a mouse and keyboard. Sure it’s nicer with touch, but everything is nicer with touch, far more intuitive and even dare I say still novel.

What we must all remember is that touch is the future, and that includes the desktop and laptop worlds. Already we see many PCs with touch monitors, and if you have used them, you find their experience is better than standard PCs without it (even running Windows 7). By the start of 2013 I wouldn’t be surprised if most new PCs came with a touch screen option. Windows 8 is a new UI for the next 10 years for Microsoft, and touch has to be at the centre of it, like it or not. If you are one of those people who still want to use a mouse and keyboard, that’s fine too, but don’t knock an OS for supporting what will be the mass market shortly.

Clashing Metro and Desktop

Clashing user interfaces is something that is also being thrown at Windows 8 at lot, people claiming that its “jarring” moving from the metro world to the desktop. I really think this is looking for faults for the sake of looking for faults. I have 3 monitors and 2 of which are in desktop mode, the third Metro, and to be honest I don’t find the experience jarring at all. Sure they look and behave differently but so do many programs you run. Currently with any OS, you have a few windows open and the experience between those windows is just as “jarring” as there is no standard design for apps.

I really don’t find a clash, especially if you stop seeing them as different user interfaces, and see them for what they are. Metro home screen is the start button, just full screen. When you run multiple monitors it’s really nice having the metro side of things on a screen on its own, it works really well. I also have the option to ditch it and go full desktop. We have to realise that metro is start, and metro apps are immersive experiences, designed yes for touch and tablets, but work just as well on the desktop. The Maps App for example means I will never use Google maps or any maps in a browser again! It is a brilliant experience on a desktop machine.

When you run multiple monitors you find that probably on one of them you will have one window open to the full screen, typically for me this will be Outlook, and the other monitor may have VS 2010 open full screen and the third lots of multiple windows open, depending on what I am doing. So the concept of full screen apps in metro fits in nicely with multiple monitors I find. If on a single monitor, if you want to have two windows open at once, you can with Metro, nothing stops you, just that the apps run side by side (a feature many of us use in Windows 7 to snap windows side by side). Not many of us have multiple windows open so we are viewing them all the time, we have multiple windows open so we can work with them, but to actually view them no, we switch between windows. I think the alt tab is the most used key, and with Metro this doesn’t change, nothing is stopping you from opening many many apps…

 

Mystery in using the Metro UI

With anything new, comes new ways of doing things. Many have written that you have to “re-learn” the Metro world, and know where to hover your mouse etc. This is sort of true, sure you have new areas or zones where you hover your mouse and new things happen, but that is “added” to your windows experience, and if you can’t remember to move your mouse to one of four corners to activate something then you really won’t even remember why you are on the PC in the first place.

There are new things to learn, for example start button is gone, but metro home is start, you access “charms menu” by hovering the mouse in the bottom right, or top right hand corner of the screen, sure its new but now you know, it’s pretty easy to remember. If anything its very intuitive once you give it a chance. My Dad who is approaching his 70s is always scared of a new OS coming from Windows as he is still in XP mode, but after 10 mins with Windows 8 he was more than happy with it.

Once you get used to some of the new ways of doing things, you soon find that these are standardised across everything in Windows, which makes life so so so much simpler. Think about changing settings in your browser, or an app, often we end up looking through menus to find where they are (not always in the most obvious place). You then go to a different application and you want to change those settings and yeap, you spend ages looking for them in that app as they are not in the same place. With Windows 8 all that is gone, just go to the charms menu, and there they are, settings…No matter what app you are in.

Oh, and don’t forget, Metro is for all your devices, phone, tablet, laptop, desktop….

Nokia Lumia 800 showing its Windows Metro Interface. Metro across all your devices makes life simple

 

Default classic desktop

So you boot up and you are greeted with Metro, some saying they want to be greeted by the classic desktop and bypass metro, but I really don’t see why. Once in the desktop, what will you do, you will look to open an application. So why didn’t you simply open the application from the metro start screen? If it’s a desktop app, it fires and you are in desktop mode? Booting into desktop, and then clicking on start, then programs, then selecting your application of choice is far more time consuming than selecting it from the metro start screen. Plus, in desktop mode, do I have live tiles telling me information I may need?

 

Metro doesn’t work for everything

Ahh this is true, and this is the point of Windows 8 in some ways. You have one OS for all your devices, so just as typical Windows desktop apps don’t work well for mobile devices, certain metro design concepts won’t work for certain applications. I doubt there will be a VS 2012 in Metro, or a Photoshop metro app. You simply need the accuracy of a mouse, you need the text based menus with all your options, so traditional desktop interface works well.  With Windows 8 you get the best of both worlds, and more to the point the flexibility. I want to be able to do “everything” on my chosen device, and with Windows 8 I have that flexibility. It maybe that I have a metro version of outlook or mail open, but then need to work with Photoshop; I have the freedom within the OS to work as efficiently as possible in both environments. Can you say that with any other OS across any or should I say all of your devices?

I personally am glad metro doesn’t suit everything. If it did, think of those entire legacy apps people would be trying to re-write…They won’t will they, and the desktop works well for those apps, so why re-invent the wheel for something that isn’t broken.

 

Kinect Support missing

This made me laugh out loud; that someone has complained about this is mad! Windows 8 is a beta / consumer preview edition; it’s not a finished OS. Likewise do we have Kinect Support on all other operating systems…erm, no. I’m sure it will be there come the end of 2012, and in many ways you can argue it is there already. Since the desktop world supports legacy apps, it will no doubt support the current Kinect drivers, API etc available for Windows 7.

 

Live tiles ….

I think you either love these or hate the look of them. I personally love the practicality they bring. With my Metro start screen I see so much information without doing anything other than look at the screen. I have noticed I do the same with my Windows phone, no longer do I flit between multiple apps for quick updates, and I simple look at the screen and the various tiles. In many ways, Live tiles are great from productivity and making sure you are aware of what’s going on…

I think if you hate the look of them, you haven’t actually spent any time with them. If you have, the blocky nature makes things easy and clear to see, and the fact they are actually live, constantly moving and updating you with information is great. Many have said that they will look messy once you get different apps and graphics being used, I have to disagree, if anything the tiles look more vibrant. I think the tiles look more standardised, even with lots of different apps and graphics being shown than a sea of icons which I used to have (be that on my phone or desktop). Moving back to the old icon world really does feel like a step back in time now, and I think that will be many people’s thoughts once they spend a little time with Metro and live tiles.

 

Business adoption will be slow

This may be true, but not because Windows 8 is something they don’t like, rather because the Enterprise update in cycles, and this usually means an update ever 2 versions of Windows in recent years. Most companies went from Win 95 to Windows XP. I don’t recall anyone opting for Windows 98. On the server side we went NT 4 to 2000. Roll forward and enterprise moved from XP to Windows 7 and server side from 2000 to 2005/8. It’s not because the other versions of Windows were cra* rather the releases didn’t fit in with the Enterprises upgrade timescales. I think Windows 8 is being released so soon after 7 so that it does miss the Enterprise upgrade path on purpose. This means by the time Windows 9 is being released; everyone will be happy with the Metro concept and be very eager to move to Windows 9 in the enterprise.

Sure in the tablet scene, many businesses will opt for Windows 8 tablets, especially with support for legacy apps. I read in one blog though that because windows 8 on ARM won’t support these legacy apps that business will turn to the iPad….You see the sort of rubbish that gets written? Why would any business chose an iPad in such a case? The iPad also won’t run your legacy apps, so I think the business will opt for Windows tablets on Intel chips and sacrifice the added 2 hours of battery life (so that’s 10 down from 12 looking at the battery span of the Windows 8 Developers Preview tablet).

 

Gamble…

Is Windows 8 a gamble…Yes, but is it a massive one, no not really. If you hate metro, you will live in the desktop mode. If like me you like to move forward, and you are prepared to spend more than 5 minutes judging a book by its cover, then you will soon like Metro and everything it stands for, and that will include the Metro start screen and “apps” in Windows 8…

I think Microsoft have got it right with Windows 8, and we have seen some real innovation finally from a desktop OS.