Is it just me, or is desktop/laptop technology falling way behind mobile technology in many ways?

It's always seemed obvious that a desktop or laptop is naturally a technological step up from a mobile device. Besides being more portable, smartphones and tablets have always been inferior computers. However, many observations over time have led me to believe that there is way more innovation in the mobile world, and a lacking in the desktop/laptop world. Here's two things I've noticed:

Mobile operating systems are better. A lot of this is a matter of opinion, but honestly, Android makes Windows look like garbage to me. Microsoft's wrong turn with Windows 8 kind of seems to have doomed them. Windows 10 has reverted a lot of the bad, but it is still a kludgy, confusing, divided system. Even without the Metro disaster, Windows still malfunctions way more than Android. Just today I dealt with a Windows 8.1 machine that had a seemingly irreparable problem with Windows update. How often do you encounter a similar problem in Android? Not only is Android more stable, it seems that every time my phone updates I find an innovative new feature from Google. I'm less familiar with Apple so I have less to say in that area, but I do know that macOS hasn't significantly improved in years. Even when it does, it follows iOS, not the other way around. I've been using Linux on my laptop for several years, and it doesn't match Android or iOS either. As you can tell, I've found myself somewhat frustrated with my options for desktop operating systems.

The second thing I've found is that mobile SoCs seem to be progressing and innovating way more than desktop hardware. Now I'm not an expert in this area so I may be completely wrong, but here's what I've noticed. Intel's processors seem to basically just be getting faster. Don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of work that goes into continuing to make chips faster. But Qualcomm and Apple are doing some crazy stuff that I haven't seen from Intel. They don't just stop at fast CPUs and GPUs, they incorporate media decoding, image processing, gesture recognition and machine learning right into hardware. Perhaps I'm wrong about this though, it could be that doing those things in hardware is unnecessary in larger implementations where power and heat aren't such issues.

Anyway, sorry for the huge post. I know it sounds kind of like a rant, but I promise it's only observation.

Submitted October 06, 2017 at 04:10AM by Jabey http://ift.tt/2xXN3gI via TikTokTikk