Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Those are effectively limited-function gadgets....
Modern smartphones and tablets are arguably closer to video game consoles than they are to full function computers....
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Define "full-function computer". Both the Nook and the Fire are much more capable computing devices than the first PC I bought back in 1987 (let alone my CP/M machine half a decade earlier). And the X-Box gaming console *is* a full-function computer; there are at least a half dozen
desktop Linux distros that can be
installed on it.
If we're going to define "full-function computer" as "whatever current state of the art is in desktop computing" then by definition *any* dedicated device is going to be "limited-function". I'm not sure why that makes it's operating system irrelevant.
As I see it, as technology consumers we're not doing less computing than before. We've simply taken the computing tasks we used to do on a single multi-function device sitting on our desks, and distributed those same tasks across a small handful of somewhat less "multi-function" devices sitting in our pockets. But if Linux is irrelevant to my ereading just because I'm reading on a Kindle, then why does Windows suddenly become relevant when I'm doing my ereading on my PC? Ditto Internet surfing, online gaming Skyping or any number of other computing tasks I no longer do exclusively on my desktop?
More and more of our daily computing tasks are being performed with OSes that don't come from Redmond. If the OS of a dedicated device is irrelevant, then why is Microsoft's revenue in decline?