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Sun President Says PCs Are Relics
christchurch map writes "Jonathan Schwartz, president of server and software maker Sun Microsystems, said that the personal computer is increasingly becoming a relic. Instead, what has become important are Web services on the Internet and the majority of the world will first experience the Internet through their mobile phones." From the article: "Schwartz points to the increasing wealth and power of companies, like eBay, Google, Yahoo and Amazon.com, that profit from free services available over the network. Among his audience, many more people said they'd rather have access to Internet services than their desktop computing applications. And Microsoft--the company with the biggest financial stake in the PC software business--has struggled to cope with the arrival of Web services."
The issue is always one of compute versus bandwidth.
The advantages of centralising compute is obvious - most PC's are idle for 99% of the time - so if we put the compute resources somewhere we can all share them then we can have 100x performance when we need it.
However, the PC can only be replaced with some kind of Web appliance and a honking great central server is only possible when there is sufficient bandwidth and low enough latency for ALL applications. If there is even one necessary application which needs more bandwidth than a typical network connection can provide - then you're screwed and you need a full blown computer at every location.
If you are talking about an office setup where people are doing word processing, spreadsheets and other predominantly text-based work - then maybe Mr Schwartz is right - but think about this - a Web-appliance capable of rendering nice interfaces isn't going to be a whole lot cheaper than a regular PC.
For a home setup, things are even worse.
When we play games - we need (at a minimum) 76Hz video at 1600x1200 full colour resolution...plus a couple of 44kHz audio channels...sustained - no dropouts and minimal latency.
That's 76 x 1600x1200 x 24 bits/second of graphics...3.5Gbits/sec. Realtime compression tricks might cut that in half - but even a dedicated 1GHz link to eachuser is insufficient.
A T1 line to every user (1.544Mbits/sec) wouldn't come close. Right now, you'd need a high quality synchronous optical network into every home.
It's possible - but compared to the cost of buying a $200 PC with a $100 graphics card, it's a non-starter.
www.sjbaker.org
One could also say centralized servers are relics also, with the advent of peer to peer networking (Bittorrent, etc).
AC comments get piped to
what is he selling now: consider the source.
Sun are still hoping that the network computer becomes popular before they have to file for bankruptcy.
To tell the truth, the day of the network computer may finally be near. Now at last we have net based email applications which are more or less as good as the PC based ones. And some net based games are decent as well although they are not even close in presentation to PC based games. But for games cleverness and network features may compensate for bad presentation.
But we still need a net based text editor (aka Word) in order to make any network computer feasable.
Then again, even if the network computer becomes popular, will Sun be able to reap the benefits? In order for the concept to work it has to be cheap and sun is not good at building anything cheap. And anything Sun can do, Linux and BSD can do for cheaper.
The issue with the personal computer is that the current paradigm expects everyone to be a sysadmin. While similar to the Marines' "every man a rifleman" ethos, it works less well in the average Home/Office setting. Frankly, it leads to a lot of shot feet. "all right Bob, now flash the Bios... *BANG*"
When people say they're sick of the their PC, what they actually mean (from talking to a few of them), is that they're sick of having to worry about the balky innards. They just want to turn it on, write their letters, check out CNN, and play Hearts against the Novosibirsk Hearts League. However, if you ask them if they'd trade the speed, immediacy, and appearance of control that having their own PC versus a running a web-service on a dedicated, limited, device offers, they'll immediately say, "No". They also, as a rule, don't want eight devices each of which only does one job. So, we're back with PCs.
One suspects that what Zander is really offering is everyone having a SunRay on their desk, with massive Sun systems in the background pushing everything through the network pipe. I, as the de-facto sysadmin for the family, think this is a great idea, but I as my geekish self, don't. Personally, I think the first company/organization that comes up with a machine that includes the modern connectivity with the single-user OS experience of circa 1996 Mac/Windows is going to have a hit. It's finding someone to work out the iPod experience for the PC; connected, yet truly yours. Clean, unobtrusive, and dedicated to its function. Maybe everything that makes a PC yours kept on an iPod-Nanoish device, which is docked to a PC, and allows it to run. Without your card, it doesn't run, and with your card, it only runs your programs, and only stores your data, so other users can't infect you. Every tub on its own bottom computing.
On the other hand, maybe we'll finally get fibre to the curb, high-speed, redundant links to the network, so you'll always be on, and there's enough bandwidth so that remote content appears like local content. Then Zander, Gates, et al., will be proved right, but until then, I think the general-purpose PC is here to stay.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Look at the cost of a cheap Dell these days - the fact is you can't make a thin client much cheaper than a low end PC. And while much of what we do with PCs might in the future be doable with thin clients, not all of it will be - you can't play decent games on a thin client, for example. There's just no reason for the end user to not buy a full-feature PC, and it will be a long time before we think of them as relics.
Oh no... it's the future.
but that's not what the nice man from Sun is saying. He's saying that PC's are obsolete
I, for one, like my pc. Network pc's have lots of problems. First off, there's performance. Bandwidth is a REAL limiting problem. Plus, LAN parties are pretty much out the window. I mean, who wants ping at a LAN party? There'll already be enough network traffic for just the game, and now you have to further bog down the network (I realize that if companies developed games to be specifically played on network computers, this problem would be eliminated, except that they won't, because, as of right now, the market for that audience is too small. Most home users don't have a network computer.) Next, there's security issues. With a pc, you turn off your computer, and your files aren't going anywhere (unless someone has physical access to the box). Network pc? Unless you have no connection to the internet, given enough time, any security will crack. (this should be solved through regular updates, but if you're not the admin, what are YOU going to do about it?)
Web applications- I'm not sure to what extent this term means, but I'm assuming that if he mentions eBay, Yahoo, Google, and Amazon, he means access to email, news, and shopping. Email is useful, and so is news and shopping...in America. I'm getting this feeling that his genius plan of bringing these services to Sub-Saharan Africa isn't going to work. Promoting of oss is great and all, but he's forgotten one teensy-weensy problem. These programs run on pc's.
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
The average user of the future may not WANT to maintain his PC software environment in the face of constant security upgrades.
Low-bandwidth screen-remote-control applications like GoToMyPC and NX make this job much easier.
Unless you are watching TV or playing video games, a "black box" that connects to a server over dialup is just fine.
If you want to play games, or watch low-res TV, get broadband. If you want to watch high-res TV, get high-speed broadband.
About the only thing you need "local power" beyond what a "sealed black box" does is print and read or write local media.
10 years from now, 90-99% of Americans will have some way to get on the free Internet and subscription-based storage and applications at home. For many of them, it will be a "black box" to the network much like telephones were in my parent's generation. Others will be more like PCs of today, with local storage and local management. Many will have both types of "terminals" scattered around their abodes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
PC's are no more a relic than owning your own home. Does everyone go out and get rid of a house because of the wide availability of hotel rooms or apartments? No, of course not. A hotel doesn't have the room to store all your stuff, it allows limited if any personalization or customization, and in general the customer service sucks. apartments are only slightly better, but in the end they occupy the conceptual space of a laptop in the computer world. great for some people, but after awhile, you're going to outgrow it as a primary computer.
the future trend is going to be for every home to have one or two really big pc's (something we in the Industry refer to as "servers") that network everything from your tivo/pvr to your cell and cordless phones to ultralight tablets and laptops, and make the data stored on those servers ubiquitously available.
Sun, MS and all the other large corporate players forget that freedom is the most important feature of any computer. The PC revolution was about finally having a powerful computer that you could do what you wanted with. Anything. Games, Business, Art, Music (ok, not on a PC until relatively recently), whatever it was that you wanted to - the PC was yours.
It started when suddenly you could choose a computer from a bevy of different manufacturers that could run the same software and even accept the same upgrades and accessories. The universe of possibilites was huge!
It was the feeling you got when you looked at a $5 shareware rack and saw someone buying the program you wrote!
It was the feeling that busines people got when they saw that software like dBase and 1-2-3 eliminated repetitive clerical work that kept small business small and big business huge.
It was the feeling that small publishers got when their LaserWriter spit out the first copy of their 2,400 subscriber newsletter... and it looked as good as what any newspaper could print.
It was the feeling that kids would get when they typed RUN after building a simple game in GW-Basic (and grew into Turbo-C, Turbo-Pascal and the amazing array of choices in development tools).
It was the feeling that somehow the world was smaller when you heard the chirp-chirp-buzz of your 2400BPS modem connect with a bbs.
It was being able to upgrade and modify and customize your machine, like you Dad did his car - to perform how you wanted it to and to do the things you wanted it to.
Now people like Schwartz say the PC is dead because big corporations want to "harness the power" of your cell phone, game console and PC and rent it back to you... Whatever. Useless. Clueless. People want freedom. Not walls, restrictions and tollbooths.
It's a matter of time until someone makes the PC of convergent cell phones - one where the user has control, the software stack is simple, elegant and compatible, and there's no toll booths for developers. Users control it. Just like I do my PC.
And incidentally, Open Source software feels to me a lot like a continuation of the PC revolution - with one difference - this time we know that it's about freedom. Last time it was simply fun.
-- $G
My personal banking info
My vacation pics
My resignation letter
My will
All these, and more, I do not necessarily want on some other guys server. My banking info? Here, and at the bank. Not with some 3rd party. My vacation pics? All of them? Well...some, I want to keep local. My will? Here, and at the lawyers office. Again, not a copy on some other guys hard drive. Some guy I have zero control over.
A LOT of things could be used and kept online. But an awful lot of other things I want to keep very, very local.
Why store data on a PC or a LAN at all?
There are a couple of compelling reasons. One is privacy. While it is possible that my personal data will be compromised through a security hole on my Internet-connected PC, it is much more likely that it will be compromised if I leave it on a network server out there where any would-be spammer or identity thief can bribe underpaid sysadmins to give them a copy. Certainly, no company is going to want its trade secrets and financials exposed in that way.
The other major reason is cost. No one is going to host several hundred gigs of data for me for free. And while I realize that most folks don't have that much data -- ignoring for the moment gigantic collections of pirated movies and MP3s -- even small amounts of data storage will come at a cost, whether that's a subscription fee that adds up to much more than the cost of a hard drive over its lifetime, or just having ads shoved in one's face whenever you want to use it.
There's one other important reason to host your own data: when network data storage is commoditized, the service providers will be operating on razor-thin margins and therefore prone to bankruptcies and mergers. What happens to your data when your hosting service goes belly up? What happens to your data and your privacy terms when your hosting service is acquired by a larger company with less scruples?
Why even buy music or movies? Pay-per-play!
Because my daddy doesn't pay for my rock and roll lifestyle anymore.
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