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The Desktop Is Dead, Long Live the Desktop!
theodp writes "'The desktop or laptop is now in decline,' writes John Sall, 'squeezed from one side by mobile platforms and from the other side by the cloud. As a developer of desktop software [by choice not necessity], I believe it is time to address the challenges to our viability. Is software for the desktop PC now the living dead, or zombieware.' While conceding there's some truth to truisms about the death of the desktop, Sall believes there's still life in the old desktop dog, 'We live in a world of computing where dreams come true,' Sall concludes. 'The mainframe bows to the minicomputer. The minicomputer bows to the personal computer. The personal computer bows to the tablet and smart phone. It seems as if these will soon bow to the smart watch or smart glasses. But at each step along the way, some applications find their best home – and other applications as well as new applications find the more convenient and smaller home better...So let's keep our desktops and laptops, our PCs and Macs. They are amazingly good at what they do.'"
Go ahead. Fire up SolidWorks on your pad or phone. Or AutoCAD. Go On. I dare you.
Now tell me the desktop is dead.
Every year we hear about how the desktop is dying and every year it doesn't. When will these idiots realize that desktop PCs are a niche that's not going to go away? It might shrink, especially compared to other forms of computing. But reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
The Desktop Is Dead
Isn't 2014 going to be the year of the Linux desktop?
For the web, desktop, tablet or phone, PCs or Macs are where development happens. We often need more power than a laptop can handle, so we use quite a few desktop PCs. For the general public, tablets may fill the need, but for development there will always be desktops.
I can say as a computer repair / consultant shop the desktop/laptop is not dead. people don't like windows 8 and when i tell them i can still get windows 7 they are ecstatic and want me to build them from scratch a computer!
The personal computer is not a form factor, it is a philosophy.
No dependence on centralized service, computing done by the user, for the user.
Unless done properly, cloud and toys (smartphones, tablets) are a regression into the mainframe era. Give your toys enough control and you'll see.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
The reason desktop sales has slumped isn't just because of competing devices and the cloud. It's because there hasn't been a compelling reason to get new hardware for a long time. The reason is simple: game consoles. In the last 13 years, PC games have taken a very different course than the previous 20 years. For the better part of the 80s and 90s PC games were targeted solely at PCs. For the last 13 years game publishers have targeted Xbox[360], Playstation[2/3], as well as the PC with the very same titles. This caused them to focus on the lowest common denominator hardware; consoles. This had the unhappy affect of holding back their developers from writing games to fully utilize the PC. Therefor PC gamers didn't need to upgrade their computers with the same frequency as they did the previous 20 years. This caused a gigantic PC sales slump. I see a very large increase in PC sales in the next few years due to new lowest common denominator: Xbox One and Playstation 4.
To develop the apps that run on smartphones, tablets, smart watches, HMDs, etc.
Desktop gaming beats mobile gaming and console gaming every day of the week.
Oh yeah, and what tabet are you going to use to download those 10 seasons in 1080p of your favorite TV series.
Yes, those use cases are incredily niche uses by today's standards, but they'll keep desktops alive for the foreseeable future.
There is no true death here: only an inevitable and natural partitioning of platforms based on target usage. Desktop PCs had a good run (three decades) as a platform for both creation and consumption, but the world has changed. Phones and tablets are better-suited for consumption (literature, movies, music, games, web-browsing), but PCs are still the best practical platform for creation (writing, editing, composition, game development, web-site building). And yet this is all pretty obvious. Of course PC market-share will go down, way down, as it must. But the sensationalist media can't help but to bandy about terms like "living dead" when describing the desktop PC industry because - as any MBA is more than happy to tell us - in business, lack of growth equals death.
It's as though they have seized upon a mercantilist mentality of a world divided exclusively into winners and losers. World ain't like that.
Haven't you seen the Star Citizen promo? Here. The PC and it's capabilities are not dead to the tune of $33.7 Million USD and counting.
Just because a newer or different technology sells well and meets one segments needs (business) doesn't mean that the old one will die. I mean seriously, how many of you are still running a tape library out there?
Careful what you say around me.. I will assume you mean it.
The desktop isn't even pretending to die.
Yes, it's not the big hot thing anymore. Laptops took over the hot spot a few years ago, but for the purpose of software, they're generally the same as desktops. Now tablets and phones are cutting into the laptop market.
But the markets are huge. Even a 90% decline would still leave a substantial market with opportunities for new products. It's only a problem for companies with established dominant products. If you are depending on upgrade or support sales to an established base, then a declining base is a problem.
The comparison to mainframe may be particularly apt. While everyone likes to talk about how the mainframe was replaced my mini computers and later desktops, this isn't really true. There are lots of companies with large mainframe deployments. It's still a multi-billion dollar industry.
While in the future you will be able to have a tablet that is like 10x faster than a current desktop, and it offers enough power to work on basically anything needed, the format itself of the tablet is bad for working.
The "virtual keyboard" is always worse than a regular keyboard, and as its a portable device, the screen will always be small and will need you to hold it.
Of course, you can plug a keyboard on the tablet, and can plug another screen on it or put it on a stand, but the end result? a battery powered, slow desktop computer.
Maybe the "computer" of the future will be a small box or a pendrive like device that will be plugged on several different "shells" for perform different functions.
Exactly. For content consumption, small and mobile devices are very convenient. For quick interactions, they're OK. For serious content creation, they are just not the right tool for the job.
The trouble for the PC vendors is that for most serious content creation, desktops and laptops were already powerful enough a few years ago. Only those who really need local power, like creative media or CAD types in business or gamers at home, are interested in buying newer and more powerful machines often any more. For everyone else, the desktop isn't dead, it's just a mature platform and they already have it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Tablets tend to suck for creation. There are limited exceptions, but for the most part a mouse n' keyboard, and a screen without your fingers in the way, are what you want for creating things. This includes software, of course, but also more mundane business things like financial spreadsheets, e-mails, and so on. It applies to other creative pursuits such as writing, video editing, and so on.
Basically tablets are reasonably good if you want to consume content. You can read a book, surf the web, etc with ease on a tablet. However when you start to talk creation, they are not as good. They can do in a pinch, but much better to have a real keyboard and larger screen.
What we are actually seeing is not desktops and laptops "dying" but rather maturing. The market is more or less done growing. However that doesn't mean it is going away. The two states are not "growth" and "death". Rather it can be stable.
We've already seen this in things like mainframes. Desktops didn't kill off mainframes. You can still buy them, and people do. There are more of them now then when there were only mainframes. However it is a mature market. There aren't many organizations that want one, and you don't replace them that often. So there's no growth, but it isn't dead by any means.
That's what is happening with desktops. Go in to a business, have a look around, they have not tossed all their computers and started playing with tablets and phones. There is a computer on every desk practically. However, as noted, there is a computer on every desk. They've got their computers. They buy for replacement now largely, not to increase the numbers.
The only people who think desktops/laptops are going to "die" are either kids who just play on their smart phone and don't do productive work with a computer, or idiot tech journalists.
Desktop software lives strong. After all, Angry Birds Space (http://www.angrybirds.com/) is still available for the PC or MAC.
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"They" are always predicting the death of PC gaming too.
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People often forget to ask themselves what is a desktop. Most of you thinks that the desktop is a big tower stuffed in a desk, but the desktop is actually:
1) Big (by comparison to phones and tablets) screen.
2) Full physical keyboard
3) Mouse or other pointer device.
The tower by itself does not make a desktop. I think in the end you will just plug your phone or watch or whatever into a big screen screen with bluetooth mouse and keyboards to do your work. Your phone os will also have a desktop interface (like windows 8, but without sucking) that will come up when you plug a big screen.
Whenever I see news or discussion about dwindling desktop sales I don't see anything about market saturation. Computers are relatively durable appliances that people aren't typically going to replace without the need to do so.
When was the last time you replaced your toaster just for the hell of it?
nope, modern laptops are just as good as desktops now. Apart from the small screen (which can be good as a secondary thing to run your email or whatnot on), the laptop has as much power as your desktop.
An average laptop might have as much processing power and RAM and disk space as an average desktop, but the upper bound on a desktop is still far, far higher. To pick an example someone mentioned earlier, you can't get a lot of laptops with dual fast processors and 64+GB of RAM, which is a good but realistic specification for a professional CAD workstation. If you're rendering video or working with high quality audio, you might be thankful for a local RAID array with a few TB of capacity (as well as the large SSD for OS/applications and probably networked storage for larger capacity, obviously).
Also, in terms of peripherals, laptops are stuck in the dark ages. I'll take my two large monitors (try driving 8+ megapixels from any laptop's built-in graphics), my ergonomic keyboard and mouse, my real graphics tablet for sketching and precision work, and my real surround sound speakers over whatever feeble imitation the best laptop you can find has to offer, thanks. Sure, you can plug all of these into a modern laptop (until you run out of USB ports, at least), but if you're going to do that and shove the laptop out of the way, you've just bought an expensive and less reliable/upgradeable desktop anyway.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
... cannot and will not be confined to a 7-inch screen. Nor can the range of artistic inputs be entirely duplicated by a touch screen. In time holographic displays and other technologies will displace some of the current hardware requirements to run, say, multiple displays, but we aren't there yet.
The PC market (where P = personal and 'PC' includes Mac,Windows,Linux etc.) has had a 30 year honeymoon period during which specifications were increasing exponentially and real-time prices were dropping. Customers had a real incentive to upgrade their hardware and software every 18 months or so, because they were trying to to jobs that were pushing at the limits of their hardware.
Now, that has come to an end. Your 3-year old PC can effortlessly run a GUI-based OS like Windows 7, OS X 10.6 or your Linux distro of choice. It can do non-linear HD video editing fast enough for 'pro-sumers'. It can render web pages as fast as your broadband can deliver them. It can play FPS video games at 60 frames/sec, at levels of detail that are just this side of 'uncanny valley'. The only reason it would even break a sweat doing wordprocessing, DTP or spreadsheets is if the software is a bloated mess mentioning no names). The 4GB-8GB RAM you got is probably still enough and the only thing that can really fill up a 500G+ HDD for personal use is your video pr0n collection - for which cheap external HDs (convenient to lock in a cupboard) are available.
Of course, there are still specialist niches who need Moore's Law to keep rolling - but they will increasingly be looking at things like multi-GPU computing, clusters and the Cloud (£1 in the swear jar) rather than traditional Personal Computers.
Upgrading might get you a 10% improvement, but that's not going to turn your movie render from "coffee break" to "instant". I think the last, great upgrade for most people will be to switch from spinning rust to SSD (which does produce a dramatic speed up for many users) - after that, the only reason to upgrade will be if your computer breaks, suffers planned obsolescence or if the vendor sells you a stylish new model on non-technical grounds (Apple are the only real masters of that - possibly why they are doing less badly than others).
Sure, tablets and smartphones are part of the picture, but I suspect that it is more a case of people spending their spare cash on the latest fondleslab as a supplement to their 2 year-old PC rather than junking PCs for tablets.
There's also a case of self-fulfilling prophecy, with manufacturers obviously spending their R&D money on mobile devices rather than coming up with anything new in the PC line (beyond bunging touch-screens on their laptops) and software houses screwing up their offerings in a misguided attempt to make them more tablet-like (Windows 8, Gnome 3, Unity).
The only reason the PC will die is if modern hypercapitalist corporations decied that they can't be arsed to support a mature market that is no longer in its boom years and unlikely to generate short term windfall profits.
Quite frankly, computing could do with a few years respite from 'if it works it is obsolete' to give people a chance to finish upgrading their DOS software to a system that may still be around when they finish the job.
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I believe people confuse "the death of the desktop" with "the logical conclusion of the desktop". In the past, each new generation of desktop brought important new capabilities, often in terms of speed and memory, but sometimes in terms of other things (long ago) such as GUI capability, networking, USB support.
However, desktops now seem to have reached their logical conclusion, at least in terms of speed an memory. Desktops already have more memory than is needed in most cases. Regarding speed, processor clock speed seems to have plateaued, and many processors now have more cores than can be efficiently used. Also, the speed of the computer as perceived by the user now is limited by non-processor factors such as network speed and hard drive speed. And what was the last new "killer feature" to come along like USB to make you buy a new desktop?
All that leaves little reason for the user to upgrade to the next generation. So, desktops aren't dead, they've just reached their logical conclusion. New desktops will continue to be made, bought, and incrementally improved. But much as car manufacturers change the cosmetics of cars each year to sell new models to people who don't really need to replace their old ones, we can expect Microsoft, Apple, Dell, et. al. to continue to change the cosmetics to convince us to "upgrade". And that will occasionally result in marketing disasters such as the Edsel and Windows 8.
No comments about the countless clerical, finance, and other sorts of people who enter, proofread/correct, analyze, update, and/or look up data stored somewhere: the desktop historically, or the cloud (if one, or one's management, is willing to take a chance that everyone between you and your data will vote unanimously to allow you to get at the data on any given day). These people doubtless outnumber all the AutoCAD and software development people by a huge margin. It seems inconceivable that they could do their jobs with tablets or, even worse, a phone or something like Glass. For them, I imagine a good-sized screen and a keyboard will always be needed. Whether these essential I/O devices are driven by a phone (with still more third-parties getting between you and your work) or something else isn't important. It needn't have the same form factor as a desktop, but it will need much of the same I/O and connectivity as a desktop.
All of these desktop vs. laptop vs. tablet vs. phone vs. etc. discussions imply that the computer is the focus when really it should be the interfaces. If my quadcore phone had methods to type and see the results as well as I can on my keyboard and multiple XX-inch monitors, I doubt that I'd have a need for anything else. For me, as my eyes fade and fingers age, the screens are also getting smaller and the keyboards need greater agility. Yea, progress!
For the "media consumption" crowd who only surf the web and watch youtube videos, then yes, perhaps the desktop is dead.
For people who CREATE anything, perform any kind of development work, do web page design, graphic design, or any kind of office work, the desktop, even if it's virtualized via thin-client hardware, will still be king.
I work on a desktop, but the main purpose of this desktop is to login to a mainframe (not kidding), that's running cobol code that goes back to the 1980's. There's millions of dollars of software investment in this system, and it's not going anywhere, even though upper management has tried to get rid of it. It simply works too well. And I'm sure I'm not alone -- I'm assuming there's billions of dollars of hardware and software that firms are hesitant to simply drop and replace if it's doing the job.
And don't even get me started on "the cloud" -- without the equivalent of cheap/ubiquitous "desktop" machine hardware out there, the cloud wouldn't be able to exist.
The desktop is dead? Hardly, and only if you're looking at a single segment of the market. That's like saying the wristwatch is dead, the wired telephone is dead, the stereo system is dead, and the TV set is dead -- all of these devices can be replaced by a single mobile device, so, consumers don't need these things either, does that mean that they are dead too?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The desktop/laptop PC market has always been two separate markets. One it the office, workplace, market. The other is the internet access market.
The standard PC was made for the office market. Both the office productivity market using the standard wordprocessor/spreadsheet/presentation apps, and all the various kinds of design and simulation software used by umpteen varieties of designer.
The standard PC was also sold for the internet access market - mainly web browsing and email, because initially it was the only device that could do it. But it wasn't actually optimised for these uses - is just did them because it was a good general purpose device. You could say that it was mis-sold for these uses: it was over complex for the simple uses people needed. When smartphones and tablets came along, they were actually designed to do the job these users wanted. Naturally they captures the market.
The PC market peaked at about 180 million devices. I reckon that was about 30 million work devices ("Sit forward" devices, as I think of them) and 150 million net access devices ("sit back" devices), The 30 million sit-forward market is still there, and growing at a reasonable rate. The 150 million "sit back" market is evaporating fast as people who want that switch to purpose-built devices.
Who is buying your product? Look at how they are sitting. If they are sitting forward, stay with the PC: you are selling to a steady segment of the market. If they are sitting back (or trying to), jump ship, because that is what your customers are doing.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
and that can happen if desktops die and people move to phones / tablets.
Also other stuff like un removable batterys and fixed storage (apple systems needs at least an SD slot) and USB.
You're right: desktops will become workstations (if they're not that already). They will continue to be very powerful devices suited for very particular work, that either requries a lot of computational power or is ergonomically sutied for a desk-and-chair.
Until quite recently, desktops were multipurpose devices: they did all that but also browsed the web, did word processing, and other lighter tasks. They'll still be able to do that, for sure, it's just that unless people need the workstation stuff, there are simply better devices than desktops.
The desktop isn't dying, it's just narrowing its mission.
The desktop isn't dead, the desktop is very much alive and well. Try doing FPGA design / VHDL design without a laptop or a desktop. Try doing intensive computing in Matlab / Octave without a desktop / laptop. I can keep going but there is no point, the desktop / laptop is very much needed in many cases, let alone servers.
I don't know where and why this keeps coming up, but at the end of the day, the death of the PC won't happen for a while, for many reasons:
1) Creation vs. Consumption
I hear this bullshit a lot as the main driver for the death of the PC. This is a particularly specious argument. The whole creation vs. consumption aspect comes from creating content. While I can type on a tablet or other device, it is not as good (no matter the method) as a keyboard. I can type this entire post in 20 minutes on a keyboard but would take hours (and having fun with spell check, etc.) on some tablet device.
2) Ownership of content
This a huge one. With a desktop I can own what I own, and it is mine. With any always connected, remotely managed device I never can control what they manage. Cloud apps just scare the hell out of me as you don't own anything. You buy a song on ITunes, it is yours until Apple says it is not. You buy a movie from Amazon, it is your until the movie studio sues Amazon and they get a take down notice. This is why if I buy something, it is a physical device. You can not take my Blu-Ray copy of Skyfall without a warrant and coming to my house.
3) Ownership of information
The next thing is who owns your data. Have you read many of the EULA for software? Try turbo tax. You would think that your data is yours. Nope. Well I can control how the software works and how it calls home for information my data is stored locally. It never sends that information out. Now use the online (cloud) app from them, they store your information for you. Let me see my tax information is probably one of three things I never want anyone to see (for identity thief protection). This is stored somewhere where you trust them to keep it safe. This is why a desktop (or laptop) is best for this as it is stored local and you have control.
4) Form Factor
Yes at the end of the day, you can consume any form of media on any form factor. I can watch netflix on my tablet or my phone, but is that the most enjoyable experience? Hell no, it is just the most convenient. If I am going to watch a netflix show I would rather watch it in all its glory on my 52" TV with dolby digital sound system. However when I am sitting at an airport, yes I have to watch it on my portable devices since pulling a 52" TV through an airport w/ associated 7.1 system would just be unfeasible.
5) Gaming .. frame per second, first person shooter) will never work on your dinky 4.3" Iphone screen. Yeah games can be made for those form factors, but at the end of the day, are those the games which are going to be what you want to spend 60 dollars on and want to spend hours playing on a larger screen. Nope, that is a console or a desktop.
While some stupid little game like candy crush or angry birds work on those form factors, you cannot tell me that a high FPS FPS (heh
Desktops are not selling right now because Moore's Law has let us down lately. As soon as the Law is restored, desktop sales will resume.
Indeed. Once Word needs sixteen cores at 5GHz and 32GB of RAM, upgrades will be plentiful.
It isn't possible to type as quickly and accurately on a tablet or iPhone as on a desktop PC. It isn't possible to precisely select a graphical element in one step (as in a CAD drawing).
Since voice input/control is not there yet, we are restricted to using mobile devices' clumsy keyboards. Even with voice, it is likely that users will opt for keyboards for other reasons (privacy, quiet in a group work environment, etc.).
"The desktop or laptop is now in decline" and the reason is that the punters and chaff users switched to tablets and phones, their needs are so simple that don't need any more than that.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Fact is, lots of people bought PCs back in the day who didn't need them. The majority of people I know only do web and email. A few years ago, a PC was the only option. Same people moved immediately to laptops when they became affordable. The same people are now moving on to tablets and phones, because that's all they ever needed. Those of us who do actually need the power of a PC will still be there.