The race is on.
The race for GUI and therefore desktop PC supremacy is back on between Apple and Microsoft officially. Again. Microsoft made it so this past week with the intro of its response to Apple’s widely praised and wildly popular iPhone. Surface is the name of the Big Box, and Microsoft thinks so much of it they have done the following:
a)had a big set of press annuoucements;
b)have a large set of pages devoted to Surface; and
c) have labeled it a NUI – Natural User Interface.
No small deal. Surface says Microsoft can do some GUI things like Apple’s iPhone … but in a container the size of a bread box and at a price that only Las Vegas casino owners can afford … literally.
Surface does some of the gestures and has some of the touchscreen prowess of the iPhone. You know – not just drag and drop but also gestures pioneered in the Web world by the Opera browser but brought to a MacOs powered screen by iPhone. Its the winning GUI flair in the iPhone – whiz around this way and the screen image rotates, draw down and the list expands or the entry moves down. What Bill promised 17 years ago with information at yourfingertips. What HP had going for it with its touch screen two years before that in 1988. Touch screen and gestures will be the next great advance in GUI and User interfaces along with GUI Integration.
A Sumo Contest of Size
This is also a contest of Size. First, its is the two Sumo Sized egos in contention. Second, because Apple has huge mind share like Microsoft used to have ; and Microsoft has market share that Apple has always craved – and secretly, I think Steve Jobs feels he was cheated out of by his buddy Bill. It is also a contest of size because Microsoft has shown it can blow up its touchscreen to the size of a breadbox while Apple has shown it can do the full works including MacOS operating system into an iPhone the size of a banana bread slice.
Now you tell me who you think is leading.
The contest now is how quickly can each vendor convert their GUI device into a laptop with at least 14″ diagonal screen selling for about $1500-2000. Given that Vista is el Bloato, this means that desktop PC market share is back up for grabs. An information-at- your-fingertips notebook will win big Big BIG BBBIIIIIIGGGGGG PC market share.
Given that both of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are confirmed Zero-sum players (“my winning of a monopoly market share means everybody else has to lose”) – let the bbbbbaaaaadddest man win.