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The Greatest Battle of the Personal Computing Revolution Lies Ahead
Certainly one way to define the Personal Computer stems from the era of the IBM PC: a gray box with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard (or a laptop). But the idea of the Personal Computer dates back quite a while — back to Alan Kay's Dynabook, the Lisp Machine, etc.
The Apple Knowledge Navigator provided a vision of personal computing far more dynamic than that dull gray box. Although still a pale comparison, tablet and phone platforms are beginning to look awfully similar.
The essence of those pre-PC Personal Computers was that of the user controlling the device. You control the data, you control the software; the Personal Computer is a uniquely personal artifact that the user adapts to his own working style. One consequence of this is that creating is as easy (perhaps easier) as consuming content. Another nice side effect is that your data remains private by virtue of local storage.
In many ways, then, a tablet or phone comes significantly closer to a personal computer than that dull gray box under your desk. For example, on Android, the screen ceases to be a place to throw icons and becomes a rich canvas of widgets. Additionally, my phone fits into my pocket and is always there. Ubiquitous cellular coverage gives me access to my data from most anywhere. The touchscreen and interface conventions make direct manipulation shine in a way you just can't get from a screen two feet away on a desk.
And, those are just superficial improvements over the desktop. Albeit tied to proprietary services, Google's voice search and Siri are inching closer to the dream of personal Intelligent Agents reminding us all that our mothers called us earlier today and want us to pick up the birthday cake for the surprise party With a few taps I can search basically all of my data, not to mention the collective knowledge of mankind.
But the software running on these devices has a dark side. Want to access your music collection the go? You have to get it from Google Play. Want to have lightweight instant messaging? You have to use GTalk. Or take ebook readers (certainly personal devices): that book you just downloaded to your Kindle is DRMed and stuck there! That intelligent agent? Apple records everything you bark at her and can take her away at a moment's notice.
Furthermore, the software on these devices is geared almost exclusively toward content consumption. You can listen to music all day long, but don't try multi-track recording. That ebook reader is great for reading, but you can't scratch notes in the margins of any of your books or sit down with one and scrawl out your latest manuscript. Clearly, some of this is from the youth of these new systems, but it is distressing to see them geared first toward consumption (the Newton, for example, was geared from the start as a device for creation).
The "cloud" as implemented by Amazon, Google, Apple, et al. is a distinct threat to the personal computer. Loss of control over our own data is perhaps the worst part of the cloud. We're easily seduced by genuinely useful features like access to our contacts and music from any device without having to manually sync anything. It's certainly more convenient to purchase a digital movie on Amazon Prime than to hunt down a DVD, and Netflix is definitely nicer for most people than cable television. But when you buy a movie on Amazon, you don't really own it.
Underlying many of these cloud services (especially media-related ones) is Digital Restrictions Management. Whether it be the files themselves or the protocol used to transmit data, DRM is used to control what you can do with your data, restricting even what programs you can use to interact with seemingly neutral files. Worse, networked DRM services can and have led to lost data when it is no longer profitable for the company to run the verification servers.
The only copying that DRM discourages effectively is the sneakernet. And, given that the sneakernet has existed since recordable media has existed, it doesn't seem like the sneakernet is really much of a threat to creative business. I might lend a friend a CD (or even let her copy a few files), but just as I don't unwrap that CD and torrent it through The Pirate Bay, I'm not going to download a movie from Amazon and do the same. There's really no incentive to do so, for most people — most people pirate because that's what you have to do to get the media you want, not because you have a compulsive desire to share things with your closest 10,000 friends.
In order to prevent what is effectively sharing between actual friends, pushers of DRM-infected data want us to completely cede control of our own data!
And they have made people accept it: Steam, Netflix, and Amazon Prime are wildly popular. All of those services are great ideas, but all of them treat you as if you were a criminal.
Worse yet, the spread of Software-as-a-Service is returning us to the bad old days: that powerful PC in your pocket is quickly becoming no more than a glorified terminal. The open peer-to-peer network is being subverted from an enabler of collaboration never before seen into yet another scheme to tether users to proprietary, centralized services. And, as SaaS expands, privacy recedes. No longer is it implicit that your documents are yours alone; now you write and store things using Google Docs and have no expectation of privacy (legally), despite expecting privacy. Amazon knows what you read; Netflix knows what you watch; Google knows what you visit.
Control over the programs you run, and more importantly can write, is key to a personal computer being personal. And it seems absurd that that right might be taken away, but behold: the iPhone and soon Mac Store are these mythical walled gardens. You have to subvert your device to gain real control! And the natural path for Apple is to restrict Macs similarly to iOS devices.
And so we are all-too-near an Orwellian nightmare where vendors dictate what we can do with and how we can use our own data.
But what about the hardware itself? It could be argued that a device isn't really personal for some set of people if they can't change all of the software. Here too we see some promise, and some pitfalls.
The shift to tablet and phone hardware has meant a shift from x86 machines running PC BIOS to thousands of ARM boards, each with its own peculiar way of being programmed. Things you take for granted on x86, like being able to even boot, require custom code. And let's not even begin talking about all of the DSPs and co-processors. Vendors aren't always forthcoming with documentation for their boards, and, even worse, those that do port Linux to their hardware often blatantly violate the GPL and do not distribute kernel sources. This restricts the utility of perfectly fine hardware: often to the detriment of the user and to the benefit of the manufacturer.
Anyone who finds they can't upgrade to the latest version of Android because their vendor won't support it, and the community cannot support it because of non-free drivers, knows what losing control over their hardware is like (RIP HTC Dream).
It might seem like a minor setback ("I guess I have to buy a new phone"), but the lack of specifications or support marginalizes alternative operating systems. There's Meego, Tizen, Open webOS, Firefox OS, SHR, etc., but experimenting with them on your device is a non-starter. Imagine if the x86 were so closed (something we may not have to only imagine much longer): it is doubtful that GNU/Linux or the multitude "alternative" OSes would exist (Atheos, Haiku, L4Linux, even the Hurd). Ever more closed hardware is putting us into a position where two or three companies will dictate everything about the computing experience going forward, with no room for freethinking tinkerers to revolutionize how we interact with our devices.
We are staring at a bleak future, and living in a bleak present in some ways. But there is hope for the battle to be won by the Personal Computer instead of the Terminal.
The Internet is not yet merely glorified cable television. Hypertext, email, instant messaging, trivial file transfer, etc. have revolutionized how mankind communicates (understatement of the decade). Once upon a time the dream was that everyone would be a first-class netizen: your IP was publicly routeable and with a bit of know-how you had a server. Instead, thanks to grossly asymmetric pipes and heavy NATing, it is rare for any individual to run their own servers. Instead we turn to Google, Amazon, et al and cede control over our data.
But now broadband connections are spreading fast (I've gone from 100Kbit/s to 2Mbit/s upstream in three years just with basic service), IPv6 is really here, and software is being written to challenge the centralized "cloud" model being pushed on us from above.
We've had a few victories already: SMTP is still in use, XMPP is the dominant chat protocol (and IRC refuses to die), RSS/Atom aggregation decentralizes news, and the core network protocols are developed in the open.
But Google still controls Android, and myriad services control your data. Part of this is because they have easy client and server interfaces; sure you could run gallery2 and Wordpress on your own server, but I can just snap a photo on my phone and it's up on Facebook 40 seconds later (well, if their app worked, it would be).
Luckily, there are people working on making easy to use "cloud" services. In particular, ownCloud. ownCloud provides a framework for hosting and syncing data between your devices and sharing data with others. The important part is not so much the central server, but the clients they are writing. Eventually, it should be possible to e.g. replace the Google contact/mail/calendar sync and Google Drive, while adding these features to the desktop. Integration in KDE is already underway.
Imagine, instead of being tied to Google you could move the central server to the hosting provider of your wish (or pack up your data and move it to greener pastures if you're not running your own). And, perhaps more subtle (but the real liberation): Your data would be freely movable between all operating systems (interesting that you have to go through hoops to sync your GMail contacts with anything else, and Abandon All Hope Ye who wants to share between an Apple device and anything else). Additionally, the server is designed to respect your privacy (you can e.g. only store encrypted data server-side).
On the hardware side, projects like Firefox OS are very important: having a "mobile" Free Software OS developed in the open might be essential when the dominant open platforms are developed monolithically by corporations with no interest in protecting user control of data.
And then for developing the next generation of devices, folks like Rhombus Tech are pushing for the development of interchangeable CPU boards for embedded devices, and the FSF is expanding their focus to include open hardware.
There are two serious threats that would undermine any resistance: IPv4 exhaustion and draconian content policing. The former issue is technical and likely to solve itself: in the long run multi-level NAT would be too costly, switching hardware will be replaced as it is obsoleted, etc. The latter is political and represents the most serious threat of all. If we cannot communicate freely and the pipes are owned by the very organizations whose business interests will be harmed... we've already seen how brazen the current IP regime can be, and it will take vigilance on the part of many to prevent them from having their way.
Where will we be in ten years? If Google, Amazon, Apple, and Old Media get their way, in a new dark age of computing. Certainly, you'll have a fancy tablet and access to infinite entertainment. But you will own nothing. Sharing data will be controlled by a chosen few entities, the programs you can run or write will be limited in the name of security, and privacy will be dead.
History shows that personal computing survived despite Apple and Microsoft in the 80s and 90s. So, I'm hopeful that other forces will win: the forces of Free Culture and Free Software. If they succeed (or are at least not crushed), the future is much brighter: most content will be available DRM-free, users will control their computing environments, and the egalitarian promise of the Internet will be realized (in no small part thanks to IPv6).
Remember when the Palm Pilot and Apple Newton heralded the "end of the PC era"?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Great for alzheimer's patients, criminals, and little kids. Not great for free adults.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Do you really expect us to read all of that?
Nobody Seems To Notice and Nobody Seems To Care â" Government & Stealth Malware
http://anonymous.livelyblog.com/2012/10/05/nobody-seems-to-notice-and-nobody-seems-to-care-government-stealth-malware/
thank you
seriously
thank you
long ago cars were sort of open and then things went to a vertical system where the manufacturer designs and manufactures the car with self made parts or custom made parts.
computers are going the same way.
most of us have better things to do than some of the nonsense in this article. $7.99 for netflix is a nice deal for what you get.
The touchscreen and interface conventions make direct manipulation shine in a way you just can't get from a screen two feet away on a desk.
Maybe for some people...personally I prefer a couple of big monitors in front of me.
I have a 32 GB SD Card in my phone. The reason? Because in Oregon, Cellular isn't ubiquitous. And because I can keep my entire 2GB music collection, plus several books, plus a bunch of other aps that don't need the net, on it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
There's no fuckin' way I'm ditching my mouse and keyboard for a touchscreen.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Direct neural I/O is the way to go. None of those razmatazz, nancy-boy, cartoon icons. Real men stick wires in their heads and program at thought-speed.
Oh come on now, dude!! This is a stupid editorial piece based on your own personal opinion full of cherry-picked "sources" to back up said opinions.
And it's ridiculously long, to boot. $100 says less than 2% of readers will finish it.
I've been in [personal] computers over 40 years, seeing them from the kilobyte/kiloflop era to the threshhold of the terabyte/teraflop era. There have been both surprises and disappointments at every turning. I dont see why this would not continue for another 40 or 100 years.
My two biggest mispredictions were:
(1) In the mid 70s I wounder why anyone would buy a store-made computer. They were so fun to solder together yourself.
(2) The sudden rise of the world wide web in 1993. Everyone knew cycberspace would eventually happen, but probably another decade or so. That was a huge victory for open source: thanks Tim!
Excellent read. Thanks.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
The 'real' PC, used for design and engineering work, is not likely to go away any time soon, as all our technological advances would grind to a halt without it.
The PC will get more expensive as the sales volume goes down from hundreds of millions to hundreds of thousands of 'real' computers per year. but then, those of us who use PCs for real work have been riding the coattails of the gamers for a decade now.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
and im not buying a smart phone, tablet or iStupid anything , and guess what i buy this pc so i can do work that makes me money rather then spend it like the idiots that sell tablets and such are doing.
I didn't know you could find so clever articles in slashdot. Very well written.
This is the most significant concern raised by the article, and I think it's legitimate. That's why I continue to buy backup drives and keep my data local (except for the backup at my friend's house.)
At a minimum, we need warranted Service Level Agreements with cloud providers, that include guarantees with penalties when access to their services (cloud based apps or data) fails. "Sorry about that, we won't let it happen again" ain't good enough.
When there is an option at 17" or larger, and I can still use an external keyboard and mouse...
Screen real estate is important to many people... not only do I want a larger screen, but I don't want the on screen keyboard and my fingers being in the way, either.
I think Apple missed the boat with the iPad Mini... I don't think people really want a small tablet, I think that they pick it because it is cheap and the larger tablets cost too much for the functionality that they offer. If I want a $600-800 tablet, I want at least a 15" screen, but still prefer the 17" or larger screen.
Up until recently, there was one style of computer, the classic desktop box
It had many diverse uses
Some used it as an embedded controller
Some used it for CAD design, video editing, music production, science, etc
Some used it to read email and surf the web
Since there was only one style, lots were sold, so they became very cheap
Now, we see the market segmenting
Many people can have their needs met by a smartphone or a tablet, but not all
Some, like CAD designers, video editors, music producers, scientists etc, still need the big screen, powerful graphics, large hard drive, mouse and keyboard
The bad news for us is that since the masses will probably move to the alternate devices, volume will go down on traditional computers
This means prices will rise
The PC will never die. These attention seeking whores are fucking technology morons. They use their computers for facebook, jerking off and youtube. Computers are more than a jerk off machine and a twitter device.
Yes, for the average idiot who was destined to sweep up shit for a living, they probably dont need a real deal pc workstation... because they'll never create or do anything.
PCs are for people who USE pcs. PCS are for people who work, create, manage, code, program, animate, draw, paint, record, do research, study... PCs are for real users. The general public doesnt need roof ladder, but everyone has a fucking ladder still.
I only read far enough to determine there's no useful information in the post.
Not to mention the fact that with a PC I can still work offline, then upload the changes to a server IF I want to. Tablets and mobiles are taking choice out of the equation and adding vendor lock-in.
The Palm Pilot and Apple Newton never achieved the success the iPad has or the iPhone.
The problem with comparing the Past Systems was the fact they while they look similar, that new feature of multi-touch is the real game player.
Before we needed to use a stylus or one finger to just push a button on the screen. Doing things such as zooming in was very clumsy. The simple feature of the pinch zoom is a massive game changers. During Newton and Palm Pilot Hayday. PC's were in a get a really big display phase. 17" - 19" - 21" get as big of a CRT that can fit on your desk. Why? because you had so much information, you wanted to view but smaller screens didn't have the resolution or were too small to see it. For the most part on the screen we only focus on a couple square inches on it at any moment. But using the mouse to scroll and zooming was choppy, made it so you need to use a desktop if you want to get real work done. With multi-touch you can see scroll and zoom much faster and naturally then before.
The next problem during the Palm Era. Was we didn't have too many good enough CPU's to do the job. During the Pentium 2 Era. your Palm Pilot had the power of an 8088 (10 year gap). Today We are closer to a 5 year gap, and our need for personal processing power has diminished. We can play a movie in High Definition on our phone and it will run smoothly. Programs are responsive and quick. While not as fast as the desktop, we are by no means suffering.
The third problem was network infrastructure. The old devices you needed to sync with a PC. Today they are self updating and work by themselves without the need for the PC. And they have wireless internet that means it is actually handy if you want to look up something.
The fourth problem was culture. Technology gadgets were not cool back in the late 90's. You would have been a major nerd or geek in the negative term if you were caught using one. Cell phones getting smaller and cheaper means more popular people were getting the technology thus allowing more high tech to be more common across the "normals".
We had a bunch of horseless carriages designed before the Model-T too.
It just needed the right situation to get them to kick off.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
1) Not one of these locked down devices is hard for a "free thinker" to put a new OS on. No one is making nor planning on making devices that are actually secure against a knowledgeable owner that wants them to do something different. They are looking to add some security that is impossible without hardware support. No one is actually advocating the position your essay is opposing.
2) When PCs started they used to come with the OS (and arguably sometimes more than one OS) on ROM. People still booted different OSes on them.
3) There is wealth of content creation tools for all these platforms that already exist, so concerns about consumption / creation are overblown.
4) DRM is obviously popular with content creators to avoid sharing, and larger entities to allow for distribution and control. It comes in and out of fashion and has for long time. There is no long term trend in either direction. For example in the last 5 years virtually all music is sold DRM free while previously music companies had required DRM.
5) On the consumer tablet / phone devices there already exist a wealth of services to setup alternative "clouds" including both Android and iOS. They are cheap and easy to configure. Instead of whining about them not existing for consumer just set one up.
Using the chromebook as an example of a glorified terminal is missing the mark, as unlike Android or iOS, ChromeOS have a boot time key combo that opens up the possibility of using it as a full blown laptop via the developer mode.
Remember when the Palm Pilot and Apple Newton heralded the "end of the PC era"?
Remember when it was said that:
Man cannot fly.
Nothing will come of the automobile.
If man goes over 30mph, he will die.
The PC is just a fad.
And there's more that I can't remember off of the top of my head.
Just because folks were wrong about something in the past doesn't mean they'll be wrong in the future.
I'm seeing more and more people who just use a smartphone and a tablet for all of their computing needs. Frankly, the only reason I'm still on desktop/laptops is because they're still working fine and I'm too cheap to switch. But as soon as these things die, I'm going tablet/smartphone.
A desktop/workstation is just too much computing power for my needs and takes up too much space and energy.
I'm not sure that this statement makes any sense. It might make sense for Blizzard (Diablo 3), or any new games from Ubisoft, all of which apparently requires a persistent connection to play your games.
Netflix is basically a movie rental service with no due dates, and you can watch the stuff you want at any time as many times as you want. I'm not under any illusion that I own any of the content they have available.
I have Steam, and I usually only buy games that are on deep discount whenever they have one of their crazy 75% off sales. The only time I go online with them is when I buy games, otherwise I go into offline mode.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I keep seeing this comparison of computers with cars and it's just not a valid one. What has changed with cars other than the manufacturing processes and the technologie that lies in them? The answer is NOTHING.
- You can still choose through many options such as color, packages and add-ons.
- You still have to get it serviced regularly and you can have the shop repair it when it's broken
Computers are handing more the way of calculators where you'll buy one and dispose of it when it doesn't work or doesn't do what you want. Currently we can still buy parts and assemble our own but eventually you will get to shop for a computer the same way you do a cell phone.
I always that for that purpose one had to rely on one's imagination . . .
That's all pc's , labtops, tablets, smartphones are.
They all serve a different purpose, and so one will never replace the other, it will just complement it.
Slipping shoelaces ?
I wrote up an effort-post about why this article is wrong, but the tl;dr is that most people don't care about all the stuff in this article. They just want to plug in and consume, and because so many people are like that, that is the direction the market is moving.
Sorry. A majority of people are outside of our insulated world of free-software and self-tinkering hopes and dreams.
I finished that correspondence course on LISP so I'm ready to tell the world the future of computing!
For the love of whatever, could someone stop accepting these ads posing as informaiton from web kiddies?
Some very good points made there, and I completely agree that the main concern for the future is ownership of data, not what your PC looks like.
I have been rather luddite in my avoidance of cloud services. In fact the only exception is Steam, which is perfectly fine and convenient for now, but I can foresee potential issues in the future. In particular when my 3 yr old son gets a bit older and wants to play games from my collection at the same time as I want to. I think the solution would be a bit torrent, rather than the odious option of re-purchasing games that I have already 'bought'.
As for my personal data, the simple answer is no way, online backups onto servers I have no control over, access subject to current download speeds and/ or their uptime. Not to mention the vagueries of their TOS and the laws of the country where the sever is hosted.
Am I being too paranoid? Maybe, but until I find a service that I genuinely trust (ownCloud.org could be a candidate maybe) my personal data, music and film included, stays stored on a device I own and control, backed up onto devices that I own and control.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
blah blah blah. walled gardens and cloud storage. I've been playing with my raspberry pi. it's just as fun as my first Apple II and way more hackable (maybe just because i'm a little bit smarter now) Personal computing is better than i ever imagined it would be. There is something to hack EVERYWHERE. get an android device, jailbreak your iphone. find cameras in the garbage. quit lamenting the fact that people who don't care about using computers settle for the walled garden.
The battle is between the corporations, which have amassed huge amounts of power in our legal and social structure, and the force of history created the PC and networking and that naturally wants people to be more free to gather information and grow on their own terms without middlemen.
That's the epic battle of our time and, due to the former condition above, it's hardly ever even commented about. They have reason to fear it because if our largest corporations (especially the media and information-based corporations) can't monopolize and be middle men there isn't a great need for them. Today's small businesses can easily do what a multinational did only a generation ago.
DRM = digital rights management, not digital restrictions management.
The hope for personal and general purpose computing is on devices like the raspberry pi.
Desktops are the most common form of computing, and will continue to be for some time. Chances are if you have a smart phone or tablet you also have a desktop or laptop.
The theory behind the cloud is that your data is available on multiple devices wherever you go. This is only a reality if you stay within your own connectivity area. Anyone who travels quickly understands that access to the cloud either becomes prohibitively expensive (data roaming) or limited. Streaming music on a beach in Mexico, and for example, if requires paying huge data roaming fees or requires the purchase of a local SIM card and an unlocked device. In my opinion the cloud will not become useful until worldwide data plans become inexpensive.
But the reason Palm wasn't the end of the PC era is the same as the reason The Tablet (you seem to like apple) wont be either. They are toys. While the PC can be used for entertainment, its primary purpose is as a tool. While I'm sure there are use cases you can come up with where a tablet can be used as a tool... there were for Palms as well, the fact of the matter is, real work is done on PCs. And will continue to be done that way for a the foreseeable future. Will desktop PCs go away? Eventually... but that would require a better interface. Tablets have an inferior interface. So eventually Full VR with thought based interaction. Granted, that's likely less than 20 years off... but tablets are not going to kill the PC market. They will however kill entertainment device markets... GPS, DVD players, MP3 players... etc...
The editorial hits the main points, but perhaps understates the importance of US ISPs being controlled by non-competitive private companies. This is a disaster. Aside from Verizon Fios (which - surprise! - has stalled), Americans haven't put new pipe in the ground in ten years. Google shouldn't be making headlines with a modest proposed fiber-to-house project in Kansas.
In the 1990s, backbone providers had to sell bandwidth to all last-mile-ISPs at the same rate. There were literally tens of thousands of ISPs to choose from nationwide. In the name of deregulation, this got nixed around 2000. Backbone providers -- who also had local ISPs -- could price their competition to death. And they did. In 2002, we have about a dozen ISPs. Not so bad... but then they met at a conference and literally divided up the major markets between them. So we have a couple cable providers... but none in the same markets. Unlike a government monopoly which is beholden to the public will (with varying degrees of success), we have a monopoly on information services that is contractually obligated to shareholders to push their own content offerings.
As a result we have lower speeds and much, much higher prices than our friends in Asia and Europe. ( http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/ ) More troubling is the prospect of political filtering. Want information on breaking DRM? Not via our pipe, buddy.
And this is just landline.
I, for one, wouldn't like to type a term paper or play Guild Wars 2 on an iPad. Tablet-style computers are a fancy toy until one of them comes up with an input that doesn't require the use of a keyboard, virtual or physical. My vision for the future would require heavy research into handwriting and voice recognition. It would be much easier to use something that stores your own handwriting like digital paper, but still searchable like pure text. I'm just thinking from the perspective of ease of use by older people. There are too many issues with cloud storage, from privacy issues, control over your own data and connectivity, just to name a few. Read some of the current EULAs we have and you come across Adobe writing that use of their basic online Photoshop gives them full royalty rights to your images. Cloud storage is useless if your internet is down.
But I see people in meetings at work all the time with tablets in pretty cases furiously typing into them(they are all ipads here).......are you saying that those are just toys and those people are doing any real work?
Wait a second.....where do you work?
But they are only half true: an artifact of the PC is dying, but the essence of the PC revolution is closer to realization than ever before, while also being closer to loss than ever before.
I... wat?
Those were great products just too ahead of their time. This go around, I think they may be right. The market is different, costs and benefits are more inline and the general population is much more savy than when those devices came out (especially newton).
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
I love your signature line.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
I don't know... I was reading somewhere when I got my Nexus 7 about setting up my own personal cloud storage with my own server and stuff like that. Perhaps it's doubtful other people would be inclined to do something like that, but perhaps they would in light of current personal data concerns.
TTBOMK, all of the DRM schemes in common use for e-books have been broken. Of course, you have to get the files onto a normal sort of PC in order to decrypt them.
It costs under $5 per month to avoid the "free" services. I have a low-end $9/month HostGator account for my minor web sites. This allows multiple domains. If I want to publish a picture, it goes in a directory there. Another domain has Wordpress loaded for a blog.
Mail comes into my own domains, is filtered, and dumps to an IMAP server at sonic.net, which I can access from all my devices. Sonic DSL has no ads, no filtering, no caching, no "deep packet inspection", no data caps, and no nonsense.
The only time I log into Google is to update my Google Chrome add-ons in their "web store". I declined to accept the new terms when Google bought Youtube, and my newer videos are hosted on Blip, which is more of a pro service. I can put videos on the Hostgator site, too, although they have to play out from beginning to end, not stream randomly.
This demonstrates how low-value the "free" services really are.
thanks for the link... some investigating to do, but looks like it's the answer to my prayers for getting my stuff back out of the clutches of Google...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I think that the number of PCs necessary for "real work" is a lot smaller than the current market. This is a major reason why pads, pods, and phones are eating into PC sales. Some tasks definitely require PCs, but you don't need one to cruise the web, look up phone numbers, and a host of other small things for which business and consumers bought PCs. And as the follow below me indicates, some real work can be done on these small devices.
Perhaps it's encoded to 64 kbps Vorbis or 64 kbps AAC, which sounds just fine in a noisy environment. At that bitrate, a 2 GB folder holds 69 hours of music. And perhaps it's just the good singles from each album.
I don't consider myself to be a super-nerd, nor am I a devout open source supporter. I pay for software sometimes, I buy into proprietary hardware at times. I even run windows on my primary work and home PCs. That said, I also avoid the most intrusive services if I can in a reasonable fashion, I read websites like /. and I am responsive to my tech devices and their ability to rat me out to corporate overlords.
I "feel" like I don't like the intrusion caused by DRM, walled gardens, and marketing guys snooping around my online activity. So... I run CM10 on my phone. I use Calibre to load books onto my Kindle. I run Ubuntu on all my computers that aren't my gaming machine. I don't use any Apple products. I will always have a desktop "general purpose" computer at home to tinker on. And I don't consider myself to be a purist by any means when compared to some of the guys I know (sorry girls but I've never met a chick that runs linux on her PC). Not to mention the dudes that develop the open source operating systems and applications that I use. Those people aren't going anywhere.
If I want to try out a game but don't have/want to spend $60 on it, I download it. Same for movies. If I really like or am anticipating a new game, I will buy it. If I really want to see a new movie, I will take my girl to the theater. If I am really interested in a book, I will buy a hard copy. Managing my content needs in this way actually feels more morally sound than following along with the rest of the sheep, shelling out my money for movies like Battleship, the next gen idevice, and DRM laden games. It just feels like a crock and a waste of money. I'd rather spend that cash on a live concert, a good independent film, or a kickstarter project. I have nearly complete control over how I spend my money and I try to put it in the places that deserve it.
Not one of these locked down devices is hard for a "free thinker" to put a new OS on.
Yet some countries prosecute, or allow copyright owners grounds to sue, "free thinkers" under anti-circumvention laws.
No one is making nor planning on making devices that are actually secure against a knowledgeable owner that wants them to do something different.
Sony v. Hotz anyone? What about the downfall of Lik Sang?
There is wealth of content creation tools for all these platforms that already exist
What programming environment for iOS is comparable to AIDE for Android?
It comes in and out of fashion and has for long time. There is no long term trend in either direction. For example in the last 5 years virtually all music is sold DRM free while previously music companies had required DRM.
Good for music. But when have DRM-free feature films been in fashion at any time since Macrovision was introduced?
I have to point out that while I admire the appeal to cars, that this is a flawed analogy. The horseless carriage was capable of reproducing every single feature of a horse-drawn carriage (except the pooping), which made it an obvious successor. There are a myriad of things that touch-based devices can't do that a mouse/keyboard can. And there are a lot of things a little tiny form-factor micro-pc with an attachment port for a mouse/keyboard can't do that a full-blown desktop can (IE: power a 30" 2560x1600 monitor at 100+ FPS on the latest games). Even with Apple trying to bridge this with their new uber-thin desktop computer, the specs on it are pretty awkward for a computer built in 2012 and at a price starting at $1700 even with, essentially their Thunderbolt display built-in, it's a pretty second-rate system, also not capable of doing things many people need a full-blown tower for. In short: I'm saying that these devices, while they have obvious and great uses, do not fully reproduce the capabilities of PCs, and these hybrid-PC-microdevices don't fully reproduce the capabilities of their larger brethren. So the end result is that the PC is a completely different market, and no new micro-devices are ever a sign of "the end of the PC era."
I suspect until some major scientific breakthroughs occur that it's not even possible for a small-form-factor PC to replace a full blown tower-based PC. Even if Moore's Law continues for another decade, there's a physical limit to how much computing power you can shove into a hand-held or ultra-thin device. Compare that with a desktop that has this monstrous 2200+ cubic inches of space for hardware, and if you can shove 10x-50x the amount of horsepower into that space, the PC has the capacity to behave like a local-supercomputer in comparison. While you might argue that it's possible to use the "cloud" for computationally expensive work like that (and that's an argument, for sure, a little awkward, but I suppose it works), the problem then lies in latency. We're limited by the speed of light, literally, a limit which does not exist when the box is sitting under your desk, so there's a use-case that will never be supportable in a cloud system: real-time gaming on nearly photorealistic engines with extreme physics support. This was tried, and the implementation failed, for the very same reason (it's the latency, not the bandwidth, and that's a physical limit in our universe, so it will never work, until FTL communication is discovered).
But the reason Palm wasn't the end of the PC era is the same as the reason The Tablet (you seem to like apple) wont be either. They are toys.
The Palm wasn't interfaced to a powerful network of apps and data. Today's tablet is an interface to a much more powerful set of tools.
A tablet will never be enough for me, but it will suffice for most people. I like using tablets to interface to my own systems.
I think you are wrong.
"If Google, Amazon, Apple, and Old Media get their way, in a new dark age of computing. Certainly, you'll have a fancy tablet and access to infinite entertainment. But you will own nothing. Sharing data will be controlled by a chosen few entities, the programs you can run or write will be limited in the name of security, and privacy will be dead."
You are conflating the objectives of each group to make is seem like they want the same thing. For example: Google, Amazon, and Apple would love to give you full non-DRM access to all entertainment and allow sharing, but old media won't let that. Conversely, Old media doesn't care about controlling your tablet experience, doesn't care about access to your privacy, and doesn't care about software security (except drm).
Becuase of the timing of this article, I thought this was a rant against Microsoft because of it new Windows RT is a copy of Apple and Google's walled garden, but you never mentioned Microsofts move into this space. They are the desktop OS monopoly and their latest moves would be more worth of mention that even Apple or Google or Amazon.
Just had to note it. This is the sort of thing I can pass upstream to my CEO and business owners about the state of computing. (Especially when they send me non-technical puff pieces about why "The Cloud is Perfect and Beautiful," or "Why We Should Buy Every Employee an iPad and Call IT Done.")
What I keep wondering is, when I put all my cherished memories into the cloud and over years I allow that collection to grow with no means of extracting it or migrating it in a useful way, what will stop the cloud from taking full advantage of the worth of those memories to me? I can't imagine why they wouldn't eventually tell me that I must pay them to be able to see the media from Christmas 2012 and that is that? I believe that is the real lurking danger here. Right now we are the kids in the school yard being offered a few free hits.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
"Treat you like a criminal" refers to DRM. Steam certainly has software with DRM, but that's not Valves choice. They would love you sell you other peoples games without DRM, but the other people won't let them as a condition of being on steam.
I disagree that NetFlix is treating me like a ciminal. While NetFlix certainly has DRM, there are no allusions to what you are getting into with Netflix. You'd don't buy movies from NetFlix. You get an all you can eat buffet as long as you pay. I hate DRM, but what NetFlix is doing is perfectly fine with me because I'm not buying movies. I'm paying freaking $8/month for access to a huge library of video. It's like cable tv... We don't say Comcast treats you like a criminal when they cut your cable after you stop paying.
On yesterday's PCs, I could just write raw machine code in Hex, save it to the 1st sector of a drive, boot the disk and be in full control of my own hardware with my own code. Many new-ish PCs now use EFI. To boot from EFI I have to write my machine code within a FAT (32) container, which means implementing MS's proprietary and patent encumbered File Allocation Table format... Tomorrow's PCs will use UEFI to boot, which requires a cryptographically signed EFI boot process. That means signing my own bootloader and installing my own keys, or paying for a key for each bootable from MS (some UEFI systems allow booting w/o signature via special boot mode, some do not) -- On ARM platforms shipping Win RT, MS has said the option to boot unsigned code or install user specified keys must be removed.
So, you can see how it's slowly gotten a bit harder to play with my own new hardware thanks to the increasingly high hoops I've got to jump through. If Microsoft has their way you won't be able to boot any OS that doesn't fork over the cash to them. In fact, even the Linux Foundation is planning to pay MS for the right to sign a bootloader so you can still boot your own software on UEFI hardware. I think that's horrible. I understand they want to make it easy for users to run free software but IMO, paying MS one red cent to give us back the freedom to use our own software with our own hardware is just vile and disgusting. Instead, I'll buy from vendors that respect my freedom. The subject line say MS + Secure Boot == PC Death, but really Apple, and many other vendors who don't let us unlock our devices to run arbitrary code are equally as evil in my book.
Recently a longing for the good ol' days of unfettered computing led me to creating Hexabootable. It's a 512 byte boot sector that contains a Hex editor. With it you can edit raw memory then execute the memory you just edited. Using only this minimal tool you can extend the program's features (eg: disk I/O), write any other program, even create a whole new Operating System -- Indeed that's exactly what I'm doing.
None of my hardware or software hacking hobbies will be possible if the OEMs get their way and lock us out of our own hardware. It's all under the guise of Security, but that's not really the reason. Think about it: OS code is huge and bug ridden; If there's even one kernel level arbitrary code execution vulnerability then the whole effort is useless. If the OS makers could write secure (read: bug free) OS's they would be just as secure with and without secure boot! If they can't write secure OSs then secure boot is pointless! Truly, I can use known exploit vectors against every modern OS, secure boot or not, to run my own unsigned machine code, and so can malware writers... So it's not a boot for normal end user security, it's just digital shackles. The real reason Secure Boot Chains exists is to keep you from tampering with your own computer.
Now, what I do find hopeful is the cool work in the embedded systems fields. There are several projects that strive to be as transparent to the user as possible, and get their code up and running controlling everything. Unfortunately you don't always get to run plain machine code on all of the hobbyist devices. Open hardware initiatives give me a warm fuzzy feeling -- That's what will save the "PC" (Personal Computer) in my opinion. Protip: If you can't personalize the machine code and/or hardware, then it's really an Impersonal Computer -- An impostor of the worst kind...
Here's a fun aside: Since I write software in machine code, I could release it under the GPL and provide no other "source code" but the binaries :-P
Conversely, if you know Machine Code, every (non encrypted) binary executable is Open Source!
Yes. They are all playing Angry Birds.
You just can't do real work on an iPad. It doesn't come with a stylus.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Which in PC parlance means they have to be thrown away every 12-18 months. Why is that? Bloat. Plain and simple. When your Andoid tablet or iPad accesses a typically horrible bloatpage with 3 different animated popups, a banner or two, 5 layers of Javascript and the rest, it grinds to a halt. And when the hardware engineers make a tablet that's twice as fast, the marketing douchebags tell the software developers "We need 7 more popups, a dozen more animations, twice as many switches and buttons for that 'user experience' and your new tablet turns into a shitty doorstop practically from day one, requiring you to run out and get a newer better one.
The downside of running everything off the network is that you're running everything off the network and you have no more control over it than you have over your cable TV broadcast content.
Is that really what you want to see happen with computers? Do you really want this decade's design patterns, protocols, and languages to be cemented for a century? Had this been the mindset in the 1980s, there would have been no web, just online services, and the Internet would only be a way for those online services to exchange email (which would be as expensive as text messaging). Had this been the mindset in the 1960s, we would just have terminals, and we'd be paying for every CPU-minute and every byte of RAM that we used, and there would be no GUI (nobody would be able to afford such a computationally intensive application, and anyway, how are you going to use a GUI over that 22.8kbaud modem?).
Do you think walled gardens encourage innovation? Where is the innovation in the cable TV system (i.e. the innovation that is not just copying things we can do with our PCs)? Smartphone innovation comes from outside of the walled garden -- from developers using their PCs (i.e. computers without walled gardens) to write programs for those devices, or to create websites that can be accessed from those devices.
most of us have better things to do than some of the nonsense in this article
Yeah, most people have better things to do than to worry about making the world a better place. You just happen to be conflating that with thinking it is acceptable to prevent people who do want to make innovative solutions to problems from doing so.
Palm trees and 8
Worse, vendor DRM ADDS ON TOP OF THAT.
But Steam *is* DRM. And it IS Valve's choice to do so.
Remember when the Palm Pilot and Apple Newton heralded the "end of the PC era"?
I do. It was a stupid statement then, and it's just as stupid to suggest that tablets will be "the end of the PC" now. To be sure, tablets are going to replace PC's in a lot of places, but anyone whose computing tasks involve any serious amount of input knows that a table is very poor substitute for a keyboard. The same can be said for those tasks that need multiple displays, etc. Those users will absolutely not be replacing their PC's with tablets.
about setting up my own personal cloud storage with my own server and stuff like that
No, you're not going to do that. A server is not a cloud. If you were to make your own (actual) cloud, you'd have to have: a lot of servers; geographically dispersed sites to place them in; solutions for HA and backups; ops teams to cater for the servers... Somehow I don't think you're planning to do this.
Ezekiel 23:20
Those touchy toys are there for playing and entertaining.
A great summary. Thank you
There will always be a market for PCs and real internet connections. They may become more expensive, but there's enough people just here on slashdot to make it a viable business. It's a shame that every child will no longer have access to a real PC at home, but hopefully there will be some at schools, where they can learn about programming, etc. This story seems like a "best of" compilation of the replies to the other 10 stories about "the PC is dying" we've had recently. I pretty much agree 100 %, but we've discussed this to death now, and there's nothing we can do. Well there is one thing, to develop great apps which work at the edge of the network and use encryption and all that good stuff, but who has time for that...
They're doing WAY more work than is necessary, very clearly using the wrong tool for the job.
For taking notes in a meeting, useing a laptop is faster, simpler, and more accurate -- and still not the best, depending on the user.
A pen and paper (remember those) is ideal for note taking, especially if you want to include charts, graphs, math, etc., take notes in a non-linear way, or need to make quick annotations to notes taken earlier.
If you need those notes on a computer for whatever reason, something like a lightscribe pen may more adequately meet your needs.
A tablet, not so much. Maybe something like the Galaxy Note (with a Watcom stylus) could be adequate, but still isn't as flexible as a pen and paper.
I've seen lots of (typically older) business people dutifully using their iPad in meetings in an attempt to look like they're keeping up with the times. It's sad, really.
Required reading for internet skeptics
It's fake, they are playing Angry Birds and when someone looks over their shoulder they flip to a text processor with random snipets from some work documents to make it look good :)
Well, it's what I do anyways...Here's a starter sentence guaranteed to keep anyone from following the rest of the paragraph:
To synergise the energy of the elastic cloud computing environment synergistically with the development platform interface specification to meet the required compliancy of Cobit while maintaining share profit managability.......
The same could have been said of Palm Pilots and Blackberries over ten years ago. And yet, here we are. PDAs are dead, and Blackberries are irrelevant. Not because they were terrible ideas, but because technology advanced enough that they became irrelevant, and they adapted to being a complementary device and not a device in which to replace the need for a desktop/laptop.
I also think that stating that the PC is dead is way too much of an overstatement, and see some reflection back to the past. Tablets and phones are good for one thing, and one thing only: consumption of content. Try to do anything outside of that sphere, and it just comes across as a rather clumsy device to use.
And I really have a hard time seeing it ever bridging that gap, since this is a problem inherent with the input system of choice. Much like speech recognition software hasn't replaced the keyboard, touch is not a replacement for the old mouse and keyboard. The problem lies in how by its very nature, touch is less precise of an input method.
That doesn't mean that I'm being a neophyte in regards to touch devices, since they do indeed have their place, but they just aren't the be all end all solution, since unless we're going to go to Minority Report like interfaces to make up for the loss in precision, which, BTW, would be completely impractical for long term use because of the ergonomics involved, then there will continue to be a need for the current input paradigms that we have now.
But that doesn't mean that the desktop won't change because of touch though. Gestures might very well become integrated with the desktop without too many problems, and which for that matter, Opera was a pioneer on this in some respects. However, it's not going to replace the need for finer grained controls. What such an input device would look like though, I dunno. It could be rather much like a trackpad on a laptop, could be integrated into the keyboard for a touch area, or even something else entirely. But whatever it ends up looking like, I'm just not seeing the killer advancement to enriching or supplementing the desktop... yet.
What I think the main problem here is that many who are involved in HCI prefer revolutions to incremental improvement, and then call anyone who doesn't want to jump on their latest bandwagon which doesn't want to go along with their revolution as being technophobic, when their new system that they propose either can't or won't replace all of the use cases that they think that it will.
I get it. Developing for older systems can be boring (although I'm a rather strange one and actually love to be on the incremental edge), and continually delving into unexplored areas is much more exciting. However, computing has never worked that way, with every advancement always being some incrementation and refinement of the older ideas which then builds on the work done by the previous generations of tech, instead of trying to replace it entirely.
So in that respect, I fully expect that touchscreen devices will likely end up being in the same position as your Palm Pilots and Blackberries in 10 years time. They will have failed to live up to the hype being given to them, and they will be relegated to being mostly entertainment devices overall, possibly replacing TVs, gaming devices, eReaders, and so on. Heck, we're actually starting to even see that now.
But they won't be replacing the need for an actual computer, much like Blackberries, iPods, and Palm Pilots didn't supplant them either. The input is just too clumsy to do that, and there's really nothing that technology or software can do to change that. But just because I say that doesn't mean that I then think that the desktop then needs to remain unaffected by it, and that it won't change as well because of it, but that such a change is going to end up being more incremental, rather than revolutionary.
Touch won't kill the need for a mouse, but something else which brings the best of both forms of input just might. And that replacement will then likely be just as inappropriate for use with a tablet as a tablet's interface would be for the desktop, even though it might take a lot of hints from the tablet paradigms.
When I got (built) my first real PC, it wasn't about "content." It was about doing things. I had BASIC (tiny), an assembler, an editor, and a way to store stuff. I wrote all manner of software. Simple stuff at first, then more crazed as I caught on to how things actually worked. As the years went by, I built or bought more powerful machines, and my library of stuff grew. Content became relevant as I could *create* it; I painted pictures, made music, wrote articles, books, wrote and received uncounted numbers of emails (and I still have them all. I was able to dig up a letter I wrote to my stepmother on my 6800 machine in 1975 last week, startled her a bit. :) I designed PC boards, all manner of hardware, even wrote PCB layout and schematic capture software. Games... not so much, although I did write a few, especially as the 80's arcade frenzy came and went and I was employed in that area. Computers were niche devices for people with special interests, really. When I started out hand-coding 8008 instructions, it's not like I was a member of a huge crowd.
Today, the start isn't the wowie-zowie of having "a real computer", it's just Other People's Content. You get a closed box like an iPad, it doesn't come with "hey write your own stuff", although you can add apps like that for cheap. You can add an editor (leaving out the PITA of that on screen kbd for real writing), a perfectly serviceable spreadsheet. On the desktop, developing stuff is still 100% possible, but again, that's not usually why people go after a machine; they want twitter, they want IM, they want to download music... for them, it is an appliance, and neither the environment that enthused me about computers (suddenly, you could have one, whereas before, you could not) or the vast unknown of "what can I do with this" really serves as the entryway or inspiration for most people.
True enough, the general purpose machine on my desk can address either type of person; me, or an inveterate content consumer. But the current market is the latter -- not me. In fact, I might not buy another machine -- I'm pretty happy with what's on my desk. 8 cores, 3 ghz, terabytes of storage, 6 monitors, USB widgets everywhere, LAN, WAN, WIFI, bluetooth, SD radio, MIDI, Logic Pro, all manner of dev languages... I feel pretty good about this puppy, frankly. If that's to be the pinnacle of personal computing... yeah, I'm good with that. Thing is crazy powerful, from my perspective.
I'm just not sure that the needs of us dinosaurs represent the needs of the marketplace today. That's really what I wanted to say, I'm just maybe way too windy about it.
So if the PC "dies", maybe that's ok. It'l die slow, and probably a niche market will arise again. The pendulum swings all the time, for just about everything. We'll be ok.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In celebration of the PC valiantly holding on in its fight to remain dead, I'm changing my screen saver to a picture of Abe Vigoda.
I have to point out that while I admire the appeal to cars, that this is a flawed analogy. The horseless carriage was capable of reproducing every single feature of a horse-drawn carriage (except the pooping), which made it an obvious successor.
I think you're missing the point here. Before the Model-T, a car was a wealthy person's plaything; costing $2-3,000 (or $50-75,000 in 2012), everyone else walked or rode a horse essentially (or rode some form of public transport). Thus, is wasn't the "obvious successor" to the horse-drawn carriage. The Model T that took the previous developments (the horseless carriage), added in a few innovations (assembly line) and "kicked off" the automobile revolution, because it was "the right thing, at the right time" -- just as new tablets/phones/whatever are doing (i.e. taking the previous developments made in the devices, adding some new stuff/slashing prices/etc to put them in "joe public's" reach).
Checking Wikipedia: The first Model T cars (1909) cost approx $850 (approx $21,250 in 2012). By the '20s, the cost was down to $220 (or about $3,500 in 2012 -- using 1923 as the source year to calculate the inflation).
Yes. They are all playing Angry Birds.
Or reading manga.
That's what I use mine for during meetings, anyway.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You're right that cost is a major factor. But the problem with your analogy here is that this new breed of tablets, especially anything from Apple, is not more economical than the alternatives. I can easily buy a laptop for $250-300 now, cheaper than an iPad and which includes a full keyboard. I'm not seeing dirt-cheap tablets available to replace these low-end laptops, so for now they really seem to be overpriced toys, especially when you consider that most productivity applications are designed for PC form factors (mouse with 2+ buttons, keyboards, etc., and not touch) and OSes.
But tablets and other toys will make the PC go back to it's early days price tags because most people only want the toys, especially now thay have to work all day on this shitty PC at their work.
Not kill, but inability to buy due to price make the same outcome.
"Treat you like a criminal" refers to DRM. Steam certainly has software with DRM, but that's not Valves choice. They would love you sell you other peoples games without DRM, but the other people won't let them as a condition of being on steam.
AFAIK, all of the Humble Indie Bundle games are available from Steam and don't come with DRM. You can request a Steam code for your games if you want to get them that way.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
...like how an interesting title/description on why I should care about the PC's supposed demise quickly turned into a novel-long rant about DRM and the cloud.
Next time, could you give us better warning before we're all sucked into your whiny blog post?
The problem: The NPCtards out there believe everything they have heard more than three times.
The whole thing is intentional. And utter bullshit.
How the heck did this ever get modded funny? It's completely true... and the claim itself is just as untrue now as it ever was.. I simply cannot see a time coming where everybody will be completely satisfied renting all their apps. People have always liked to *own* their possessions, and software also. Furthermore, nobody, at least yet, is being "forced" to use the "cloud", thankfully. Certainly I havent gone that direction, although *as an option* only, and not as the primary storage location for all your personal data, it's a perfectly valid one .. I remember M$ was trying to go in that direction almost 15 years ago, when they came out with "active desktop" (remember that?).. and we still have desktop computers.. Rather, I have noticed that it's not so much people *dropping* PCs for mobile devices, but rather people that would not normally ever have or use a PC, that use mobile. Africa is a very good example of that. My sister who is currently there now, mentioned to me that the majority of people that pick up email, write letters and texts, and play games etc. do it on their phones. People that would never consider buying a desktop otherwise.
So.. i see no real drop in the popularity of the PC, but rather, as a percentage of the total user base, it's simply gotten smaller, due to the explosive growth in users of "devices".
Compare the stuff in Office World today with an IBM T43P from 6 years ago! You dont need a quad core processor for most business work (eg writing SQL, reviewing managerial reports), but you need a much better screen and keyboard than the tat thats on the market today.
No, I do not design PCBs on my Samsung Galaxy S3! (but I do read semiconductor data sheets on my Kindle).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Long live the personal computer!
A pen and paper (remember those) is ideal for note taking, especially if you want to include charts, graphs, math, etc., take notes in a non-linear way, or need to make quick annotations to notes taken earlier.
Spot on. My preferred workflow currently is pen & paper in the meeting, a quick scan to PDF and store in an app like "Things" with a few key tags for future reference. Easy, quick, and no problem finding a note made weeks/months ago - a notes field attached to the PDF in the indexing software allows for future thoughts to be added, as well (and searched).
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
A server is not a cloud.
Nebulous marketing-speak is nebulous. The problem is that everyone who uses the term "cloud" means something slightly different by it.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
I got a Lenovo G470 not long ago, and it seems fine for any kind of general office work. I wouldn't use it to design PCBs, but for regular business work, it's fine. The keyboard is as good as most laptops on the market today, and just as good if not better than those wacky Apple laptop keyboards, though it definitely doesn't measure up to the keyboard on my Thinkpad.
This is a major reason why pads, pods, and phones are eating into PC sales.
Maybe, or maybe it's because PC sales have been over-inflated since sometime in the 90's. Just my opinion, but I think we should step back and take another look at this - TBH I'm not entirely sure that what we're seeing is such a bad thing - and that it's completely natural.
Most people aren't tinkerers, inventors, hackers, or scientists. Most people aren't curious about their world, investigative of the way things work, interested in science, or even all that intelligent. Most people don't have a scientific mind or any desire whatsoever to use technology for any more than canned entertainment (which, by the way, is also what they use most of everything else in their lives for). Not because they're inherently a sub-species - but because they just don't care. All respect to the author of the original article above, but I think he's missing something important - PC's are losing ground to tablets, etc in the market because most people don't have any use for PC's - and they never really did. PC's were always FAR more complicated than they were able to appreciate or take advantage of - and they don't have any use for them because they can perform their stupid, meaningless, and irrelevant tasks quite adequately on a phone/tablet/whatever. They also don't give two farts who legally owns the movie they just paid $9.99 for, as long as they get to watch it right now, and have never heard of DRM (and wouldn't understand it if you explained it to them). Jobs was a genius - he understood that, and by simplifying the PC down to a glorified toy, he knew that the entire world would throw their money at him - and they did.
And I say, more power to them. I don't care. Let them do their thing, and let Apple and Google and Amazon make bank off of them. Big deal. Me? I'll always have a PC of some kind, and a hundred other hacked and frankenstein'd gadgets - because my nature isn't to just consume, it's to create and arrange things to make them better. It doesn't really matter to me if Apple quits making Macbooks, or Microsoft quits writing operating systems that work on regular computers - at worst, it's a minor inconvenience, because I and many others like me will step in to fill the void - just as we created the beginnings of all this stuff to begin with, way back in the 80's and before. This move toward DRM and non-ownership of public entertainment is meaningless. Jobs and Gates and the rest took what was originally created and commercialized it; made it accessible to the masses - and the masses, because they don't know better or don't care, will eventually be controlled by draconian corporations or governments, or both. Those of us who care enough to invent, create, and make the world a better place, will not.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
A pen and paper (remember those) is ideal for note taking, especially if you want to include charts, graphs, math, etc., take notes in a non-linear way, or need to make quick annotations to notes taken earlier.
Appending to or editing previous notes is exactly where pen and paper fail. If you need to go back and insert an additional two (or any N) lines of text in to a place where there's only one (or any N-1) blank lines, you have a problem.
PC stands for Personal Computer, i.e. a computer with only one user. This is in contrast to a server or mainframe which have multiple users. Tablets, smart phones, game consoles, laptops, and desktops are all examples of PCs. The form factor doesn't matter, the OS doesn't matter, the I/O devices don't matter. If there's only ever one user at any given time it's a PC.
What programming environment for iOS is comparable to AIDE for Android?
This is a very good point. I wanted to play around with app programming for the iPhone. I'm a fairly knowledgeable programmer with 20 years of experience. I started programming for the Web just about when the Web was invented. I know Perl, VB, PHP, JavaScript, jQuery; have worked in Java, C, Python, and so on. I've had a Linux system of one kind or another since 1996.
I give all that as background to show that I'm not totally incompetent when it comes to computers and making them work. In order to program for iOS you need OS X. The only Mac I had access to was from work where I didn't have root. You can't install the iOS development environment, Xcode, without root. I read about some people who got Xcode up and running under an OS X VM under Windows or Linux. So I got Snow Leopard working in a VM, only to find that the latest Xcode requires Lion. When I was trying this, Lion wasn't runnable in a VM because the modified kernels didn't exist yet.
It took me two or three days, by the way, to reach the point where it was clear I couldn't get Xcode running in any way, shape, or form on any device I own. All that time wasted to learn, no, you can't develop for iOS.
That, to me, is a clear problem with iOS. Never mind the walled garden, you can't even write your own code without jumping through crazy hoops.
In fairness, it doesn't require a computer to be "curious about the world," "investigative of the way things work," "interested in science," or "all that intelligent."
Lots of doctors, lawyers, philosophers, and any number of other fields that aren't "computer scientist, mathematician, or physicist" are more or less computer illiterate beyond "type a document in word and click around in a web browser" - yet they're still pretty fucking smart.
It's a bizarrely egocentric world view that says "anybody not interested in the things I'm interested in, and not trained in the same fields I'm trained in, is just not that smart, and not that curious about the world." A computer is not the only lens through which to view the world, learn about the world, or investigate new areas of their respective fields.
Most people here would bristle at the suggestion from a lawyer that, "Most people just don't know anything about contract law and tort law, and frankly, are not that smart." Most people here would bristle at the suggestion from a doctor that, "Most people just don't know anything about neurological disorders and gene expression, and frankly, are not that smart." But that doesn't prevent the same commentary from being one of the most misused and arrogant aphorisms frequently seen here on Slashdot.
Sadly I agree, I also feel the age of the cheap general purpose powerful computer is coming to an end. But projects like rasberry pi have at least calmed my fears about the end of cheap hackable low power computers.
My guess is that in 10 years desktops will return to 1990s prices and sales numbers. And will only be used by professions that require the power and by hobbyists. Content like Hulu, Netflx, Pandora, AAA video games, etc will only be available to locked down devices. Tablets, and weird crossovers like the MS surface will be ubiquitous. The manufacturers of traditional laptops and desktops will be Chinese & Taiwanese companies that most of the public currently don't recognize (and maybe apple we'll see) because most of the current PC heavyweights won't survive the shakeout. Linux will survive but will become even more niche as its users won't be able to do any of the fun stuff online. Cable companies will start to suffer a backlash caused by their heavy handed tactics and high prices of today. And most folks in my home town will still have only land line telephones, as the digital divide continues to reduce the global competitiveness of rural America.
Only geeks like me will miss what we have now.
Considering how many people i know who are perfectly content with their 5 year old laptops. It won't matter how powerful a desktop computer will be in a few years for the vast majority of people.
The demand for general purpose computing power per capita is starting to plateau. So unless theirs a software revolution to make the average individual demand more computer power, be prepared to pay more as the market contracts.
Here's a better analogy
A semi truck is more powerful than a car, yet most people have cars and don't want or need semis.
Yes there is still a market for semis, but they are really freaking expensive because only a few people buy them.
Actually, you're exactly right, and if you think that's what I was trying to say you totally missed the point. Just because one isn't interested in computers doesn't mean they're a useless person, or not very smart - but I never said otherwise, did I? What I said was that most people aren't any of those things - not that people who aren't interested in computers are all of those things. All A's are B's, but not all B's are A's. Read it again without the foggy filter of your prejudices, and I think you'll find we agree.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Not the most concise posting, and I didn't see any links to external material to critique.
AskSlash: What percentage of Facebook users can touch type?
AskTwo: Why would the previous question be significant?
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Ethanol tonight effective is. I'm seeing little green slugs with glowsticks.
Nebulous marketing-speak is nebulous. The problem is that everyone who uses the term "cloud" means something slightly different by it.
The Dictionary app on OS X, using the New Oxford American Dictionary, gives the origin of the word "nebulous" as
So it's perhaps a bit appropriate that talk about "the cloud" tends to be a bit, err, umm, nebulous.
As for "mist" and "the cloud", well, perhaps the Germans have the right idea here....
You're quite right - I started off in agreement with you. Where we differ is your closing:
In the context of your entire comment, it's a pretty clear delineation in your mind between "people who care about computers" as the ones who invent and improve and push the world forward, and "people who don't care about computers" who are simply mindless sheep who will never do any of that.
And that's where you lost me.
Appending to or editing previous notes is exactly where pen and paper fail. If you need to go back and insert an additional two (or any N) lines of text in to a place where there's only one (or any N-1) blank lines, you have a problem.
Another problem solved by adding a layer of indirection - put the additional text elsewhere and draw an arrow to the point of insertion.
You might not want a permanent record to be full of pointers, but perhaps it's "take notes quickly by hand at the meeting and type them in later on your computing device of choice".
... about technology and the practices of these companies. The game industry is probably the worst at the moment we have neofeudalism arriving via STEAM and DRM where you PAY and never get to use the game without the "lords" permission. There is no end of life for MMO's for all those who paid obscene amounts of money monthly into a game they will NEVER OWN. The public domain is in the toilet (currently copyright is lifetime + 70 years, like wtf?).
Game companies behind things like World of warcraft, Everquest, etc, are pretty much scum. The uninformed masses who willingly forked out monthly payments for a game that technically be done without centralized servers is why we are here. Most people are too stupid and uninformed and corporations are remaking laws because 90% of society is too fucking stupid and ignorant of how technology works and lets be honest most don't give a shit because where the worst things are happening doesn't effect them. They can't psychologically FEEL the mass spying the internet enables. Just witness all the stupid kids who post naked pics of themselves on their phones not realizing it will be leaked to the net which enables new forms of harrassment/bullying. Or all the secrets people think they are potsing 'anonymously' online on reddit or other web forums.
If anything the internet psychologically removes peoples barriers for self expression but at the same time it doesn't trigger the psychological threat. Everyone gets up in arms about 'dangers of strangers on the streets and their kids' but people blindly express themselves openly and freely on the net.
The human mind did not evolve to deal with technology and hence society is being carried by inertia o the illiterate and uninformed.
You are so wrong it's hard to tell whether it's out of blinding ignorance or veiled malice.
I sincerely hope someone with a slashdot login and less ADD than I gives you the bitchslap you deserve.
Agriculture was fairly new a long time back. Actually growing things and feeding lots of people who themselves had no idea how to get from the seed in the ground to the bread they ate every day was a HUGE progress, especially because it allowed much more people to eat bread every day and still get some things done besides hunting for food.
"Computers" are like that. Walled gardens and appliances like the iPad are like the bread you buy and eat without having to bother with gathering food or putting seeds into the ground. It's called progress. It does not mean that nobody needs to know how to grow wheat -- somebody has to do it. But that the majority of the population can just buy and use something without having (and wanting to have) the slightest idea what makes it work is nothing but progress and is fully in line with all progress of civilisation.
I mean, if you *really* mean it and hate walled gardens and such: Grow your own wheat. Bake your own bread. Keep sheep and knit your clothing. Eat your own dog food please. Having your pizza delivered and complaining about walled gardens is just absurd and hypocritical. You're living in a walled garden all day long anyway and not seeing this is a kind of intellectual blindness.
The next problem during the Palm Era. Was we didn't have too many good enough CPU's to do the job. During the Pentium 2 Era. your Palm Pilot had the power of an 8088 (10 year gap). Today We are closer to a 5 year gap, and our need for personal processing power has diminished. We can play a movie in High Definition on our phone and it will run smoothly. Programs are responsive and quick. While not as fast as the desktop, we are by no means suffering.
Actually, the power of a 68000, which was a substantially better chip than the 8088.
The popularity of flares in 1978 should mean that straight leg jeans should not exist in 2012.
Popularity is not a measure of long term success. Look at Tamagotchi's or any other fad from the 90's. I'll stand to wager that the Ipad/phone are simply fads of the 10's.
LoL. The developing world uses old PC's rather than iWhatevers. US$500 is far to expensive for such a limited device.
The model T was not a new form of car, it was a new form of car production.
Henry Ford didn't change the car at all, he just made the car available to all. The Ipad is not compatible to this at all as PC's were already commonplace by the time it arrived.
And beyond this, did the traditional car makers like Benz disappear?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I got more real work done on my old Palm Pîlot than I can on any current smartphone or tablet. I tracked my billable hours and synced it directly to QuickBooks. I made appoinyments and tasks and synced them directly with Outlook. I made detailed lists and outlines. I could even type fastr (and much more accurately) with my stylus than I can on any size touch keyboard (using the Fitaly keyboard). It was easier to fit more user interface on the same size screen because the gadgets could be smaller because they didn't have to be sized for the fattest of fingers. I almost cried when my Sony Clie' finally died and I was forced to downgrade to a "smartphone."
For all the "smarts" in a smartphone, they tend to be less functional becsuse almost all the apps are written for a wider, less tech savy audience. No one wants to alienate millions of customers by making an app too technical.
The only reason why everyone believes that styluses are bad is because Steve Jobs said so. After something has been repeated by useful idiots often enough, then the whole world starts to believe it.
They are toys. While the PC can be used for entertainment, its primary purpose is as a tool.
Are you sure about that?
Your office desktop isn't going anywhere soon. But for the consumer, the tablet is enough. It is a great consumption device. I would be willing to bet, that a tablet, or tablet like device will replace many office desktops. Not everyone with an office desktop needs to create stuff. A consumptive device is plenty for reading reports.
I agree that cloud services are things we should be very careful with but I think that using Steam and Netflix are bad examples.
Steam is quite open about giving you control over the software you buy through their service. Offline mode, no download limits and a large amountof drm-free content. Add to that a very fair pricing scheme and I have little to complain about.
Netflix isn't really a cloud service at all. It doesn't store your data in any way and it doesn't pretend to be a service in which you are purchasing digital goods. It's a rental service, plain and simple. Just like the video stores of last decade it simlly lends you content. With that in mind I think the cost and service is both fair and as unrestricted as possible. Watching from multiple devices simultenuously is not blocked and moving to a new content region is painless and fair. If you live in the Canada and log into your Netflix account from the US you'll instantly have access to the US content. Ideally networks will eventually abandon the regional segmenting of their content, but you can't blame that on Netflix.
If there are aspects of these services that I'm unaware of, I'll be interested to hear about the details.
A pen and paper (remember those) is ideal for note taking, especially if you want to include charts, graphs, math, etc., take notes in a non-linear way, or need to make quick annotations to notes taken earlier.
Appending to or editing previous notes is exactly where pen and paper fail. If you need to go back and insert an additional two (or any N) lines of text in to a place where there's only one (or any N-1) blank lines, you have a problem.
I find that the use of an asterisk and "PTO" usually solves this alleged problem.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you watch a movie that you downloaded from a torrent site on your home-designed-and-built-from-scratch computer you are still just consuming that product the same as someone who pays to watch it on a dumb TV.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
To synergise the energy of the elastic cloud computing environment synergistically with the development platform interface specification to meet the required compliancy of Cobit while maintaining share profit managability. His strong manly hands probed every crevice of her silken femininity, their undulating bodies writhing in sensual rhythm, as he thrust his purple-headed warrior into her quivering mound of love pudding.
The home personal computer, particularly desktop, is dying out because almost nobody wants/needs to do any computing at home. What they want/need is something that will let them spend time with their friends and relatives and whatever and will entertain them. We used to think those capabilities would develop from the primitive TVs and telephones, but it turns out the PC evolved into that niche instead.
Actually yes, I am saying that. In fact, my primary job is as a DB admin for our companies main... well ticketing/sales/whatever/tool... and our corporate "marketing" department, and I use that term VERY loosely, scheduled a meeting with me some months ago. I wondered what it was about and when I got there, they told me they had "Big plans!" great... that's always the best thing to hear in a meeting like that. They tell me the future is mobile! Ok... We need to put the database on our tablets. No. I say... but wait! We want to put it on iPads! You're joking right? I say... They took offense to that. I asked them "You do realize that the iPad is an Apple product correct?" yes... "And have you ever seen a single Apple computer anywhere in this 12 story building?" No... "How on earth do you expect us to get this application, that is a Windows, .Net application, to run on Apple hardware?" Well, that's why we are talking to you. How are we supposed to know how this stuff works. "You're the marketing department for a mutli-billion dollar technology company. Your job is to sell this stuff... and you don't know the difference between standard OS's?" We just sell!! We have to get this to work, we already bough over 100 iPads!
Later my boss hand a meeting with me, and after we both got done laughing he said I probably shouldn't stand up and walk out of meeting laughing while Directors are still talking... but he could understand this one time.
Mac user huh?
Social Credit would solve everything...
umh, someone should come up with a law on how long it takes for unhackables and drm to be proven bs as well, someone here maybe? gods know there's enough brainpower here to fuel a starship twice around the galaxy
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I agree wholeheartedly with that comment. Apple and now Microsoft are the biggest threat to the internet because they are trying to lock applications into their walled gardens. We are heading back to how it was in the days of CompuServe and AOL where you logged into their walled garden and had no way out onto the general internet. What bugs me is that the Mac/iPad users seem to like this idea of being tied into everything Apple and don't care that pretty much everything they do is via iTunes?? This blindly following what Steve Jobs wanted them to do like Lemmings has made Microsoft perk up and decide that they want a piece of that cake. Now Microsoft are playing "me too" and it won't be long before they turn off the "Classic" desktop and you are stuck with a) Metro apps and b) touch as the primary way of interacting with your PC. I personally want none of it. I am using Windows 8 as I have to keep ahead of my clients so that when they need support I know about it. However to do my other work developing database applications I need to be in Desktop all the time. (Thankfully Stardock have created "Start8" and it makes WIndows 8 on a desktop PC really usable. You can put back the classic Aero start menu and make Windows go straight to the desktop avoiding the Metro start screen altogether. WIndows 8 does improve a lot of things when you are using the desktop only so it is like Windows 7 SP3! The other advantage is that you can still get to Metro Applications and the Metro deskto pif you want, so it's handy if you want to play a full screen Metro game when not doing serious stuff. To me this is how MS should have done it giving desktop users the option to skip the Metro Start and give their users a traditonal start menu. This will save big corporate clients a much more painless way of adopting new PCs that have WIn 8 installed). If Microsoft decide to either turn off the classic desktop or block third party tools like Start8 that allow me to have a more familiar productive desktop environment I will finally jump ship completely to Linux and start recommeding it for my business clients. The current strategy at Microsoft seems to ignore their desktop user base in order to make big bucks chasing consumers who just want consumer devices. I also do not like this one size fits all approach to using the Cloud, why would any sane business want their data entirely in the cloud?? Are you going to tell the boss that we can't do any work this week whilst MS, Amazon whover recover after their servers are hacked by anonymous and have to take it offline for a week to clean out the damage. Oh and by teh way they have sold all our company confidential data to the Chinese!! Siv
Martley, Near Worcester UK.
A lawyer mac user to be a little more specific.
Oh, that's right, I forgot. When the mini-computer was first introduced, it was merely a toy! To get real work done, you needed a mainframe! And when the personal computer was first introduced, it was merely a toy; to get real work done, you needed a mini-computer. When the Mac came out, it was merely a toy — if you wanted to get real work done, you needed an IBM/DOS/whatever machine....
Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Your boring, close-minded, myopic, unhelpful opinion was just as stupid in the 70s as it is today. Get real. No, you can't do everything with an iPad that you can do with a PC. But really, you can't do everything with a PC that you can do with an iPad (namely, carry it around easily and allow my grandma to actually use a computing device).
But most importantly, the PC era isn't going to be over the day the world's very last personal computer finally gets thrown away; the PC era is/will be over when they're no longer as relevant or mainstream as their successors — the iPad, Surface, etc. And judging from sales numbers, if that day hasn't arrived yet, it's soon.
Duh.
Big corporations are afraid of better-quality competition being produced by the open source community.
The open source community never would have existed without PCs.
This is a democratizing process and nobody worth mentioning is harmed by that.
Everyone who predicts the death of the PC era is a shill. QED.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
Microsoft Windows 8 cemented the crypt on Windows PC's with windows 8.
BUT this leaves a great opportunity for LINUX, GOOGLE, and others to utilize the feature rich machines that were necessary to run Windows (Once Upon a Time- Dows???) In any case, by abandoning the desktop, a plethora of machines exist to facilitate LINUX, and other solutions on the desktop.
REALLY bad move by Redmond this time.,....potentially disastrous.
sorry Americano, but Mephistophocles is right. MOST people are pretty dull.
You mentioned lawyers and doctors in your counter argument, but lawyers and doctors are not "most people". They're a small segment of the population that is overall more intelligent than average. And even doctors and lawyers are overall not as bright as the "true nerds", i.e., those whose focus is math / hard science / technology.
Your "everyone is special in their own way" spiel might have a nice morally upstanding ring to it, but it isn't an accurate description of reality. Some people perceive and explore the complexity and patterns of the world more than others, and this tendency is what we mean by intelligence. People with higher intelligence do not simply have "different tastes" than their their less intelligent peers - they SEE MORE. Don't get me wrong, average people are free to be average. I don't judge them for it. But average is average, and above is above.
When I hear a teenage girl talking about her difficulty in choosing what to wear to a Halloween party, or a middle-aged man talking about the superiority of his favorite sports team, it isn't that I don't appreciate or "get" what they are saying. I understand completely. Therefore I realize that these topics are utterly BORING when compared to subjects like the history of ideas, information theory, the properties of the physical universe, etc. And those are just things you can talk or think about - this is nothing compared to actually DOING and CREATING! Whether it be technology, art, craft, or some combination of all three - exploring and shaping the world the world through interaction provides a pure joy that makes a sad mockery of most average people's "interests".
Put bluntly, TV is for the dumb and/or lazy. Hacking is what smart people do. There will always be both types of people, and so there will always be technology to meet the needs of each: iPay for the masses, and Linhax for the nerds.
p.s. I've been to law school, and most lawyers DO think that most people who don't know tort and contract aren't that smart. They just don't say it to the clients.