Slashdot Mirror
The End of the PC Era and Apple's Plan To Survive
Hugh Pickens writes "Charlie Stross has written a very interesting essay, ostensibly about the 'real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash,' but really about how Jobs is betting Apple's future on an all-or-nothing push into a new market as Moore's law tapers off and the personal computer industry craters and turns into a profitability wasteland. Stross says that Apple is trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem — one that rivals the 26-year-old Macintosh environment — to maturity in five years flat — the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry and turn PC manufacturers into suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligible profit. 'Any threat to the growth of the app store software platform is going to be resisted, vigorously, at this stage,' writes Stross. 'And he really does not want cross-platform apps that might divert attention and energy away from his application ecosystem.' The long-term goal is to support the long-term migration of Apple from being a hardware company with a software arm into being a cloud computing company with a hardware subsidiary. 'This is why there's a stench of panic hanging over Silicon Valley. This is why Apple have turned into paranoid security Nazis, why HP have just ditched Microsoft from a forthcoming major platform and splurged a billion-plus on buying up a near-failure; it's why everyone is terrified of Google,' writes Stross. 'The PC revolution is almost coming to an end, and everyone's trying to work out a strategy for surviving the aftermath.'"
...just changing. People seem to be exclusively using mobile devices more and more (whether it be phones, tablets, or laptops/netbooks/etc). That being said, tower PCs will ALWAYS have a place in the enthusiast and hobbyist markets. Even with my phone, laptop, and whatever else, I still love having a full-blown setup at home that I can chill out in front of.
Hard to beat a multi-screen setup with a full size keyboard and a kensington expert trackball :-)
Living With a Nerd
That's some over-the-top fear mongering.
now we're going back to the thin-client model in a spectacularly fucked-up way? What a sack of shit!
Time to give up my nerd hobbies and look for something else to get interested in. As a non-IT user now there's no more point in GNU, Linux. Everything's going to be a fucked-up locked-down black box bunch of HORSE SHIT.
yay.
Fuckers.
I don't think the PC is going to meet its demise anytime in the foreseeable future. Microsoft dominates the business sector right now because it caters to businesses in a way Apple doesn't. Apple may take over the home user market, but until they convince businesses to adopt their ideologies PCs won't be dying anytime soon
I have to say that just but reading the article and the way things seem to be going in the IT field just on support I can see where he is coming from. I myself have put to use google docs as a way of storing my files so that I can access them anywhere. Cloud Computing is definately penetrating the IT industry in its entirety. Apple's stance on this and their fear of everything is understood, as is everyones fear of the change. Many companies will change with the times, but can we honestly say that PC's are going to go away and the revolution is over? There are still many flaws in making things available over the cloud and a lot of companies would rather have the ability to maintain their own information as opposed to putting it on the cloud and losing control over the hardware and software that maintains it. Most will not trust the security of the cloud over the ability to run NIDS and other such devices to secure their own networks and files. So a valid fear yes, unsubtantiated no, but is it truly going to take over and make pc's secondary any time soon, doubtful.
The description sounds like the business model for consoles
Half of my users have trouble getting vpn protocols to work reliably over their isp links. ALL of my users complain loudly when things aren't fast and snappy. I would NEVER put any of these people 'on the cloud', considering one lost packet is enough to get them riled up. It's bad enough that they will complain about new emails not coming in....it would be worse if they can't get to ANY of them when their connection is down.
You can get a lot of power into very small notebooks now.....why go backwards back to a dumb terminal that is dependent upon overloaded Starbucks wifi in order to get ANY program to work?
Desktops may be dying out....but we're not switching the entire world to the cloud anytime soon.
- Eric
So far most of these new devices seem to have a huge tradeoff.. Privacy. There are very few apps on my iPod touch that allow me to keep my stuff within the confines of my home; especially if I am on the road and not on my own netwok. Until these privacy concerns are addressed I would hope PCs survive, otherwise the tech industry has done a monumental disservice to everyone. This all sums up my main dislike for Apple.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Not quite.
Many people still don't feel like having a "cloud" service in the Internet hold the only copy of my documents. They can and will hold the files hostage if I stop paying, if they go belly up or if the government says so. Unlike money, documents don't loose value in a mattress.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
This guy sounds like a desperate market speculator that has no clue how the market works. The "personal computer" market is just have as rough a time as other markets, but it does not mean that we should just throw our arms in the air and give up. While I have not purchased new PC hardware in four or five years(for economic reasons), it does not mean that I do not want new hardware. Whoever this fucktard is, he needs to keep the stupid opinions to himself.
Yeah, perhaps Apple and HP are looking to switch their platforms, but it does not mean that this will seal the end of the PC market. Only an idiot would buy into this horseshit.
...the Y2K bug.
I tend to take any prediction anyone in the computer industry makes with a rather large grain of salt since then.
Particularly the ones relating to "the end of the world as we know it" and similar predictions of global occurrences.
Seeing "END OF THE WORLD!!!11eleven!" not happen before your eyes does that to you.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It is tapering off. Any smaller and quantum mechanics come in to play, which is something we're not quite done studying yet much less implementing. Chips as we know them are very near their physical limits.
But TFA is a sack of shit anyway. Throw some heat pipes on the die and slap another die ontop of it. Repeat as needed*. You can call them eSandwiches.
* If only it were that easy...
Yup. And I think this article is not at all wrong except maybe in the timeframe. Sooner or later networks will be reliable and very, very wide. The timeframe for the sustitution of local computing for remote "clouded" computing is directly proportional to the value of "sooner or later". The more networks take to get decent, the more time the PC has.
Now there is an interesting gridlock: network providers are idiot money whores that still want to get dough out of an investment that has already returned them many times over. They do not want to move to ipv6 and PC software makers like MS have no incentive to do so because, yes, this will cheapen networks and make them more reliable thus making them obsolete.
It is Interesting that yes, GNU, Linux and FOSS platforms in general will kill microsoft by being the dominant OS infrastructure of the new cloud which will be subsequently used to lock us in for the "service" of content providers and of just about anything else (applications and games)....
Now, in the future, if this happens my young padawan, an Open Net movement with the GNU ideal on its mind will make its own cloud and we (yes, you and me) will compete with the other fuckers on services combined with foss platforms, unlocked phones and "freePads" or LiberPads. You see, if what I forsee is coming, and ipv6 is implemented despite the gridlock, net neutrality more or less comes by default and killing it looses any justification from the net providers who should anyways compete in price per MBPS and that only.
And on and on....
NO SIG
There have been plenty of phones for a while now that have a USB port. The most popular form factor is micro-USB, but it's still USB. It's up to the manufacturers to put compelling software on the phones and for the wireless companies (I'm looking at you, Verizon) to not ruin the experience.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Sorry, but I've been around too long to buy it. I remember seeing Larry Ellison predict the end of the PC era just as it got going. Literally, I was in the audience, as he described how the NC (Network Computer for those that don't remember) would replace the PC. Conveniently, it was all driven by Oracle. No need for Apple, or Microsoft, or any of their nonsense anymore! And that was in 1998 I think... Remember 1998 folks? You were still using those clunky Netware networks - might have even been on Token Ring still, and you were excited by that new Windows 98 that was coming out that was FINALLY going to fix the problems with Windows 95... me, I was excited about that new fangled phone operating system... Palm OS.
Sorry... Saying that PC's are going to bite it because of the "cloud" is like saying that we have bullet trains now, so you no longer need your car.
(There's your car analogy for those looking for one)
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I see no end in site for PCs. I see only changes. The biggest change is that hardware has gotten good to the point that you no longer need the best for many things. I mean time was, computer were slow even for simple stuff. I remember in high school I'd send a document to print and go off to the kitchen to snack while I waited the 10+ minutes it took. The system was just slow. Booting took forever, launching an app could take 30 seconds, etc. Media playback was limited to tiny, postage stamp sized video. Even if you had good hardware, it wasn't good enough.
That's not the case these days. For basic stuff a low end system works fine. Also because lithography technology has progressed so much, basic can be quite small. Hence a small, cheap thing like a netbook is feasible to make and sell, and quite popular for various things. Still a computer though, and it hasn't killed off other computer markets.
We just don't have a "one size fits all" market, or perhaps more accurately we are now able to make technology good enough to make different kinds of systems for different uses.
The iPad is not the future. The iPhone is not the future. A combination of devices, including ones not yet created, are the future. We do not appear to be heading towards a "death" of normal computers.
For the past 25 years we've seen these types of predictions. What's being said is nothing new. Just a new surface on an old polygon.
The industry has a long way to go before it is going to die. There's nothing Apple nor anyone else can do that will change things. The industry, in a way, is at fault for any problems being perceived. The constant niggling of customers by tiny incremental change leads customers to believe that there's nothing happening and thus their unwillingness to pay the price for the technology. Make big changes, some radical, such as from the command line to the GUI and we'll see another 50 years of growth in PC.
This is more feldercarb by some industry exhaust spewing waste into the ecosystem. They are just blowhards seeking to get you to think that this Apple product is the direction we'll be going. We do not run our computers for gaming, as gaming is secondary. We expect significantly more from our computers than a gaming console provides. We do not do serious productivity work on an iPad or gaming console.
And Moore's law has nothing to do with this. Everytime someone says Moore's law has come to an end we have another go at it.
I think what I'm reading are the younger generation that didn't see the world as it was back then, before computing was involved in every aspect of our lives. These people have a problem with their imagination and hence their mind is out of focus when it comes to innovation and technology. I'm certain this isn't quite like the music business where a friend said that the only reason music sucks today is because all the good music has already been made. It's really a lack of vision that drives one to conclude that these cobbled devices are technology's future. They are a just a crutch to innovation.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
"The Cloud" is just the fancy new name for "Utility Computing", which was a fancy new name for "The Grid", which was a shorter version of "The Network Is The Computer", which was just a fancy new name for what used to be called "Mainframe Computing"
When the world does actually switch over to it, it's not still going to be called "The Cloud", and there's a few spectacular failures and legal changes that will happen before we get to the shiny new name that sticks to a successful implementation.
the PC industry already IS a profitability wasteland. PC manufacturers have been suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligible profit for over 5 years now. That's why IBM liquidated their PC division to Lenovo. It's also why Dell's market capitalization continues to dwindle despite their efforts to diversify. And why Acer gobbled up Gateway and eMachines. Companies either have to continually grow their volume to maintain the same profits, or get into something different with more margin. Apple has been doing that for a while now, as has IBM. HP's PC division doesn't make them much money at all (relative to volume), but with all their other lines (printers, servers, etc) it's worth their effort because they can be the sole supplier for some huge corporations, thus making their profits on the specialty equipment.
Let's assume we hit the absolute limit. We develop a lithography technique that is as small as possible, and there is no way to do anything on the quantum level. I'm not saying that is remotely likely, just assume. So what? That now means there no use for anything but an iPad? Hardly. While there's a wide variety of users for computers these days that require little power, there are plenty of other uses that require more power. Media creation would be a big one. People love to shoot, edit, and distribute video. Wonderful, but you need an ok system to do SD video, and you need a reasonably high end system to do HD. Video games would be another area. Those modern consoles, including the Wii, have some heavy hitting graphics hardware in them. Not the kind of thing you pack in an ultra mobile device.
In fact, if we hit the absolute limit of transistor size scaling, we'd then be at a point where the only way to get higher performance is larger chips, more processors, more power usage. It would in fact be a hindrance to portable devices. The mobile market we have today is possible only because we've been able to scale things down so well. The potential technologies that people talk about for the future in the mobile market will only be possible with more scaling. If we can't build smaller, more efficient chips, well then we'll just have to live with larger devices.
Also just because a market becomes saturated, doesn't mean there isn't money to be made in it. Sure, everyone who wants a PC owns one these days, more or less. It is even getting that way with laptops. So what? There's still a market. As an example, look at TVs. In America we hit TV saturation long, long ago. EVERYONE has a TV, even extremely poor families have a TV. What's more, you can now replace a TV with a tiny device. In theory, a smart phone could replace a TV. Doesn't matter, people don't want to watch TV on their smart phone, they want a 65" big screen TV. Doesn't matter that they could have it more mobile or in another device. They want a bigass TV, so they'll buy one.
For all those who f the cloud - have you ever thought about some of your most precious resource are in other people's hand? I.e. Bank?
A couple of points:
cheers,
Andrew
If you don't know what Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-Backspace are for, GTFO.
;)
If you think a pretty web browser is more important than a properly secured one, GTFO.
If you don't know how to listen to music with any player other than iTunes, GTFO.
If you think the App store counts as a software repository, GTFO.
If you think you know how your computer actually works, GTFO.
If text that is not encompassed by a pretty bubble widget scares you, GTFO.
Most importantly:
If you think personal computers are no longer necessary, interesting, or are part of a dying industry, turn in your geek card at the door as you GTFO.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
It appears many of the responders have interpreted the "end of the PC era" to mean that in 5/10/15 years there will be no more PC's. This interpretation is amazingly stupid, and misses the entire point Steve is trying to make.
Steves point is that particular applications and use cases are moving away from the PC. We watched NetFlix and YouTube on a PC in the past because we needed to push out new software to a general purpose platform to support it. But that's not how most users want to watch it. My new TV streams both inside the TV. I'll never watch Netflix on my PC again.
A couple of years ago if I wanted to find a nearby restaurant I would have loaded Google Maps, searched, and clicked around on my PC. Today I take my iPhone off my belt, load UrbanSpoon or Yelp, and get more useful information plus a map I can take with me. I don't search for restaurants on my PC anymore.
People aren't going to get rid of their PC's, and the PC will always be the platform for really new innovation because of its general purpose nature and the ability to run new software. But PC's have effectively saturated the market. Maybe people need a desktop and a laptop, but no (consumers) need 10, 20, or 50 PC's per person. There is no growth.
But TV's, game consoles, smart phones, tablets and other form factors are just starting to do interesting things. They are doing them in a more convenient way much of the time, and in a way consumers are more likely to use. I can start a netflix movie on my TV with 3-4 remote presses. Compare to 5 years ago where you had to build a media center PC, hook it up to your TV, deal with all sorts of programs to get content, etc.
Steve's point is that while PC's are 95% of the way people access information today, they will be 50% in 10 years. Not because PC's have gone away, but because there is an explosion in other devices. So if you keep building for the PC, you'll be building for 50% of the market in 10 years. We'll still be doing word processing on a PC with a mouse and keyboard then, but other things will be done elsewhere.
There is much truth to what you say.
Even though you are modded plus 5 Funny.
Much of what makes Apple cool is the Elitist attitude.
They have traditionally been the BMW of computers.
If a BMW where the same price as a Hyundai I am sure some of that desire to have a BMW would wane.
This is not to say the product isn't good. But because it is a product that your poor uncool friends can't afford, whilst you can, makes the purchase even better.
Moore's law has nothing to do with the size of the transistors. It has to do with the number of transistors, and their cost. If you fit the exact same number of transistors for half the cost, Moore's law holds just as true as if you doubled the number of transistors for the same cost.
Yeah, what does he know about computing and the future? After all he's just a long time Linux user, former sysadmin, Perl hacker and currently a very successful science fiction author. And a very good one at that. IMO the best current SF writer that I know of.
Let's not lose sight of the fact that the world will be a better place the sooner its rid of Flash. Please, buy all non-Apple products if you wish, but let's all dump Flash ASAP and help promote open web standards.
But because it is a product that your poor uncool friends can't afford, whilst you can, makes the purchase even better.
Who the fuck can't afford a Mac? Depending on the vintage, even a homeless person might obtain one for free from a dumpster. Perfectly usable modern Macs are available on eBay for $100 - $200. People don't buy Macs because they're "exclusive." We're not exactly talking Chanel or Louie Vitton here.
... and then they built the supercollider.
When you look at it, it turns out the number of mainframes in use hasn't gone down. It didn't peak and then decrease. It has in fact grown a bit. It is simply that other kinds of computers have grown more. The microcomputer didn't kill the mainframe, it just expanded the computer business to markets the mainframe was never going to reach. I would never own a mainframe of my own, no matter how much I might want to, however I do own a microcomputer. In fact, I own 3 of them.
However mainframes are still in use in many places. IBM still makes new ones (the IBM zSeries). The market is still there, though small. It was never very big, and was never going to be very big.
We have probably reached saturation for desktop computers already, and probably did so some time ago. We are likely reaching saturation for laptops too. Doesn't mean they are going away, doesn't mean new ones aren't going to be sold all the time. Just means that the total number in use isn't going to grow a whole lot.
I'm not complaining about the pre-emptive multitasking or protected memory. What I'm complaining about is mostly:
* Completely half-assed backwards compatibility. The "Classic" environment never worked worth crap, and Apple didn't even pretend to care about improving it after 10.2 came out.
* Removing features that were in Classic. Suddenly, Finder isn't spatial anymore, it doesn't have labels, you can't tab folders against the bottom of the monitor.
* Dismissing any sense of consistency. Suddenly, Macs have two completely different window styles, both in appearance and behavior, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Since that wasn't screwing with their users enough, they decided every new app should have it's own completely different window style.
* Pissing all over previous usability research. Remember when the destructive window control (Close) was widely separated from the non-destructive ones (Zoom, WindowShade)? We don't need that anymore-- in fact while we're at it, let's make it look like a stoplight (of all things!) instead of using the old icons that at least somewhat attempted to explain the button's behavior.
* Making new UIs that were... well, a complete mess. (To be generous.) Remember when the live search feature was added into Finder? What a disaster. Did Apple care? Nope, not even slightly. (I'm not saying the Windows one is better, but, again, Apple *used* to raise the bar for usability.)
Despite all this stuff, they've sold tons of machines, which goes to show that maybe usability doesn't matter at all. Which is a depressing thought.
Comment of the year
You sound like someone stuck in the past, 15 years ago past no less.
I, and probably 99% of the rest of the current mac users, couldn't care less about pre-OSX Mac OS anything. They sucked. (Yes, I did use it, and it has as much fondness for me as Win 3.11 or NT 3.51, or perhaps OS/2 2.0)
Seriously, move on. You complain about a relatively congruent system and compare it to the Ribbon... wait, menu... wait, Icon system of Windows and the completely non sensical and inconsistent GUI it comes with? If you doubt me - just do a plain install of Win7 or 2008 R2 and check out the default administrative apps and their modal dialogs. There are at least 3 completely different types of windows.
Are you trolling or what?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Moore's law matters very little in the way that you think of it. We turned a corner here and you don't see it. When performance is good enough, we don't need more performance - we need more performance per Watt.
Help stamp out iliturcy.