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PC Designer Says PC "Going the Way of the Vacuum Tube"
jbrodkin writes "One of the original engineers of IBM's first PC says PCs are 'going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.' With the 30th anniversary of the IBM 5150 (running MS-DOS) coming this week, IBM CTO Mark Dean argues that the post-PC world is very much upon us, perhaps not surprising given that IBM sold its PC business in 2005. Microsoft, of course, weighed in as well, saying the PC era is nowhere near over. But perhaps in the future we will consider a personal computer anything a person does computing on — whether that be laptop, tablet, smartphone, or something that hasn't even been invented yet."
Me: "I'll take supposedly obsolete technology for $200"
Trebek: "the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs"
Me: "What are things I have in my house"
*DING DING*
Nahhh.. Never happen. Smaller more portable devices are coming and filling in the gaps and taking market share, but there will always be power users who need as much power as can be fit in a form factor about the size of a PC and that power will keep increasing just as it always has.
Pundits just WANT the PC to go away because they realize they screwed up in that early product cycle by giving all the power to the users. Users have the ability to change anything or do anything they want and can un-cripple anything they do to that class of devices. They want to introduce something shiny and new that is locked down and sealed box like smart phones where they can cripple them and sell the features back to you piecemill.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Like any other issue where businesses are involved, it depends on whom you ask. Microsoft will obviously say the PC isn't dead, as most of their income depends on it. Apple will say the PC is dead (but not the Mac). Mobile device makers will say the PC is dead.
The real problem is that not many businesses nowadays depend solely on PCs for their income.
not many businesses nowadays depend solely on PCs for their income
But they do depend on PCs to count their income and to make promotional material to sell their products to make income.
But perhaps in the future we will consider a personal computer anything a person does computing on — whether that be laptop, tablet, smartphone, or something that hasn't even been invented yet.
Like macs? Please for the love of gods, can we please refer to them as PCs? They are fracking personal computers!
there will always be power users
But with tablets allegedly eroding the economies of scale of the home PC market, how long will individual hobbyists still be able to afford new PCs?
The "post PC" age is not upon us. Small computers and cellphones largely do what PC's used to, but they don't even come close to being capable of handling high-end gaming, graphic editing, movie editing, sound editing, and heavy mathematical computation. Small computers also aren't particularly convenient for software development in general. Unless the landscape radically shifts those items aren't going away anytime soon.
Someone is just trying to get a little press buzz and desparately hoping the world takes notice of them.
From TFS: "But perhaps in the future we will consider a personal computer anything a person does computing on..."
That's what the term "personal computer" means in the first place. Person. Computer. It's not that big a leap to get from where we are to... where we are.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Both will never go away.
Corporations like the bulky desktops because they can be managed and repaired and are not easily stolen. Old apps decades old will keep it like the mainframes that are still being run today. MS is like the IBM of the 1990s today and are in trouble.
MS is still in denial. But of course if IBM is right MS is screwed and why admit that. Even if Windows Mango is a great Phone OS it doesn't matter as they no longer set the standards or create lockin or slow the whole industry down to best help Microsoft. Infact, Apple is the new evil MS today but thankfully with Andriod there is hope.
The generation Ys and the millinium generation who browse slashdot do not realize how much power MS and the PC standard had back in the 1990s and even today. This is why no commercial desktop software exists for Linux. On the phone it is totally different thanks to not a single company trying to manage everything. Apple got very close before Andriod came to the rescue
http://saveie6.com/
I could see the specific form of a PC tower (ATX/microATX board, etc.) being on its way out. But what constitutes a "laptop" has been expanding in both directions, to the point where it's a bit of an incoherent category. On the small end, you have netbooks, which are sort of in the process of eventually merging with tablets and handhelds as well. But on the other end, you have gigantic luggables, which are sprouting more weight and expansion slots. I wouldn't be surprised if, within a few years, they start having external screw-in or snap-on mount points for extra hard drives.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The PC will not be obsolete as long as there are still a few people around who actually *do some work*, rather than just consume entertainment.
Why is a laptop not a PC?
It's a personal computer (you can't get more personal than sitting on someone's lap). It has full compatibility with "PC" software and quite a lot of hardware, has the same external ports, has the same keyboard and video standards, and has the same kind of display. It's just that someone shrunk it and stuck a hinge in the middle.
The standalone desktop - sure, that might be on the way out, but what do you think all those SOHO servers are sitting in? A laptop? A 19" rack? Nope. But a laptop IS a PC - it's the PC we would have had 50 years ago if the technology allowed it. If you'd asked someone in the 60's to design a "personal computer", it would have been portable, and come with all the added extras (screen, keyboard, disks) built in - and it would connect wirelessly and run for hours off a battery without needing to be plugged in. That's sitting on most people's desks and in most student's bags nowadays.
Though they'd probably add "all the computers work the same", "they all use the same standards" and "the contents of world libraries and textbooks would be free". You can't have everything though, in a corporate world.
I hate smartphones. They are underpowered computers slapped into a device that has a single primary purpose. I like my general purpose computers for 99.9% of things I want to do and if I want to phone, I Skype or use the cheapest, most basic mobile phone available. The point of the PC (and a laptop) is that is a general purpose machine. The other gadgets AREN'T. I can't word-process on a touch-screen. I can't play 3D FPS on a smartphone. I can't play a DVD on a 2" screen. I can't compile my code on something that doesn't let me run any program I like. I can't even view most damn web-pages/streams properly without having a "full" PC. But on a laptop, you can do all those things and have touchscreen/3G/Skype/a headset etc. if you want.
Sure, it's not practical in every application but the point of a PC (especially a laptop) is that it's general purpose. I can literally do everything a computer can do, without having to juggle compromises.
The PC isn't dead - it's just that one old definition of it has ceased to be relevant, while another newer definition has taken over because it does everything the same, but better.
BluRay....it's going to be obsolete in 5-10 years when a new standard is released that supports higher resolutions. Oh, cars...no one will be able to afford a car, so in the next 50 years, people will just pay for transportation everywhere with robotic drivers, no need to drive with smart cars. Computers are evolving as well, but in the same way that there will always be a need/desire for more powerful devices for WORK related tasks, and because mobile devices will always be less powerful due to heat related issues, there will ALWAYS be a market for different tiers of computing devices.
The real problem is this trend of aiming for the lowest common denominator. If software developers aim for the lowest end machines out there, with no benefits for those with higher end machines, then there becomes less of a reason to get a higher end machine. All of this nonsense of "cloud computing" assumes everyone will always be online, and with bandwidth limits, that is also a really foolish approach. What we need is for executives who know the business the company is in, rather than generic businessmen/women who know about business management, but couldn't come up with good original ideas that will really improve how things are done.
I'm also sure the PC as we know it will disappear or at least change radically, but probably not in the next 10 years. Their mainstream adoption, in the meantime, will probably fall back to the same proportion as people who had PC in the 90's; people who wanted PC because they wanted a PC, not because it became a common household item and a commodity.
Ultimately, I think the trend will go toward wearable computers and perhaps personal household servers when people realize the "cloud" is probably just that: vapor. You will probably end-up with some kind of G modem on your belt, a display/keyboard on your wrist and an earpiece, all connected to your home-server and/or cloud.
I don't feel the PC-like (including Mac and Linux) era is over on my side.
My concerns are
- Internet is not available from anywhere
- More importantly, cloud offers do not guarantee that all my data is stored on their side in an encoded way that makes the data understandable (humanly or computerly) only when it's locally on my computer
These are my two requirements.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Wasn't the PC proclaimed dead by Oracle and IBM in the late '90s already? To be replaced by the thin client Network Computer?
You can't take mine on the cart yet, because it says that is isn't quite dead . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
How do you figure that? By and large they have the same components. The only piece where they really differ is the case.
It seems rather unlikely.
Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors which are smaller, cheaper, much more reliable, much more capable of integration and for most applications have superior performance characteristics. Valves don't give you anything extra.
Typewriters have obviously been replaced by something which has all the features plus many, many, many more which are very useful. Again, there is nothing you can do on a typewriter that you can't do more easily otherwise.
Vinyl records. Well, some people still hold on to them. But, CDs are generally sound better, are smaller, more robust, don't wear out as they are played, cheaper due to the small size, hold more audio, don't need to be double sided etc. There are apparently a few cases where vinyl is alleged to be better, and that's probably why they still exist.
Incandescent bulbs haven't gone yet. I, personally avoid them where possible, but they are still cheaper and have a much higher power density than the competitors. They're still around because there is no complete replacement. It is likely that replacements will slowly replace incandescents as their capabilities improve.
So, onto PCs. What is going to replace them?
If you want to write a lot or code, nothing beats a proper keyboard and a large screen (or two). Nothing beats the PC for 3D graphics performance. Nothing beats the data storage and bandwidth (want to do video editing in the cloud, eh?). Nothing beats a PC for the range of peripherals which ban be plugged in. Nothing beats a PC in terms of flexibility. Etc, etc, etc.
Of course mobile devices will start to catch up in some areas, but unlike the previous examples, the PC is a moving target. It will always be 5 steps ahead because the technology is the same but the formfactor allows it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This just seems like someone making a claim to (successfully) steal a headline. This is just like those that say that mobile phone games are the future of the gaming industry. As far as I am concerned, this is utter bullsh*t and is only a projection based on a short-term analysis of the data. Sure, mobile phones are the fastest growing market for games at the moment, but only because the PC market has reached saturation; this will happen with other platforms too (growth always tops out). Some operations can move off the PC platform (think email), while other operations would be horribly difficult or tedious after moving onto a new device (think extensive word processing, video editing, 3d rendering, or scientific calculation on something like a smart phone or a tablet.. *cringe*)
Person. Computer. It's not that big a leap
A dictionary defines "to compute" as "to calculate". How is it "calculating" to read articles over the Internet? Sure, there is calculation involved in laying out the boxes on a page styled with CSS, but that's hidden from the user.
I can see a future where mobile phones are powerfull enough to do anything, even for developers and video editors. It just needs a bigger monitor, mouse and a fullsize keyboard in those situations. That's easily provided with wireless connections. Maybe it's not based on PC-architecture (386-like), but I guess that's not the issue here.
A few decades ago, only the most nerdy of people had PC's.
In a few decades, only the most nerdy of people will have PC's.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I have a desktop at work. I have one at home but it's a remnant of a bygone era. If I stop being able to incrementally upgrade it I'll get a high-end laptop. Most of what I do I can use my netbook for.
For work, it's the focus of everything you can do. A laptop is adequate but the keyboard isn't as good, nor is the monitor, nor is the trackpad. You can use an external version of each of these but if you're doing that why go for the expense of a laptop?
For the home, a PC needs a place to live. It needs a desk and chair. These take up space. A laptop can be used on any table and packed away and put on a shelf when finished with.
People owning only one computer increasingly have a laptop or netbook these days, if not they run some beat up or low end desktop. I can see a lot of people running smartphones as their only computer in Africa, India in the near future (they don't all need to cost 500 euros and have a fruit logo on them) but only as a kind of cheaper, lower power and limited computing. It's more easy to charge from a small solar panel, and the deeply integrated 3G modem is mandatory for internet access.
With electricity and a better internet connexion? a PC is decently cheap (about the cost of a bicycle), has an easier choice of OS (windows or linux, both updatable), isn't such a moving target and is better at doing CAD, word processing, audio production, web browsing etc. Doesn't lack support for printing, sound cards, network cards and huge storage either.
IBM 5150 (running MS-DOS)
Who rights this nonsense? The 5150 ran PC-DOS not MS-DOS. The two are different in EVERY respect that relates to the first two letters of their name and are only otherwise similar in so far as that they are identical. I expected a higher standard of reporting from Slashdot and wish to cancel my subscription.
The big thing for PC is that it's actually a personal computer that let's the user decide if they want to give information to random companies.
Until somebody is going to stream me a fully end-to-end encrypted virtual gaming/graphics/debugging machine i will continue building them myself.
The day I stop buying PCs is the day we can easily build laptops and tablet from easily available consumer-grade parts. Probably not even then.
As I've read before on slashdot (and it bears repeating), portable devices are excellent content viewers, but terrible content creators. Good luck trying to do any of the following on a phone / tablet: edit the fine details of an image in PhotoShop (let alone find such a device powerful enough to even run PhotoShop), type up a report (attachable keyboards don't count, because then you may as well have a lightweight notebook), edit a spreadsheet, tweak the pixels in a bitmap file, program and debug code, edit video, etc.
Now, that's not to say that there isn't any room for evolution of the PC. I believe there's a good chance that PC mini-towers will go the way of the antique soon. I'd love to see manufacturers make mini-ITX the new case standard, use 2.5" disk drives instead of 3.5", use 35W processors over 65W or 95W, and cut the overall power requirements of a standard PC in half. (For those of you who would argue that that's not powerful enough, then how come notebooks, which have even lower performance and lower power requirements, have grown to nearly half the PC market?) Anyone wanting better video performance can always have a half-height PCIe video card added, and for the 10% or 20% that need something more powerful, they can always resort to a larger case.
If PCs are supposed to disappear and everything will become one of these lesser content-consumption devices, then where is the content they are supposed to consume going to come from? Obviously PCs will still exist just to create the content that goes on non-PC devices.
I am worried, though, that the cost of owning a content-creation system will skyrocket. Today a few hundred bucks gets you in the door with a cheap PC. If OS X continues iOS-ification and Windows similarly dumbs itself down, what becomes the content-creation OS of choice? And how much is it going to cost?
How do you figure that? By and large they have the same components.
And a retail video game console "by and large" has "the same components" as a debug console that mainstream video game developers use. One just has different binary signing keys, is much harder to buy, and is much more expensive.
After decades of race to the bottom competition to make low-margin PCs, the race to the bottom will end up shifting to tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich, allowing price pressure on PCs to relax. Then PCs will become a luxury item that not everyone feels a need to own. The new feature of iOS 5 to make it independent from iTunes is one step toward end users not absolutely needing a PC. I guess the real test of my hypothesis will come in the next version of Mac OS X after Lion: whether not Apple will choose to continue to make XCode upgrades available for $5, or whether the Mac SDK will become a $99/year subscription like the iPhone SDK.
My Dad loves telling the story of how IBM told Dow that PCs would never become dominate thus selling Dow a $75K (in 1970s) Mainframe and Dumb Terminals. Yes, IBM has always believe in the power of a mainframe, but truth of the matter is that I personal am still wish my 6 core AMD would blood well move faster. At least they never change there prediction!
Even with Cloud computing I still prefer to remote between PCs and using my own HDDs.....
When you pry my actual keyboard and 30 inch display out of my cold, dead hands.
And this isn't a case of audiophile tube bullshit: Actual proper keyboards and large bright displays (that never wink out because your battery just died) are just two of the things that make desktop PCs objectively superior to handheld anything for many tasks (like anything involving text entry and interactive graphics editing).
i dont want itablets i dont want laptop
Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM, famously said "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson#Famous_misquote
Apparently the company still pursues the same goal.
high-end gaming, graphic editing, movie editing, sound editing, and heavy mathematical computation. Small computers also aren't particularly convenient for software development in general.
In other words, the PC is a niche device for a few specialized, high-end uses that 90% of the population doesn't do at all.
Sounds like the post-PC age is upon us.
A better argument would be that PCs are cheaper and yet have so much more potential functionality compared to current mobile devices. That one will at least hold up for a few years.
I was thinking about this and while we are likely to see people moving more and more to tablets, I don't think the PC will die out, rather it will be viewed differently. An iPad is great for 'consuming' content, but it is a poor tool for creating content. Sure it can do some content creation, but it isn't really where is excels. A PC on the hand is great for creating and working with content, but for many people it is probably more than they need for the task of viewing content, writing e-mails and surfing the web.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
am I doing it wrong?
did you forget to take your meds?
... the Winkelevoss twins say social networks are going the way of the dinosaur.
If you set your cell phone at a desk, plug in an HDMI interface (or some newer alternative), and start working via a real monitor, bluetooth keyboard and mouse, what do you call that*?
* Also, I refuse to believe that we will ever live in some star trek future where keyboards don't exist because engineers instead choose to "talk to" their computers. If we don't like talking to people, what makes you think we want to talk to computers?
The PC was originally a tool for people who needed to COMPUTE - scientists, programmers, engineers, accountants. It went through a phase of being a machine to play games on, to play music, to communicate, to surf the web. Now that those roles have been taken over by machines that are better suited to the task, the PC will return to doing what it always did best - being a high powered desktop machine for people to do serious work with. I sit here with an insanely powerful 8-core CPU, two graphics cards and 10Gbit Ethernet, three 24" monitors and a super ergonomic keyboard. I don't see anything like that being available as a portable device - so no phone, laptop, tablet or anything else is likely to take over that role anytime soon.
So let the PC return to where it started - a relatively rare, specialized - and perhaps much more expensive - machine for doing computing on.
Actually, the architecture is exactly the issue. Fujitsu has been making tablets since the mid 1990's, running various versions of Windows. They never seemed to get much traction, I think due to the wintel platform.
Now that Microsoft has finally figured out that start menus don't work on touchscreens, we just might see something new.
Of course, Intel does have an Android port on the Atom, so who knows what they're up to?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Vacuum tubes are not obsolete: I am typing this message on my ENIAC, you insensitive clod!
The PC is dead! Long live the PC!
The game.
IBM sucks at those sorts of predictions. On the other end of this line back in the early 90s, their "real" development groups were making fun of the OS/2 team because PCs were "toys that will never amount to anything! If you want to do REAL computing, you buy an AIX workstation!" Or an AS/400, or a MVS mainframe. 20 years and a multi-billion-dollar software industry that IBM could have been a leader in later, we see how well THAT prediction went. They probably still think your PC should serve as a dumb text-mode terminal to your mainframe and nothing else.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
IIRC IBM sold their PC division because the whole desktop PC market had become very commoditised and low-margin. Nothing to do with the decline of the PC.
OTOH, if the summary is implying that the IBM guy has a vested interest in saying that the PC (which they no longer produce) has declined, I'm not convinced. What stake do they have in its obvious "successors"?
Oh, and BTW, this guy may have designed the *IBM* PC, but he did sure as hell did *not* design the personal computer as a general concept or format. It's not even like the IBM PC was a particularly radical example of a personal computer when it came out anyway- its later success was due to the way the market played out, not any particular technical "strengths" of the design.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Incandescent light bulbs are not obsolete. How many of those othere items were, or are ,being government regulated out of use. Incadescents woudl still be around for at least 50 more years if the almighy government were taking care of us.
The PC isn't dead. The age of "one-size fits all" is dead. We used to have desktops. Then we had servers, and laptops. Then we had notebooks, eReaders and smart phones. Then netbooks and tablets. Now there are nettops and HTPCs. The PC isn't dying- it is evolving and splitting into multiple species. The original desktop is still around and will be for some time. At home we have two ancient desktops, an ancient laptop and a modern laptop. Is my next computer going to be a smart phone or a tablet? No- those are luxuries- I need to upgrage and get a decent desktop... after that I want an HTPC. Quite bluntly- smart phones and tablets are cool- but I don't really have a need for one. I do have a need for a decent new desktop. There are lots of people like me. You can live without tablets and smartphones- but few people would want to lose their home PC.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
...indistinguishable from a PC.
They keep saying that PC's are going to be replaced by: set-top boxes, game consoles, smart-phones, etc. But the moment any of these devices are advanced enough to replace the personal computer they ARE the personal computer.
That's why in the end the only thing that will truly replace the PC is another PC. Doh.
Do you really think that Apple, Sony, et. al. don't lay in bed at night dreaming of a day when every computing device is as walled-off and locked-down as iPhones, iPads, PS3's, etc.? There are some BIG names in the computer industry who are going to push for this. Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before Windows and OS X are every bit as locked down as iOS is now. People laugh at me every time I say that, but you mark my word. The day will come when all software installed on a modern PC (if it can even be called a PC) will have to go through the MS store or Apple store for approval first.
Apple has even started removing optical drives from their PC's. How long before they remove USB ports too, just like the iPad?
Now go ahead, laugh at my crazy ideas. Tell me about how that could never happen, how everyone would turn to Linux, etc.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Seems that these new devices are filling roles that PC's didn't fill, or filled poorly.
PC's will always be with us. Not in such huge numbers, and they are going to change somewhat. However there will always be a market for a computer that you can plug specialized hardware into.
Once the ARM based SOC's are powerful enough (give it 3 years) you will simply plug your phone into a docking station or tower... wa la there is your PC. So basically it is an era of BYO CPU.
Vinyl records are still in circulation and there is still a market for them. Type writers may be less common, but they are still used to teach correct typing manor.
Incandescent light bulbs are more in favour now because they do no contain mercury - didn't a US of A state repeal a law banning them because of health concerns over CFLs?
The problem here, as I see it, is that all of these tablets and smartphones started appealing to the crowd that never really took to the computer in the first place. That means you've suddenly got another big wave of people discovering things like Twitter, Facebook, personal email accounts and Google's various services, or finally getting on-board with shopping for things online. Some of them are even getting hooked on casual gaming (Angry Birds, etc.).
If you ask THOSE folks, sure - they're very likely to believe the "end of the desktop PC is upon us", because they think they've got something "better" with their tablet or smartphone, netbook or e-reader. And hey, it always feels good to be able proclaim a device "dead" or "dying" when you never liked it in the first place.
If there really is such a thing as the "post PC age", it will consist of a COMBINATION of desktop PCs and notebooks, PLUS all of these new devices. As usual, the content CREATORS usually want/need a system more powerful than what you can cram into a super-portable container, suitable for consumption of that content. And ergonomics aren't changing any time soon either. It's harder on the eyes looking at a tiny screen and less comfortable for one's back working for long periods of time on a portable devices that you typically sit on furniture not designed specifically for that purpose (unlike a computer desk). By the time you make all the compromises needed to attach a tablet or netbook to a full size LCD display, link it with a standard size keyboard and pointing device, and attach a power source so it can run for an extended time without batteries running out? You might as well just get a regular desktop PC to leave set up in that space permanently, most of the time!
vinyl sales are growing each year (the last stat is saw was for the last few years and sales were up 300% or something), and will continue to grow alongside digital media. because however cool it is to have more music in your pocket than you could even listen to in your remaining lifetime, it's at least as cool to hold a 12"x12" piece of art in your hands, and hear the pops and hisses unique to your copy of the album, and watch the record spin.
Vacuum tubes still have at least 1 job where they're vastly superior to transistors. For example, ask almost anyone who plays guitar if they'd take a solid-state amp over a tube amp. Almost all of them will say "Hell no!" (though some prefer the sterile crunch of solid state). Tubes sound better, and it's not just perception. It's measurable.
I can't confirm this one personally (I have many records and even buy many new releases on vinyl, but no player for them yet), but records are also supposedly superior when it comes to sound quality.
Some technology never completely goes away. It might get "almost completely replaced" by something newer and better in "most" applications, but as long as there is something that the older tech is better at and there are enough people who want to hold onto it, it won't completely go away.
I also agree that PCs are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
I use CAM software at work, will it run on a mobile phone or tablet?
And there is no way our customers will let us store their design on a cloud server.
I'm just dying to get rid of my dual 30 inch monitors.. they make me feel oh so obsolete
You keep hering about how the PC is / will be obsolete, and while I agree that smart phones and tablets will meet the needs of many people, I wonder why you keep hearing about the demise of PC's. I think I have a theory, thoug it may sound a little tin-foiled hatish. All smart phones currently are on closed hardware where PC's are open hardware. The user controls the PC (especally if running Linux) where your smart phone is basicly controled by your provider and you just have user access. The faster they can more the masses off the desktop, the more control can be concentrated.
Anyway it's just a theory.
Makes sense if you are a big company. Of course they want the PC go away better sooner then later. A PC empower the user, it gives unlimited opportunities.
Either if you a gamer, or watch DVDs, or you writing a document in Word, or you are a programmer. You are in the control, you can use your PC as you like and you are independent.
That is exact the opposite what the big companies wants to be. They want you to be dependent, helpless without them. They want to sell you everything through an app store, lock down your PC so you can only install approved applications and they want you to be a consumer only.
Is it Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Google, they want the PC to die. They want you to use the AppStore, the Cloud, the ChromeOS. They want a permanent connection to their servers and they want limit you in every possible way.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
And this guy is a douche bag.
This does indeed follow in-line with the majority of stupidity that exists in the company.
Note how he is the chief technology officer, yet we use this odd device called a "lap-top" to do our job, and so does every other worker around the globe.
I think it might also be considered a "PeeCee" but I'm uncertain.
I could be wrong...
Pseudonymous internet poster says PCs going the way of TVs, radio, movie theaters, books, and board games.
Like a cyberbrain?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
No, that's the destiny for people that can't escape the Apple universe. I have no doubt that eventually Apple is going to kill off their PC's in lieu of the more easily controlled iPad/iPod/iPhone line, and I'm sure I'll see about a billion news articles about "Apple is a revolutionary for revolutionizing the revolution"...but I'll be reading that news article on my PC, as will the majority of other people out there.
The tablet is a poor substitute for a real computer. If you want an internet box to play browser based games on, great, but most people want a lot more.
How about fill out any arbitrary pre-printed forms you happen to be given, or print on loose 1-inch by 2-inch hanging-file-folder tags? A typewriter can do those easily, but how would you do either one with any other kind of printer?
All these new kinds of devices and user interfaces, smartphones/tablets/Kinect/Move/Wii/.. , they may all be fun and perhaps more intuitive. However, do they make you feel more productive? Like you can get more work done? Not even close. (I'd even argue it's quite the opposite at this point..) As long as there is no alternative that allows you to do the same stuff you can do on a plain old PC, but faster, I see no reason to mention some sort of post-PC era.
If anything's going to make changes in terms of productivy, I'm thinking of eye tracking to replace the mouse some day and some sort of brain-to-computer interface to replace the keyboard. These types of technology currently are taking baby steps, but in the long run, I do see a lot more potential in them than touch/hand-waving interfaces. And to replace the monitor.. why not replace the output of your eyes into your brain by a video signal? Can't get much more immersive than that .. but that's just sci-fi at this point :)
Then again, what is a PC really? For all I care, my calculator is a PC. It's mine, so it's personal; it computes stuff, so it's a computer.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"But what...is it good for?"
- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip
Oh sure, I would love to develop in Eclipse, Visual Studio and Xcode on a tablet...*cough*. What the hell are these people thinking? I wish Slashdot had an "opinion" flag, although I suppose the "unlikely" and "bollocks" tags come close.
Even and odd harmonics. I forget which way round it is, so I'll just say one version, but you need more frequencies to re-create the sound using odd harmonics than even harmonics, so you don't have to drive your amp so hard to replicate the right sound. Valves amplify even harmonics. Op-amps odd harmonics.
Also musically odd harmonics sound worse, so you need more hash to hide the aharmony.
These factors are why a 10 W valve amplifier will *sound* as loud as a 50 W op-amp amplifier.
Another pet peeve of mine is the "44kHz means we can replicate 22kHz signals!" guff. NO IT WON'T. It will allow you to discriminate and reproduce the FREQUENCY up to the Nyquist limit, but you need to know the amplitude as well. Two samples won't do it, you really need three and even then you are going to have a large discrepancy in the amplitude (because your DAC isn't 100% accurately linear). So you may have the frequency right, but you have the strength wrong.
Sorry, BS. Yet another idiot predicting the end of the PC. Why does this story pop up once a year or so? It never goes anywhere. It's just someone pushing their own agenda.
I'd like to relate something that happened to me recently. I am a long-time computer guy going back to the original PC-XT and DOS. I have multiple PC's and various reclaimed business laptops at home. I needed to get an iPad for work-related stuff this summer, so I bought one (company paid, not personal). I have also been looking for a good ultra-portable laptop for taking on vacation, to be able to check email, web surfing, run dive software and do a little light some content creation work. I did NOT want a netbook, too slow and too limited. I really expected that after getting the iPad, I would no longer want a small laptop and would probably get an iPad for personal use. I used the work iPad for the past couple months, and while it has perfectly valid uses and it's good at some things, I felt it was just too limited for what I needed personally. I ended up buying a small Lenovo ultra-portable and I'm glad I did. The iPad is fine as a consumption device, but it's really not a lot more than that. Can I create on it? Sure, basic stuff can be done, but it's not fun. I'd much rather reach for my laptop and get it done faster and easier. As a sofa-browsing tool, the iPad is great, but it just can't cut it for a lot of the things I want to use it for. The cool factor wore off after only a few weeks using the iPad. I still use it daily and it's an effective organizing tool, but tablets or other "portable" computing devices are just NOT going to replace the PC any time soon.
Generally, when I see someone "who worked on the original X super-product" say "X super-product is going the way of (insert antique technology reference here)", invariably I read it as "I'm spent; where's my retirement check?".
The PC isn't your grandfather's PC anymore. It has evolved, and will continue to evolve. That said, it isn't going anywhere, because it is a nonsensical comparison in the first place.
So, yeah, a has-been attempting to get that last 15 minutes for his myopic and geriatric tech punditry. Whee.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Time for "informatics", you English speakers.
That sounds reasonable. In English, we have "information technology", which is similar in derivation. There's also an "information device", as seen in the name of the MIDP API on Java-powered feature phones. But that word could refer to a device for creation of information or a device merely for retrieval of information that someone else has created.
Yeah, the main reason for the success of the IBM PC was that it was more open than the competition (in the sense of: everybody could build a clone, driving the price down), combined with the fact that it was from IBM (making businesses more likely to buy it).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
n/t
The calculation of CSS is for the presentation of the work, not for the meaning of the work. Therefore, the median user (unlike the geek) doesn't see it as calculation any more than the reprinting of an AP or Reuters article in two different newspapers is calculation. A spreadsheet, charting, or statistics application, on the other hand, takes numeric measurements, derives meaning from them as directed by the user, and produces reports with this meaning.
Didn't they say similar things about gaming being over on PCs and it would all move to game consoles?
Tablets and phones will integrate more with our day-to-day life and activities and will probably "take over" for many peoples' primary "computers" but I'd argue that they never _really_ needed or used a computer in the first place except to do things that tablets work great for--word, excel, balancing their check books, typing emails, and playing solitaire.
Personally I don't see myself ever getting rid of the "PC" but I do see myself in the future with both a tablet AND PC.
Of course maybe I'm ancient...I _do_ happen to also have a SPARC, DEC Alpha, and SGI Indy box in my apartment too...
Once again, people forget the value of dedicating a room to something. Some of us actually use computers for professional work. Sure you could do garphic design and programming on a handheld, but it would be easier on three 30" screens. And sure, with wearable displays and ocular implants you could have that anywhere, but you still need a quiet room in which to work -- with everything positioned in the right place, at your fingertips. Welcome to a desk. Be it a writing desk, or a computer desk, a desk is still an important part of any professional desk job.
So if you're in a room dedicated to your task, and it's the size of a good-sized room, you don't need portability. And if you're making money from your work, as professionals do, then you don't care about low-power, low-noise, low-heat, or low-overhead. And a bigger computer is the equivalent of more equipment.
So sure, recreational computers for games and music and calendars won't exist beyond the weenie handheld. But they were always that small -- remember credit-card sized electronic daytimers? And individual portable video games? The iphone's bigger than either of those ever were.
The idea that we are entering the Post-PC Era does not mean that the PC is going away. It means that we are finally past the era when the only way to get anything done was to own and use a Wintel box. Today, most major applications and services have moved behind the glass and are accessible by *any* device. Just because one of those possible devices is a PC doesn't mean that we're still in the PC Era.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I told you all in the 80's that those damn PC's would never catch on.
I am I wrong? PC means Personal Computer/Computing. So in effect isn't it just coming to be more main stream? Instead of it being in the homes it's now in the streets, in the cars, on our bodies.
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Used to be $4, is now free for Lion users.
to bad that phones are tied to 2 year lock in's with forced high cost data plans $10 a gig? and lot's of lock down and lock it.
They will need to be at least as open as windows is to day or maybe at least have 3rd party app stores.
Even with hubs and docks apple will need to make so you can swap the battery on your own so you don't have to go with out your phone / pc for the time it takes to have some shop change the battery. Also add a SD card slot as even 32GB is small for your only system and the cloud may work but mobile web speed is all over the place and roaming fees are super high up to $20 a meg on some systems.
You have been approved to remove that stick out of your ass
They are generally far behind the curve and just repeat whatever they've read in Information Week or Network World, or whatever magazine they've latched onto that they found in the lobby one day.
And like many of you, I have all these "obsolete" items in my house today.
CFLs have displaced incandescent light bulbs in many applications but incandescents still have their place.
CFLs have a warning on their base that putting them in enclosed fixtures such as ceiling fixtures and recessed fixtures can shorten their life.
I haven't seen any low intensity CFLs. There are still 15 Watt incandescents which can fit a standard light socket.
The CFL floodlights don't perform as well as incandescents. For home use, I seldom leave my outdoor floods on for extended periods. But when I want to investigate a sound, I want full intensity right then. The CFLs I've tried had a warm up characteristic.
I still like the look of incandescent christmas lights, especially the C7 and C9 flasher types.
LED stage lighting is a mixed bag. It uses less power and doesn't get nearly as hot but incandescent looks better. Some of the colored CFLs such as blue look really good. There's one club in the area using those with reflector fixtures.
I doubt we'll see incandescent lights completely disappear from specialty use or from use in harsh environments.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I believe we do need cards. even if 80% people don't need them or don't need them know, it's just too convenient being able to turn any PC into a workstation, server, router, have a good sound card, or all of the above. also industry types need their special equipement and serial ports, rs232 or something other.
Maybe low profile ATX with no optical would be good.
Besides the earlier statements that the definition of "PC" itself is fuzzy, there is also a problem with the word "obsolescence". PCs are not going obsolete, but are being enveloped by the nework, extended in their functionality, and transcended in form. Some people talk about power, buy my phone is far more powerful than my first several desktops. Others talk about keyboard-video-mouse, but there's nothing technical preventing a mobile device from being connected to a KVM setup, and is already happening with.some android devices. What we are seeing is a convergence of use cases, where the mobile becomes more desktop- like, and vice versa (see android, windows 8, and apple moving to an app store for laptops).
Nothing is being lost here. In fact I can do more at more times and placres than before. I just used cert based authentication to log into my ec2 instance over openvpn from an inn in southern Vietnam to fix a bug, USING MY PHONE. fucking awesome!
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
[For $500 plus a $100 case and $200 monitor,] you get far, far more bang/buck than anything in the portable market can or ever will offer.
Relying exclusively on desktop PCs might be fine for people who drive everywhere. But some people such as myself ride public transit and would like something to do during the commute to and from work.
So...one of the most widely-used devices on the planet, which has no valid replacement, is suddenly somehow going to be obsolete?
Let's try to come up with some other form of device before saying the existing model is going away. I don't see anything besides PCs that do what they do...
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
You say a full-size desktop PC offers use of programs anywhere? Not on a bus. Anytime? Not during your commute. A laptop does. A tablet also does for those living in a market with affordable mobile broadband.
Obviously IBM is right. The PC will die, and everybody is helping kill it (Microsoft especially). Most major companies are pushing cloud storage nowadays. Not long from now your entire pc (ram, cpu, hard drive) will not be yours but part of a large sever farm somewhere, and you'll just have an input device, and a screen. PC devices will probably still have a niche market, but will pretty much be considered dead as vinyl.
Until a phone or tablet is the most powerful computing device that can fit within a personal workspace for a reasonable price point, it won't be where developers, editors, and animators live. It's these type of people that drive processing power upwards...nothing can be too instantaneous. And if you think "There, they'll have enough power", they'll just make their work more complicated until everything is slow again. They're like the plecostomus of computing...put them in a bigger tank, and they'll just expand to fill it.
They're not the average use case though. I *do* think that desktop workstations will decline in the average user household...other form factors are just too convenient. But I do also think that this entire idea of "docked phones" is questionable. Maybe for single people and travelers...otherwise it assumes that everyone in the house will have their own phone, or that you'll be willing to share your phone with others that don't have one to use for computing tasks. Do you really want to tie up your phone so junior can research grasshoppers?
I guess Apple thinks the capability for app development is such an obscure edge case, relative to the total market for tablets, that people who demand it should be willing to pay $300 per year extra for this capability (one $1000 PC every five years plus one $100 per year developer certificate).
However, expectations constantly rise so the videographer working in 480p last year is working in 1080p next year
True, over-the-air video broadcasts in the United States upgraded from 480 lines to 1080 lines a few years ago. But I don't see ATSC being replaced with yet another standard that will require yet another converter box in the near future.
and maybe they'll be doing stereo video 10 years from now.
Not necessarily. People are already saying stereo gives them headaches, and movie studios are lately having to bribe theaters to offer stereo because of underwhelming demand. Besides, let me know when 1080 stereo can be broadcast over the air.
Computers still are used for programming, how do I program a cellphone or a tablet computer.
The only way I see it to replace the pc is that the pc becomes part of the device.
Basically in maybe 10 years we will drop a tablet or cellphone onto a matress or something else which enables
a data connection and loads the device and from there a monitor mouse keyboard and a different ui is powered to enable programming
and certain work tasks.
...this guy recently purchased a smart phone?
I swear I'm the only person I know that purchased one without saying "HOLY CRAP THIS WILL REPLACE MY COMPUTER FOREVER."
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I just recently set up a "family computer" desktop.
Does it emulate the "family computer"? Or does it emulate the "family computer"?
I'm amazed at how much my productivity increased sitting at a desk.
Would the productivity increase even more with desk + mouse + second monitor? That's how I've occasionally used laptops that I've owned: with a VGA cable running to a monitor. Even a TV tray can work as a desk if your second monitor is an HDTV.
Even the EEE PC running gimped Linux?
When I got my Eee PC, I wiped it and put on vanilla Ubuntu. It was still GIMPed in a way, but only because I don't need the extra features of Adobe Photoshop.
Netcraft now confirms: PC is dying.
There, fixed it for ya.
Plus I cant find that "burn to DVD/BluRay" button on my IPad version of iMovie.
I imagine Apple thinks optical drives and rural markets are on the way out, and the intended use case is to upload the finished product to your iCloud account and then share it with viewers who would browse to it on their own iPads or Apple TV boxes. Otherwise, Apple wouldn't have made an optical drive optional on the latest Mac mini and folded the MacBook into the MacBook Air line.
I'm not seeing it.
So you're telling me that technology is going to progress? That's news.
I'm still waiting on my flying car btw.
this guy should just take a higher dose of his Alzheimer Meds
I just posted this an hour ago: http://www.youtube.com/user/41D57#p/a/u/0/c5cF8Us4cK4
While the video pokes fun at size and boot time, for the average desktop user, those things remain largely the same.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Instead of saying "PCs are dead" more likely it's a matter where the processing power of small, handheld devices is finally reaching a point where applications that are MOST useful when personally portable (scheduler, contact list, etc) are now, in fact, portable.
Desktop PCs will continue to grow in power, and be used for ever broader applications.
Consoles will continue to grow in power, and single-niche lower-priced cousins of their more flexible, more expensive PC relations.
It's almost like it's not zero-sum. /sarcasm.
-Styopa
The only reliable platform for developing software and prototyping hardware is the PC. When we can do absolutely everything on other devices that we can do on a PC, that's when PCs will "go the way of the vacuum tube". Otherwise, they won't be going away any time soon.
The tablet is a poor substitute for a real computer. If you want an internet box to play browser based games on, great, but most people want a lot more.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. "Most people" just seem to want something they can post stupid messages on Facebook with and play Angry Birds on.
However, there's millions upon millions of office workers in this country alone that rely on desktop computers, and their employers are not going to move them to tablets. You can't work on serious office applications with a touchscreen, and you sure as hell can't develop software on one.
The needs of the home and business markets are very, very different.
In another ten years I'll probably be demanding a 40" screen for my PC.
A 42" LCD TV with VGA and HDMI inputs has been available for a few years now. I see them on Google Product Search for under 500 USD. But there appears to be some hang-up among the general public about connecting a monitor bigger than 24" to a PC.
The only way tablets are going to make PCs "go away" is by merging with them.
So will one be able to develop tablet apps on a tablet by itself, or will one need to buy an Expand-O-Tron 4000 at prices only an established business can afford?
Tablets are just laptops - nothing has really changed.
"Mark Dean argues that the post-PC world is very much upon us, perhaps not surprising given that IBM sold its PC business in 2005. Microsoft, of course, weighed in as well, saying the PC era is nowhere near over.
Mark Dean is correct in that the world is rapidly moving towards non-PC devices like the Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. IBM sold its PC business not because of this current technological seismic shift but because third party companies discovered how to clone the IBM-PC and without paying any royalties back to IBM. Microsoft was more than happy to license DOS to these third party cloners, as IBM had neglected to buy DOS outright from Microsoft.
Post PC 1. See Through augmented reality glasses (Vuzix selling them now $5000 apiece) 2. Small box that transfers image from Cloud to glasses. OnLive showed it's possible (hardcore gamers sorry) 3. Some analog of virtual keyboard. For casuals kinect like recognition of hand would be enough, and programmers would buy keyboards that read signals from hand muscles and translates into keystrokes.
There will be no big monitor - augmented reality glasses. Check vuzix they already selling see through glasses.
Will Tablets and Mobile Stuff replace them? In many respects certainly, but until a Mobile Platform can build and compile their own applications. Frankly who the hell would want to write software on a mobile platform and watch the battery scream as the app is compiled? I do love my dual screens for development (true laptops can do this, but it's much roomier on a desktop).
:-p no laptop can fit this and still be called a laptop.
Laptops still have a few disadvantages over desktops:
1) You just can't cram as much hardware in a laptop. I want 2 high power video cards , 192GB RAM, 2 Network Cards, 8 drives and 4 physical CPU's, sure send the bill to my company
2) Even if you could cram some of it, Heat would play hell....there's only so much you can do to cool laptop casing compared to desktop casing, again laptops will never hold as much hardware
Anyways I've made my point.
...in bed
and im fitting the innards with gigabyte 990fxa-d3 mobo with crossfire capability (up to 37 cm length monster cards), AMD Bulldozer support, 2 x 4gb dual channel 1600 Mhz Kingston ram modules.
yeah - you figured - WHATEVER the mobile devices and small crap like tablets can afford to field as processors, memory and power, PC form factor will be able to field multiples of it. This is what it is - Form factor.
So, when the mobile devices and shitty tablets become able to play today's monster games with 1920x1200 resolution in high detail setting with good 3d audio, PCs will be doing Ray-tracing and doing 3d audio in high fidelity format you cant compare.
He forgot that. The spearhead of Information technology evolution was lead by Gaming/3D applications. even the new supercomputers organizations recently started building with Graphics cards became possible because of all these years of Graphics card development.
There - you have it. PC is not some number crunching accounting machine since early 1990. This person, respectable that he is, is out of touch with the reality of the subject he is talking about. It is only normal, considering his age.
Read radical news here
Mark Dean was the man who brought us Micro Channel on Intel architecture, I believe .. a poor implementation of a reasonably good architecture. He knows all about obsolescent technology.
As an entertainment delivery system, the PC may be on the way out. As something used to get work done, handheld devices are just too weak on the input side. For passive consumers of information (i.e. most of the US population), the home PC may be on the way out. But anybody in school or with a job that requires originating anything needs something with a keyboard.
Admittedly, not many people today really do much computing on their desktop. I've been running Autodesk Inventor and SprutCAM lately, and it's impressive what can be done with today's solid modelling and graphics power. Especially with Inventor, which actually uses a 12 CPU core machine usefully. You used to have to struggle to work with a sizable model in a CAD system. Now all the sluggishness is gone, and you don't need to cut up the model into sections to get it to fit.
It's interesting that Apple still assumes that i[phone]|[pad]|[pod] owners have a PC-type system available for activation, synchronization, and updates. You'd think they would have cut the cord by now, but no.
The great thing about television is that it's so passive. - Ted Turner.
But the sound of vinyl does not compare to today's digital recordings.
Sometimes I lose it when confronted by the lemming vortex.
Here's one for you. Has the modern world experienced a dramatically reduced use of fire? It's been a while since I stacked a cord of firewood. Guess I'm too busy driving my truck to and from my place of employment. At 3000 RPM my four cylinder four stroke lights a fire about 50 times per second, for as long as I cruise to or from freedom.
Here's another institution seeing dramatically reduced usage these days: jobs that pay well. In technological economies, an increasingly smaller portion of the workforce delivers most of the value and receives the majority of compensation.
How many Google engineers are performing data analytics on an iPad Touch?
The PC with multiple giant monitors is a platform of full intellectual engagement. It's putative demise seems to track demographic trends in the workforce at large. Another technology of full engagement: human language. Seems to have weathered the storm of fashion with nary a blip.
Perhaps it's less that the form factor of productivity has become obsolete than that many of the people formerly making casual use have jumped the shark to consumption-oriented platforms with lush, manicured walled gardens.
I hear trees are also toppling out of fashion since the invention of the chain saw. Some effort in making apt comparisons is useful in pulling up short of the cliff.
Here's another one, maybe closer to the truth: the giant beige box is going the way of the telephone, which also used to be a giant box shackled to the wall. I still make the majority of my calls on a shackle-phone with a proper handset and I rarely have to participate in fishbowl-to-fishbowl sonic experiences that remind me of garbled audio from the 1960s. Those old shackle phones are holding up remarkably well for those of us who value clear communication over whim of wherever.
I'm sorry but as good as a mobile device is I'm still going to want a 19" plus screen to work in for 8hrs a day, and when sitting at home I'm not going to want to stare at a 8" screen when I have a 55" sitting there. Mobile devices might be docked to things more and more but people are still going to want the large screen, full sized keyboard and mouse/trackpad so effectively the mobile device will be being used for the majority of the time in a docked/small form factor PC mode not as a tiny device with a touch screen if it is used to replace a PC.
Tablets will replace PCs, but only for people who only use their PCs for web surfing, email, and entertainment. If you actually have to do work on it, you'll need something with more reasonable input devices, larger display, and that can hook to a variety of accessories. So no worries. There will still be a market for real computers.
Support SETI@home
The needs of the home and business markets are very, very different.
THIS
Pundits love to see trends with computing hardware but fail to see that there are two completely different universes when it comes to that. A large number of average Joe, home users can get by with a netbook, a tablet, and (for some) a smartphone. There will of course always be geeks, enthusiasts and prosumer-lever users who want and need more. The custom built PC isn't going anywhere for those enthusiasts. But for the home market as a whole, there's seems to be a shift away from desktops and even laptops bigger than 12 inches. Off the shelf desktops are a dying breed.
But businesses can't move away from the desktop. Sure, you could move to thin-client computing (some do), but you still have a use-case where people need a powerful machine. You simply cannot compare the needs of business with the needs of home users. It's apples to oranges.
I have clients who want to user their iPads and such in their offices and it just doesn't work. It's the same problem that the "tablet PC" has had for the last 10 years. It's absolutely not a form factor that is conducive to productivity. A couple of my physician clients recently purchased convertible tablets to use with their EMR system, and they don't use them. $2,000 a pop for those things, and it's mostly a waste. They find them cumbersome and difficult to use. I've had other physician clients in the past tell me the same thing. They had purchased tablets, used them once, and stuck them on a shelf and never touched them again. What would have been more appropriate for these physicians is either 1) a desktop or thin client in their exam rooms or 2) a desktop or thin at the nursing station they dictate at following a patient consult. Of course their EMR vendor pushed those blasted tablets and the doctor wasn't interested in my input. Either way, tablets just aren't efficient ways to be productive.
That's why there's a huge vinyl scene that includes nearly every mainstream artist, Lady Gaga and beyond.
Until a secretary can type at over 100 words per minute on a tablet/smartphone, the PC will not go away. And don't say that keyboard can be attached to the tablet, because that defeats the purpose of a tablet in the first place.
if he means there will no longer be any local processing power, due to the current state of 'web apps' this wont happen..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
people will also realize it's stoooopid to spent hundreds of bucks upfront and/or tens of bucks monthly for a small phone when they have a perfectly serviceable, more reliable, bigger, clearer, ... one at home !
Of course I have a phone at home. So what do I use to make urgent calls when I'm not at home, such as arranging rides?
So maybe you meant "carry a dumbphone instead of a smartphone, and do all your computing on a desktop PC at home." I find that slightly easier to swallow. But there are plenty of use cases for a laptop: anyone who spends so much time away from home that he or she hardly ever gets a chance to sit in front of the desktop. I ride public transit to and from work. I have two cousins that live in one house on odd weeks and another house on even weeks because their parents have divorced. Some people fly on business trips.
the PC model is obsolete and no longer fits the needs of consumers.
So what model fits the needs of people who do something other than consume?
from my cold dead hands.
Ohl, the era of the PC on the corporate desktop is ending, that's for sure, though I doubt tablets will be the future at work.
Eventually most business apps will be in the cloud, and need only a thin client to provide a real mouse, keyboard, and screen (and there are ARM-based thin clients now that fit in the monitor, or the wall socket), and all the stuff that needs more horsepower goes in the datacenter, gets virtualized, and used remotely from that same thin client. The IT/support cost for a VM in a datacenter is just so much less than a box that the user has physical access too that the war is already over.
The fact that you can also access everything you need from your tablet on the ride home is just icing on the cake.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you're sitting there at a desk with a keyboard, mouse, external HDD and monitor plugged into your tablet why the hell aren't you just using a PC, where you can leverage the power of a full desktop OS and much MUCH faster hardware? You're already tethered to the desk in an attempt to make your tablet usable for general computing.
The ONLY advantage is that it's portable. But why wouldn't you just own both?
My prediction: The PC isn't dying any time soon.
Anything in the Peavy "Classic" series (see link)
http://www.peavey.com/products/instamplifiers/guitaramps/classic/
-- Terry
Vinyl records. Well, some people still hold on to them. But, CDs are generally sound better, are smaller, more robust, don't wear out as they are played, cheaper due to the small size, hold more audio, don't need to be double sided etc. There are apparently a few cases where vinyl is alleged to be better, and that's probably why they still exist.
Actually, vinyl is a format which is growing quickly at the moment. If you go to an actual decent music shop (yes, they still exist) you will find most new good, non-pop music available on vinyl. Even better, you can generally get an LP on vinyl plus a digital version for about $20 - the best of both worlds.
The fact that the guy in TFA cites vinyl as something which has disappeared indicates he is totally clueless about social trends, and therefore that his predictions are worthless.
Read Pynchon.
But what could you possibly still be using that has vacuum tubes in it?
Some lesser known ones are magnatrons in Microwave ovens, HV power distribution circuits (HV silicon is very new compared to a normal transistor), X-ray machines.
Then there's the common ones, guitar amps, high end tube amplifiers.
Despite what people thing the vacuum tube is a device which provides true very linear voltage gain. The transistor on the other hand needs all sorts of fancy trickery to become a linear current gain device which combined with a known load produces a voltage after.
The word "contract" means a commitment or by a person to make
Is black, the north face sale threat of smoke, the volcanic plume, and the top of the ominous Roman of lovers seem dumbfounded that the real eThe word "contract" means a commitment or by a person to make
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Is black, the north face sale threat of smoke, the volcanic plume, and the top of the ominous Roman of lovers seem dumbfounded that the real estate agent when-in his face bright smile-provides expression: "in addition, such a view this is a problem!" may What is completely, you when you sign a "contract". The word "contract" means a commitment or by a person to make
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Yes, there are now many different kinds of personal computers from smart phones, pads, tablets, laptops, desktops, build in the wall-car-reefer-toilet-, I have them all and I use them all. but the one outstanding good factor about the desktop PC is........size. The little things work great but my fingers and hands are the limiting factor to speed and accuracy and comfort. I like a keyboard that I can place my hands on one spot and spread my fingers to reach any key without having to move my hands but plenty of room between keys so I don't push down two or three at once. PCs are comfortable, easy to use, easy on the eyes. Face it..doing a Word document or spreadsheet on a tablet or pad, let alone a smart phone, is just too damn hard on the eyes and the control of coordination. Each device-smart phone, tablet, pad, laptop and desktop has its very special 'comfortable usefulness' window.That's why I don't think the PC will ever go away-no, we'll just have more and more choices of devices to use and adapt to our very own and individual life styles, and that's a good thing.
...indistinguishable from a CD.
They keep saying that CD's are going to be replaced by: DVDs, Blu-ray, HVDs, etc. But the moment any of these media are advanced enough to replace the compact disc they ARE the compact disc.
That's why in the end the only thing that will truly replace the CD is another CD. Doh.
(Just because PC is short for "personal computer" doesn't mean it's (commonly understood as) a catch-all term for personal computers. Dells are international business machines, but not IBMs. SSDs are random access memory, but you wouldn't count them as RAM. )
Graphic editing on the ipad2? Are you an idiot?
I did not intend to imply that it was practical.
Stop listening to everyone else and get some real hands on experience.
"You must spend a substantial amount of your own money before participating in Slashdot." Do I understand you correctly?
Keep an open mind, not everyone wants to do design, production, film and the like just for a business.
Then explain why all game console manufacturers require developers to be businesses, and why some genres are underrepresented on PCs.
"These days, it's becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people's lives."
So all the people who post on FB or twitter about how many boogers they ate when they were a kid, or that they hate their boss, how they feel about how someone feels about how they feel, or other such nonsense are the wave of the future.
Just goes to show you how wrong I can be, I thought they were just stupid tools.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Smartphones will get to be so powerful everybody will carry all their work environment in one of them. Your employer will provide something like a dock with monitor, keyboard, mouse, lan connection, etc which youÂll connect to through a special standardized connector in your phone. All public places will provide such docks.
so profound. and where is the italics button?
The "PC" which to most of us is any stand alone computer will be around for a long time to come. I still purchase new equipment using vacuum tubes albeit high powered RF amps. So many keep touting the cloud and I think today's perception of the cloud is going to cause a lot of regret. Putting you personal information on some one's servers where they, the govt, and possibly any one else can see without you knowing. Being a retired CS professional I see the cloud as *potentially* one of the most dangerous facets that have developed within computing. Certainly there aspects of it that are very handy, cost saving, and time saving, but I think it's being used for far more than is safe.
OK FYI, the "warmth" you describe are actually caused by vibration of internal components (mostly the grid in triode) which usually reflects the actual harmonic tones being played. When amplified, this gives the signal almost unhearable chorus-like effect. thank
Extremely late, but seconded. I recently bought a Peavey Classic 30 off eBay and couldn't be happier. I'm not an audiophile, but the difference is night and day. Some of the new modelers (like a line 6 amp) might get you to the same goal, YMMV etc, etc
Kind of. Sort of. But not really.
Aside from having specialized boards that mass produced consoles don't have, debug consoles are expensive for two other reasons. The first reason is because of what they do not have: DRM, region coding, etc. "Just" having different binary keys makes the dev consoles worth a whole bunch more. The second reason is because they are priced artificially high because console makers want to arbitrarily limit the market to those devs that will be serious about producing titles.
And I think you're off the mark as to the real test of your hypothesis. The real test is when generic PCs begin to inflate in price relative to tablets, smart phones, etc. So long as tablets and unlocked smart phones cost more than PCs (or the parts to build a PC), I think we can say that your hypothesis is not supported by the empirical evidence.
I wouldn't say a "poor" substitute. The only thing I use a "real" computer for over my iPad is to compile LaTeX files to PDFs. And that is an arbitrary limitation. The only reason I can't do that on my iPad is because of Apple's policy of forbidding apps that contain scripting languages and the like.
By the time my iPad dies and needs to be replaced, I suspect that some Android tablet or the other will be on the market that fills in that hole.
console makers want to arbitrarily limit the market to those devs that will be serious about producing titles.
So how does one demonstrate seriousness without moving away from the support network of one's family to a different state?
So long as tablets and unlocked smart phones cost more than PCs
Nook Color is a tablet whose price is comparable to that of a netbook. LG Optimus V, which I admit is locked to Virgin Mobile but still comes with no annual commitment, is a smartphone that's cheaper than a netbook.
I don't understand where you're going with your first point.
As for the second, PCs cheaper than the Android Optimus V are quite easy to find. Either drop by your local white box builder or visit Tiger Direct.
The PCs listed at Tiger Direct are used and don't come with a monitor. I was comparing new tablets with a built-in monitor and new no-contract smartphones with a built-in monitor to new laptops with a built-in monitor and new desktops bundled with a monitor. Or are you recommending using one's existing HDTV as a monitor?
First, you evidently didn't click on the "new" sub-category. Nor did you look in the Netbooks section. Nor did you take a trip to your local whitebox reailer. Or even brand name kit like HP in big box stores. It is frequently the case that one can find rebates campaigns going on that brings the cost of a new desktop, monitor, and keyboard to $150 or less.
Second, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. My point is that the technologies that go into smartphones and tablets are largely the same technologies that go into PCs. So long as there is an economy of scale at work for those phones and tablets, that economy of scale will also apply to the PCs. Would SSD secondary storage be so inexpensive in products like the Macbook Air were it not for the massive production of smartphones that has driven the unit cost of SSD chips down? The price of PCs is not going to magically escalate to the point where only a select few rich hobbyists can afford them as long as the tablet/smartphone industry enjoys economies of scale on components that also go into a PC.
First, you evidently didn't click on the "new" sub-category.
I clicked "New" from the link you gave, and only two results appeared. One was an ARM thin client, and ARM CPUs are not compatible with proprietary software designed for current PCs. Another was listed as coming with no CPU.
Nor did you look in the Netbooks section.
I looked in the Netbooks section of Tiger Direct, added the same under-$200 price bracket that you had added in the previous link, and there wasn't even a "New" subcategory because all six results were refurbs.
My point is that the technologies that go into smartphones and tablets are largely the same technologies that go into PCs.
I agree with you that tablets and netbooks use a lot of the same components. It may end up the case that the primary difference between a tablet and a netbook is that a netbook has an x86-compatible CPU and unlocked bootloader. In this case, netbooks would be phased out in favor of smartbooks, which have an ARM CPU, run a tablet OS, and may have a locked bootloader or secret hardware-level interfaces that interfere with the use of the device with a free operating system or with the use of homemade and mass-market applications side-by-side on the same device.