TI CEO Says PC Era is Ending

FModnar writes "Texas Instruments CEO Tom Engibous is claiming that the PC era is ending. He claims that wireless Internet devices are replacing PCs as 'the driving force in the electronics industry' and will become even more popular once they are linked to broadband networks. Check out this story at Yahoo! News."

Comments

Nothing we haven't heard before.

[nicksand]

I've heard tons of tech evangelists saying that the days of the PCs are ending. Usually, these evangelists have some vested intersted in the net appliance market. IMHO, this viewpoint is utter bull--PCs will undoubtedly remain a focal point for the computing experience for at least several more years.

Sure, you may be able to read email on a cellphone, but its a far more pleasant experience when you are sitting in a comfy computer screen in front of a nice big 19" monitor. What makes PCs so attractive is their versatility. They can do everything from helping you create essays to letting you entertain yourself.

I take the more moderate view on net appliances. Its obvious that PCs and netappliances will coexist for the conceivable future. In the long term, I think that everything will eventually converge on mobile/wearable PCs. Imagine a future with a computer weighing a few hundred grams, with t3 net connectivity, virtually unlimited battery life, and the ability to project a 19"+ eqiv screen directly onto your retina. Yum.

Thus, in short, net apps won't swallow PCs, and PCs won't be around forever. Eventually they will meet in the middle.

Re:Nothing we haven't heard before.

[Squid]

If it has a 19" screen, chances are it's not a PC, it's a workstation.

It's the middle-of-the-road, consumer PCs you find at Best Buy that we should be ushering out. These are the equivalent of a 1979 Malibu six-cylinder, too underpowered for its size, too big and gas-guzzling to be a daily driving car, but since it was the smallest and cheapest thing on the showroom floor, you drove it home. Consumers buy these midgrade or lowgrade $1000 machines basically because that's all Best Buy has.

Average users don't really like PCs (or Macs). They're big and bulky, they are FURNITURE (they take up a whole desk), they're slow (no other appliance in the house takes 2 minutes to start up), and they never really quite do what they want. They'd rather play video games and watch movies on the TV, do their checkbook at the kitchen table or on the desk in the bedroom (using some smaller portable unit), and sit in the easy chair to surf the Web.

The modern PC isn't that far removed from an old room-sized mainframe - the PC often expands to fill the room it's in. You can't bring it to you, you must go to it, which means it, its data, and all the media you see or hear on it must remain forever trapped in whichever room you put it - which in most households, is never the same room as the entertainment center. You pay the price for its flexibility by concentrating much of your activities in that room, at that desk.

Laptops aren't the answer for this - they're downscaled PCs, saddled with the additional limitations of battery life, tiny screens, sick keyboards, and high price tags. And they're the solution to the wrong problem - they take the PC on the road. I don't want to take a PC on the road, I want to take it to my easy chair.

Cell phones and PDAs aren't the answer either - they're small devices designed to do specific things, which by itself isn't the problem until you overdrive them by making them do too many things. Let them do what they are designed to do and do it well, and let larger devices - say, a 9x12 or 11x14 LCD "sketchpad" - start to absorb the role of the consumer PC (finances, Web surfing, etc).

Workstations are another matter entirely. Artists, programmers, and writers (and Slashdot readers) - and in general, people who focus on the COMPUTER (not merely the applications thereof, as in the consumer who buys a computer for what it will do for THEM) - are fine with a tower under a desk and a 21" piece of glass in front of their faces. And even then, what writer or artist wouldn't desperately love to practice their craft under a shade tree? Bjork composes most of her music these days walking the beach with a tiny (CD-player-sized) handheld sequencer and a pair of headphones. I'd trade the 21-inch monitor for the ability to code Perl on the beach, wouldn't you? Especially if I'm saving and testing my code via wireless on the tower at home.

The car analogy continues: use a truck (workstation) for big work, small efficient Hondas (wireless 11x14 pen-driven digital notepads) for day-to-day stuff (surfing the Web, doing the books sitting on the sofa), and motorcycles (handhelds) for when you want to feel the wind in your hair (writing Perl on the beach). The alternative is to continue as we have done, letting PC vendors do like Detroit auto makers and continue to build dinosaurs just because that's all they know how to make.

Therein lies the revolution.

Everyone keeps saying this, but...

[jjoyce]

One thing that I've noticed over the years is that people who think they're analyzing the industry are judging where it is at by what's at the forefront. For instance, when a new chip comes out, suddenly analysts look at that as the standard machine everyone's using. No way. We need to look at the state of the industry as some kind of average of what consumers are buying. Sure, execs are using all these wireless gizmos. But are consumers dumping their PCs? No way. Hell, I'm typing this on my Pentium 233 (that's right, not a PII or PIII).

Schools, libraries, universities, hospitals and government offices all have invested heavily in PCs and there are no signs of obsolescence. The undeniable fact that PC prices are dropping like crazy is a reason that people are only going to buy more. Frankly, I don't want some little gadget I'm going to sit on and break -- or worse yet -- lose. I like my PC.

Remember the network PC that was supposed to replace our clunky desktop machines?

Mankind has always dreamed of destroying the sun.

*shrug*

[cdlu]

He doesn't really say the PC market will fade, but more that the wireless market will increase. This is true. As wireless high-speed communications increase in availability they will increase in popularity, because, face it, people will want such toys. PCs will hold on for some time yet because of things like full keyboards, mice and large monitors. Newer people from the older generation trying to learn computers will tend not toward wireless high-speed gizmos, but more toward the PC desktop market as a [relatively] easy to use method of computing. Personally, I don't think something like the palm-top with an airlan type connection would suit me, as I can not see taking a 3-6 inch monitor seriously... imagine slashdot on one of those?
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1); }return(0);}

Not yet.

[Maul]

The PC still probably has several years in it. It will likely never really die out. Portable gadgets will probably serve to complement available PCs, not replace them.

I think that within 5 years it will be commonplace for any average home in the US to have one computer for all the high-end needs, and that members of the household will have personal, small, PDAs that they can use for their daily purposes, then interface with the home PC.

So I think the market will change a bit, but I doubt the PC will "go away."

And of course, I'm sure that coders and the like will still want personal Linux boxes hanging around.

"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

Re:Not yet.

[Danse]

I think that within 5 years it will be commonplace for any average home in the US to have one computer for all the high-end needs

Only one? Like most homes have only one TV? I doubt it. I think the trend will be towards more PCs rather than fewer. They'll just become cheaper and cheaper. Unless they get so powerful that 3 or 4 people can play different games, surf the web, and/or use their favorite spreadsheet at the same time on the household server and not need their own box, just their own monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc, I think we'll start seeing more households with more PCs.

Bwahh

[pridkett]

Okay. I can understand why he might say that the PC era is ending. I mean, my Ti99/4a can hardly keep up anymore. We upgraded recently to a massive 10 megabyte hard disk and a 1200 baud modem. You should see slashdot on this thing. It's interesting to see how it remaps the character set to make the various icons like einstein and lady liberty that you "power users" of such computer as the Timex Sinclair take for granted.

However there are two things that my trusty Ti99/4a will have that these newfangled things (that connect to something called the global internet) will never have. First a giant box of a speech synthesizer. Who would think, a talking computer. Second a cassette tape adapter for me to load Tunnels of Doom. God bless technology.

He's wrong.

[Esperandi]

People use their PCs for more than web surfing, ya know, he seems to ignore that. No one wants Q3 on a handheld with a 4" screen. PCs have become a fixture in the home, and they'll stay that way. Televisions are portable now, do you see the TV set going anywhere?

Esperandi

Yeah right.

[SurfsUp]

90% of the world doesn't have a PC now and the PC era is supposed to be ending? Right. I'll believe it when I see all those Indians, Chinese, Indonesians, etc. etc. etc. running Wordperfect on their cellphones.

Re:The PC era is soooooooo over!!

[BJH]

And I've gone back to calling "Anonymous Cowards" "Flaming Bastards"...

Wireless Costs

[Detritus]

I don't think wireless Internet access will become popular unless the costs to the subscriber can be greatly reduced. I've read a number of reviews of the devices and the associated services. Most of the devices are brain damaged and the service costs are high. There don't seem to be any open standards for the devices and services.

Yeah, right.

[pb]

All this means is that the TI CEO thinks wireless internet devices or whatever are the "next big thing".

Well, everyone is investing in all kinds of crazy stuff hoping it will be the next big thing. Feel free to make a generator for it, using the words "innovative", "wireless", "internet", "hand-held", "touch screen", "Open-Source", "integrated", "internet-ready", "small footprint", "network", "Java", "device", "organizer", etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. We'll all be sick of it soon enough.

Does that mean this will be the next big thing? They sure hope so. We'll see a lot of attempts, and most of them will fail. These devices have their place, and some of them will live on. Some of them might even replace cell phones and pagers, and let you check on your stuff when you're on the road. That's really handy.

But the PC will live on. PC's will always have more brute computational force, display your games prettier, give you more room to surf the web and chat with people, play your music, etc., etc. Technological advances from both sides will be folded together. I can't wait to have a PC with a nice big flat screen, and a few really efficient processors.

But I still wouldn't want to take it on the road, and it's still a PC, just as much as my old Tandy with the monochrome monitor and the full-sized keyboard. Heck, anyone who hasn't been keeping up would just know that PC's are more like TV's now, they're prettier and stuff. Outwardly, they look pretty similar. Screen, keyboard, CPU, etc. I don't think that's gonna change for a while.

Screw paradigm shifts, I'm staying right here. :)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

What if?

[Insanik]

What if all those Indians, Chinese, Indonesians, etc skip the 'PC era?' From what I've read, wireless networks are taking the rest of the world by storm (places other then the US). For instance, I went on a tour in Ireland a while ago. Our tour guide was a telephone-line repairman (For Eircom, I think). It sounds like a shit job by US standards, but is a respectable job in Ireland. Anyway, their telephone networks are not all that great. Many areas on the island use some old radio system for their telephone communications.

The fact is that almost everybody I met had a cell phone, and nobody had a computer. The internet and email are things that would be of great use to the people. Small and portable web-devices would be much better suited for these people then desktop PCs.

I am not sure of the situation in the Asian countries, but I am sure smaller devices would suit a majority of the people much better.

It's not like they HAVE to own a desktop PC before they buy some smaller wireless-web type device.

Re:What if?

[SurfsUp]

What if all those Indians, Chinese, Indonesians, etc skip the 'PC era?'

And play quake 4 on their cell phones? Prepare their office correspondence on their wristwatches? Give me a break.

From what I've read, wireless networks are taking the rest of the world by storm (places other then the US) ... The fact is that almost everybody I met had a cell phone, and nobody had a computer.

You mean nobody was actually carrying their desktop around on the street :-) What has this got to do with the "end of the PC era"? Personally, I have a cell phone, actually more than one, and I've got normal computers at work, and at home. I don't think I'm so unusual in that. People are getting very confused about this "end of an era" thingy.

The internet and email are things that would be of great use to the people. Small and portable web-devices would be much better suited for these people then desktop PCs.

Again, while such devices are very likely to become more popular, you'll see them being used in addition to ordinary computers that you can type on, and that you don't have to squint to read. In fact, my cell phone would make an excellent wireless modem for my laptop if the connect charges weren't so ridiculously high.

Re:What if?

[SurfsUp]

Western Europes mobile network is exploding. GSM is hitting east asia and australia. The US seems to have been take by suprise for once and caught napping. I thought the US network would be better, but I was shocked to find out that it is quite dated, specially in WAP areas

Hehe. No way, can you say CDMA? GSM is the one that's outdated. Hopefully, once CDMA takes over the world we won't have the stupid division between NA/Euro cell phone standards.

He's right -- in a sense

[edhall]

The margin on a PC is tiny. It would be impossible for someone to enter the market and achive significant market share. Investors wouldn't support them, since they'd just lose money to the Dell's, Gateway's, and others who have:

1. achived enormous economies of scale,
2. still aren't making much money, and
3. aren't likely to come up with a product new and different enough to raise profit margins.

None of these limitations apply in the portable/wireless Internet market. Any number of killer, high-margin products remain to be developed and sold. It's a new market, not a "mature" one. TI (and Motorola, and ...) are right to focus on it.

Desktop and portable PC's aren't going away any time soon--they still be made in the tens of millions for years to come. But that's not where money is to be made.

Is TI trying to pump up this new market with this sort of PR? Of course! And as well they should. Trying to start something new in the PC market would be a colossal waste of money.

-Ed

the lan will be but a collection of little parts

[Speare]

I'd like a desktop like this:

ls --ip6links /dev
/dev/key0 ip6-> key://127.0.0.1.0.1/
/dev/mon0 ip6-> term://127.0.0.1.0.2/?4096x3072
/dev/mon1 ip6-> term://127.0.0.1.0.3/?2048x1280
/dev/ptr2 ip6-> point://127.0.0.1.0.4/
/dev/hda0 ip6-> ext3fs://127.0.0.1.0.5/mnt/boot
/dev/hda2 ip6-> ext3fs://127.0.0.1.0.5/mnt/swap
/dev/htv0 ip6-> hdtv://127.0.0.1.0.6/

Once IP6 is available, the lan will be but a collection of little parts that are connected to one or more processor units. I can imagine a desktop that has a bunch of tiny gold-plated studs in a decorative pattern, any three of which provide low-voltage power and/or ip6 hot-docking networking to the device(s) that rest upon them.

I'd head to the meeting room with the wireless mini-monitor to read up on the BeOS Matrix II DVD MPAA controversy on SlashDot, rather than fall asleep.

("the lan will be but a collection of little parts" => "well-chosen, brilliant, but total leaflet topic")

Re:oh please.

[w3woody]

The theory is that the PC era is ending because wireless dumb terminals will slowly replace personal computers in the future. Of course this is predicated on infinitely powerful servers and infinitely large wireless bandwidth, which makes me think that this is all pie in the sky bull.

What's fascinating is that anyone who has half a brain should be noticing the trend towards web-enabled applications which supplant the browser, rather than having the browser replace applications in general. Of course the pundets are usually the last idio^H^H^H^Hfolks to notice these things...

By the way, keep in mind that TI has an interest in having the PC go away, so anything that TI announces about the "end of the PC era" should be taken with a grain of salt.

Excuse the brevity, but more is not necessary.

[Effugas]

When people start using anything other than a PC to access the web, I'll start believing that the age of the PC has come to an end.

WebTV and the Palm Pilot(which doesn't even espouse to replace your computer!) do not a new PC-era make. What are the churn rates on WebTV, incidentally?

The fact that "x86 compatible" was repeated around 30 times by Transmeta's Ditzel should be noted.

Yours Truly,

Dan "My Brain Is Not Yet x86 Compatible" Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Excuse the brevity, but more is not necessary.

[ben_]

When people start using anything other than a PC to access the web, I'll start believing that the age of the PC has come to an end.

Let's assume that you include Macs in the set "PC". Then start believing.

The Sega Dreamcast is a web access device; at Xmas here in the UK the ISP providing access to Dreamcast users was overwhelmed by the number of registrations.

Virgin recently ordered an initial 10,000 iBrow internet appliances to give away free as part of their Virgin.net service.

My father regularly uses his Psion to pull down meteorological info pages before flying.

I agree with those who see PCs declining as a percentage of the set of web access devices. The mass of the population don't want or need a general purpose computer to access the web, they want an immediate-on dedicated device like the telephone or the TV.

Re:Just how does wireless broadband work anyway?

[w3woody]

Actually think "cell phone technology." That is, you rig it so that each transmitter only works within a limit area, with the different transmitters working to "trade off" as a device moves from cell to cell. Broadband only helps make things less prone to noise.

Of course the thing people don't tell you is that this is predicated on cell phone pricing as well. So the real question will be are people willing to surf the web on a 120x120 pixel display for $.10/minute?

Probably not, unless they're a "gizmo freek" or a masochist...

So many people are responding negatively...

[Lemmy Caution]

that I think he must be on to something.

To say that the age of the PC is over is probably like saying that the age of TV ended in the late 80's or early 90's with the rise of the home PC. Of course, there are as many TV's as ever, but they no longer represent the defining technology of an era. How many people here hack their TV sets or digital cable boxes?

I think some people here may be frightened about obsolesence - after all this time developing mastery over a medium, and cultivating arrogance towards those who have failed to get it, could there be a little payback coming down the pike? (Many others, of course, I am sure will be quite able to translate existing expertise to deal with the new environment - I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with IPv6 myself.)

But I do think that the PC paradigm is inelegant. Cables and wires everywhere, big clunky boxes, etc. - from a design perspective and in terms of aesthetics, the whole thing could use a lot of improvement.

I agree

[cprincipe]

I doubt very much that wireless devices will replace desktop PC's. There are still many developments coming out for desktops, plus the full size keyboard is the fastest method of input available without speech recognition. There are comfort issues as well. I know whenever I work off my laptop that I can't wait to get to the nice full screen of my desktop. I know PDA's are cool, but I doubt I'll use them for anything rather than pure functionality. As others have no doubt said, consider the source. Texas Instruments completely missed out on the PC revolution, although they tried to cash in with the horribly misplaced TI-99. The TI-99 was way ahead of its time in proving why a great deal of people don't like using a tiny computer - it's just plain hard to do. I couldn't envision using a handheld device for anything more than using a GPS transceiver to negotiate my way out of a traffic jam, or to jot down an appointment or quick note. I certainly couldn't work on the Great American Novel while listening to Launchcast and downloading porn...I mean, the latest kernel update. "The network will be going down until I can figure out how to put up with all of you."

Re:I agree

[Danse]

Ugh. It would suck to have a bunch of people in the office all talking to their computers. And people think cellphones are annoying. Wait'll they have to deal with people walking around talking to their pda too. Until I can subvocalize to my PC, I don't think I'm going to enjoy speech recognition all that much.

p0rn in school!

[jajuka]

Wow, I bet the TI'll be raking in the bucks tho when all those high school kids find out the new TI graphing calculator lets them look at their favorite porn sites in class! :)

TI's just desperate to have a consumer product again, so they'll latch on to anything. I have no use for a PDA in their current form. Give it an eyeglass based heads up type display and an input glove for typing and you'll have my interest. No voice recognition for me tho, until it's sentient I dont want to talk to my computer.

agreed, but- sm411340450131645

[goon]

Where is MicroMozilla, or MicroLinux?
a lot of examples fo r MicroLinux can be found here at,

• embedded linux - including Red Hat Tools for Embedded Developers
• 
  EL/IX Application Programming Interface - an embedded application programming interface
  Graphical IDE - cold fusion
  Hard Hat Linux - os for embedded appls
  mobile linux - allows linux to work on very small devices
  

however I agree with browsers... very few free open sourced browsers (for embedded systems) can be found (that I know of). The only one I can think of that could be suitable is being produced by Opera (thats not released and it's cli and not open source. I remember reading about this in an interview on /. but cannot find it. Opera developed a cli version and may release it.). But perhaps each device will have a browser developed for it by the manufacturer (or purchased). I dont see how MS can win in this arena as they dont have control the operating system and they can't possibly produce a browser to fit each system and respect the gui. More important is the protocol to transmit the information (follow to the next message)...


links:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/cgi-bin/news_view.cgi
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-mobile/199 8Jul/0001.html
http://www.wapforum.org/
http://www.operasoftware.com

"But mister Beeblebrox...

[XNormal]

...it was on the sub-ether radio this morning it said your were dead..."

"Yeah, that's right. I just haven't stopped moving yet"


----

But what about video games?

[Sludge]

Whether or not PCs die out, in the past year or so, and increasingly so in the future, video games have required specialized gaming hardware. It used to be that I could go over to a friend's house where their parents had bought a computer for word processing and install eight or nine games, and they would actually become interested in computers.

These days, games cannot be an afterthought when buying a computer, sadly. It was Tim Sweeney who commented that engines are going to have to become even more scalable, because the 'home user PC' and the video gamer PC are really starting to get a vast difference between them.

I think this could be a major curbing point for PC game evolution, if engines do not become VERY scalable.

Scalability isn't the be-all end-all solution, either. While you support features that can be turned off, they can't really be directly related to gameplay. For example, in Quake 2, the OpenGL renderer on my 3DFx ran in 16bpp, but the textures were all 8bpp. (The extra bittage was used for coloured lighting.) The 8bpp software renderer held the high colour renderer back.

Such is the price of scalability.

Mark Twain

[Kid Zero]

"The Reports of my Death are Greatly Exaggerated."

I think that says it best. Granted, wireless is where the next big boom in growth will be, mainly in areas where Phone service either sucks, is expensive, or both. :) (Europe comes to mind)
In the US, we are used to cheap phones, and are now getting spoiled on cheap broadband access. Being mindful of our neighbors can't hurt us.

Bandwidth scalability/availability

[theonetruekeebler]

I think you're spot-on, yuriwho. The usefulness of these devices is going to be dependent on what if any bandwidth is available at a given moment. If your home PC is attached to a wire it certainly can process more information than a gigantic cell network, and it's connected regardless of whether you're in a restaurant or a tunnel or whatever. I think the PC is going to be where all your agents run, sifting through the big random pile of data the Internet is doomed to become, monitoring your stocks, analysing the market, shopping for that rare Pokémon, paying your taxes, running pattern recognition on the WebCams monitoring your house and back yard for burglars, and so forth. It'll ping your portable from time to time, and based on what it determines is the available bandwidth and cost thereof between you and it, prioritize and summarize the information it sends you. If you only have 300bps between you because you're so far out in the sticks the only feed you have is a $30/k download, $250/k upload satellite relay, it will restrict messages to "your house is on fire"-priority text; if you have unlimited-use at 9mpbs, it'll feed you a gameshow where it's transparenty rerendering all the contestants as naked supermodels answering questions about sex.

In effect, in addition to its own modest offline processing power, your portable is a thin client to a real computer doing incredibly powerful middleware stuff.

Huge processing power and huge bandwidth require heavy equipment, lots of electricity, and wires to carry the data. If your PC sits at home doing all the fancy stuff for you, we solve two problems at once: how to manage unpredictable wireless bandwidth and how to handle the huge processing requirements of tomorrow's software.

--

For TI, the pc era ended...

[ch-chuck]

...in fall 1983 when they started dumping their formerly $900 pc's for $49.95 - it was 16 bit too!
One problem may have been software authors had to submit their work to TI for approval, amongst other thing....

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