Is Windows 10 the starting point for Microsoft to completely abandon PCs?

Do you still remember the "burning platform"? This term was coined by Stephen Elop, the "undercover of the century" who sneaked from Microsoft to Nokia. Elop came to Nokia with a strong sense of crisis. He said that Nokia could not cling to its current platform and market share and must seek change. This statement itself is correct, but he chose a backer who was slower to change - Microsoft, and everyone knows the ending.

The transformation of giants is always slow. Think about the arrogant look of Nokia when the first generation of iPhone was launched. We can also guess why it took Microsoft so long to transform into the mobile and cross-platform market. Starting from the first generation of Tablet PC, the market gave Microsoft more than ten years to respond. Today, Microsoft has stood on the "burning platform" that was used to describe Nokia.

The Windows 10 conference held early this morning Beijing time is widely regarded as Microsoft's last chance. As the overlord of the desktop era, Microsoft must make preparations early if it wants to avoid perishing along with the entire desktop era.

What do you do with your PC now? Your needs for surfing the Internet, shopping, chatting, and playing games have long been transferred to tablets and mobile phones. The reason why PC is irreplaceable now is that it is the most effective and reliable productivity tool. Although we old people may not admit it, we will insist that PC is still the most efficient productivity tool now - can you imagine office clerks typing or making Excel spreadsheets on tablets or even mobile phones without keyboards? However, the transformation of efficiency tools is indeed happening. Now it is through tablets and touch devices, and in the future it may be through a variety of different media. We can complete office work at any time and any place, and some of the manual work we are doing now will be completed automatically.

Microsoft itself has made no secret of this trend. We have seen the 2019 prediction video a few years ago. This video comes from the Office Innovation Department. Office is extremely important to Microsoft. It makes Microsoft a reliable productivity partner for enterprise users and a cash cow for Microsoft. The future predicted by the Office Department is like what is shown in all science fiction movies. We will have holographic projection screens, and any larger plane, such as desktops, walls, car windows, and even the ground, can be used as a carrier for interaction. Although we don’t know where the display comes from if there is no electricity or light, we just think that there should be a screen, and our fingers should interact on these smooth surfaces or even in the air.

No matter how much you miss the crisp or dull sounds of the various axes of the mechanical keyboard, no matter how much you miss the pixel-accurate positioning that the mouse can bring, or the thrill of killing in seconds when playing games, we are always worried that in 10-20 years, we will be reduced to the same antique professions as today. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a profession called typist. Before that, when the telephone was not a program-controlled switch, there was another profession called switchboard operator. Before that, when computers were not invented, Computer referred to living people who did calculations on paper - in China, these people should be able to play with abacus. These tools can produce relatively high efficiency at the time, and the methods used to replace them in the future were relatively less efficient at the time.

Looking back at history, we can see that we cannot ignore the trend that has come. If everyone changes, it is not impossible that mature technologies will be forced to be abandoned. Touch screens that make people lazier and ubiquitous interactions will change the way we work and live.

Although Office has already accumulated extremely powerful technology on the desktop, the existing Ribbon is still too complicated if you want to switch to touch. The Ribbon interface was developed by Microsoft in the Office 2007 era. It was to solve the problem of too many hidden functions that could not be used, rather than to solve the problem of touch screen operation. Microsoft had to design it from scratch, and even turned the original full-featured Office into a reduced-featured version, and then went back to add the previous functions one by one, on the premise that these functions can be run synchronously on mobile phones, tablets and even Xbox. - Do you remember something? Yes, many people say that Apple's new version of iWork has become like a toy, and many familiar functions are gone. But it has embarked on the path I mentioned in advance.

Yes, Office will no longer look familiar to you. In order to adapt to the new Office 2016 (which will be released with the Windows 10 preview in mid-next month) as soon as possible, you can now install Office on your iPad (yes, not Microsoft's own WP) to experience a similar interface.

Before this conference, there was news that the Office team would also take the opportunity to make a major release, which was considered to be the second most important part of this conference, second only to Windows 10 itself. But we were wrong. Office was indeed introduced during the conference, but Office has been internalized as part of Windows functions. Almost all departments of Microsoft were mobilized by this conference, and it can be said that Windows is equivalent to the entire Microsoft in a certain sense.

In addition to the only reason for the PC's survival - the transformation of productivity tools, this time Microsoft brought a mature interactive technology and a brand new technology under development.

The fully mature Cortana can recognize more natural languages, which also brings us more expectations. Microsoft does not expect people to use Cortana in front of a formal desktop computer. But even if you really plan to use it, it doesn't matter. The current computer itself is much better than before. The sound pickup effect of many notebook microphones was very poor before, which led to the Windows Vista speech recognition function suggesting that you must use a headset to ensure the effect. Now I install Windows on my Macbook, and the recording effect is really unexpectedly good. After that, I tried Surface Pro 3, and its recording capture effect was equally amazing. Microsoft is accelerating the promotion of voice to become the most familiar interaction method for users.

At the same time, Microsoft also attaches great importance to holographic projection, which has not yet reached us. Even though Google Glass has not been accepted by the market, Microsoft has not given up on using glasses to allow people to superimpose visual elements outside the real world. Now it seems that the interface of Google Glass is easy to copy, but Microsoft's augmented reality glasses are not like this. Based on the prototype that looks good, the 3D modeling technology is constantly improved, and the human eye is adapted to such images without dizziness. All the details are taken seriously, until suddenly one day, people find that this system is close to perfection. Then people will know that the form of Google Glass that displays a box in the lower right corner of the field of view is actually a lazy move.

I must say that Microsoft has indeed seen the trend this time, even though it may continue to be slow to respond due to the big company disease. The change of interface and the decline of the importance of PC platform will bring about a change that touches the soul of Microsoft. By then, all the interface improvements that we are arguing about now will become trivial. Abandoning the x86 architecture that has grown up with Microsoft will be the next thing Microsoft must do.

What does abandoning x86 mean? It means that all Windows applications will use the Metro interface; it means that the familiar file names such as exe, txt, doc, etc. will become a thing of the past; it means that folders, file systems, C drive and D drive, registry, disk cleanup, etc., will be hidden at the bottom layer and not visible to us. The concept of file names that has existed since the DOS era will no longer exist, which means that no matter whether it is doc, docx, pages or pdf, they will all be called "documents"; there will be no distinction between MP3 and AAC for sound formats, and we will only know the sound quality; we will not even know whether the video we are watching is transcoded from the cloud or from our local hard drive.

Having achieved this step, Microsoft will really say goodbye to PC. The future Microsoft will live on desktops, walls, car windows and other places, just like the future video in 2019.

The full shift to hybrid computing on-premises and in the cloud will bring unexpected side effects. In places like my country where foreign cloud services cannot be accessed smoothly, Microsoft's future transformation will be a greater challenge. If things go wrong, the Chinese people will be completely disconnected from the rest of the world, and the technology tree will be forked.

Finally, for those of us who grew up with traditional computer education, we may have to face a turning point. From now on, we have to face the fact that mobile phones and tablets, which were originally entertainment tools, have become productivity tools. We need to renew our thinking and understand what computers are from the beginning. Only by constantly learning and improving can we keep up with the pace of the new era.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.