The PC is Over

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/10/the-pc-is-over.html

by bussetta • 14 years ago

63 117 14 years ago

Tablets are fine for browsing the web, reading, etc. but serious work happens on desktops and isn't going to move away from them.

jaimebuelta4• 14 years ago

Adding a keyboard to a tablet makes it a decent computer, able to do a lot of day-to-day tasks (email, documents, etc)

pi18n2• 14 years ago

Not to burst your bubble, but adding a keyboard to a tablet makes it a touchscreen laptop. It's perfectly fine if that's what you enjoy, but you're not really obsoleting laptops if the alternative is a smaller laptop.

tokenizer2• 14 years ago

But not video/audio editing, or any programming of any kind. In other words, you can consume on these other devices, but not create (unless it's plain text).

bitcracker• 14 years ago

Adding a keyboard to a tablet makes it a computer with the power of a PC we had ten years ago.

There is nothing more productive than a good desktop workstation with big multiple screens. I recently purchased a new one for a good price, and I am happy with it.

vidarh17• 14 years ago

> serious work happens on desktops and isn't going to move away from them.

All the sales numbers shows you're wrong: The desktop market is at best stagnant, while people move in droves to other form factors. In many areas it is collapsing.

There's only tiny niches of "real work" that needs desktops rather than laptops.

And this is despite the form factor of the typical PC dropping rapidly, to the point where my local shops don't even carry full size ATX cases any more, and most "desktops" are "all in one" iMac style machines.

Big screens and full size keyboards are going nowhere, but the form factors are converging on mobile devices with suitable connectivity.

Desktops will likely remain available for a very long time, but they're well on their way to becoming an ever diminishing niche simply for the reason that the computational needs of most workers and for most home use is being met sufficiently well that more speed or disk space is now a secondary factor for a larger and larger segment of users.

twelvechairs2• 14 years ago

I don't disagree that the sales numbers for desktops are tanking. I just think they have a core use that is not going to move away along with the rest of the flock.

I'm not sure about using tablets with keyboard/mouse/big-screen. I haven't seen too much of it happening, and I'm not sure its really an attractive thing to do anyway for a lot of reasons from the office-practical (lots of plugging things in, harder to coordinate everyone, possibility of losing things, etc.) to the purely pragmatic performance-based (can a tablet do all the graphics processing for a big screen? What if you are using a big file - can your tablet handle it?)

Disk space is a huge draw to PCs too. Very few people I know are happy to entrust their life's photo collection to an online storage-as-a-service provider. And I'm yet to see a good 'media center' (though I think they'll come along at some point).

hayksaakian2• 14 years ago

News flash: land lines still exist. However, unlike land lines, you don't pay a monthly fee to keep your desktop, and the software powering it is growing less and less resource hungry.

takluyver2• 14 years ago

The majority of home owners still grew up without mobile phones. I had one from about 15, and I doubt I'll want a landline when I have my own house.

No-one's suggesting that the desktop will completely disappear. The thinking is that it will become a niche for hobbyists and professional data crunchers.

hayksaakian2• 14 years ago

Unfortunately the title of the article was sensational and inferred the former, whereas the latter is more likely

uvTwitch• 14 years ago

Of course they do; how else are you going to get your DSL?

ht_th• 14 years ago

Cable? Power line? (Dedicated) fiber? Wireless WAN? The neighbor's wifi router?

lispm• 14 years ago

I am using iDevices since they have been available to buy.

The machine that I use most and is the most fun is the latest MacBook Air. I would expect that 'Ultrabooks' are similar useful.

tokenizer2• 14 years ago

Agreed. I also have a ultrabook and the portability is prefect. Extremely lightweight devices are what I want, and this delivers this to me, and includes more power, and a keyboard.

fredley4• 14 years ago

This is fine from a consumer point of view, consuming content on a phone or tablet is really great! But if you want to create, there is just nothing out there that can rival a keyboard and a mouse. For this reason, 'desktop' PCs will be around for a very long time, in business and for anyone who creates (writes, codes, or creates any kind of media) in any way semi-seriously at home.

sausagefeet• 14 years ago

This is the same thing I came to say. Even something trivial like replying to this on a tablet or phone sucks. Quoting you would be utterly painful and it's even worse in a Reddit app. Perhaps it's generational and people will cope but so far creating.anything has.been far more painful for me on global devices.

vidarh17• 14 years ago

You don't need a desktop PC to be able to attach a screen and a keyboard.

My <$130 7" Chinese Android tablet can drive a full HD 3D TV at full resolution, and can handle both bluetooth or USB keyboards. And many of these tablets can boot full Linux.

The next step up is MHL, allowing the screen to power your phone or tablet while it is using the screen for output.

Increasingly people will have the option of combining the convenience of the phone or tablet with being able to effortlessly connect it to a large screen and keyboard when needed.

cjfont• 14 years ago

By the time you have to connect three different peripherals to your tablet in order to get the same functionality as a laptop, in almost all cases it's better to simply have a laptop, particularly if you're doing your profession.

gexla4• 14 years ago

DIY and alternative tablets can be desktop replacements, or close to it. But that's not the sort of mass market trend of which you can write these sorts of articles (though in China this may be a large trend compared to the U.S.)

Personally, this is just evolution of form factors. Nothing terribly interesting. As a techie living in Asia, I would either just buy a Chinese gadget (clone) which fits my needs or just build my own. In this sense, the PC lives on. ;)

bad_user3• 14 years ago

This is missing the forest from the trees.

Yes you can attach a keyboard. But carrying a keyboard along with your tablet is more expensive than carrying around a light notebook, like a Macbook Air, which is just as portable, more efficient at certain tasks, less efficient at others.

Also, comparing a PC with a tablet by comparing the hardware and the input interface is totally missing the point. When the PC evolved from DOS to Windows, from single tasking to multi-tasking, from big desktops to laptops and then to thinner notebooks with touch-pads, nobody talked about "post PC", as the evolution was not including regressions of functionality which made it totally obvious that the new devices were just like traditional PCs, only better.

That this happens now only means that these new devices are more limited than PCs, so a hard distinction needs to be made. And going forward, while lines continue to be blurred, the distinction will be extremely simple and effective, by answering just one question ... is software installation from third-party sources easy?

The ramifications by answering Yes to this will be: (1) piracy is easy + (2) mallware is possible + (3) Firefox is available for that device + (4) yes, that's a PC.

d0de• 14 years ago

I've always thought that a laptop-tablet hybrid of the sort Lenovo makes is the best form factor[1] for mobile computing. A physical keyboard and trackpad you can fold away when you're not using but that you always have with you. I used an old x61 tablet that I got dirt cheap for years, and for things like watching video or reading comics or long-form text documents, being able to fold away the base is great.

Are there any machines in this form factor aimed at a general audience? A modern multi-touch tablet screen with a pivoting keyboard and mouse base?

[1]http://shop.lenovo.com/gbweb/gb/en/learn/products/laptops/th...

neverminder• 14 years ago

Also let's not forget about milions of hardcore gamers. I don't think AMD and Nvidia would keep releasing more and more powerful graphic cards for desktops if PCs were dying.

pi18n2• 14 years ago

Two guys agree on it, so it must be correct! Well, time to chuck this inconvenient clamshell POS and get an Android tablet to do some actual work on.

lutze• 14 years ago

I can barely type a short email on my phone without wanting to punch someone, I can only imagine what writing anything more than "LOL HASHTAG IM A JURNALIST" on a tablet would be like.

My desktop isn't going anywhere just yet!

Floopsy• 14 years ago

I always end up going back to my laptop to do any real work. Tablets are great for, as others have mentioned, consuming content. But the PC is "far from over", IMHO.

jaimebuelta4• 14 years ago

Curiously, I need a desktop to do "real work". A laptop is uncomfortable for some things (mouse, small screen, etc)...

timClicks2• 14 years ago

Once Ubuntu for Android appears, it will be copied by other OSes and then the PC will be (mostly) dead. Until then, people will still feel like they need a laptop/PC. http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

Edit: please explain the downvotes, I don't see how this isn't adding to the conversation.

fredley4• 14 years ago

Can you elaborate? I don't see how having Ubuntu on my phone negates the need for a PC.

timClicks2• 14 years ago

When a phone is docked, Ubuntu will run on a full screen. When in your hand, the phone will run Android. Here's an early video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzc0uMXGFBY

mooism2• 14 years ago

Ubuntu for Android won't kill off PCs. It'll just mean that your phone/tablet is a PC, in addition to being a phone tablet. It won't kill off PCs, it will keep them alive.

vidarh17• 14 years ago

But it will kill off what people currently think of as PC's.

Nobody, as far as I can tell, is claiming it will kill of universal computing devices for personal use.

macavity23• 14 years ago

That is a very, very interesting project. High-end phones have had more than enough horsepower to run a full desktop environment for a few years, but getting the mix of phone and desktop software right is the tricky bit. Android and Ubuntu is a natural mix, and of course (nearly) all your Ubuntu software is just a compile away. Getting carriers on board is going to be a challenge for Canonical, but as soon as the source is out for this the custom modders (and I) will be absolutely all over it.

It would seem obvious for Microsoft to aim for a similar thing with Windows RT/Phone, but they've made a terrible hash of mobile for the last decade, and I don't think that their optimise-for-touch-everywhere approach to Win8 would work well with a non-touch monitor plugged into a phone. On the other hand, if Win8 gets as much of a kicking as I suspect it will, they'll be in full desperation mode with Win9 and something like this could be a major selling point.

sixbrx2• 14 years ago

I did't downvote, but maybe you can explain what you mean by Ubuntu for Android? They are both OS's, I'd think that Ubuntu would replace Android if you're using Ubuntu, is that what you meant?

vidarh17• 14 years ago

Read the link.

Android and Ubuntu both share the underlying kernel, so nothing really is preventing most of the rest of the stack from running at the same time.

Ubuntu for Android is just that: Ubuntu "userland" running on top of an Android-compatible Linux kernel, with various "glue" to integrate the Ubuntu side with various Android features, including ability to answer calls, unify contacts and calendars etc.

axefrog• 14 years ago

Hmm, I dunno. I still can't quite come to terms with the fact that with tablets, we've essentially got the equivalent of overlaying our keyboard on our screen every time we want to type something and obscuring half of the visuals on the screen in the process. I find that quite annoying for anything other than trivial input scenarios and I'm not quite sure I can envision the ideal solution to it, other than perhaps projecting a keyboard onto the table in front of me.

tsahyt2• 14 years ago

There are devices that do that. Some quick googling for "keyboard laser projected" finds a couple of products. Actually I remember such keyboard projector from some 6 years ago or so on thinkgeek. I'm not sure how well they work though. However, I agree that this is a major problem. Personally, I think that on-screen-keyboards are a bloody mess. I can't stand the lack of proper tactile feedback (no, letting the whole thing vibrate doesn't count).

willvarfar• 14 years ago

I think that laptops are the perfect migration away from desktop

I've just brought a laptop as my next main programming computer, rather than a desktop.

Laptops are the new portable desktops.

You can't type on a tablet.

fredley4• 14 years ago

I think Jeff and others are grouping laptops in with desktop PCs. For the purposes of this article, I'm pretty sure desktop means a computer with a large, touch-less screen, a keyboard and a mouse.

aes256• 14 years ago

Precisely. I don't see how a tablet is much of an improvement in form factor over a laptop.

Recall the 'iPad + Linode' experiment [1]. In every photo Mark O'Conor posted of his iPad in action, he had an Apple wireless keyboard next to it. A screen and a keyboard. That's a novel idea.

Combined, they take up just about as much space as a laptop (11-13") but the combination is far less usable. Smaller screen, less processing power, less flexibility using iOS, less customisability, so on and so forth.

O'Connor was attempting to nullify one of those drawbacks (lack of processing power), but he can't escape all the others.

[1] http://yieldthought.com/post/31857050698/ipad-linode-1-year-...

cake• 14 years ago

What do you do when you have all the computing performance anyone could ever possibly need, except for the freakish one-percenters, the video editors and programmers?

I think he misses the point, when my computer will boot instantly and allow me to work or when I won't have to wait for a file to copy that's when I'll have enough computer power. We're far from it and I think this applies to anybody, geeks or not. Who wants to wait for his computer to do his thing ?

aelaguiz• 14 years ago

I actually tried using my IPad as a primary device for work. I was living in ssh back then so with a Bluetooth keyboard it seemed like I would be able to. What I found was that the software itself, while fine when it's biggest limitation was my ability to interact with it using my clumsy sausage fingers on a touchscreen - was far from sufficient when I had my trusty old Qwerty physical keyboard. My want from the software immediately exceeded its capacity and feature set. Wonder how much of the joy of using a mobile device comes from significant self imposed limitation of the scope of that usage.

EwanToo3• 14 years ago

If you have a tablet, and almost always carry a keyboard to go with it, then really aren't you saying that a laptop would be the right solution?

Tablets are definitely moving towards being general purpose computers, but they're not there yet, and if you're willing to buy into a locked down iPad as your main computer, then I feel slightly sorry for you.

On the other side of things, I really don't see the point in $1500 laptops right now. Yes, the laptop should be extremely thin and light, but the cheapest intel processor married to an 120GB SSD and 4GB of RAM will work great for huge numbers of users, for both consumption and creation.

Frustratingly, it seems only the Chromebooks seem to be taking this approach to laptops, and I really don't want to replace an open device with one which Google works hard to lock down.

tsahyt2• 14 years ago

There was an article on HN a while ago, describing how a developer traded his laptop for a tablet and a Linode box. He'd ssh into the box and work there. I thought it was really elegant and thought about trying something similar.

However, I figured that a tablet + a keyboard is effectively a laptop with a good-looking UI and less features. The only real advantage I can think of now is better battery life and the fact that a tablet is usually cheaper to buy.

rahoulb2• 14 years ago

I was inspired by the same guy and use an iPad with the Logitech ultra-thin keyboard (with a Linux desktop at home).

The advantages, for me, are:

* battery life

* in-built 3G

* the fact that iOS is almost single-tasking means I get distracted significantly less often

* when I do stop typing, I pick the tablet up and move around; on a "computer" I tend to stay in the same position, even when not working

The major disadvantages:

* not much good when doing web-UI work (task switching, no web-inspector)

* iOS really needs the "open in" button available everywhere, or something like Android intents/OSX Services/Windows 8 contracts.

[edited for formatting]

vidarh17• 14 years ago

> and almost always carry a keyboard to go with it, then really aren't you saying that a laptop would be the right solution?

Not unless the keyboard is detachable, like e.g. the ASUS Transformer series. I carry a 7" tablet with me. I use it as a tablet to read stuff. The form factor means it's easy to hold with one hand. I also carry a keyboard with me, mostly because that makes it convenient to use for emergencies when a server goes down etc. and I want to be able to type faster and not have to prop the screen up. But 90% of the time for me the keyboard is dead weight. That's fine in my bag. It's not fine if I'm holding the device up to read on a crowded train, for example.

Increasingly I'm also finding that my typing speed on my phone and tablet is getting better rapidly. Especially with special-purpose keyboards like SwiftKey that has very good prediction, and so I resort to a hardware keyboard less and less.

EwanToo3• 14 years ago

The detachable keyboard models are nice, but to me, the only thing that makes the Transformer a tablet rather than a laptop with a detachable screen is the OS used.

Assuming Windows 8 does ok, I think we'll see a lot more devices in this form factor.

DanBC• 14 years ago

For a while I've really wanted tiny portable "thin" clients. You have a nice keyboard, mouse, and monitor at work and home. You have a portable version (maybe even a tablet) for on the move.

Most people only need a couple of hours of battery to or from the office.

Most people only need something powerful enough to do word processing and spreadsheeting, with a bit of accounts-package-nightmare and specialist-industry-nightmare software on top.

It'd be interesting to see Google drive this, or maybe even Canonical. Have a 5 year plan, with plenty of iteration and wiggle room.

takluyver2• 14 years ago

You've probably already heard of it, but Canonical do have 'Ubuntu for Android' in the works. A high-end Android phone docks to a monitor and keyboard, where it can run Ubuntu.

They've demonstrated prototypes, and I imagine they're talking to handset manufacturers.

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

vidarh17• 14 years ago

Quite a few Android tablets can boot Ubuntu already. And many Android tablets have HDMI out and supports USB or bluetooth keyboards just fine. Other devices supports MHL.

So you can have that now.

Since you mentioned Canonical, they most definitively do have a plan: http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

"Now multi-core Android phones can be PCs too. Ubuntu for Android enables high-end Android handsets to run Ubuntu, the world's favourite free PC desktop operating system. So users get the Android they know on the move, but when they connect their phone to a monitor, mouse and keyboard, it becomes a PC."

They're pushing this to manufacturers as a way to drive adoption of higher end Android devices with more cores, as well as to sell accessories like screens, keyboards etc., and as a "drop in" next to Android on the same device, with various integration.

sbierwagen• 14 years ago

I've been unemployed for more than two years. I use a prepaid dumbphone. While it's great that Jeff has an iPhone 5, neither I, nor any of my other 20-something friends, can afford one.

thenomad3• 14 years ago

This scares me, because of the likely conclusion: people who DO need a desktop will end up paying through the nose.

If no-one's buying PCs any more, the price will go up. As the price goes up, all the tasks that you'd do on a PC become more inaccessible.

I'm not looking forward to a world where if you want to edit professional video, do 3D animation or do games development, you need to shell out $10k or more for a machine first.

sukuriant• 14 years ago

So you don't want to go into a world of proprietary console development? I hear those development machines are quite expensive.

thenomad3• 14 years ago

Well, given I'm a filmmaker, no, not really :)

My understanding is that there are some routes that are less expensive to get to consoles these days, but yes - the console dev situation of 5 years or so ago is pretty close to what I'm worried about.

gnaffle• 14 years ago

While that may be true for specialty hardware like 3D graphics cards, don't forget that the server market will likely be alive and well, leading to faster and cheaper servers.

So while you might not be able to get a silent, high end desktop computer, I think you'll still be able to buy or rent the computer power you need at a reasonable price.

thenomad3• 14 years ago

That's a fair point - and thanks for bringing the optimism!

Given gaming, I can't see 3D chips getting more expensive either. Boards may, a bit, but provided a general-purpose PC doesn't become an extreme luxury item, I think we'll be OK.

hkarthik• 14 years ago

I've had the exact same concern regarding pricing of equipment for workstations/laptops.

It's not hard to imagine a world where the workstation that costs you $2000 today will cost closer to $4000 simply because the demand is 20% of what it is today, and the economies of scale disappear for even the large manufacturers like Apple, Lenovo, Dell, etc.

My hope is that the next great frontier for tablet commuting will be content creation (code, video, etc) and we'll start to see that make some serious in-roads before the prices go up substantially.

gexla4• 14 years ago

So what? The trend of our computing devices is that they get smaller as they are getting faster. As they get smaller, we are able to create new form factors. The tablet is just another form factor.

I imagine battery tech is going to be holding back tablets and smart phones from being true desktop replacements for a while. The markets want long battery life, not a desktop replacement.

Lots of link bait over an article for a trend which is as old as computing.

dbattaglia2• 14 years ago

For development, design and other forms of work, the current generation of smart phones and tablets are clearly not up to task. But it makes you wonder how long before one of these things can run an XCode, Eclipse Visual Studio while wirelessly connecting to a monitor (or 3), keyboard and mouse. I think the biggest issue is really the lack of a traditional file system and ability to host a local web or database server on one of these machines. Neither of these are impossible to overcome given enough clever engineers, especially if the face of server side computing itself starts to change. As long as I don't have to type code on an iPad virtual keyboard I'm pretty excited to see whats coming.

darkstalker2• 14 years ago

Android has a traditional file system, iOS does if you jailbreak it.

dbattaglia2• 14 years ago

True. I guess really what I mean is they do their best to hide the file system from you, even if it is actually there under the covers.

smithzvk• 14 years ago

Long live the PC, and by that I mean the phone/tablet that I will connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to when at the office or at my desk at home.

http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

If this was in stores today and handset manufacturers had good compatibility, I would make my next PC whatever the newest, top of the line Android phone and be relatively happy.

That said, this headline is sensationalistic nonsense. That setup would still be a PC, in fact it would look remarkably more like a PC than our current laptops we are lugging around (external monitor, keyboard, mouse, connected to a tiny "tower").

shahzadaziz• 14 years ago

I think of it as a step migration. With desktops you get the ultimate workhorse, best for heavy duty work (and this is now a small niche left with graphics and rendering tasks) You step down a bit and you get a portable laptop (its an ideal compromise). Tablet is a third step down with a lot of features cut down and as many pointed out its more of a content consumption device as opposed to creation.

Laptops will stay for a while as they sit brilliantly in between.I do see no evolution in laptops but I do see tablets catching up.

deif• 14 years ago

A lot of these comments comment on the fact that development is not available 'on the go'. Obviously one wouldn't carry round a keyboard and a tablet.

What I find interesting is the fact that powerful computing systems can fit into your pocket. I may be crazy, but couldn't we fit 2 projectors to this, get rid of the display completely and require two surfaces to project a display infront of you, and a keyboard/mousepad at your hands.

Maybe have both - a small display for simple tasks and projection for tasks that require a bigger display. Could we see a shift towards holographic display investment in the future? It's already available for keyboards...

manmal• 14 years ago

Owning an iPad 1 and an iPad 3 ("new iPad") I'm always thrilled to see how they perform side by side. It's like night and day - unreadable, low-contrast vs. superb, super-high-resolution display; 5 seconds for opening Mail vs 0.5 seconds; almost tripled battery life (at least for me). For some aspects, it's an improvement of an order of magnitude within only 2 years.

I don't think such an improvement will be possible in the next 2 years, and the only incremental improvements in the iPhone 5 seem to support that. You can't really upgrade a tablet (yet - there is at least USB host support in most Android tablets), but consumers won't be as hard-pressed to buy an iPad 4 and 5 as they were with earlier versions. There is already the highest-sense-making display resolution, apps open almost instantly, and superlong battery life. What more can you ask for given its restricted use case of media consumption? It will again all be about software (Siri for iPad, tighter TV integration, perhaps OSX on iPad?) soon.

digeridoo• 14 years ago

TV is coming. Radio is dead!

Actually, radio is as big an industry as it ever was. Mobile phone and app sales may eclipse PC hardware and software sales, but the products are just too different to expect one to replace the other. Perhaps there is more money to be made in Mobile/TV, but that's just because it's a plain old risk/pay-off trade-off.

ditoa• 14 years ago

For consuming content and creating very basic content a tablet is great. On a train or on the sofa a tablet is very nice for reading reddit and HN, watching some Youtube, Skype with the family, writing emails and basic document creation.

However for any real content creation a laptop is my primary choice. I would love an ultrabook like the Asus Zenbook or Samsung Series 9. An ultrabook will most certainly be my next computer when I buy one some time next year. I am waiting for them to hit the 10 hour mark which I am hoping they will do next year (already very close with the Samsung clocking in around 9 hours). I am happy to sacrifice some CPU and graphics power for an extra hour or two.

dschiptsov• 14 years ago

Oh god, what a news!))

Consumers are using smartphones and tablets while professional are using macbooks. Samsung is new Nokia, Apple is new Microsoft (even worse). Linux is server and Rails is PHP. What news what news..

btw, the burst of Wintel (and Java) bubbles is really a good thing - it is for a new wave of Arm/Android/Linux.

Of course, there still will be x86_64/Linux server market for long (because its so cheap in terms of Price/Performance) and tons of MS/Java based enterprise crapware still need to be maintained, but that wave is gone long ago.

Surfing is a very nice model of IT business, btw.)

mark_l_watson• 14 years ago

Another take on PCs: I used to keep a few Linux boxes around the house for CPU intensive processing. Then I started to prefer EC2s or Elastic MapReduce. Earlier this year for a side project I decided it would be cheaper and take less of my time to rent a large memory server for about a month.

I got rid of my last desktop years ago and have not missed them.

Tichy• 14 years ago

I can just imagine how he dreads having to type those long blog articles on a keyboard. Clearly it is so much more convenient on a tablet.

(Sorry - I like codinghorror actually...)

3amOpsGuy• 14 years ago

The idea of running a desktop "in the cloud" on EC2 or similar interests me. Not sure how practical it would be in real life though.

sabret00the• 14 years ago

Didn't they try this and have it fail already?

netcan3• 14 years ago

IMO thinking in terms of power/performance is completely useless if your goal is to figure out where things are going. All these "computers" have enough power now or will have enough power in the next few years (either through better hardware or device specific software) to do all the things most people need to do. If there really is a need for rendering animation in your pocket I'm sure it will be possible, at some price.

For that reason, this is not the same as the mainframe-minicomputer-microcomputer transition. What is going on now is new types of computers (tablets & pocket tablets) that are defined by their form, not their power.

There is a second reason other than new form factors for the success of these new devices that has nothing to do with power or form factor: new OS/app metaphors & paradigms. The basic metaphors & ideas (desktop, file system, install scripts, desktop shortcuts, trash) behind the PC are 20-30 years old. They were created before grandmothers, electricians and 2 year olds used computers. They were never optimal and they have grown hairs over the years. iOS & Android are a clean slate. This has fixed all sorts of things. Most important (IMO) is tuning applications application into "apps". Apps have a clearer definition than applications. They are self contained, easy to install and easy to remove. Applications are things that your older brother or IT department has to install.

This second factor (the clean slate factor) is tricky one because it's very important in the short run. In the long term it's irrelevant to the number of desktops, laptops or tablets sold. PCs will eventually incorporate the features (or the whole OS) that are better in touch OS's. This factor will not affect the ratio of laptops/tablets sold in 2018.

Declaring the PC dead is silly. This is just like web based software vs installed software. Power was a bottleneck. Now that it's clearing we can see that for all sorts of things web based software is better but not always. Keyboard & mouse vs touch is similar to this "transition." Things that work better on touch will move to touch, but not everything.

This will be a dispersion, not a migration.

mtgx• 14 years ago

The PC's and mini-computers were defined by form and price, too, not performance. In fact the much lower performance is what completely blindsided IBM when mini-computers appeared, and later DEC when PC's appeared. For their customers, the new type of computers didn't make any sense. But there were whole other markets out there who wanted a much more "portable" or cheaper computer.

You can now get a decent tablet for $200. You could also get netbooks for that price, but they aren't exactly decent when it comes to overall performance, and that has more to do with how the software is written (for powerful x86 chips - not for Atom chips), while mobile apps are written for much lower performance chips.

netcan3• 14 years ago

Yeah, I didn't put in quite enough time into the definitions. But, there is a fundamental difference that I was trying to describe.

Micro/mini computers were computers at a different price/size points. I agree. But, the reason for buying a minicomputer was not that you didn't have room for a mainframe. It was because of price & power. They were the same category of thing just at different prices & power. Once power on all of them became enough to power everything most users needed, the lower priced form factor (microcomputers) became the only form factor that mattered.

By making that analogy Jeff is implying that smartphones, tablets & PCs are the same category of thing and that the thing at the lower end of the price/power chart will eventually become the thing of the future.

What I am arguing is that he's got it wrong: the form factor is there for the its own reasons. It's not there to facilitate power and its not there to facilitate price. Laptops have keyboards and mouses. Smartphones fit in your pocket. There is overlap in what they do, but phones won't get awesome enough to replace laptops.

This is unless they become laptops. Maybe eventually everyone will have a keyboard that snaps onto their tablet when they need it and a screen at home/office that plugs into it too. That's cheating. It doesn't count.

16s• 14 years ago

I need gcc, vim and a shell and a nice big screen with the ability to type easily, that's why I use old-fashioned PCs. I also don't like how all the pads and mobile devices are locked-down and more focused on tracking user activity (EDIT: and selling stuff) than being a computing device. I guess I'm getting old.

berntb2• 14 years ago

Use SSH (and AWS, or something). I agree on the big screen.

(I checked the iPad SSH clients this spring, they seemed to be able to handle vim but not Emacs. Time to check again, I guess. WTF -- terminal emulators that don't let much of key codes for control etc through!?)

zxoq• 14 years ago

Apple does not provide any API for getting the state of the modifier keys on iOS. I really think this is something they need to loosen up about if they want people to go into the post-PC. We get the point Apple, you want users to be able to do everything an app offers without accessories. But that's orthogonal to replacing your PC with an iPad.

(Especially since the private APIs are already there, they just need to allow them)

bergie• 14 years ago

Some tips for setting up an iPad development environment here: http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-...

vidarh17• 14 years ago

> I need gcc, vim and a shell and a nice big screen with the ability to type easily, that's why I use old-fashioned PCs.

You can get all that apart from the screen pretty much any Android tablet or phone these days, and the screen too on a large number of devices with either HDMI or MHL.

> I also don't like how all the pads and mobile devices are locked-down and more focused on tracking user activity than being a computing device.

Not nearly all are. My tablet came pre-rooted, and is known to be fairly easy to get plain Linux booting on.

pc86• 14 years ago

Which tablet is that? I've got an iPad, a Macbook Air and a custom-built PC. I think the next logical step is a tablet running Linux.

snogglethorpe• 14 years ago

> > I need gcc, vim ... > You can get all that apart from the screen pretty much any Android tablet or phone these

Hmm, how about a CPU powerful enough to not fall over when repeatedly compiling that enormous codebase and running your massively parallel number-crunching app?

Tablets seem to be a pretty anemic when it comes to crunching (for good reason ... battery life, size, and cooling issues affect tablets/phones far more than they do a desktop)...

Tablets are fun way to browse the web while sitting on the couch, but the small size that optimizes them for that usage comes with costs; surely there are many applications where it simply doesn't work out?

podperson• 14 years ago

It seems to me that iOS is not focused on tracking user activity. Some apps are but no-one forces you to use them (or enable their tracking). I'd be much more concerned about vanilla Android installations. On the other hand, Android devices (e.g. I own a Nexus 7) are not locked down at all (sometimes in a bad way -- I suspect something equivalent to the Bad Old Days of Windows malware is in the Android near future).

Quite a few gcc/vim/shell-centric developers use iPads as terminals and they work very well for this (with or without a keyboard).

That said, I'm typing this response on a Macbook Pro.

EwanToo3• 14 years ago

By default, Android devices are locked down in 2 ways - you've not got root, and you can't install unsigned non-market apps (though trust of market apps is somewhat of a joke).

You can obviously gain root, and you can easily tick the box to allow unknown sources, but it seems likely that 99% of Android consumers are not going to do this without a decent reason.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

Sorry but bollocks. And I'm fed up with this utter crap being spewed at every available moment.

The day the local pc repair shops shut, the day the local electronics store shuts and the day that people pry my universal computing device out of my hands and the 3-4 billion other people let it go, I'll believe it.

Until then, this is a fad.

vidarh17• 14 years ago

What local PC repair shops? Near me, most of the options are now large chain stores that don't even sell "old style" desktops, but mostly laptops, with a corner set aside for "all in one" desktops they most certainly don't have anyone who can repair on the precises. Another, already larger, section at my nearest chain store now sells tablets.

The local electronics store doesn't sell PC's at all, though it sells some components. And it does sell tablets.

But of course, these tablets are still "universal computing devices" too. Just in more convenient form factors.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

I live in London, UK. They are literally everywhere.

A tablet is not a universal computing device: it's a portal for consuming stuff from a content producer. If it stood alone, then it would be, but they don't - none of them!

zv• 14 years ago

When XBox came out, someone declared that gaming on PC is/will be dead. Fast forward today we have 2 ecosystems that are thriving. Now someone declares PC is dead. My prediction is that in reality these two will coexist. We don't have the tools yet (want application for web, desktop, mobile? you better learn programming language x,y,z, framework x,y,z etc), but future hopefully will be brighter.

darkstalker2• 14 years ago

Yet another article about this? The PC is not going to die. Maybe it's the wet dream of the vocal minority who lives in the apple-bubble. But for me and many others, they are devices that serve distinct, non-overlapping purposes.

When I'm at home, I pretty much forget about my tablet/smartphone, because a desktop PC is much more comfortable to use than a mobile device.

lukifer• 14 years ago

I say it's time for the notion of things "being over" to be over. The PC is absolutely going to diminish in mass-market relevance in favor of devices, but there will always be a PC market for hobbyists and power users (though the economic factors may shift, potentially turning commodity parts into luxury items).

There's plenty of room in the computing ecosystem for both web sites and apps, for both closed and open platforms, for both PCs and devices, and whatever other divisions you can think of. Even if one thing "wins", it doesn't mean the other is automatically erased from existence.

cantankerous2• 14 years ago

This article makes me wonder if, for power users, someday there will be an iphone sized device that devotes its entire form factor to performance. That is, it goes without a screen, packs a ton of ram and cpu power for "general purpose" computing, and you can put it in your pocket and carry it around. When you get to work you can just plop it in your "workstation" and it will use monitors, keyboard, whatever as interface devices. I guess anything's possible. Now that I write this, I feel like it's sorta already happened, though I can't fit a Mac Mini in my biggest of cargo short pockets.

fredley4• 14 years ago

This is a feasible model, but that's not the way the market is going. Nobody is either making the devices or the docking stations, or even really trying. What we are seeing is a move towards real thin-client. I carry around a screen, with a battery to power it. This screen essentially gets everything done for it on some remote server, very little computing happens locally.

The problem for power users is having a remote service connected to the screen that's as open and hackable as a desktop system, and having a way to input data to the screen as easily as with a keyboard and mouse.

vidarh17• 14 years ago

Take a look at these:

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale/wholesale-android.html?g...

inthewoods• 14 years ago

Interesting to me that people here and in the post are expressing a desire for a tablet/mobile device that transforms into a desktop/workstation when brought near a keyboard. Probably more a reflection of this audience, but I just hadn't heard a lot of people express this desire.

Interestingly, to me, that's the problem that Window 8 seems to be trying to solve - I didn't know many people had it! And, of course, a few Android tablets that become laptops, etc.

amorphid• 14 years ago

Mobile computing has definitely changed my life. I just realized the other day as I tossed my busted up laptop from 2008 that I no longer own a magnetic hard drive. I also don't have a desktop computer, anything running Windows, TV, a CD player, a DVD player, or a landline phone (technically I do w/ my DSL line, but I've never once used it). I live my e-life via a 13" Macbook Air and a 2 year old Android smartphone.

I don't consider myself bleeding edge anymore. I still don't have a tablet, although there is the occasional day I want one. Diablo 3 will be played on my next laptop, my 2010 era Macbook Air doesn't have quite enough horsepower to power point and click monster bashing for my taste. And while I've been pushed into going touchscreen on my phone, I still yearn for a physical keyboard on a mobile device.

bking• 14 years ago

My thoughts are that a logical change will be a smartphone that without peripherals will be just what a smartphone is today. I also think that we will have a "station" that is a monitor, keyboard, and mouse that all wirelessly connect to the portable device when it is in the near vicinity and is turned to "computer mode". All the extra data storage that towers have will be wirelessly linked in a base home server that sits on the desk next to the other peripherals.

I love a desktop because it is a stationary place I can always count on, but as soon as that becomes more easily replaced and can still run games and media editing at the same scale, I will keep my desktop

The PC is Over

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