Writing on his blog this week, he noted that Apple and Google (with Android) overcame the incumbents, Nokia and BlackBerry, because they could build devices using technologies – big touchscreens, fast mobile networks – that would have sunk them in 2000, but led to success after 2007.
With Windows 8 optimised for portable devices with touchscreens, it becomes a pain in the proverbial for people trying to do real work using a keyboard and mouse on a PC.
He reels off a long list of features his firm is working on: longer battery life, "always on" modes, thinner and lighter designs, better touchscreens and so on.
The special chemistry of many products, such as iPhone touchscreens, means they cannot be recycled.
It looks very different from past editions; it is designed for touchscreens on both PCs and tablets; and it can run on processors designed by ARM, a British company whose allies dominate mobile devices, as well as chips made by Intel, Microsoft's long-term partner.
Polished for Chrome Read The Economist on a desktop or laptop computer in an elegant full-screen layout inspired by our tablet apps, using our new app for the Chrome web browser, with full support for touchscreens and audioAn Onion for India Fake-news websites and political parody are sweeping India's English media.
Tom Sun recalls the date easily, because TPK, of which he is the chief executive, began manufacturing exactly four weeks before, making touchscreens for Apple's gadget.
Suitably interpreted, the signal from the exoskeleton might, for example, let someone pick things up remotely, with a hand-shaped grab which could be a good idea if the things in question were heavy or dangerous.Carbomorph can also be used for capacitive sensing, the principle behind the trackpads on laptop computers as well as some touchscreens.
On stage in Taipei were "two-in-one" machines of many varieties, by many manufacturers, with touchscreens that detach, swivel or fold behind the keyboard.Better performance and greater flexibility may persuade some people to replace their PCs with younger, suppler models, and might even invigorate the hitherto droopy demand for Windows 8.
If you have to write from the conference, take the lightest device you can possibly find that has a physical keyboard; you will be walking a lot, and touchscreens are not blogger-friendly.
But applications such as touchscreens exploit its conductive nature.
