Windows/Microsoft could actually be the first ones to make a concurrent OS that ran from phones to pcs and be "all the same" on all platforms. They really could do it. Really, like right now if they wanted to .....
But they don't seem to want to do it right now. Microsoft is on hold waiting for their new CEO's direction and he hasn't been hired quite yet.
Of the Windows versions out there, Win 7 seems to be the best appreciated Windows version from those whose deal with Windows in a IT environment. Most stable, best supported.
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Please remember, the terminology in Linux had to be made different back then so that the ugly old time Microsoft didn't have something to sue you over back when they were actively suing Linuxes and SCOs and IBMs over everything -- and yes, them geeks do tend to be cutsie when they go to naming things. The geeks at my work have named the servers after the planets in the original star wars Trilogy --- my office attaches to the Naboo server, for example.
Mountng and unmounting terminology is older yet, it goes all the way back to 1950s Unix days, so you actually "do it" in the background in all OS products, even Windows. Mint no longer uses the term but goes with the generic "open" & "close" two click motif (on the Mate desktop, anyway). That's progress for Linux Mint and they do more of it on the traditional Linux desktop type user interface than anybody else does.
Except for Ubuntu of course, who has left the planet and lives on a Unity deathstar of their own imagining now-a-days.
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Let's see ----- Serowbot now understands Android 4.1 or .2 fairly well, he understands its limitations as far as anything he would want to do real work on. And I agree, it isn't. Android would have to grow up a lot to be a sit down desktop workspace.
Now me, I can live a computer life and do postings with pics and all that stuff on a Linux Mint Mate machine just dandy using an old first generation AMD Athlon 1 ghz processor machine. I gots plenty of power and quick and all that stuff on a processor that isn't much at all by today's processor standards. And that is kudos to Linux being light and quick compared to any modern Windows. The interface is fine and it uses every piece of an old desktop computer in the way you expect it to, including tapping the sleep button on my old keyboard.
A modern Windows and Explorer would bring the old white box to its knees in quick fashion -- I see it everyday at work because some of the music labs have Windows machines not much more modern than my old white box in them and they CHOKE DOWN on the current Explorer, right painfully they do.
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So, what is the future to be? It is coming within the next few years, so we might as well get some pre-thoughts together.
First, America's future will not be the same as the Orient's future. America has already become sort of irrelevant to the oriental folks and since they are driving the cart now and they do love to compete with each other more so than holding to any "standards" or "OS requirements" or anything else pretty much. They compete up to the point of sale, and once the product is sold they don't let anything like past compatibility slow them down for much either for what they do next.
They ARE going to have competing OSs inside competing products and as such are doomed to be what they are right now, a bunch of quick little guys hopping around the football field bashing each other in the helmet with baseball bats and lacross sticks.
Intel is going to get better --- They will make relatively more powerful processors and throttle them back to get decent battery life as that is the path they are taking right now.
Can they get cost competitive doing this? Not yet. At Walmart they are selling an $89 new built Black Friday special, a 1 ghz single chip Intel processor in a 7" tablet made by HP that has a gig of systems memory and 8 gigs of flash and that single core processor (the most modern type that Intel has) will drain the battery totally inside 5 hours of use.
This is not competitive battery life at all (which is why it went from the assembly line directly to a Black Friday Special).
It runs Android OS at that price point, since a copy of Windows would just about double the cost of the tablet by itself.
At the same price point Walmart is selling ARM based 7" units are swinging dual core ARM processors with better specs on the same android OS that get 10-12 hours of run time and actually give you a solid 8+ hours in real daily use no matter what you do with them.
So no, Intel isn't there yet at the low end really at all. And MS isn't even in the low end picture, period.
Go up to the middle to the very top end, and Intel will be in there, competing. Perhaps not with MS's OS on it as MS adds a cost penalty that is greater than the total profit margins for those middle ground products.
Intel is one of the creator/supporters of Tizen, along with Samsung. Tizen is coming out of the gate fairly well polished and with a starting purpose statement that includes phones, tablets and laptops.
Since Intel is a creator/backer, Tizen has baked into it the full set of Intel support structure. I look for good things from Tizen as Intel will keep it "backwards compatible" with Intel chips and Samsung will keep it state of the art in ARM as that state rolls forward and begins to fragment.
And ARM/Android is going to fragment. Google is doomed to lose control of it as they simply won't roll it forward into a full OS product.
The ARM basic "hard macro" designs are quickly becoming the purview of the Chinese Cheapie Guys as one by one the old-school chip players have begun to roll their own versions of ARM starting now.
This list of "roll our own ARM chip designs, thank you very much" group now includes AMD, IBM, Caldera, Texas Instruments, Freescale, Microsoft/Nokia, Intel/Altera, and Samsung.
Of these build their own ARM chipsets, the group also includes "roll our own OS" groups as well. Tizen group includes IBM, Freescale, Intel and Samsung. Android/Chrome group includes Google/Motorola and all the Chinese Cheapie Guys.
The game will change for the Chinese Cheapie Guys when the Chinese government steps in and states what the standards in China shall be, as they just did in the PC desktop side of things just recently. This will be avoided for as long as possible, but look for the Chinese government to state requirements that suit their needs eventually.
China likes open OSs ..... they feel they can do business with Ubuntu out of South Africa and they would generally tend to support those open OSs that originate in China in particular as they can put their thumbs on them.
Google is the pivot point for Android right now, but that is changing as we speak -- Google refuses to finish a full OS out of Android and some Chinese Cheapie Guys are currently doing it for them anyway (Rockchip, for example).
Watch Rockchip -- they hold a designed by themselves "cheapie world" leading RK3188 quad core ARM chipset and a designed by themselves (android based) near desktop OS right now. So, the Chinese government preference would likely go over to them and they are right there under the Chinese thumb to be supported and controlled.
China's Miltiary has just sold the ghost of MIPS off, by the way, to Imagination, the VR graphics people. Why, you ask? I guess they are done with it, having sucked all the juice out of the EMP hardened MIPS designs the USA military paid for back in the day. Nobody likes Imaginations VR graphics for much lately, so Imagination is going to do a Google and make up their own MIPS based OS that uses their VR graphics stuff (gots them a prebuilt customer base in China, they do).
How will it really roll out in the next two years? Who knows ......
...... all we do know is that
more people will start computing in the next two years than the total of ALL the people who have ever computed in all the years before.
And anybody who is really popular during this critical massive expansion period will own a significant slice of the future world of computing, no matter what they did (or did not do) in the last 30 years of computing.
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