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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.
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!
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.
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.
Okay, seriously? You mean to tell me you can't fathom people spending gobs of cash on some bad-ass box when they're spending 4-500 on things the size of our hands!? Please...
PCs aren't going anywhere and the idiot who made the original comment about this is some moron who has his head in the cloud a bit too much.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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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.
PCs aren't going anywhere and the idiot who made the original comment about this is some moron who has his head in the cloud a bit too much.
*squint* .. I see what you did there..
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
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.
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.
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.
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.
The one I have now has a 1GHz dual core cpu and an OS that makes it feel instantly responsive. Later this year, quad core versions of the same CPU will be available.
What can your full-size box offer me that I don't already have?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
...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.
so.... you have a seperate hard drive and keyboard and an intergrated display & processor... I guess it's easier than carrying a pc and a monitor... but isn't a laptop more convenient? Can your tablet run full versions of software - not stripped out shadows? Can it run software like Matlab.. do you have space to install large programs?
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.