I disagree that we will ever see a FULL fusion of desktop and touch OS's. Sure the OS may present two interfaces and they will be married closely but honestly I don't ever want to see "one interface to rule them all".<p>Fact is we're used to doing things on desktops that are precision. Pointers are very accurate and we can manage large amounts of data on-screen very well. Touch UI's are different by design because simply put our fingers are fat lumps of meat. We need to alter the UI when it will be a touch experience to account for that lack of accuracy.<p>To try to ultimately merge these two I think is a mistake. You're bound to loose some of the qualities that make each UI ideal for its intended use. I don't want to tap tiny icons with my finger, I don't want to scroll huge tiles with my mouse. I don't see why it's such a bad thing to accept that they are two completely different use cases with different capabilities.
I would love to see a Windows 8 review by someone who understands both tablets and PCs... but this isn't it. The author has so bought into the Microsoft view of the world that I genuinely wonder what they've been doing for the past five years.<p><i>We are now entering the post-post-PC era, and its focus is the PC. A new, smarter, more versatile PC. A PC that lets users browse the web casually in bed and work with massive databases in SQL Server. A PC that can run a $0.99 news reader as well as it can run proprietary $99,000 CRM software. A PC that is as ideal for playing Angry Birds as it is for running a modeling environment that allows its user to build schematics for a skyscraper. This is the future of computing.</i><p>Er, no. No it isn't. That was the model that MS were pushing for a decade or so with 'Tablet PCs'/UMPCs and it has failed utterly. Most people DO NOT WANT a single device that can do all that, because the necessary design trade-offs produce a device that isn't very good at anything. Apple's realization of this fact (and their execution) is why they're the biggest company in the world, and why Windows Phone and Windows 8 are playing catchup.<p><i>The machine I tested Windows 8 on is a pre-release dockable Samsung tablet with a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM. Yes, it’s a tablet with a fan. It’s also a tablet that can run your existing desktop-grade enterprise software, consumer software and lightweight Metro-style apps. Get over it.</i><p>A Core i5 in a tablet? What's its battery life? I bet it sucks. People aren't going to 'get over it', they're just going to buy iPads.<p>It's nice to see MS executing again. Windows Phone looks great. Windows 8 looks promising, if they can negotiate the backwards-compatibility waters of a new architecture. But I hope MS can see what they've been doing wrong for the past decade better than this guy, or their further decline is assured.
There are 316 millions iOS devices, with nearly half of that sold in 2011.<p>I don't know the actual install base numbers, but presumably it is close.<p>1 billion isn't far off
not more than 2 years ago we've heard of the 'post-pc' buzzword, people haven't got rid of pcs yet and now we have a 'post-post-pc' era? really?! btw which web are we now in, since web 2.0 is passe?