Surface not-Phone already losing the hype war?

[Drael646464]

For the PC you are correct. This scenario worked for Microsoft in PC's because people didn't have home computers or anything like them. So you were introduced to them at work, saw the potential at home, so you bought one for home. Simple. The application of this logic to Microsoft's next device falls apart because this time something else that is similar already exists, is familiar and fills a similar use case.

This scenario worked somewhat again for pocketable computers starting with Blackberry. Blackberry was an enterprise targeted device with some consumer market. But they neglected, just like Microsoft did and is still doing, to think about what a consumer would use it for after they went home from work. The use case for a pocketable device is very different from a production desktop in the office. Blackberry missed this and we all know what happened to them.

Apple, won that battle because Apple realized that the use case for a pocketable computer would mean these devices would spend more time being used after work hours. Few enterprise people would be constantly on their phones during work hours. That is evident from the fact that the enterprise still uses desktop computers to get the majority of work done. I'm not saying that iphones and androids haven't replaced some work tasks, but they haven't replaced the desktop wholeheartedly. Apple targeted a much wider use case for a pocketable device. The iphone was targeted at the consumer to use it's many functions outside of work. After hours. In the other 72 hours that we aren't working or sleeping. Blackberry started pocketable computers in the enterprise, Apple perfected it by expanding their mindset beyond just productivity and sought the general public with full touch and an app store for the consumer.

The desktop scenario of proliferation started with the iphone, and continued with Android because The majority of consumers didn't have a computer in their pocket before those devices. Only a niche group of tech enthusiasts. The average consumer had to learn a new system because they knew no other pocketable system. The iphone was a consumer facing device! The iphone/androids didn't start in the enterprise, but they were so good at everything else and could do some enterprise tasks the iphone/androids went backwards into the enterprise from the consumer market.

This method of proliferation might work for the Hololens. But they feel like Blackberry. AR will come to consumers eventually, but will it be Microsoft that brings it? Microsoft has stiff competition from Oculus, and others. Microsoft also has baggage. Burned consumers that are wary of them now.

For Microsoft to break into the pocketable device market they have to have a huge differentiator. If it is even remotely like the existing phones, it won't survive. Folding isn't enough because we know Google/Apple are also working on a folding device and their OS is what is familiar in the pocketable computer market. The current known use case for a pocketable device is not business production. Pocketable devices are consumer devices with a little business mixed in. (fitting to the number of hours we spend as a worker and a consumer.) If the device can't target the after hours market user base, meaning, basic apps people already use outside of work, as well as use cases for those who don't use a smart phone for work, like the the stay at home mom, the retired couple, or the teenager working a menial job that doesn't require a folding pocketable productivity device. It has to be desirable to these people as well, and overwhelmingly so as to overcome the current device OS that is already meeting their needs and with which they are already familiar.

The first computers were adopted because there was nothing like them in the mass market. The first smartphones were adopted because there was nothing like them in the mass market. Now people have developed deep roots into those ecosystems, like app purchases for instance. This requires any new player to produce a very compelling reason or a completely new type of device that does things nothing else can that the vast majority of people truly see a need for. (Apple never truly challenged Microsoft in the desktop world. but they made the iphone. Now the situation is flipped in the smartphone world.) They also need a product that other players can't catch up to very quickly. By that you gain mindshare. This is what Microsoft did with the desktop computer. This is what Apple did with the iphone, and Google did with Android. Now Microsoft is the one playing catch up. I'm concerned that the foldable phone that isn't a phone, but still isn't good enough to replace your work desktop (although getting closer for some business cases) Combine that with marketing that just confuses people over what the device is (truly it is nothing more than a more powerful pocketable device the general public calls a smartphone) At this point it certainly won't replace your android/ios phone because those devices have way more available basic apps that are missing on Windows still. Why are these apps missing. Because Microsoft doesn't have a phone, and desktops and phones have different use cases.

No that's incorrect. PCs were originally mainframes, and their were no personal computers. They only became PCs after the technology was miniaturized because universities and enterprise used mainframes. A computer used to be the size of a room.

Even the early days of computers, home computers were a hobbyist pursuit. People didn't use the vic20 at work, let alone bring it home. You seem to have missed the actual evolution of most technology, and thus misunderstand how it comes about. The PC wasn't the first computer. It came after a long line of prior technologies. Even the PC was of zero real interest to consumers outside of hobbyists until windows rolled along. And mostly they weren't interested at all, until the internet took off. Before then home PCs were for gamers, hobbyists and productivity. Even the early days of the internet, prior to that bulletin boards - it was primarily hobbyists, academics, government and businesses.

The same is true of cellphones. Cellphones in the 80s were initially a product for millionaires. That is, the smartphone as it exists today would not exist if someone hadn't pitched a product exclusively for millionaires in enterprise. Then enterprise. THEN consumers. After consumers took up the feature phone, enterprise evolved the PDA, and the touch screen (separately) - and from that, came the consumer device, the smartphone.

You'd be hard pressed to find a modern computing technology that would be possible, or exist at all, if it hadn't started in enterprise.

The iPhone was nothing more that a combination of already existing techs. Techs that ALL came from enterprise.

Nothing else will improve the manufacturing process and the technology to get it to the point consumers actually want to jump in.

Graphene folding screens, or graphene nano-computing, or AR - these are not technologies that manufacturers can just throw at consumers and sell units. They are too expensive, experimental, too under developed, and no one would buy them. No one either wants it, or can afford it. Just like early computers, early cellphones or early internet. Only those same groups are really into these ideas - hobbyists, productivity, gamers and the like, only they live on the bleeding edge.

Everyone else comes in, when the water is warm, and the home speakers are set up, and someones been to the store to get drinks.

The next step doesn't arrive tomorrow, because unlike the iPhone when released, the related technologies aren't "baked" yet. Imagine if you were talking about the iPhone this way, when there was no affordable or useful personal computer, or no affordable or useful touch screen. That's what you are doing.

The technology for the next step is still at a proto stage. And that's what andromeda is. It's not "the next big thing". It's a development platform, like the HoloLens. Something to build on, for the eventual day, when the candybar touch screen is as dead as the feature phone was the day the iPhone was released.

To use an analogy for MSFTs hinged device and AR plans -MSFTs hopes are not hinged on "creating the first iPhone".

They are hinged on developing iOS and it's ecosystem in preparation before the iPhone is even technologically possible as a consumer product. Imagine if the same year apple had released the iPhone, someone else had released a smartphone with an OS and ecosystem more resembling iOS five years later than that release, when iOS itself had no apps, no ecosystem and the OS was primitive. If that had happened, no one would really even know who apple are.

This is what MSFT is trying to do, it's trying to LEAPFROG its competition. And that is what andromeda and HoloLens are for. They are not for selling, or making profit or consumers AT ALL. They are trying to be so future minded, they are focused not on today, but on in the future.

They are for selling to enterprise, refining the platform, expanding the ecosystem, so that the day when AR and folding and scrolling screens hit the consumer market, MSFT will be so far ahead, no one else can catch up.

it's not a consumer product, it's an alpha. Something that will eventually down the track, turned into a consumer product, one so refined that the competition won't be able to touch it, because they have been too busy focusing on what will, then, be redundant technology (candybar touch screen devices)

MSFT is actually really lucky, because PWA is a major boon in that. They only need power software, and a platform that encourages adaptive apps, because PWA will completely take care of all the ultrabasic stuff like snapchat and twitter. In that, to develop their plan, they don't really need much development in the consumer mobile space. That really helps things along, for their leapfrog long game.

Side note: Also don't think the PC has been replaced by the touch phone in home use, or non-productivity functions. The highest selling market is laptops and gaming, and fasting growing hybrids. PC's didn't suddenly get replaced as home use devices.

Instead what happened is the computing market diversified - so you have a smartphone for on the go, a tablet for on your coffee table, a laptop for travelling or studying, and a PC or console for gaming (or work, or any other input intensive task). Most homes have multiple devices, and multiple operating systems.


That's the correct way to view that phenomena IMO - it wasn't a computer replacing a computer as a recreational device, it was computers becoming more specialised, more different from each other. That diversity will only increase IMO.

And that is the place for the prototypish andromeda, as a market - it fits a tightly specialised role, that of the enterprise road warrior. Someone who can use a product that isn't entirely polished for other uses, and help develop out the platform and the ecosystem. Someone who needs windows in a highly portable form, with pocketable multi-tasking and stylus functionality. Someone like a salesperson, an analyst, someone who takes a lot of meetings and conferences, or someone in the media - a person for whom a tablet or laptop is too large to cart around everywhere.

Something that fills the computer equivilant role of a notepad.

When we get graphene tech, we will see a similar phenomena - more diversification - because you'll have tiny scrolling phones, dual screen, triple screen. Your wall sized touch screens. Your table and bench touch screens. Because graphene is basically indestructible, can flex, and it can also be use as a nano-computing medium AND for nano-batteries, it will also probably bring about ubiqituous computing - public touch screens everywhere, computers put into every device. We may get to a point where everything becomes a dumb terminal (or rather a slower computer, not actually a dumb terminal), and communicated over a network with a server PC.

And AI, that's sort of a server/PC task. So probably what each home will have is a 'hardware ecosystem'. A PC that runs the home AI program, games, does VR and stores all the homes media. Maybe multiple such devices for power users. And numerous smaller, terminal type devices that connect to it. Same in the office. Then that main AI, central computer will probably connect to the cloud, for even more computing power, and distributed network access.

Of course, at some point if graphene gets really cheap, there may be so many screens everywhere, AR and AI voice control, that we generally, on aggregate, cease to carry screens altogether, and generally start to only use wearables.

 

[Drael646464]

What is the material that will make a foldable display? I mean, it can't be glass. It has to be some form of plastic right?

Eventually it will be graphene OLED. But to begin with I think it is merely glass - basically two curved screens like a "3D' display, against each other, in a hinge, with a crease. If you see MSFTs patents, this is what we are talking about, it's not a single display, and it's not creaseless. That technology is ages away from consumer markets.

The prototype MSFT and Samsung used to first demo graphene OLED in 2015 cost them about 10,000 USD to construct (just the building of it, not the development). Graphene manufacture is still a huge obstacle.

But MSFTs patent has a tech that evens out the visual appearance of the fringe, as to appear flat. So while you won't be able to operate the touch input over the hinge area, you should be able to say, watch some Netflix full screen.

 

[Drael646464]

There also isn't a mass migration to Chromebooks even though Android is now the dominant Operating system worldwide.

Well thats for very obvious reasons. ChromeOS is just a browser, and android apps scale poorly to larger screens (because they are developed for tiny screens). That's also why android tablets are not only not that popular, but shrinking in popularity. The ipad doesn't suffer this problem, because it has development for larger screens.

This is why Apple is also more future proofed - it has a desktop OS, and a mobile OS that scales to larger screens. It's far better positions for its inevitable hybrid OS. Apples issue is more that they refuse to create compatibility. They seem to think they can create to IoT by themselves. I think that's a grave mistake.

 

[anon(50597)]

@fatclue_98 You are correct. My declaration that no device existed is false. My intent was that wide market adoption of such a device among average consumers did not occur before the iphone. Therefore when the iphone was released targeting the average consumer market, they had no competition in mindshare aside from BlackBerry or maybe Palm among the general population. Few people knew that Microsoft even had a device. A problem that Microsoft still has today.

I think this is a fair statement.
I too had a Windows device that could do the things mentioned, but it was not “consumer friendly”. It took a few years for that device to become reality but it was not MS that developed it. When they tried to enter that market it was too late.

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

Corning introduced at CES forever ago a bendable glass called Willow Glass. No news about it being used in anything.

https://www.corning.com/worldwide/e...merging-innovations/corning-willow-glass.html

Thanks. Interesting video.
Another interesting video is here: https://youtu.be/xIAH4q0EWd8

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

Eventually it will be graphene OLED. But to begin with I think it is merely glass - basically two curved screens like a "3D' display, against each other, in a hinge, with a crease. If you see MSFTs patents, this is what we are talking about, it's not a single display, and it's not creaseless. That technology is ages away from consumer markets.

The prototype MSFT and Samsung used to first demo graphene OLED in 2015 cost them about 10,000 USD to construct (just the building of it, not the development). Graphene manufacture is still a huge obstacle.

But MSFTs patent has a tech that evens out the visual appearance of the fringe, as to appear flat. So while you won't be able to operate the touch input over the hinge area, you should be able to say, watch some Netflix full screen.

Thanks for the explanation.
It made me go back and delete my entire comment above. Ha ha

 

[Drael646464]

Thanks. Interesting video.
Another interesting video is here: https://youtu.be/xIAH4q0EWd8

In it, Dr. Chowdhurry from Corning repeatedly says that the glass is flexible, and could be used in large rounded displays, like large concrete pillars for advertising. He implies that the glass is durable as long as it is not being constantly flexed. In every demonstration I've seen so far, the glass is flexed or rolled up, which is cool, but never bent 180° in half like I'm guessing it would have to be able to do on a foldable phone. Also, it is mentioned that Willow Glass looses the durability characteristics of Gorilla Glass due to its flexibility.
For a foldable mobile phone display without some sort of split in the middle, I just don't see how glass is going to be able to handle the stresses of folding and unfolding without showing some signs of damage or breakage. I'm just rambling here. It's definitely cool tech, but I think it will be a while before we see a hingeless, truly foldable (not flexible) mobile device.

This is the graphene OLED display Samsung and Microsoft co-developed and unveiled in 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osidB-Ix_f8

Side note, thats the development that also led to the curves screen, which doesn't use graphene but has overlapping tech.

Since then several other companies have made similar prototypes. Graphene is not only flexible, but it has been used to make bullet proof shielding, so it's extremely durable.

Other related technologies made from graphene are circuits, and batteries. Meaning the entire computer could one day be made entirely at the nano level, inside a peice of graphene based plastic like this.

The issue is that proto cost 10,000 USD to produce. Graphene manufacturing is incredibly expensive. It will take a long time, and a lot of technological break throughs, to get graphene cheap enough for even enterprise.

Side note - graphene serves not only as the basis for new computing paradigms, but will likely be a key technology to filtration, chemical manufacture, nanomanufacturing - basically its a key technology to our entire future. So when we get graphene cheap, it will create a whole wave of new tech. Including things eventually like 'anything printers', and in the early days 'chemical printers'.

Until then, we will not get creaseless displays. A creaseless display requires nanotech - it requires flexible atomic bonds. Andromeda is not creaseless. It uses two screens that have a rounded edge on the inside and "roll" into each other, while the display tech creates an optical illusion that the surface is flat.

So you'll be able to watch things across the crease (like movies), but not input things across the crease (like UI). That limits it's application and target market, but the purpose of the device isn't profit. It's the same purpose as HoloLens - it's entirely to be more prepared that other tech companies for the coming of graphene, to leapfrog the competition.


Sorry to repeat myself so much in this thread, but I want all of this to be very clear, because the originally linked article is exceptionally misleading and people's general grasp of the technologies that lead to 'the next step' is a little off kilter.

I think it's a bit like when people in the 70s thought the year 2000 would have hover cars and personal robots. It'll come, but it's slow, incremental.

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

Well thats for very obvious reasons. ChromeOS is just a browser, and android apps scale poorly to larger screens (because they are developed for tiny screens). That's also why android tablets are not only not that popular, but shrinking in popularity. The ipad doesn't suffer this problem, because it has development for larger screens.

This is why Apple is also more future proofed - it has a desktop OS, and a mobile OS that scales to larger screens. It's far better positions for its inevitable hybrid OS. Apples issue is more that they refuse to create compatibility. They seem to think they can create to IoT by themselves. I think that's a grave mistake.

One thing that is often overlooked is the education market. I teach in a district that enrolls over 14,000 students per year. At the moment, the district's mission is to have a device for each student. What devices are we buying? Dell and HP Chromebooks. Every one of our students graduate well versed in how to get things done in yhe Google environment. And we are not alone. There are 3 other districts nearby with an equal or greater number of students doing the same thing.

 

[Scienceguy Labs]

This is the graphene OLED display Samsung and Microsoft co-developed and unveiled in 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osidB-Ix_f8

Side note, thats the development that also led to the curves screen, which doesn't use graphene but has overlapping tech.

Since then several other companies have made similar prototypes. Graphene is not only flexible, but it has been used to make bullet proof shielding, so it's extremely durable.

Other related technologies made from graphene are circuits, and batteries. Meaning the entire computer could one day be made entirely at the nano level, inside a peice of graphene based plastic like this.

The issue is that proto cost 10,000 USD to produce. Graphene manufacturing is incredibly expensive. It will take a long time, and a lot of technological break throughs, to get graphene cheap enough for even enterprise.

Side note - graphene serves not only as the basis for new computing paradigms, but will likely be a key technology to filtration, chemical manufacture, nanomanufacturing - basically its a key technology to our entire future. So when we get graphene cheap, it will create a whole wave of new tech. Including things eventually like 'anything printers', and in the early days 'chemical printers'.

Until then, we will not get creaseless displays. A creaseless display requires nanotech - it requires flexible atomic bonds. Andromeda is not creaseless. It uses two screens that have a rounded edge on the inside and "roll" into each other, while the display tech creates an optical illusion that the surface is flat.

So you'll be able to watch things across the crease (like movies), but not input things across the crease (like UI). That limits it's application and target market, but the purpose of the device isn't profit. It's the same purpose as HoloLens - it's entirely to be more prepared that other tech companies for the coming of graphene, to leapfrog the competition.


Sorry to repeat myself so much in this thread, but I want all of this to be very clear, because the originally linked article is exceptionally misleading and people's general grasp of the technologies that lead to 'the next step' is a little off kilter.

I think it's a bit like when people in the 70s thought the year 2000 would have hover cars and personal robots. It'll come, but it's slow, incremental.

Thanks for the link and explanation. I'm largely ignorant to display technology. Need to do more research. I like how you used the word "creaseless" to describe the nanotech display. That's what I was trying to get at in my post above. If we're a few years away from graphene displays, nanotech developed displays must be even farther away for sure.

 

[Drael646464]

One thing that is often overlooked is the education market. I teach in a district that enrolls over 14,000 students per year. At the moment, the district's mission is to have a device for each student. What devices are we buying? Dell and HP Chromebooks. Every one of our students graduate well versed in how to get things done in yhe Google environment. And we are not alone. There are 3 other districts nearby with an equal or greater number of students doing the same thing.

Yeah I find that a really interesting phenomena, especially as a non-US citizen where this doesn't occur.
Here in education it's kind of a weird mix. People mostly use windows, but in education they use a lot of google services (gmail, google docs), but there's also a strong ipad presence.
Mainly though it's PCs. Chromebooks are very rare.

Obviously if you can get people familiar with your services from an early age, that can help secure them as adult consumers. But it comes with some interesting oddities in the case of the google ecosystem - mainly in the form of, as yet, people don't use it for work, and outside of that.

So it remains to be seen, if that's going to transfer to adult consumption habits as much as one might like, and that's compounded by the lack of global take-up.

Certainly I can see why google did it, focused hard on hitting the US education market. But the other issue is that it is free. There's no direct tie in between google search (googles profit engine), and gmail or google docs. If someone was familiar with those systems, there's nothing stopping them from using them on PC, especially with the move to PWA. The exception being chrome itself, which will obviously buy search users.

Should the more global popularity of google search slip (and I think it might be a little these days), that service familiarity with gmail and gdocs won't count for much. Duckduckgo has exploded recently, although it's still not tracked by major stats companies, I think it should be. It's quadrupled in size since googles upped its advertising volume and political positioning. It's still under 1% marketshare, but it's growth is rapid - it's gone from about .2 or so last year to .5 or so this year.

Bing has been steadily growing on desktop, to the point where now, on desktop, bing ads are the most clicked ads by a large margin:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-search-engines-in-the-united-states/

If chromes US play achieves anything, it might not be to keep users in the google ecosystem, but rather to fight Microsoft on the desktop, and keep users in chrome and thus google search.

Obviously on mobile there's no real competition. Yet. Most searches on mobile are google. But:

I have extremely strong suspicions apple plans to launch an AI based search engine. If anything's going to really rock to boat, that'll be it. Their AI acquisitions and partnerships look 100 percent like a question based web search.

They have purchased a company that's an AI indexing data based on subject catergory (ie a smart AI web crawler), and partnered with IBM, who own Watson, a question answering AI - that is superbly good at matching questions with potential answers.

They have variously been forced to default to other companies search engines, and have been paid very large sums of money for this. Bing tried to get in awhile ago, but google paid a fortune to keep iOS on google search.

But I doubt it's a situation they are happy with. They always keep tight lipped on new tech, but I'd be more surprised knowing this, that apple doesn't come out with a game changing AI based search engine.

If every OSX and iOS user goes over to apples new search, and it's feature rich and attractive enough to pull more than that - that's going to hurt google big time. And it'll also make the search market feel much more like one with many options, than a monopoly.

We've never seen google really fight for it's main income source yet. I think that's not far off. It's already no longer third in value ranks for companies, Microsoft has jumped ahead. If this happens - people may very well start to internally question the assumed solidity of the company, and whether it can remain as dominant as it has been.

It's sort of inevitable in a way, because of the novel profit model. It's one thing selling a single service based on ads, like facebook. It's another entirely selling a whole ecosystem of essentially free software with only a tangential link to profit via search.

 

[Drael646464]

Thanks for the link and explanation. I'm largely ignorant to display technology. Need to do more research. I like how you used the word "creaseless" to describe the nanotech display. That's what I was trying to get at in my post above. If we're a few years away from graphene displays, nanotech developed displays must be even farther away for sure.

As in "computer paper"? Yes. Creaseless displays I'd put at roughly ten years. But actually putting the battery and computer inside that flexible bit of graphene plastic? Could be more like 20. And they probably won't be too fast either. But by then network tech will make computing more distributed so speed might not matter.

 

[tgp]

Um, I had Remote Desktop, Network File Sharing, Office Suite with Outlook and printing abilities on Windows Mobile well before iPhones were released. In fact, iPhones had none of these capabilities for the first few iterations.

I'm not disputing that Apple and Google took the football and ran with it while Microsoft watched from the sidelines, but please.

Yes, I experienced the same thing. Windows Mobile had a problem though: it was not user friendly. You had to be somewhat of a techie to understand how to use it. It would not have worked very well for the general population. That is probably why the iPhone, and later Android, took off.

 

[fatclue_98]

Yes, I experienced the same thing. Windows Mobile had a problem though: it was not user friendly. You had to be somewhat of a techie to understand how to use it. It would not have worked very well for the general population. That is probably why the iPhone, and later Android, took off.

The HD2 cured a lot of what ailed WinMo with the capacitive display. Not too many people experienced that awesomeness since it was a T-Mobile exclusive and let's face it, TMO sucked donkey d around that time.

 

[taynjack]

I learned computing on an Apple. My elementary school and the Jr. High had Apple computers. Seeing as windows was the dominant system past that i learned Microsoft. Now i wouldn't know what to do with an Apple computer.

 

[Wevenhuis]

I think hardware and designwise the andromeda device will likely throw the competition off guard. In terms of software I'm less enthousiastic micorosft will pull it off with andromeda OS. If they don't show some kind tablet oriented OS that is touch and pencentric and an improved tablet experience over windows 8 and 10, I'm not buying what they come up with.