Meta trends - what have we learned?

Posted by 22111
Dec 31, 2013 at 11:27 PM

“The problem for traditional desktop software developers is that the whole nature of the game has shifted. It’s becoming a complex calculation/guess work as to which business model to go for, both in terms of platforms to develop for, and licensing regimes and pricing strategies to go for. My guess is that the successful ones will be those who will be able to develop an eco-system of sorts, with support for multiple platforms (inc. mobile), syncing, web access, and possibility for other developers to write scripts, add-ons etc.”

I am very critical about the current MS slate offering, and they should have kicked out Ballmer 10 years ago… but then, he is out now at least.

I simply cannot imagine that MS slates will remain in their current shape, i.e. either ridiculous weight (too much) and ridiculous battery life (too short), OR not being Windows compliant (= their ridiculous RT series).

Unfortunately, I did not put my money into Apple when their very first iPad was announced/released, because I wrongly thought then that their incompatibility with their Mac OS (iOS or whatever it was then, 3 years ago) would hamper its sales, prospects wanting to wait for a compatible offering, either from Apple or in the Windows world - as you will remember, Windows slates were available but very thick and very heavy.

Now time proved me very wrong, but my original idea cannot be that wrong: If something compatible is available, users will prefer a slate where there will be NO “translation” of data but where they will have their “original” pc programs, and their original data to be processed, just as in ancient times data shuffling from pc to notebook and back (which is complicated enough).

So what Alexander says in the above citation will again be partly overturned in the moment acceptable Windows slates will reach the market - they will not necessarily come (and will preferably not come) from MS, but they will make available regular Windows applications on your slate, and many people will buy slates then, both (like I) as new slate users, and people who will then have had 1 or more slates in other systems - as we know, today, many people use a pc but then an iPad, too.

I think this is so aberrant that most of those users will return to Windows on two platforms, office and slate.

As for cloud services, of course they will become predominant (since 90 p.c. of people don’t bother who has access to their data), and I am aware that this is another core factor in this game since it will weaken the aforementioned effect of the user now being able to use the same data, in the same way, on both his desktop pc and his slate.

Personally, I hope that acceptable slates will come very soon, but I acknowledge that if they do not, it might be too late, most not-heavyweight pc applications (i.e. graphics, video cut, cad, etc.) will have been replaced by cloud applics by that time.

If this is about to happen, you all can be sure no data will ever be safe again, and no applic can be bought, it will be rent, and yearly subscriptions for everything.

I know that the cloud, the web, is very practical for many things, but overall and for most people, it’s a honey pot. Today, you have a choice; if developers are driven to cloud applics (and they will if they see that those are perfectly accepted, both by the data safety aspect and by the financial aspect), many people will mourn over the pc age that will then be lost (with elderly pc users just continuing to use legacy sw up into their old age).

At the end of the day, for developers, web applics are a much better business model than pc applics were, and most users are eager to switch to that business model which in the end is to their disadvantage.

Long-term, the game is over, we know its outcome; it’s just the very next moves that might be of interest to some of us.

Just these days, the ex-Ebay woman that now rules HP had announced she will not have kicked out another 26,000, but another 34,000 staff from this once first-rate company.

In fact, the business model I prefer, and to which HP and MS clinged to, in the past, is already dead today (and MS, with Office 2013, already switches horses).

The web, the biggest honey pot in history, for the masses, and for smarter people, they put some little honey puts into the big honey pot, in order to get them glued, too.

I think I begin to get why no serious developer invests any more buck into pc applics.

The irony here being that those “dumb workstations” from some years ago, to be connected to the corporate server instead of regular pc’s, never took off, but that now, very thin and light slates will more and more be the “dumb but perfectly sufficient end device” for more and more sophisticated web applics, which will bury the pc for good: Even cad will be done on (bigger) iPads, since the respective sw houses will not upgrade their pc versions but by the corresponding web applics.

And in 20 years, they will implant chips in your brain, and in 25 years that will become mandatory.