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Preparing For Life After the PC
New submitter Doctor_Jest links to a recent I, Cringely column, in which Cringely "is speculating how the world will look when the 'Post-PC' era is in full swing." He makes the case that in just a few upgrade cycles, extensible phones and other devices, coupled with remotely stored data, could replace most of today's conventional PCs — but also admits he thought this transition would have already happened.
Remember what we can do with computers now, because if the industry has it's way, within a few years technology more capable than various sizes of smartphones will be unheard of.
Hmm, there is going to be a continuing and significnt need for a device that has a real keyboard for all the people who write a lot of text every day; substantial local CPU power and storage for people that do stuff like development, modeling and simulations; good screens and specialized input devices for people that do graphical design CAD and the like.
Now, that device might not be an X86 box that runs Windows, so in that sense it may well be "Post PC". But to all intents and purposes it will look and act very much like the laptop and desktop machines i have today.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I don't see how this vision ever becomes a reality in a world where putting significant computing power on my desk and fully under my control is dirt cheap. Comparatively a tablet or phone has a klunky and imprecise interface, poor processing power and needs more external support. Also the value of having a powerful processor in the box greatly speeds compute operations in many cases.
Wake me up once one of those toys can compete with an actual 3D graphics workstation.
I don't see people coding on devices with inferior screen(sizes), cpu power and input devices.
In TFA Cringely states: "Radio was invented with the original idea that it would replace telephones and give us wireless communication. That implies two-way communication, yet how many of us own radio transmitters?"
He is apparently unaware that cellphones, tablets, etc. use radio transmitters (technically transceivers) to communicate with cell towers, WiFi access points, Bluetooth headsets, etc.
Whenever I see people saying this, I wonder how many people actually use their computer to do real work.
I work as a recording engineer. You can buy non-PC devices to do the actual recording if you want, but even in that case mixing and post-processing really does require a computer with vast amounts of local CPU power and storage, in addition to some highly specialised equipment (such as external audio interfaces that connect via Firewire or even PCI cards). You can't record ten simultaneous tracks of uncompressed 24-bit, 48 khz audio to the cloud. I'm sure the same is true of many other fields like video and graphics production, software development, and scientific number crunching.
Sure, grandma probably doesn't need a full-blown PC to look at emailed pictures of her family, and maybe the "post-PC" era will benefit her. But I do worry what will happen to the PC world if major manufacturers keep taking their focus away from people who really do require serious equipment. (Hello, Apple, selling 2010 Mac Pros for 2014 prices, with an operating system that's leading the charge towards turning your desktop computer into an iPad!)
The problem with such predictions is that they rely on the smartphone being a full replacement for a PC. And that's just not the case.
There's the obvious problems - typing large amounts of text, or doing things that require more processing power than a smartphone will have in the foreseeable future. These have been covered to death already; I won't bother reiterating them.
But then there's the lesser obstacles. Let me bring in some anecdotal evidence. I was feeling nostalgic, and wanted to play some of my old Game Boy Color games. I figured I should do so on my phone, rather than try to drag yet another bulky piece of electronics around. Finding an emulator was easy enough (finding one that didn't display ads was tougher, but doable). And I easily found a ROM file (just in case you're spying on me, MAFIAA, yes, I still have those games on cartridge, so bugger off).
But, every time I tried to download it, it prompted me for what program to open it in. And it only listed the ones that had registered themselves as being able to open .ZIP filesl the emulator was not among them. There was no option for "save the file locally, I'll handle opening it". None at all.
So in order to actually get it to work, I had to hook it up to my computer and copy the file over. Such a simple task, but it couldn't do it.
There are many other times I've tried to do something on my phone, but been unable to without using a PC. Here's a big one - development. You can code for Linux, on Linux. You can code for Windows, on Windows. I've even coded for freaking TI calculators, *on* the calculator. But you can't code for Android on an Android device, nor can you code for iPhone on an iPhone.
The running theme of it seems to be that smartphones and tablets are designed as consumers of data, not producers. But, given how essential producing data is to modern society, that means they will never replace the PC until that fundamental design concept is thrown out. Sure, for some, even many, uses, they're adequate, or at least capable of doing the task (if slower and more awkwardly). But so many common things remain impossible.
The more paranoid among you are probably preparing a rant about how this is $BIG_EVIL_CONGLOMERATE's wet dream, and something something 1984 something something DRM something from my cold dead hands. But that's not the case. Even *if* you posit a dystopian future where the $BEC controls everything, there will *still* be PCs, because *someone* will still have to produce data. They may become much less common, but a PC, or a PC-functional device, *will* be necessary.
Now, it could be possible that smartphones will change to have this type of functionality, and would be able, in theory, to replace PCs. But *that* seems unlikely, because the form factor itself, as well as limitations of technology, makes them very poor PC replacements.
[1] Note that, throughout, I use the term "PC" for "workstation, desktop or notebook". OS does not matter - your Mac is a PC; your Linux desktop is a PC; even that one guy still running CP/M is using a PC.
What’s keeping us using desktops and even notebook, then, are corporate buying policies, hardware replacement cycles, and inertia.
While I actually agree with the assertion that laptops are on the way out, I don't ever see a day I *won't* want to have my own dedicated box. And what's going to keep me buying (or, rather, building) desktop computers is customizability and control. I don't want Google, Amazon, HTC, Apple or anyone else telling me what my computer should be. I don't want an internet outage to prevent me from using my machine, I don't want to be told what software I can or cannot install on my machine, and I don't want to be a slave to a company's repair center whenever I need to do a simple replacement. It's in the name: Personal Computer.
I'm not saying that thin clients don't have their place, and I don't doubt that their popularity will rise, but I don't think the PC is going anywhere.
Steve Jobs used the analogy of trucks and cars; some of us need trucks for heavy lifting and special tasks, but most of us don't. The PC running Solitaire on a receptionist's desk will probably go away; the engineer's workstation will not.
Give me a call when you can easily develop for the iPad on the iPad. Or when you can develop complex server applications on a Galaxy S3. PCs are going away in the consumer world (to the detriment of anyone who wants to create anything outside work without forking out a fortune), but PCs are going nowhere in the office where you need a large screen or two to efficiently do your job and a decent keyboard to do accurate typing.
We are not whiny buggy whip holders, we are the people that work in real organisations, where the needs are more complex than Facebook access and where legacy applications abound. When you futurists can come up with a decent device for doing complex work that is a realistic alternative to the PC then you can criticise those of us who actually know something. Until then get the fuck off my lawn.
Come on guy's, this is happening all over the place, my parents do 90% of their computer stuff on a tablet and when I am not at work as a storage guy I use my ipad for almost all my stuff together with a synology nas.
I see almost all my none tech friends moving to tablets after the move drom the desktop to the laptop, an ipad or android tablet can be found in most my my friends livingroom and it seems to be the perfect device for almost all tasks.
I have a 4 year old pc that will do all the video editing i can't do on on my tablet but what other tasks would I need a pc for, i can't think of any.
It's not about resistance to change, it's about need. I've got a much more capable device sitting in my computer room than I do in my pocket or on my nightstand. Why utilize an inferior piece of hardware when a twenty second walk will put me in front of my pc. I think it's more about convenience of use. We've got two smart phones, a touchpad and a kindle in the house. For casual forum reading, the phones or the tablet will suffice, For even something as simple as searching for information on a new topic, I much prefer he utility of a keyboard, mouse and multiple screens. People of future generations will utilize the best tools available to them, including dedicated pc's if available.
All these arguments here over input devices and 3D capable workstations and "powerful" processors vs. "weak" tablets and smartphones. Give me a break.
We're talking about the FUTURE here. Rewind 10 years and tell me you EVER thought you would be sitting around with 3 terabytes and 32GB of RAM inside your "personal" computer at home for less than $1000. Now go ahead and TRY and predict what kind of computing power we're going to be literally holding in the palm of our hands in another 10 years as you complain about 3D capability and resolution (ironically while you hold your 2048 x 1536 iPad in your hand) .
As far as keyboards go, we're only beginning to see what interfaces like Siri can do. Yes, I love my keyboard and can type with speed. But it is still no match for my voice, and I would much rather use THE most efficient method of input. The average person can speak MUCH faster than they can type (250 - 300WPM), and as long as that statistic rings true (along with increasing levels of car accidents due to texting instead of looking at the damn road), we WILL have many reasons to move away from a box of keys.
Sorry, but considering what computing power has done in the last 10 - 20 years, I've given up on trying to predict the wonders of tomorrow, but I'm sure not going to simply dismiss them based on archaic mentality.