Review of 2011: Is the Wintel axis starting to buckle under pressure from Apple, ARM and Google?

The Wintel desktop OS axis is being buffeted by Apple, ARM and Google - will it go into a tailspin?

This past year saw a number of important operating systems released or previewed.

It was also the year when the internet browser wars were rekindled.

The biggest OS announcement this year was the developer preview of the next iteration of Microsoft's desktop operating system, Windows 8, and I travelled to Microsoft's BUILD developer conference near Los Angeles in September to hear what the company had to say about the operating system.

With its large icon 'Metro style' interface, optimised for touch screens, and with social media applications at the fore, Microsoft is hoping Windows 8 will go head to head with Apple's iPad and the Android tablets.

At the BUILD conference, developers were given a Samsung tablet device to keep, an announcement that not unnaturally raised the biggest cheer of the event [see picture].

We found Windows 8 to be ideally suited to the tablet format, which suggests Microsoft has at last woken up to the threat from mobile devices to its desktop OS market share.

Things were not so rosy when we tried using the OS on a standard desktop with mouse and keyboard, which we found painfully slow compared with using the tablet's touch screen.

That said, when using the standard Windows 7-type desktop, running as an application in Windows 8, mouse and keyboard are better than the touch screen.

This is because the touch screen is limited owing to standard desktop user interface icons and font sizes being too small. OK the icon size can be changed, and font sizes can be increased, but at the expense of screen estate.

Shall we just say the touch screen is non-optimal when you're dealing with applications that haven't been rejigged to work with the touch screen.

The beta version of Windows 8 looks likely to be out at the end of February.

One thing Microsoft wouldn't say at BUILD was what different versions of Windows 8 there will be. You can see them announcing home and enterprise editions of a tablet version and maybe still keep an edition for standard home and enterprise desktops.

Review of 2011: Is the Wintel axis starting to buckle under pressure from Apple, ARM and Google?

The Wintel desktop OS axis is being buffeted by Apple, ARM and Google - will it go into a tailspin?

ARM versus Intel

The fact that there’ll be an ARM version of Windows 8 also explains a great deal about where Microsoft sees the competition; and it is with those iPads and Android tablets currently running ARM processors.

An ARM version of Windows looks decidedly bad for Intel as well, as this company has struggled to make any impact on the tablet market.

In fact the only Intel tablet we saw throughout the year was Fujitsu’s Stylistic Q550, the performance of which was poor.

If all the other Windows 7 tablets performed as badly, enterprise tablets such as BlackBerry’s Playbook, or Motorola’s ET1, which both have run Texas Instruments (TI) OMAP 4 ARM-based processors, will be ripe to take the Windows 7 tablet market [see pictures].

The performance of the Motorola ET1, which was running Android v.2.3.4 (codenamed 'Gingerbread') and the BlackBerry Playbook, which ran under QNX (an OS produced by QNX Software a company acquired by RIM in 2010), was far superior, and had the more intuitive user interface.

Mac OS X Lion, Thunderbolt and USB 3.0
Apple also released the next iteration of its desktop operating system, Mac OS X Lion, and upgraded it a few months later with its cloud service offering called the iCloud.

We also reviewed the Mac OS X Lion running on a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air and were impressed by its usability, especially on the Air, which sported Apple’s new 10Gbit/s-capable Thunderbolt connection [see picture]Apple, however, seems not to want to put USB 3.0 connectivity on their systems preferring its own proprietary Thunderbolt.

The performance of the Thunderbolt devices we measured was impressive, but it's possible that storage and peripheral manufacturers will opt for USB 3.0 instead, considering Thunderbolt a niche market.

USB 3.0 data transfer rates, which we measured on a variety of devices – from USB Flash memory sticks to USB 3.0-enabled solid state devices (SSDs) and hard disks – was 3-5x that of USB 2.0.

This is not a ‘breakthrough’ performance improvement, but if you’re filling a 16GB USB Flash drive, it's useful.

As USB 3.0 devices are improved and the interface is refined, expect transfer rates to rise sharply. However, don't expect them to mirror to the theoretical 6Gbit/s USB 3.0 interface and device manufacturers tout in their product marketing.

Review of 2011: Is the Wintel axis starting to buckle under pressure from Apple, ARM and Google?

The Wintel desktop OS axis is being buffeted by Apple, ARM and Google - will it go into a tailspin?

Android tablets
And the Android camp hasn't been idle. They've released a flurry of ground-breaking tablet form factors. One example is the Motorola Atrix – a mobile phone that clips into a dumb laptop shell [see picture].

Also see the Asus Eee Pad Slider, a tablet hosting a slidable keyboard – [see picture].

However, if there’s one launch this year that will act as a shot across Apple’s and Microsoft’s bows, it would be the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. The Transformer appears to be a bog-standard laptop, however users can detach the screen from the keyboard and then use it as a tablet [see picture].

You can easily store data locally too, since there’s USB connectivity and support for MicroSD cards – unlike Apple’s iPad 2 which we also saw earlier this year.

There are also two lithium batteries in the Transformer, one in the base unit and one in the detachable screen giving a full working day's battery life. If I was in the market for a new laptop, this would be the one.

Browser wars
Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9, and Mozilla began to release Firefox versions every six weeks.

Just last month, November figures from StatCounter showed Google’s Chrome browser, one of the few that uses WebGL to deliver content, surpassed Firefox in global market share, at 25.7 per cent against 25.2 per cent.

Whether Chrome can beat Internet Explorer, currently on about 40 per cent according to StatCounter’s browser market share data, is another question altogether.

My favourite browser? Well, I still have a high regard for Opera Software, the Norwegian team that put together the Opera browser. As the underdog, I’d like to see them succeed, but they’ll have some stiff competition in 2012.

The Wintel axis
So will the Wintel axis (Windows + Intel - the number one combination for desktop hardware and software) start to lose market share in 2012?

Can the Wintel axis dent the Apple/Google Android mobile device market? It might, if Intel can crack the mobile device processor market.

As well as being under pressure in the mobile processor market, Intel could be about to feel the heat from ARM in the server area as well, especially as ARM unveiled 64-bit versions of its technology in October, and is pushing to get its chips into servers – the initial market being for low power storage and print servers.

Open source Linux distributor Canonical, famous for its Ubuntu package, announced a new desktop version of the OS this year – v11.10 – it also released a technology preview of the server software for ARM-based server hardware.

I actually think 2012 will be a holding year for the Wintel axis; it may then pick up following Microsoft's Windows 8 release (probably at Christmas 2012 or early 2013). Intel can spend the year getting a grip on the mobile processor market.

To demonstrate the competition Wintel faces, check out the latest update of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer – called the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime.

Asus must be cock-a-hoop with this Transformer update.

It’s the first quad-core tablet (using the latest nVidia Tegra 3 processor – based on ARM’s Cortex A9 design), has an 8-megapixel camera, lets users store data locally, and probably has a battery life similar to the original Transformer – of around 15 hours.

By the time Microsoft releases Windows 8, the Android/Apple/ARM trio will have had an extra year to innovate.

And although Microsoft will be shouting about Windows 8, the competition may well have stepped ahead.

The next year will be an interesting one for the Wintel axis.

Happy Xmas and have a great New Year.