The Linus view of GNOME 3.2

[Alan Cox]

> very convincing and well-grounded in facts. The *majority* of Internet
> connected devices will definitely be in the smartphone and tablet
> category in the next 3 years. That does not mean they will be the *only*

That's very questionable. The majority of internet connected devices
*with a user interface* probably - and at the current takeup almost
entirely phones. How much of a shift this really is you can debate for
hours given that the phone/tablet/pc divide is IMHO essentially an
artificial construction caused by current hardware limits.

We don't ask "is that a phone or a watch" any more. We don't ask "Do you
have a PDA and a phone" any more. In a few years time it won't make sense
to ask "do you have a tablet and a PC". To me the more interesting
question is how you ensure when you get home and stick your system on the
charger that it backs up, switches to the fast processor on the base
unit, fires up the monitors and speakers and does so seamlessly, ditto
when you take it away, ditto when it's put into the car, ...

> The fact of the matter is we are already seeing this happen. Smartphones
> are starting to displace even desktop computers in low income families
> because they are cheaper (as in $200 range), constantly connected, and
> do actually handle most of the basic tasks (e-mail, basic Web, etc.)

Actually if you look at pricing a second hand PC is cheaper at the base
level. However it's hard to maintain like all PC systems, it needs
technical poking now and then while Android has pretty much (not quite)
succeeded in being a 'just works' environment along with a 'can reset and
get it back' model.

One of the most convincing marketing explanations I heard for all of this
is that the end user PC market is finally segmenting more. It's splitting
more and more clearly into groups like

- I don't type a lot, I don't care and if my phone does it with the least
  hassle I'm sorted

- I need a keyboard but otherwise don't care (traditional low end PC)

- 'Power' users - technical folks, extreme gamers

- My computer is a style statement

> that were once solely the domain of PCs. Tablets are quickly displacing
> laptops in the business world. The main barrier is that they are more

I don't know where you got that from, but worldwide tablet sales hardly
back that up.

There is one point that is being missed though, critical to the whole
argument. Try using Fedora 15 / Gnome 3 on a touchscreen - its absolutely
unusable because of things like the window resizing behaviour.

Alan