I’m am watching this aspect with a keen eye, Michel. Perhaps the only difference between us on that point is that I want to see further serious migration (meaning what is implemented stays around) into that tablet arena by businesses before I believe it’s “the next thing”. Everyone said that about iPads when they first came out too, and at least with my customers, they tried it and found it was not as advertised … too many limitations when compared to the laptop computer for real business applications. If I had to paraphrase the common theme I hear from them, it would be, “When is an iPad coming out with the power of a laptop?” When it comes right down to it, they don’t really like carrying a laptop around (let alone the “pregnant pause” it creates when you walk into a customer site and say to that group of customers staring at you, “Gimme a few minutes to get this set this thing up, booted and operating.” (which usually results in more than just a few minutes). But they dislike the constraints of doing what they need to do with the iPad even more. When it comes right down to it, it’s not a choice of what is best as opposed to what is the lesser of two evils.
As far as penetration of mobile devices into business, I think it’s fair to say that “Retail” is the lowest hanging plum (already a lot of mobile apps in use there), Commercial comes next, and Industrial is dead last. You mention in one of your previous posts “a couple of years” before the paradigm shifts … as far as “my world” of industrial is concerned, there’s not the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hades of seeing that happen in “a couple of years”.
But now back to where we are in synch:
As the paradigm does shift (and it WILL eventually), that’s the horizon that I’m trying to keep in the crosshairs. It’s much more a natural segue for me from what I do today … so, keep a piece of that pie aside for me, would ya, please? ^^
Everyone know the trend is mobile and web apps, sometimes seen as true cross-platform applications.
I suspect later, in future, the big new thing will be true-native desktop apps. Again.
One of my clients – a major civil engineering company – has 30,000+ desktops. There’s no way they’re going to design bridges and tunnels or write 500-page proposals and reports on any mobile device. If mobile devices are outselling desktops now, this doesn’t mean that people have stopped buying desktops, just that they like additional toys. And remember, 67.4% of statistics are invented.
To go back to the tailored versus off the rack comment, we need to steal the term “Bespoke” for custom software solutions (mainly because it sounds more “cool” than “custom”).
Hi, we’re Seville Row IT Solutions - your Bespoke software provider. We make sure that our solutions fits your needs perfectly.
There is no doubt that some businesses will still need desktops for a very long time, just like some professions will use shovels and bricks probably forever. And that is good for whomever is serving them. The point is that the average Joe is increasingly leaving desktops for portable devices. And calling them toys will not change that fact.
The ‘Death of the Desktop’ is not a new thing, nor are the statistics associated with such claims. I think it was the Mayans that predicted its original downfall in 2012. Predictions of it fading have been going on even well before then.
Productivity on tablets or smartphones is very low. These devices are good only for a few things to do on the fly or while killing time on the couch. Unless you attach a mouse and a keyboard and multitasking… so basically you reinvent the wheel transforming the tablet into a laptop.
That is where transformers steal the show : tablet and laptop at the same time. As for productivity, not all people buy these devices for productivity. It does not take a keyboard to play Candy Crush on a smartphone, nor is it really needed to surf the web over a tablet.
Basically, applications that consume data, like video, web surfing, music, reading ebooks, are quite allright on touch only devices. And for text entry, if old timers like me will always prefer the keyboard, seeing younger generations typing super fast with both their thumbs on smartphones, I wonder if they will ever need a keyboard. Maybe the next step is the phone used as physical keyboard, both for computers and tablets. After all, it is rather easy to do through Blue Tooth.
[quote=133978:@Michel Bujardet]Maybe the next step is the phone used as physical keyboard, both for computers and tablets. After all, it is rather easy to do through Blue Tooth.
[quote=133978:@Michel Bujardet]That is where transformers steal the show : tablet and laptop at the same time. As for productivity, not all people buy these devices for productivity. It does not take a keyboard to play Candy Crush on a smartphone, nor is it really needed to surf the web over a tablet.
Basically, applications that consume data, like video, web surfing, music, reading ebooks, are quite allright on touch only devices. And for text entry, if old timers like me will always prefer the keyboard, seeing younger generations typing super fast with both their thumbs on smartphones, I wonder if they will ever need a keyboard. Maybe the next step is the phone used as physical keyboard, both for computers and tablets. After all, it is rather easy to do through Blue Tooth.
Actually tablets are finding quite a bit of use in my company. We have eight distribution facilities across the US and tablets allow supervisors and managers to keep up with what is going on without being tied to a desk for reports. Data entry is about 5% of the system activity on our systems. Everything else is reporting.
I’ve tried delphi a handful of times. Had 0 luck with it
[quote=133665:@Michel Bujardet]In the corporate world, though, the destiny of iOS rests on Apple racket-like policies. Ad hoc with 100 installations cannot seriously address big companies, and the iOS Developer Enterprise Programs is definitely not for indies. On the other hand, Android lets a developer distribute his apk through email, and probably with minimum effort could even enable auto-update like some of use do on desktop.
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The big companies I’ve worked for (BP/Amoco and several other large oil & gas co’s) would not think twice about into the enterprise program
Windows of the next decade - isn’t exactly endearing.
There’s a lot of bad aspects to “windows of the future”
Low margin devices where no one makes money except the OS vendor (dell , hp etc who’ve all had serious issues building low margin boxes)
Updates happen only when you get a new device (hence the longevity of XP)
I know what you mean though - commodity hardware that everyone & anyone can afford and is widespread.
Windows itself being the demonstration that the most established dominant position comes eventually to an end…
In a way the ready-made software is experiencing a destiny not unlike the record industry : electronic distribution considerably enlarges the customer base, but at the same time lowers prices. But that in itself may not be bad. Trading hundreds of thousands of customers back in the 90s to hundreds of millions today may yet compensate the lower ticket.
