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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."
Your microwave. Ok it is a magnatron, but still its a vacuum device (electrons in a vacuum). But vacuum tubes are far from obsolete.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
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.
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?
Tablets are a fad. It should be no surprise that some of the best selling accessories for the iPad et al are stands and keyboards. Some of those keyboards even include a touchpad mouse. It should also be no surprise that the best selling apps (that are not games) for the iPad et al are productivity applications like PDF readers, word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation managers. The customer basically wants a laptop with a long battery life and a shiny factor amped to 11. Maybe a detachable screen. Tablets don't make sense because by the time you've gotten all the features back in you can get, it is the cost of a pretty high end laptop or extremely high end desktop.
I also strongly suspect we may yet see a resurgence in the home desktop. I've been a laptop only guy for 6 years. I just recently set up a "family computer" desktop. I'm amazed at how much my productivity increased sitting at a desk. I'm also amazed at how much faster the previous generation desktop is compared to the current generation laptop. (I do tend to be a bit cheap when it comes to laptops though.)
Finally, business will keep the desktop alive and well. Every business I've been in the majority of the computing devices at the company are desktops.
It will be as the OP suggested, there will be an expectation of "well why can't I?" This question has killed many technological has-beens in the past, regardless of their success at the time, they didn't last long. Remember the internet appliances of the late 90's? The H/PC? The Pocket PC? Even the EEE PC running gimped Linux? Of course the PC has to be functional in its form factor, which is why we don't see things like the UMPC anymore. I don't think we'll see any long term break in the laptop/desktop form factor except where I noted we may see a laptop with a detachable screen.
Seems to me that the trend isn't "the death of the PC" so much as "the rise of shiny toys for simpletons who don't know how to computer"
Use of traditional PCs might decline among those who want to use a computer the same way they use a microwave –to do a handful of simple pre-defined tasks, without any control or knowledge of the details– and maybe that's a big market segment these days, but I can't see myself replacing my big box any time soon.
I prefer the form factor, the desk setup, the ability to open the thing up and tinker with it, the extra power and storage... everything.