This has been coming for a while. Phones have become increasingly important and are now the most important (or only) device for many people. It has been focusing on developing hardware and software for the mobile phone market for some time (as long as it is still called that). ). From here, development moves to other areas. In the past, new technology always came first to computers, and the development of central processing units (CPUs) was primarily based on speed. Nowadays, efficiency is by far the most important thing.

Phones with 8GB of RAM are very popular these days, while new computers are also sold with 8GB.

We also see the same thing on the software side. New applications (except games) increasingly focus on online or mobile use, both in their interface and in their expectations for RAM, CPU, and storage.

I wonder what impact it will have on the operating system market. Windows is still the dominant operating system on PCs, but it plays no role in the mobile market. We’ve had Chromebooks for some time now that are blurring the lines between PC and mobile, and part of the tablet market is also moving in this direction. Apple also sees interest focused on mobile devices, including its own devices.

The most obvious choice is and remains Windows. The Windows version for ARM has never been very popular, but it does exist. Backwards compatibility used to be a bottleneck for everything except x86, but emulation/virtualization is so good these days that it’s not an issue anymore.

On the other hand… if your primary device runs Android and has no legacy tying you to something else, why would you want anything else on your PC if Android runs too? (Same for Apple).

There is currently little pressure to switch. In fact, people don’t like change and many don’t even want to upgrade to the next version of Windows. We see the same thing with every version of Windows, as people stick with the old version. Even if MS gives away upgrades for free, they still pray and beg. MS is in a difficult position in this regard. On the one hand, they don’t get any money from people who never buy an operating system, and on the other hand, they have to compete with Google and Apple who give away their operating systems for free. So it seems that Microsoft is increasingly using Windows as a platform to sell services, and like Google and Apple, to make money through its App Store, cloud services, and advertising.

The problem for us users is that our interests shift even further into the background. Writing good, fun software becomes completely dependent on other concerns like showing as much advertising as possible, vendor lock-in and paying subscription services. Almost every mobile phone comes with junk from the manufacturer, and this is rarely an improvement (for the user). I’m not saying I want to ban it (far from it), but it shows that there is little incentive to make a difference when it comes to the software out there.

It is perhaps most evident with operating systems that display advertisements to the user. Then it immediately becomes clear that it is not to serve the user? If MS (or Google or Apple) really wanted to help the user, they would write the best ad blocker ever and ship it as standard. But no, they don’t do all that. Then you know that you are not the customer but the cash cow. I only see an ad blocker being provided as standard with some Linux and Android distributions.

People seem to accept that. I cannot understand it and can only explain it as desperation and ignorance. They don’t know any better than to see calm everywhere. People don’t know enough about IT to really identify the problem and they don’t have an alternative to turn to anyway, so they accept it as is.

I’m curious where we’re going.