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Is the Home Desktop Going Away?
fishdan asks: "I recently wrote a lengthy reply to Doug Barney who had written an article saying that Apple and Linux were not trying to compete on the desktop. I saved my reply in my journal, if anyone is interested. However, this got me to thinking. Game makers have said that they are going to be developing for consoles like the Xbox or Playstation, first. Rich web applications like Writely are moving much of the standard functionality of the desktop online. Email is moving rapidly to mobile devices. Given your integrated Web/Media Center/TV that runs through your high resolution screen (that everyone will have in 10 years), what is the future of the home desktop?"
I can't wait until I don't need to use my desktops for anything, 'cause my SETI@Home Average Credit will shoot through the roof! Soon afterwards, I will get credited for discovering the Tralfamadoreans, who, coincidently, like to give huge sums of gold to people who discover them.
I'll just sit back and wait.
I'm sure that EVENTUALLY with media centers and portable tablet/handhelds getting move advanced it might become a reasonable notion, but until we're all walking around with Star Trek-esque super computers the size of a notepad, I'm not sure I see any obvious reason for the desktop to disappear anytime soon.
I'm somewhat opposed to the home desktop being replaced by a dumb terminal, mostly on the grounds that it will reduce user privacy and artifically limit the scope of possible use. There are a couple of factors to consider, however:
1. At least in the U.S., there just isn't a good enough broadband Internet infrastructure to handle the bandwidth required to drive a dumb terminal and provide anything near the current desktop experience with games, movies, etc.
2. Even if point 1 wasn't an issue, it'd still be a gradual process to get people to switch to something like that, plus it would take time for various service providers to come up with the hardware and software infrastructure to do it, and finally there'd be a big market war.
3. There's also the point to be made that Microsoft still maintains its industry presence largely via Windows, and a move to dumb terminals plugged into a server-side experience would cause a dramatic shift in Windows' - and thus Microsoft's - role (if not toss it right out the window, pun intended).
Bottom line: I give desktops at least another 10-20 years before someone vaulted into the future from today would have a hard time recognizing a home computer.
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I'm sitting at home right now typing this post on a G5 PowerMac. Sitting next to me is my cousin's new Mac Mini. I'm waiting on a 20" Apple flat panel display before setting things up at her house. Here's the deal: The Mac Mini will be in placed in my cousin's cupboard, with all the wiring hidden. The flatpanel will be attached to the wall to the side of the cupboard, and a small cantilevered ledge, that has already been built will serve as the home to the keyboard, and optical trackball. This whole set up is very easily to get to, and is situated so that you almost must be able to view the flatpanel if you are in the kitchen. My cousin and her family will use this set up to do most of their online activities, e-mail, web surfing etc.. It will also serve as a bulletin board, family calender etc., and my cousin will have all her recipes stored on the beast. She'll be able to read them from anywhere in the kitchen with out her glasses. (Yes that means large print.) They will also have an nice speaker system in the kitchen and use iTunes for music. If they so choose, they can also view DVDs with their meals. So then where is the desktop? The only 'top' is the small ledge for the keyboard, and trackball, and there's no way that I'd call that a desktop as there's no desk just the small ledge.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Remember WebTV? It was supposed to be the internet for people too dumb/old/poor for a PC. I remember we got it for my grandmother. It sucked pretty bad, and the fact that it only did the basic things was still too much for her. The problem was that no one else knew how to use it either, since everyone else has a PC.
Now she has a PC that's riddled with spyware. What she should have is a machine with a smallish(5G), noexec hard drive + smaller (1G) HD for swap space, in a $100 box that runs BOOTP or something to her ISP. Every morning, she turns it on and it pulls down the OS image, in fact the same OS image that every client of the ISP gets. Tech support becomes "Reboot the box."
That's all 90% of home PCs need to be. But then those semi-tech literate kids at Best Buy wouldn't have anyone to lecture about spyware anymore. Very sad.
I have no problem finding public terminals in libraries, friends houses and coffeeshops that I can boot from a USB key or a businesscard CD, so perversely don't take my laptop on the road. I could be rendered homeless tomorrow and my clients wouldn't notice. It's a barely perceptible but immensely powerful change in the world - net access isn't ubiquitous, but it can be found for free or at nominal cost just about anywhere in the developed (or even semi-developed) world, as easily found as a public restroom or a dumpster full of yesterday's bagels. People like the homeless guy are as much a part of the information age as the rest of us. That's world-changing stuff that no-one really notices.
The desktop is not going away any time soon. These amazing handheld all purpose gizmos are not about to replace the desktop until certain technologies are enhanced big time:
- batteries. You can run a heavy, hot laptop for about 2-3 hours before needing a lengthy recharge. You can run a handheld PDA for roughly the same amount of time; current drain scales up proportionately. You are going to need a couple of orders of magnitude better power sources to replace a desktop; 12 hours of continuous use per day for several days, I would guess.
- data input. The desktop/laptop has this amazing invention, the full size keyboard, that lets us enter tons of information more quickly and accurately than any other method. Having used a Palm handheld and mobile phone for years I can safely conclude that the keyboard is in no danger of being replaced. Speech recognition still sucks and that's the one possible alternative.
- display. Desktops have awesome displays; it's not uncommon to have 19" or 24" displays these days, nice crisp LCD screens. Nothing compares to this. Teeny little 3" screens are not going to replace these any time soon.
- storage. Desktops start at 40G of permanent storage and go up to terabytes. Nothing else can compare. What's more, our storage needs are growing, not shrinking. We're not going to switch to Pocket PC/Phone/consoles that have maybe a 10G memory card or a 30G hard disk and give up our 250 giggers.
- connectivity. A desktop is on DSL or Cable or T1 or dial-up and is a reliable way to access the internet. Handheld devices have to be in range of a wireless hub or in network for cellular connections. The widely available connectivity for broadband handheld devices simply doesn't exist yet. My previous apartment was in some kind of Verizon dead zone, in a big suburb next to Boston so it would have been impossible to have handheld broadband or even handheld slow dialup. THere's a tremendous amount of infrastructure to be built, just to displace an existing infrastructure that works pretty well.
As storage is further miniaturized and as voice input and battery technology improve, we will doubtless see a displacement of casual desktop/laptop use with handhelds, such as Blackberry-style email reading and Palm/PPC-style organizer functions, but for heavy lifting, the desktop will remain. When 8 megapixel cameras are the norm and everyone's using digital video cameras with their huge demand for disk space, we're going to want those capacious, fast desktops even more.
Phones will probably get a little smarter but convergence tools such as the Treo can only do so much. People still want phones to act like phones. It's going to take a lot of tech to move us to the next level.
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