blattus

As a consumer I'm excited by the vision these convergent solutions sell, in a futuristic "I just carry one device" way, but I think the reason they haven't kicked off is that in reality you don't just have monitors and keyboards and mice lying around wherever you go.

A significant part of the value prop of the "mobile" desktop is that you can "just plug in", but if you have to carry a keyboard and mouse well you might as well also carry the incredibly thin screen it's attached to on a laptop.

I think this is the idea behind Xpenology [0]

[0] https://xpenology.org/#What_is_Xpenology

(I work at Stripe)

Yes -- we have both native APIs (iOS and soon Android), and a web based API (JavaScript). Our JavaScript SDK is designed for you to easily extend an existing web-based application to enable in-person payments.

Cerberus is a pretty good open source alternative (in addition to some of the others listed in the comments) - http://tedgoas.github.io/Cerberus/

I'm surprised with how many comments here are focusing on Zuck and not the market play for Facebook.

I've worked at large companies that claim to be innovative. More often than not, short-term demands made by Wall Street guide business decisions in increasingly poor ways (reducing employee benefits, stymieing R&D, etc.)

This announcement obviously helps Zuckerberg personally, but it does also provide a signal to the market for Facebook's direction.

I work in consulting; I have seen my fair share of badly-drawn graphics and spend more time using PowerPoint than I would care to admit.

The reality is that for most of Corporate America banning PowerPoint is not going to happen anytime soon. In our industry, decks are viewed not just as presentations but general fodder for deliverables, handouts, etc. I've been on several engagements where we intentionally jam-packed slides full of content (including multiple levels of footnotes) so they "stood on their own" in case someone picked up or distributed the deck after the meeting in which it was used.

If I was giving a talk I'd agree that presentation style would be overkill, but I've been in meetings with C-level execs and VPs where the extra info has paid off by being able to preempt questions and provide additional justification for the conclusion. Sometimes having a crowded slide is more "professional" in a meeting context than alt-tabbing to the detailed Excel worksheet showing the assumptions.