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The Passing of the Personal Computer Era
An anonymous reader writes "AllThingsD columnist Arik Hesseldahl noticed another milestone marking the passing of the personal computer era: for the first time since the early '80s, the share of worldwide sales of DRAM chips consumed by PCs (desktop and laptop computers, but not tablets) has dropped below fifty percent. Perhaps a more important milestone was reached last year, when more smartphones were shipped (not sold) worldwide than the combined total of PCs and tablets (also noticed by Microsoft watcher Joe Wilcox). While this is certainly of tremendous marketing and business importance to the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, and PC OEMs, others may reflect on the impending closing of the history books on the era that started in Silicon Valley a little over 35 years ago."
You buy a phone once a year vs a PC once every 3 years. I would expect 3x more smartphone shipments than PCs.
The only sorts of people satisfied with a smart phone or an ipad rather then a proper computer never really used the computer properly in the first place. They do not do the same thing and you don't have the same control over it. That vital in business which is where much of the demand for computers started in the first place.
The cloud has it's uses and I think it will remain relevant for as long as our smart phones aren't powerful enough to do run desktop level applications entirely in their own processors/memory. That day will come though. And when that happens why trust the cloud and a likely unreliable internet connection when you can run the whole thing live?
The personal computer is as likely to go away as the pencil and paper... less likely actually. The iFad is enjoying it's day but in the end it can't deliver the same utility as a personal computer. And even if it could, there are matters of latency, security, customization, etc that are a systemic flaw of the cloud.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...more bicycles were sold worldwide than family cars*. Pundits hail the passing of the family car era.
Pffft... hogwash.
* - I have no idea how many bicycles or family cars are sold, but it's at least plausible.
Cheaper products that tend to have shorter lifespans because they have not reached the "good enough" level of performance and because teenagers tend to drop them requiring more replacements are sold in greater quantities than more expensive products that have reached OK performance levels and aren't trashed as frequently! Film at 11!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Most people already have a computer. They also replace smartphones more often than computers, since laptops and desktops that are fast enough for their use have been around quite some time, while the wireless domain is still improving with transitions from 3G to 4G, faster mobile processors, better screens with more real estate, lighter weight, etc. A better question would be: How many people own a smartphone, but no laptop or desktop? My admitted SWAG is that most who own a smartphone also own a laptop and/or desktop or are children in a family with access to the family computer, while a larger percentage of those who own a laptop or desktop don't own a smartphone. So, no.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
For the basic user, desktop and laptop hardware is now Good Enough and has been for a while. You do not, in actual fact, need dual quad-core processors, 24GB of DDR1600 memory, or the latest Radeon 7000 series or nVidia Kepler video card to check your email, surf Youtube, and edit your TPS reports. So a lot of people have no need to buy a new computer regularly now. Furthermore, computers have gotten cheap. So much so that almost everyone who has any want for a desktop or laptop, has one. Laptops and especially desktops don't have the faux "oh, your styling is out of date! You need to replace your car that will be perfectly good for another ten years!" thing going on that phones to some extent do.
So color me shocked: A mature and saturated market isn't growing 20% per annum, and is in fact shrinking relative to its size at the peak of growth! Meanwhile, servers always need MOAR POWAH so hardware there is more likely to keep churning. It's not like this isn't a predictable curve for every not-freshly-disrupted market (surprise: There's only 1 maker of gigantic utility-size power transformers anymore. I guess utility transformers are dying too), and yet it seems that every month this year there's been a breathless "Oh, let us lament the passing of the PC and the Laptop, for they are dying!" article posted. PCs are "dying" like file sharing is "dying": it's saturated at "everyone has one and does it."
People who use small devices are primarily consumers of information with obvious exceptions like texting, voice, pictures, and video. But specifically these people are not manipulating the information. They might take the video but they aren't likely to turn it into a documentary on their device. As the screens and computing power gets larger the amount of creation and manipulation increases. Thus programmers, video editors, 3D artists, engineers, etc all need powerful systems with good keyboards, mice, and many screens.
A good example of how this trend is understood by the hardware makers would be the increase in video cards with more than one DVI port. Your average email/websurfer doesn't need dual screens. Even apple, which makes the vast bulk of its money from consumer devices, still makes the Mac Pro. I suspect that they don't make enough money from these to make it worth it. But if they were to loose that tiny core audience of hardcore users to another platform then those hardcore users might start recommending that other platform.
In a way this whole reduction of the lower end users might help us who would prefer some more powerful machines as the manufacturers will waste less time making machines that are one step up from toasters.
The one wildcard in this whole mix are the gamers. To a certain extent gamers may have driven the leading edge of hardware development for years with servers driving similar but different high end hardware. So I suspect that instead of the lower end causing problems for the average high end user like developers that the gamer and server market will keep things cooking along at the extreme end and things will trickle down to the rest of us.
So to say that the desktop is dead is wrong. I would say that the crappy desktop is dead.
The article says that smartphones and tablets are not personal computers. If you consider the "PC" as only in the mold of a beige box with a display and keyboard/mouse tethered to it, then yes smartphones and tablets are not personal computers. However, I disagree. A personal computer is a general purpose computer intended for use by one person. How is a smartphone or tablet not a personal computer? In fact, a smartphone or tablet is, in some ways, more a personal computer than the beige box "PC" because it has more of a one-on-one interaction with the user. The bottom line is that the computing industry as a whole is always changing, perhaps now more than ever.
We have 4 people in the household that use one PC, but we each have Smartphones. I build my own PC and update one individual part (mobo, cpu, RAM, video card, psu, etc.) every 6 months so I never really show up on the radar of the floggers who write such tripe based on HP and Dell stats, but we each get a new phone at a minimum every 2 years and frequently more often if there's an accident with one. The PC isn't dead it's just reached a saturation point like the tablets will someday. Phones I would expect to ALWAYS have higher numbers because they'll always have more frequent replacement, but they may suffer the same fate if they reach saturation once all the features have been fleshed out and hardware hits physical limits.
We get a story about how the 'PC era' is over, even though there is no evidence for it. The mobile device is a supplement to a PC, the fact that people are turning to the mobile device for entertainment (web browsing, etc) isn't indicative of a mass move away from the PC.
Everyone still needs their laptops for college classes, all companies still require work to be done on a laptop or PC, they aren't going away any time at least in the next decade. I can see the tablet possibly becoming the new laptop (once it runs a 'normal' OS and not a watered down one), you bring it to work where you have a bluetooth keyboard and mouse there... then you just bring the tablet home where you also have a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. At this point, is it really any different than a laptop? Is that really a post PC era, even though the computer is just a different form factor?
I never really dreamed of the day when I could pick anything I wanted without being a millionaire.
Well, these days I can. The only thing I have to be concerned of now, is my personal health and well being (physically, that is!).
Who's complaining? I only pity the kids who's only gripe on technology is an xbox and a smartphone, but they're not complaining either, they have no clue what we "the old dinosaurs of personal computing" grew up with, I pity them because they'll never have the in depth knowledge that we (40+ something) have.
I grew up with a Philips Electric Engineer 2003 electronics kit where I learned to follow schematics and make modifications (eg my own police radio) with these kits, later on I got a Commodore 64 in 1981/82, and since there where literally no software for it back then, I had to code my own, and BOY was that frustrating...and ultimately VERY much fun later on. It was like going exploring in an incredibly interesting new world, unseen and uncharted. I just only WISH kids could experience what I experienced back then, I know David Braben is trying to do this with his Raspberry PI, but it just seem to fetch the interest of old timers like me...he he...no wonder, btw. one can dream and hope, and of course...inspire.
I look at the world in a different way than kids do. Me? I live in a wifeless super-electronics-complex, totally mad science with 1000000's of components from the 50's to today, so many gadgets and computers you'd break into my house if you knew where I lived (and of course suffer the consequences of my analog gadgets that awaits such a culprit, oh straying off the subject here...). I have microcontrollers, I don't think about getting the latest smartphone if I feel like programming an APP, I actually make the darn thing from scratch with libraries, a few MCU's and sensors...and voila...new thingy that no one can explain, but most ...enjoy.
The kids wonder if I am some kind of mad magician that can come up with stuff from gizmos (to them, totally unknown world...of components) laying around and just make it do cool stuff?
Thank god for the MAKER movement though, it IS slowly but steadily arising, and maybe once again, we'll get kids curious enough to dive into this basic, simple, from-scratch kind of DIY world that we once took for granted.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I wonder how many tablets are nothing more than multimedia devices... I know that's the only appeal they have for me, and every time I think about it, I realize my old, $100 netBook does the job better than any tablet could in most cases. Would we be so excited about these sales figures if, when PC sales slowed down, it was portable DVD players sales that went through the roof, and started requiring a big fraction of chip production? Would we still have the same doomsday predictions for PCs?
From what I've seen, the only places where tablets replace laptops, is where folks just about only used them to launch Citrix, making it just a thin client, with some games, music, and movie watching built-in. And even there, you're buying a keyboard to go with it, and this is nothing a real laptop couldn't do, and better.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I am sick and tired of people trying to bury personal computers. Just because smarphones sell, and there is a lot of money to be pried from their users, does not mean that we should abandon computers that we can actually get work done on!
I own a tablet, but I use a laptop for word processing. I use a desktop for CAD and video editing. Because devices are small, they can be a marvel, but I remember when computers were much more useful with less hardware. Business did not want to spend the money for a 386DX 33MHZ, but if they did,they could run their whole business on it; smarphones are tablets are much more powerful and their are relegated to playing angry birds and small applets. People are amazed if they can write a single page of text on a smartphone, but were angry if they couldn't lay out a whole book on a 1GHZ desktop computer.
RISC processors might be the way of the future, but my laptop is still 10x faster than my tablet, for now, and there is no reason to make them faster if we don't expect better software. AMD's failure in the marketplace means that intel has gone dormant like a sleeping bear--stagnating the desktop market. Microsoft is trying to wall-in the open PC garden. Ubuntu screwed up by trying "Unity." Gnome screwed up by turning its back on desktop users, and for removing too much usefulness.
I like that people network more and can collaborate on projects more easily, but we have grown too dependent on single points of failure. To some, Google is the internet; that scares me. We are building too many card houses, and sooner or later, they will fall.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
expect “it’s”can also mean “it has”.
Power isn't what matters. Useful power is.
Desktop and laptop PCs have simply passed the point where even an entry-level model is sufficient for everyday home and business tasks like reading e-mail, web browsing, working on office documents and database applications, and playing audio/video files.
As soon as that happened, the upgrade treadmill was doomed. That sucks for the businesses who were happily coasting along knowing that every 2–3 years someone was going to pay them more money just to get a faster PC and all the preinstalled software that would come with it. It's good news for everyone who actually uses these devices, though, at least until the industry responds by doing shady things that build in obsolescence and try to keep the treadmill running artificially.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Have fun creating audio/visual content and software on your tablets... Buzzwords and marketing blah ("the passing of...", "a new era...", "groundbreaking, industry leading...") however might work well.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
The state of the industry is that even a 5-8 year old PC can still do everything most people need a PC for.
I'm writing this post on a Dual-core Athlon machine I built back in 2005. This machine does everything I need a PC to do, from standard office type stuff to running Cadence for schematic capture and layout.
New PCs stopped being necessary for anything other than games YEARS ago. Nothing the remaining 99% of the PC market does requires modern horsepower.
What a load of rubbish.
What has happened is that there is a singularity on "good enough" PCs.
Most of the people I know have PCs that are 4-5 years old because they are absolutely fine with what they have and it still works. They rarely go out and buy new stuff. The same is true of the company I work for. We bought decent quality dev workstations 4 years ago and they are still spot on now. Same for standard desktops.
People aren't buying stuff as much because what they have works fine.
I live in an expensive bit of London, UK and you'd expect it to be Apple everything. It's not. It's 5 year old ThinkPads everywhere.
Windows 7, Windows 8 will run perfectly fine on a machine designed for Windows Vista.
If the OS requirements climb above what you have it's off to buy a faster PC.
That's true of Macs: Mac OS X 10.8 wouldn't run on a Mac mini sold brand-new four year before it was released. But Windows system requirements stopped creeping so fast when Microsoft realized that people were keeping old operating systems around to run on old PCs. The system requirements of Windows 7 are all but identical to those of Windows Vista. The system requirements of Windows 8 are also all but identical to those of Windows Vista, I've read.
"With ATT, you have paid off the hire-purchase agreement on your old phone after two years"
I radically fixed your spelling.
The problem here is that as I understand it, a customer's monthly bill doesn't go down after the hire-purchase agreement is paid off. This is unlike T-Mobile's Value Plan (formerly Even More Plus), which itemizes the monthly service and the loan repayment and then drops the loan repayment from the bill entirely after two years.
YASIFS (Yet another sky is falling story). The overall computer market is still growing.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
... is just around the corner. That's another "finding" that the technoworld pundits root out every few years to astound their readers. I view crap like this article to be in the Mark Twain "lies, damn lies, and statistics" category. You could probably show that left-handed red-heads buy more PCs than ambidextrous bald winos, but so freakin' what? This is clearly a move-on-nothing-to-see-here story.
Students and business people and IT workers, etc, but not the 'general public'. For "them", it seems to me that we are simply getting back to the then-failed "internet devices" of ~2000 or so, which is all that *most* people really need; an internet-connected device as simple as a toaster, perfect for clueless/non-techie end users. Push a button and it works, no real worries about keeping up the security and updates and all that stuff like that which people with "real computers" have and will have to continue doing. Security for these 'toasters' can be pushed out by the OEM, as needed, and due to fragmentation and customization of the various embedded OS'es by the OEM's, that may be a good thing, creating several smaller targets for black hats instead of the one monolithic MS OS that is around for years to poke at until they find a break in it that puts 90+% of the market into vulnerability phase. Phones, tablets, WebTV (then and now), Audrey, Netpliance iOpener - same paradigm, slightly different form factors. What was old, is new again...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
To say the PC-era has ended you need to look at application usage. For example: What percentage of web browsing is done via PC, cell phone, tablet, etc? I would guess the overwhelming majority is done by the PC.
Likewise look at email, word processing, games....
Anyone have these kind of numbers?
All throughout this "PC era" we have still used the non-PC computers that preceded it.
Before the PC era we used general-purpose minicomputers that allowed the owner to make, install, and run programs. During the early PC era we used general-purpose microcomputers that allowed the owner to make, install, and run programs; it was just more common for the user to also be the owner. During the later PC era, i386 and i486 PCs stopped being equivalent to microcomputers and became equivalent to minis, allowing multitasking and multiuser operation on Linux and Windows NT just as UNIX and VMS had done on minis. But after the PC era, it is predicted that people will perform more and more tasks on devices that aren't general-purpose computers because only a device's manufacturer, not its owner, has the authority to load applications onto the device.
Is not a tiny computer held in your pocket for your games and your data a personal computer?
It's personal if I, personally, dictate what kind of computing takes place on it. It's not personal if only Apple has the authority to do that. And that's why I have chosen to use Android devices.
no surprise here! people bought computers because it was the only way to access the net and play games, now they can pay less and buy a phone or tablet and not have to have a space available for a computer. And computers will still be bought by people who still need the flexibility and apps that can't be provided by a 'smart' phone. It's the way that the market has gone. My guess if that it's the end of crappy cheap computers as people invest more to get the power that isn't available in a phone or tablet.
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