Anyone sell a Laptop any more?

 

A year ago, I saw an add for a cheap Google Chrome Book.  They also had a lot of cheap $150 ‘netbooks’ that was preloaded with Windows CE.  A person had to be careful when buying a cheap netbook, as companies saw it, a Google Chrome book was a regular computer, so was a ‘netbook’ with Windows/ce.  Never mind the fact that you can’t load an operating system that lets you run all your existing software.  Tablets have their place, but especially when your trying to develop software for tablets, one prefers to own a real computer!  Microsoft seem to be wanting to force users to move to Windows 8 apps, and have your desktop look much like our windows phone.  I guess they figure if you have Windows 8, a windows phone, and you can pretty much take your work with you no matter what, then it seems only natural that you’d want to get a windows phone and have your life being Windows everything, much like Apple hopes folks with an iPhone will buy a Macintosh to develop software for their iPhone, and perhaps eventually have all their favorite sofg gware their Macintosh on their iPhone, etc.  Only problem with this situation is, Apple software tends to be from the same companies that made Windows famous.  Weird too, because for some reason artist get this wacked out theory that you have to have a Macintosh to do graphics work, despite the fact that the software they love so much on the Mac is available on the PC, the graphics card the brag about so much for the Macintosh is available for the PC, and now the CPU their Macintosh runs is the same basic CPU that runs on the PC.  It’s really just a Clic that they feel they must be in, because they are an artist.  Enough with the sad state of artist stereotyping their own selves.  Back to the PC Issue.  If I’m going to be forced to buy a desktop that is nothing more than a glorified tablet with a keyboard and pay high end prices for it, why not just buy a tablet and know what your getting from the start?  I mean, buy a new PC, you can run Windows 8 apps for their cell phones and be allowed to run *SOME* of your older software now with the thought that when they upgrade to a newer operating system and you can no longer get support on Windows 8, you’ll have to ditch all the software you previously paid for and buy “Apps” to do everything.  At least with a tablet, when you upgrade, you get to keep your apps, and if you buy a new device you can run your apps on both devices!  I guess with that in mind, when are folks going to make a 52” tablet you can mount on your wall?  Have built in HDMI input, a TV app, TV Tuner port,   Imagine watching TV on your 52” tablet on the wall, you press a button and a menu comes up.  You click record show.  It automatically knows how long it last, so it starts recording it to your hard drive.  You turn on a remote dvd drive that connects to your wifi.  You click ‘burn movie’, a few minutes later, it ejects the disc and says “Movie complete”.  You take it to the bedroom and put it in your DVD player and watch it from the beginning.  There are uses for tablets, but there are still uses for computers!  I wish Microsoft would wake up and realize they can’t just demand what everyone uses for a computer!

Back in the App Business!

I decided to get back to writing apps for phones.  I did have a welcome change.  When searching to see how much it cost for various markets I noticed one company had an article online that said what I’ve been saying for quite some time.  If Windows wanted to have more of a share of apps, they needed to reduce their fees!  It’s really stupid that companies that host apps for cell phones charge so much just to get your app listed on their web page!  It’s not that developers don’t want to develop for any specific phone, and it’s not that the phones don’t support their apps.  Any developer can use phonegap to generate an app that works on every platform from the same piece of code.  What stops them from distributing on each market is the cost!  Apple charges $99 to get your app out to iphone users, Windows normally charges $99, but now for a limited time they reduced the price to $19!  Android charges $25, and Amazon is free for the time being.  Next time you see an advertisement for Candy Crush Saga on TV, think about this.  The company has Candy Crush Saga available for every platform and has TV ads available.  That’s a hefty cost to distribute an app for “FREE”!  How do they do it?  They sell the app for free and get you to pay to go up to next levels.  Now the markets aren’t accepting your payments for you out of the kindness of their hearts either!  Each time you make a sale, they gladly keep a percentage of the cost for handling the transaction.  Now consider Amazon boast being able to run apps on their Kindles, and those apps on Kindle comes from the Amazon Market.  They advertise they give away 1 free app a day, and if a developer chooses, then he can participate in that and one of his apps may be chosen to be given away.  It can be a free app, or a paid app.  If a paid app, the developer will likely loose a lot of money in sales because of the give-away.  Now these apps are helping to sell the kindles.  Apps on Apple’s iTunes help to sell iPhones.  Google Play Store apps help to sell Android phones from all different companies.  Lack of apps on Windows phones actually hurts the sale of Windows phones.  With that in mind, Market companies should drop the startup fees for selling apps and just go for a percentage of the sales.