Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You're being slightly disingenuous. There is a clear difference between a general-purpose operating system, and a dedicated device which (completely invisibly to the user) runs that operating system behind the scenes. I'm sure that most people would find this pretty clear. I neither know nor care what operating system my washing machine uses in its embedded controller - such knowledge is irrelevant to the use of the washing machine. Knowing what operating system my PC is running is, on the other hand, pretty central to its use.
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I would argue that a smartphone or tablet has far more similarity to a PC than to an embedded microcontroller (
where did you pull that ridiculous comparison from, if you want to talk about "disingenuous")... or even a single-use embedded system.
Don't you own a Surface tablet? Is that an embedded device, just because it uses a mobile form factor?
What, precisely, is your inscrutable determining factor between "general-purpose OS" and "dedicated, invisible-to-the-user"?
Because it sounds like your definition of "embedded device" refers more to user knowledge than device design; I could easily make the case that a Windows 8 desktop rig is an embedded device according to what you just said. G-d knows, a lot of people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
