“A war between two of the major conglomerates will always have casualties, and unfortunately for us, this time we are the casualties. We aren’t yet at a state where it is impossible to use Google services on Microsoft platforms, but we are moving towards a stricter ecosystem world where we might see Googlers/Gmail users on one side and Bingers/Outlook users on the other. We can only hope for the sake of technologies future and for the sake of innovation that the two companies can learn to work together in an ever expanding world of data.” We can hope so, but we’re talking large companies, and large companies do not care about users. Never have, never will.
Personally, I’d love to have Metro apps for Google Voice and Google Plus, if for no other reason than to be able to have desktop notifications for both. There are solutions for that already, but they’re not elegant. For example, I tried this:
http://gplusnotifier.com/en-GB
It required an app to run in the background, which consumed over 100MB of RAM. Somehow, I don’t think a Metro app would be quite that greedy
Ah well, at least we’ll be getting a native Facebook app soon, which I want for the same reason.
> Personally, I’d love to have Metro apps
That is a combination of words I just can’t comprehend.
I guess I’m not happy with the loss of interface/features that the tablet world is bringing to destkops.
I say don’t be so narrow-minded
When I imported Facebook contacts into one of the Metro apps (I forget which one), I get a little popup notice when somebody IMs me. I click the little window, fire off a reply, hit ALT+TAB and then back to what I was doing. Sure, it’s not a full-featured desktop app, but it works well in this limited capacity, because Metro apps stay frozen in the background when they’re not doing anything. Besides, installing apps like this on the desktop, having them consume RAM, along with space in the system tray is kind of a pain. Personally, I prefer using Metro for this.
Only problem is, this feature only seems to work about half the time with the built-in Metro app, which is why I’m looking forward to the native Facebook app
On the bright side, the notification API is available to Desktop applications. So an enterprising developer could technically develop something which leaves you in desktop mode with the new notifications.
Yeah, that would be great
$100 buys you 16GB of RAM. The worst IM program might use 0.1GB. You can have hundreds of systemtray icons and only show the ones you want to see.
I think you just want to put other choices down because you like metro.
LOL. RAM is not the issue here, Disk IO is. The more programs you have running and the more RAM they consume the more disk IO there is, like it or not. Even with an SSD, disk IO just isn’t fast enough to deal with too many / bloated programs.
Keep it simple. Running as few processes as possible makes the system Real-World^tm faster and that has been the result for the last 10 years despite constant improvements in processor speed and RAM capacities.
Go ahead, get 16 GB of RAM, turn your page file off and try running 100+ processes. I can assure you a machine with 2 GB of RAM running 20 processes will _still_ be faster.
Bloated software kills performance almost regardless of any technological improvement. The only true way to be fast is to simply load less data.
To play the devil’s advocate, this wouldn’t matter so much if modern OSs were actually able to prioritize disk accesses properly, or alternatively if applications stopped performing long tasks like disk accesses in their main UI thread in a blocking fashion.
In hardware, disk seek times, which are the time intrinsically needed for a disk drive to switch from reading the data of a low-priority task to reading the data of a high-priority task, are of the order of a milisecond. So I don’t buy the “hardware is too slow for multitasking” argument. If you imagine an OS optimized for responsive multitasking that would enforce a prioritization policy like “foreground tasks can get full access to system resources for up to 90% of the time, while background tasks share the remaining 10%”. In such a scenario, why should the amount of background tasks matter?
Edited 2013-07-11 06:35 UTC
Do able using systemd under Linux. You learn that this is not quite as good as it first seams when you think about it.
The items that are background tasks include items like print ques. So you have foreground task and it now wants to print and there are too many background tasks it might fail to print completely. Why because particular model printers have time limitations on when can receive messages. Print ques are one of many examples of background tasks that you kinda need to perform reasonably well. Of course there are other tasks that really should wait until slack time appears in system.
Systemd starts addressing some of this by making like cups and other services that are not required all the time start on demand.
Really no hardware is too slow for multitasking. The question is will it grant you a quality experience.
Linux Cgroups can order priority of IO requests this is how systemd pulled it off.
There are many solutions to the hard disc reading problem for multitasking. One is more ram like a battery backed up ramdrive and having a OS able to use that ramdrive as a cache to the old school cheaper spinning media. Linux use of ram also helps.
Writing is the worst problem at times. This is a bit harder to do prioritisation on writing half a file is not good.
In this case, hardware access with time constraints should probably be treated in a soft real time fashion, similar to the one outlined above for foreground tasks.
Generally speaking, I think that “pure” round robin scheduling where tasks are only prioritized in a relative fashion is a bit overused nowadays. It’s perfect for providing the illusion that equally important tasks are running simultaneously, but when tasks run under time constraints (latency for user-facing tasks, others for hardware), the scheduling policy really should outline this
It is true that a lower latency comes at the cost of a worse throughput, but in my opinion OSs have taken throughput optimization way too far for interactive computer use. It’s okay to maximize disk performance when the OS is running on a computer that is not meant to be directly used on a daily basis, like a server, but when user-facing tasks are present, they should really be treated with special priority.
Edited 2013-07-12 06:10 UTC
Not true. I’ve worked in both customer service and engineering in a very very large company and we cared greatly about the customer.
We engineered something because we wanted our customers to like and purchase our products.
We did our best in Customer Service to resolve all issues our customers had which included intensive data gathering and analysis, co-opting members from engineering teams to work on specific issues, adjust QA and to market processes and procedures to insure bugs did not get out into the customer realm, etc.
“Never” and “always” are nearly always wrong and probably never right in this context. There is always one example to the contrary.
BUT extremely large publically traded companies where the founders don’t have a lot of influence anymore are more prone to have the behavior Thom is complaining about. They nearly always only care for shareholder value and not the customers/users.
I reckon you are right… I just feel odd about sweeping statements and what I have found is that while they (large corporations whose boards drive everything, and the boards are concerned about their stock) do make questionable decisions (in light of the customer) from time to time, in their own favor, MOST of the time it is all about the individual workers who work hard to do what is right for the customer.
So… yeah, sometimes bad decisions or policies are implemented by the flag officers, but the line officers still strive to “do what is right.”
And yet Google shuts down Google Reader because 10 million users is not enough for them. While feedly and newsblur are glad to have even 1 million users.
That is why _on average_ big companies don’t care about the customer.
Yes, I suppose some products are axed simply because they are not generating enough revenue or interest (overall, 10 million might be a drop in the bucket to google).
They ARE out to make money, I don’t forget that, but that does not negate hard working employees and their relationship with customers/clients.
I guess I am being extreme in the other direction. I know of what you speak… it’s kind of like electing a politician that promises all bread will be buttered, then he simply throws the bread away once he’s elected.
And millions of Google Reader users were willing to pay even for a service that almost cost nothing for Google.
But I have learned my lesson. I don’t trust Google anymore and I am preparing to be screwed even more by Google.
The single newsblur developer is awesome and really listens to his customers. The $20 per year is more than worth it and the software is completely opensource. He is an example of how I would like to use all my software.
“After booting up the machine she heads to the Windows store to download her collection of Google applications.”
Nobody on the planet has ever booted up windows 8 and gone straight to the windows store looking for apps; especially not the person in this example.
yeah, I think the example was more than a little strained here. I mean its Google, they are a web company first and foremost. If you want to search, use gmail, or watch youtube, you don’t need to go to an app store, you just use your web brower. So what that google doesn’t really make win8 apps. I plan on getting a new computer later this year and it will probably come with windows 8, however I’m not the least bit worried I won’t be able to use google stuff, I use them online through my browser now and I will use them online through my broswer then.
I think the Windows Store does have a discovery problem of sorts. Some people just don’t know that its there. When they have discovered it, I’ve found the people I’ve observed actually go ahead and download a few apps (mostly games which they’re surprised exist on iOS and the Windows Store)
I think this is different on tablet form factors where people are more used to looking for app stores. I do get a higher proportion of downloads on my apps from tablets.
I did. Then looked around and went back to Elementary OS and dual booting.
Yes they do, especially the young. They totally expect to be able to just run the app store app and download apps.
I continue to use primarily Google services. I have three Google accounts and currently no plans to quit using any of them. I have an Android phone, so I don’t have trouble trying to connect to any of them. My next phone will probably also run Android, so I don’t see any potential major problems popping up in the foreseeable future.
I have created two Microsoft accounts back when Outlook.com was first pushed out as a preview, and so far haven’t really used them… I just kind of played around with them. I don’t have or intend to buy a Windows Phone, or anything with Windows 8/Windows RT for that matter, so as far as Google compatibility in terms of “apps” on a Microsoft operating system… I personally couldn’t care less. An Xbox 360 is not entirely out of the question, but on a gaming system the very last thing I give a damn about is checking my e-mail, so again… I couldn’t care less about Google access.
However, I am paying attention to what Google does… they have been irritating and occasionally downright pissing me off recently, so if something needs to be done I will consider ditching their services. I already started this when I jumped from Google Talk to a 100% XMPP/Jabber server as a result of Google’s plans of closing down and locking up their Talk service for Hangouts, and if I really have to I’ll consider switching other services… *if* I can find a similar, roughly equal or better service to replace it with. Google and Microsoft are certainly not the only companies I have e-mail accounts with, so Microsoft is not my only alternative in that aspect.
Edited 2013-07-10 01:03 UTC
I think Google is being particularly aggressive, even smart, in preempting Microsoft with this platform protectionism.
There are likely more people heavily wedded to Gmail than Outlook, so it does screw customers, but they don’t lash out at Google as much as they just don’t opt for Windows Phone.
To be clear though, I don’t think Google can afford to ignore the Windows Store on Windows 8.x because of the potential size of the addressable market. With Windows 8 sales being in the tens of millions and growing at a steady pace, you’ve already seen Google make moves to support Windows 8.
They are hoping Android becomes their next stage for their services and displaces Windows eyeball for eyeball but this obviously isn’t happening fast enough or necessarily a guarantee to happen at all.
At the same time, Microsoft is fighting back aggressively to claw back some share from the others. The entire company has been put into a yearly release cadence which for a sprawling company like Microsoft is pretty significant. Couple this with the looming re-org and you quickly see a company that is serious about taking on its competitors.
Windows Phone may or may not take off, but Windows 8 is an eventuality that Google has to come to terms with. It will complicate things quite a bit for them down the road I think, where they ignore Windows Phone but can’t afford to ignore Windows as a whole.
I just use GMail as an aggregator from my email accounts to read email outside home.
At home I use the trusty desktop IMAP client and take care of doing proper backups.
If tomorrow Google decides to go wild on my stuff, I can easily disconnect from GMail. The only downside being the access to Play Store on my Android devices.
I already gave up on Picasa and went back to host my pictures on my own web site, when they started nagging private albums had to be made public because of Google+.
The main problem is with the population at large that aren’t tech savy.
All companies are in the game for profit, it took some time, but I learned my lesson that there aren’t good or bad guys in this game.
They did? Funny, because when they announced that, the only difference I saw was that albums *defaulted* to public. So now I have to manually select private for a new album, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same. I still regularly upload albums that nobody can see except me, and some that only those that I specify can see.
It happened when I got a Google+ invite, right at the beginning.
The outcome of such suggestion was that I deleted all my Picasa albums and am yet to have a Google+ account.
I thought this was a perceptive article by Marco Arment called ‘Lockdown’
http://www.marco.org/2013/07/03/lockdown
Apple is entirely closed off, allows zero public access to any of the data it collects, and gives you no way whatsoever to take your data away or use their services with non-Apple products
Marco approves.
Google closes Reader, allows you to take away your data from it, and move to one of the many competing products that have now emerged, re-igniting innovation in the RSS field. On top of that, Google gives insights into all the data it collects on you, allows you to take it out of Google, and makes it services available for everyone to use, no matter the platform.
Marco screams bloody murder.
That’s not hypocrisy at all. No sirree.
Edited 2013-07-10 10:10 UTC
You can export your contacts, calendars, bookmarks and mail from Apple apps in formats that can be read by non-Apple and non-Mac programs. What is data exactly do you think you cannot get out?
That’s not a response to single point that Marco made. No sirree.
Your comment was just the sort of distracting ad hominem attack that people usually use when they can’t actually respond to any points of substance.
Go on – prove me wrong
you do realize that what you’ve said has absolutely zero to do with the issues that marco pointed out right?
Let’s talk about the real losers here, I’m talking about Open Source applications that consume standar services, while we see these two companies fighting for power with propietary protocols our choices will start to narrow. We are going backwards.
Edited 2013-07-10 02:57 UTC
Its pretty much impossible to use most Google services (except email) on windows phone, and i expect that one day it will be near impossible with Windows too.
Edited 2013-07-10 08:55 UTC
Right, how do you think they’re going to pull that one off? Google services are mostly accessed via web browser, Microsoft can’t do anything about that without severe customer backlash.
It’s not Microsoft that would be doing the blocking. Google is the aggressor here as we’ve seen them previously block WP8 access to maps, WP access to Gmail EAS, unnecessary IE warnings in Gmail, etc.
They’d probably risk another antitrust by doing that.
Start WIndows 8. Install Chrome. “Oh look, now I have access to all my Google services!” Problem solved.
Chrome is basically Android on the PC with sync on the fly. What I like in Google services (although I don’t use them every day, or even every week, but like them) is that one app, Chrome browser, gives you everything on Windows/Mac/Linux machine. And I can be logged in all my Google stuff on Chrome, while I’m more or less anonymous with Firefox.
It’s very good thing to have second browser for “Google’s internet” and Chrome is ideal for it.
Google can’t afford to lose Microsoft users, Microsoft can’t afford to lose Google users. They can resist all they want, but in the end they’re going to have sex.
Fact one if you pay Google for enterprise services you can sync outlook and windows phone against it.
Why is it not free. Microsoft wants to be paid per user using those connection methods. Its the fact that Microsoft wants to be paid is why those features are turned off for free.
So Google now only offers those features on paid services.
Also Windows Phone users you are a very small percentage of phone users. Google does not need to give a stuff about you. Sorry you are like Linux Desktops have been the unimportant minority to large companies.