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Will The Death of the PC Bring 'An End To Openness'? (infoworld.com)
Slashdot reader snydeq shared "11 Predictions For the Future of Programming" by InfoWorld's contributing editor -- and one prediction was particularly dire:
The passing of the PC isn't only the slow death of a particular form factor. It;s the dying of a particularly open and welcoming marketplace... Consoles are tightly locked down. No one gets into that marketplace without an investment of capital. The app stores are a bit more open, but they're still walled gardens that limit what we can do. Sure, they are still open to programmers who jump through the right hoops but anyone who makes a false move can be tossed...
For now, most of the people reading this probably have a decent desktop that can compile and run code, but that's slowly changing. Fewer people have the opportunity to write code and share it. For all of the talk about the need to teach the next generation to program, there are fewer practical vectors for open code to be distributed.
For now, most of the people reading this probably have a decent desktop that can compile and run code, but that's slowly changing. Fewer people have the opportunity to write code and share it. For all of the talk about the need to teach the next generation to program, there are fewer practical vectors for open code to be distributed.
The PC isn't dying. Not at all. Despite tablets and mobile devices, there's a lot of work that can't easily be done on them. There are lots of jobs that still require or are much easier when done on a PC. This question is built upon a premise that is false. As long as there's work that requires a PC, and there will be for the foreseeable future, the PC sure isn't going to die.
Back when I was more of an GNU zealot a decade ago I predicted open platforms would kill dumb phones as we saw the beginings of the smart phone starting.
Reason being is the PC won over the Mac because it was open. You did not have to go to the mighty Jobs and beg to be compliant and certified. Of course DOS the 8086 and most of the PC programs/DOS were absolute crap! But hey, coders loved it with it's limitations because of the low barriers of entry and DOS allowing assembly and low access to system calls.
Atari almost died in 1982 because they tried to control everything.
Boy, I was wrong :-( Android we all hoped would be a GNU OS with all rooted phones and terminals and hacks back in 2009 when we read about it. Nope. Is it too late and why won't Google be more open? Apple too. If they make barriers low and allow more with their phones more apps will come to Apple even if they lose out on iMac sales temporarily.
http://saveie6.com/
Even more need for platforms like the Raspberry Pi then!
For once, we will have PCs in future to write software. In addition we have open devices such as the raspberry pi , arduino and others.
openness. Secure Boot and Trusted Path and the blocking off of Linux, today from installing on the PC, soon for access to the internet, will ensure the end of openness even though the PC stays. Even if it stays user-upgradeable.
So quite why the submitted wanted to put "Death of the PC" as the reason for it remains shrouded in silence.
The death knell of PC is but one example of the end result of wealthy companies who exist these days to be little more than patent whores, maintaining armies of legal teams ready to do battle to crush the very definition of competition, destroyed by their patented flavor of capitalism.
Future wars will see death by pen from a suit in a courtroom instead of death by rifle from a uniform on a battlefield. Political correctness is hardly of value when the end result is the same.
With cheap VPS providers, your local hardware only has to be powerful enough to run ssh and vnc or rdp. I would argue this is beneficial since it lowers the barrier of entry. Amazon Lightsail may not be the cheapest, but it lets you get started with your own server for $5/month. If I could connect a keyboard and monitor to my phone, I wouldn't even need a full blown computer.
the death of the PC has been a thing for a while...and yet it's not dead, not even close.
With general computing power and even decent graphics becoming ever cheaper and integrated even into some monitors at a fair cost the CapEx of a PC compared favourably with consoles.
Where a PC currently wins is versatility. I can Skype, Administer, Game, Code, Design, View and FB on one platform with ease and more importantly I can do this in almost any way I want on various software platform/s stacks.
Let's not forget I can typically expect to extend the life of the platform or change it's usability case with hardware upgrades.
No walled garden, console, smartphone or the like comes even close. all they do, if used at all, is complement my PC usage.
I'll not bother to list the amount of useful activities that are obviously inferior (to the layman) on other platforms.
Restriction to a person's freedom always results in that person seeking a way to circumvent or resist that restriction and learning to avoid restriction in the future...
Death of the PC they say? -tell uswhat genuinely better replacement is coming along and I'll agree...
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
There will be alternatives to these walled gardens and information will continue to be free. What really matters for these alternative platforms is their market size and not market percentage. Specialized open devices can easily support ecosystems with a million users even though that is a tiny percentage of the market of users and we're seeing these kinds of markets thrive (Raspberry pie, even open hardware CPUs, ...). Remember the number of PC users trying to do meaningful things that are beyond what these walled gardens allow are also very small so I suspect the number of people actually using free features in on the rise (though I have no stats to support it). If you can get a $30 device that uses your smartphone or tv into dumb display. That $30 device will soon be $10. Hardware in trending towards free. These are extremely interesting times and I'm not worried about corporations controlling old forms of distribution. Technology will open up new doors much faster than the man can close old ones.
The human brain has evolved to focus on problems, but don't forget that by the majority of major indicators (poverty, health, nutrition, shelter, freedom,...) that there has been a steady improvement over the past few centuries.
And by the way, the article is wrong. The first PCs were not easy to code for. Sure, MSDOS 3.3 did include gwbasic, but for anything complex you had to license compiler software from somebody else. TurboC and the like were not free, you know. Or you could always code in assembly.
'Member GWbasic? 'Member shareware? 'Member BBS? I 'member. (South Park reference)
Seriously, this reads like an article by a 12 year old kid who only plays console games and thinks that means no one uses a pc anymore.
Even if it made a good case for "The death of the pc" the same component sockets and ports are all used on server platforms, so there's no present indication they are disappearing at all. Unless you live in the cave like bedroom of a 12 year old kid maybe.
State VERY Clearly, that the desktop is in fact re-surging. Desktop sales were back up the last 2 quarters, and seem to be on the rebound.
Windows (uwp - phone, pc, xbox apps) - free dev tools, partly open source platform, no capital required for any step of development
Android (google app store) - free dev tools, mostly open source platform, no capital required for any step of development
IOS (apple store) - free dev tools, no capital required for any step of development
Xbox (non uwp) - free dev tools, you get 2 free dev consoles, no capital required for any step of development (final publishing costs a bit - you need to pay to PEGI to rate your game)
No.
Establish that the PC is dying in the first place.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm getting pretty sick of hearing about the death of the personal computer; its demise is greatly exaggerated. If by "PC" one means a general purpose computing device there's the "traditional" x86[-64] box, a plethora of ARM dev boards, MIPS, router platforms and servers to choose from. The only reason this keeps cropping up is poor sales, which is a signal that the market has matured and those of us with more sense than money have hopped off the upgrade train at the last stop. Now the general population have also disembarked, which coincided with the latest variant of Redmondware getting on. Linux, Windows 7, *BSD, it doesn't matter what you use, you really don't need a top Skylake and 32GB of system memory to run it.
In short, it's a ridiculous premise from which to construct a debate. General purpose computing is going nowhere and the choices have never been so diverse.
It will bring an end to Microsoft.
At last.
Being an engineer, I just cannot fathom what the author has been smoking to come up with that?
Computers are used for so much more than just programming. And I don't mean just 'publishing webpages'.
I can understand that someone who uses computers routinely just for reading email & facebook could have such a view.
But anyone who worked in any sort of industry instantly realizes the death of the PC [sic] is just not an option. Sure, the future might bring the death of the sub k€ PC, but that is not quite the same argument.
Oh, you meant the other PC.
I was just going to say, Politically Correctness is killing "openness" and free speech.
design for you on a tablet.
http://get.swfchan.org/10122/onedaymariowokeup.swf
I'm a Graphic designer.
And do you use GIMP for your job? Some other FOSS package?
Probably not or at least any FOSS you have is for some minor utility that you'd didn't want to buy.
PC ecosystem is changing. It's no longer our primary device.
Every just saw 'PC dead' and went all off completely missing the point.
No one understands subtle arguments anymore.
Open Source is not taught, it is encountered and embraced. Open Source programming is community. Those people who have oh so specialized cognitive abilities will naturally gravitate into the Open Source world. Not everyone belongs there and the idea of introducing this into curriculum is a waste of time when they should be learning something else. Of the Open Source programmers I know and have otherwise met, not a single one of them were taught about it in school. However, many got started in programming at a pre-teen age.
You can cite figures of slumping PC sales for sure. But what about the balancing figure that shows people aren't buying new desktops because the one they bought five-years ago is still blazing fast. Right now I am writing this on a Windows 10 tablet. It's a great device but the quad-core Cherry Trail and four gigs of ram are nothing to write home about... oh, a Bluetooth keyboard and I can code away on this tablet. Next room over I have the desktop I built when I need serious horsepower for something or need my nerd fix. It is 6-core AMD machine with 16 gigs of ram, a 120 gigabyte SSD and, integrated video. That is straight of 2011 and I call that my fast machine.
I could get back into carrying on about Open Source, but this statement:
Reveals the depth to which you have no clue whatsoever what you are talking about. There are plenty of people around here who might take the time to write a small book about it for you, but I am not one of them.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Tablets have pulled away from the PC market all those users who primarily do mail, browsing and Scrabble-class games. The way forward for desktops is to upscale into the professional market. When you want to run Autocad or Photoshop, nothing will substitute for a fast desktop.
There are also changes taking place in the way people work. In my consulting days I used a large laptop for everything; now that all my heavy software is being run in the home office only, I run a desktop there and a tablet on the road.
We know you aren't the real appy app guy, but I will say at least you're actually more on topic this time.
Early software was written because the author needed to perform a function that existing software didn't address: either in terms of utility or quality.
The PC magnified this need, with millions being sold but only crappy commercial software to run on it. Whether the free/share-ware in question was a Windows app or a different O/S, the same voids were filled for the same reasons. (If Windows software had started out as low-cost and high quality, would freeware have become so popular? Discuss.)
The argument now is whether that phase is over. Do we have enough apps? Can we (users) do all the things that we wish to, with the software that is available to us, now? Do we prefer to spend 99 on an app that has "star" ratings, user feedback, integrated installation is (almost) guaranteed not to make our hardware die, send SPAM or steal our data - or do we prefer to download something for zero cost and then spend hours trying to configure it and bend it to our will?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
It's easy to think that with the walled gardens, fragmentation, and so forth that's rampant in the mobile world, not to mention the startling lack of customization to be found there, that we're entering a dark age: One where enthusiasts, hackers, programmers, and people with a desire to make their computers function as they see fit without having to turn to a big corporation for help have nothing, and where information technology is no longer something that common people can actually own or are allowed to understand. Phones have been encroaching on the PC for a long time now, and with docking finally approaching the mainstream, we're going to see major intrusions into former PC territory within the next two years and massive damage done to the PC market. The writing is on the wall.
However, single-board computers aren't going away. Makerboards, hackerboards, whatever you want to call them, fully functional computers with more than reasonably open standards (many of which are designed to be messed with and put into whatever project you please) can still be acquired easily. They're getting more powerful and more flexible, too. The days of truly building a computer from scratch with your own components, chips, wires, and so forth are long gone, but I think we'll discover in the near future that there's never been a better time to design, construct, and program a computer that truly suits you, and devices to accompany it, now that it's both possible and fairly easy to build a mobile computer or a computer-enabled device. There are even some cellular modems floating around that could be included in a project in order to create your own smartphone, and as a proof of concept, the PiPhone has demonstrated that this is possible.
In many ways, I think that we are going back into the bad old days of fragmented standards, inflexible system specifications, and mainframe computing where information technology is just a service. However, we're also entering some fairly uncharted territory that should be exciting to people with a penchant for both software and hardware hacking. As long as I can boot an operating system onto one of these computers, write and compile software, and connect anything I wish to them, the frontier of personal computing will remain open. However, and I must stress this, proponents of openness must be willing to put their money where their mouths are. They must be willing to either undertake or at least provide support to projects that keep open standards alive and expand them, and even more crucially, they have to demonstrate - not just explain, but demonstrate firsthand - how openness can benefit common people and their relationship with computers. Getting Makers involved and making them visible will be vital, as both the problem and the solution here are two-pronged.
i know theres an app for that
The only difference now is they use a smartphone or a laptop rather than a desktop.
The difference now is you can buy a computer for a few hundred dollars, even less if you just need hardware connected to the internet, along with a firehose of an internet connection, and can pretty much do what ever you want. That is as open as it gets.
The real heart of the matter is that most people could give a flip less about coding up their own solutions, any more than they are willing to change the oil on their car. They never will. The minority that is willing to do that will be the ones selling them solutions.
Will Trump supporters open up about voting for a man who pays Russian hookers for golden showers while pretending everything Obama does is a scandal?
Couldn't find an exact figure, but this got me an approximate figure.
Which goes to show that tons of people don't mind going through minor hoops to get into the app store.
Does the OP have any proof that "Fewer people have the opportunity to write code and share it"? If anything, it's easy these days to get a professional development environment for pretty much any programming task, be it a pro version of Visual Studio for free or a free professional game engine. And people use them, as is evidenced for example by the huge growth in the number of PC and mobile games being published. Not to mention that consoles are a lot more open than they were in the past, with lots of indie games being available, and a normal Xbox One can be used for console development.
So even disregarding the sensationalist "PC is dead" angle, I feel that pretty much everything in the OP is not only unsubstantiated, but the opposite of the truth.
Don't think so. The PC will always be with us. 275 million shipped last year, down 6%. I have built several, and only waiting for the AMD Zen to build my next. (My aversion to Intel is not technical or economic, it is religious.)
I don't know what to do about the smartphone. In my opinion the most disgusting, useless, and invasive thing ever devised by man.
I have one, but I keep it wrapped in aluminum foil, unless I am actually engaged in using it, which is as little as I possibly can be.
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it!
The article is right:
- The PC is dying.
- Programmers of the future will have to share programs with normies through "app stores."
- politically unacceptable restriction on freedom
- abuse at the margins (no ad blockers in Chrome on Android)
- subtle memetic shift: if you _can_ charge for your trivial program, then charging is "normal," and the goal of the game must be money. Not everyone will absorb this, but too many new programmers already have. It's a terrible blow to free software.
However the nostalgia in the article is somewhat wrong. There was a brief moment of freedom when Linux desktops were relevant, and that moment deserves nostalgia, but it ended separately from desktops. Just the shift to back to Windows and Mac OS was enough to end it.
I grew up in the 90s, and compilers were too expensive for a child. A single release of a crappy 16-bit compiler cost a quarter what the computer shared by the whole family cost, so it was like a combined birthdaychristmas present to get just one of them. Our present understanding of a programmers' needs, that programmers should explore several languages, that software stacks evolve and need to be updated, would have been unaffordable. GNU solved most of this, and Linux made it accessible to many. Within the Windows and Mac OS world, development tools remained a costly per-seat "purchase your pass to be creative" game. Cost aside, there was no discussion accessible to beginners like stackoverflow, no repositories of building blocks like hackage.haskell.org or github.com. The revolution in accessibility of programming came after the desktop, not with it. Compared to the large expensive computers that came before it, the desktop was uniquely bad for programmer freedom until this revolution freed it.
Inside the walled garden, only some of this is rolled back. You have to step inside a "development environment" again, one which will increasingly evolve adversarially to your or your users' interests. As computing fragments off phones to tiny app ecosystems all over the place, these third parties will get extremely pushy. But it's probably much cheaper to keep that environment updated. You don't have as many collaborators, but you have some collaborators, and a rich standard library.
The main tragedy is politically relevant access to users and memetic shift.
Protip: if you're not sure whether you should use it's or its, the needful is it;s.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, that is the goal, isn't it? Keeps power out of the 'wrong hands'.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The PC isn't dying, stop spouting bullsh*t.
Just because there's lower sales of pre-built, doesn't mean everyone suddenly stopped using their computers, it's just because they last much longer these days and with intel barely improving their CPUs in the last 5 years(and AMD not competing for even longer than that), there really isn't any reason to buy a new computer when your current one is still working just fine. We aren't in the P3 era anymore where a new CPU meant double triple if not more, performances gain, now it's barely 1 to 5%, if that, not even noticeable. So even mainstream people are wisening up and just upgrading their "old" computers with more RAM/SSD/new GPU, while keeping the CPU, meaning no "new PC".
Is greatly exaggerated. Someone is believing too much hype, methinks.
'App' asa paradigm has and will continue to change. There is nothing stopping anyone from developing a super smart, articulate and beautiful XaaS. If anything the world is a bigger not smaller place once you make the jump onto mobile and connected things.
Tablets are still PCs whether they run Window$ or not. The truth hurts doesn't it? Now pull that PC out of your pocket and tweet your feelings.
For anyone who needs to store a over a Tb or so of media and share it locally, it seems the PC remains the only way to do it. You can't send all that through high speed cable, or at least it would be stupid to do it, so the cloud is not an option. As long as there is a basic use like that, the PC will not die.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I can't really back this up with any data, but it's my speculation that all the people that NEED PCs are still getting them. What we're seeing in the area is that people that never actually needed everything a normal PC offers have migrated to phones and tablets. If you're just doing email and Facebook, a desktop machine is overkill, but there was no other choice for a long time.
There will always be programmers working on these sorts of "open" machines. We need them for academic and industry work and there's not any way that's going to change. Apple itself will always be a maker or a purchaser of those sorts of machines themselvesâ"OSes can't be made on heavily restricted machines.
What is the basis for this claim; ie, the PC is dying? I get the impression someone is pushing an agenda.
It may be that people who were using their PC primarily for gaming are beginning to opt for consoles more (if I understand the term "console" correctly), but there are a lot of people who don't play video/online games.
And if the major software manufacturers decide to move to consoles, I think that will encourage more people to use FOSS.
I have a hard time imagining SAP or Oracle releasing their products on consoles. And wouldn't they end up all wanting their own console? Imagine having a console for each business application.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Nuff said!
/docow1 NO /docow2 STUPID /docow3 TRUTH YOU
The truth is that there are more opportunities for people to become programmers than ever before. Free education abounds. There are programming tools that run on common handheld devices. I don't know of an easier way to make a functional app which actually does stuff than Tasker, for example. You can install a complete Linux system on your Android phone and use it for Android development. Whence come these bullshit assertions that there are less opportunities to become programmers?
I don't know about you, but I can sideload anything I want onto literally all of my Android devices. I have a Pine64 (which is actually running Linux now, but I did run Android on it for a while), a MK908, an Amazon Fire stick, and a Moto G 2014, and I can load whatever I want onto any of them. Perhaps the problem isn't mobile devices. Perhaps it's Apple. Only, they have a minority market share, so is it really a problem?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Are we talking the 'death' when a generational math prodigy turns twenty-five?
Or the 'death' when a the fastest of all fast-living rock stars turns thirty?
Or the 'death' when an formerly fetching actress turns forty?
Or the 'death' when a corner-office executive producer turns fifty.
Or the 'death' when a commercial pilot turns sixty?
Or the 'death' when a professor emeritus turns seventy?
Or the 'death' when a defeated American presidential candidate turns eighty?
Or the 'death' when everyone's favourite preschool teacher turns ninety (on Okinawa)?
Or the mostly-just-resting 'death' when the queen mum turns one hundred?
And we're still not done. George Burns lived an entire Windows 95/98 maximal uptime (49 days) after his one hundredth.
It's good to feel that you are in control.
My grandparents' radio was a cabinet four feet high and two feet wide. It had a face that showed the names & frequencies of ~30 AM stations across the country. There were eleven knobs to adjust. When you turned it on it took a full minute to warm up and produce the pleasant background hum. A skilled operator could tune in stations from far and wide.
Modern radios often have no knobs, no fine adjustments for the skilled operator to fiddle with. They are common appliances that just work without any effort from the user. Likewise, the early automobiles had buttons, levers, knobs in an endless variety of arrangements. Today you have two pedals on the floor and a steering wheel and tomorrow you won't even need that. My first computer was controlled by a hex keypad in assembly language, and of course things are much simpler now.
For most people, computers will go the same way. Voice control, no knobs, no keyboard. Looking ahead, even voice control will be eliminated by direct neural connection. If you want to feel in control you'll have to look elsewhere. Knobs are a thing of the past. Being in control is a thing of the past.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Let 2017 be the year where we just shout "GO FUCK YOURSELF!" when some "journalist" comes up with another "PC is dying" story.
PC sales are declining, but not with the demographic that the article is worried about. The folks who want to compile and run they're own stuff are a minority of the population. The folks who want to compile and run code buy just as many desktops as they always have.
On you very own site. You have an article about tape recorders and not only are still with us, but are thriving like vinyl records and holding their price value. I think that 3rd world countries will snatch up the opportunity to get the audience that still hungers for options and customization.. If options and customization are not true. Why do they still offer them on cars??
Why do your processing on a slow machine when you can have access to a remote rendering farm.
Are $5 per GB uploaded or downloaded and 1000 ms ping to said "remote rendering farm" reasons enough? This is the reality of satellite Internet.
Just because someone has to create works doesn't mean everyone needs to have this capability "without an investment of capital," as the article puts it. There will still be PCs for a price, and established businesses will still be able to afford this price just as established video game studios can afford console devkits.
I mean reading about programming from a guy that has on more than one occasion talked about virtual memory but literally has no clue about what it actually is makes me a little dubious. Anyway aren't they still sell tens of millions of PC/Laptops every year? They're just not replacing them every 2 years since a 5 year old laptop/desktop is good enough these days. (Can't wait until he'll say tablets are dead when they've just reached saturation as well.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I don't get this article at all, just looking at nVidia their sales are up over last year. More people buying graphics card in 2016 than they did in 2015
LOL, at first I didn't know what this article was talking about. I thought PC meant "political correctness" at first rather than "personal computer".
I wish political correctness would die, nevertheless.
If the author is right then the PCs, smartphones, and TVs are demoted to dumb terminals and the computing shall be done by computers 'in the cloud'.
Even thought the PC is not quite dead yet, we must ask how these cloud computers will be programmed and how open they will be.
fake news alert
I think standardization of PC components would allow the average Joe to upgrade their desktop box piecemeal. Want a new graphics card? Pull A out of slot X, replace with new component B. Same with network adapters, motherboards, even modems.
If you post it, they will read.
Computers are tools. Just like cars. Why isn't it being lamented that everyone should be able to build a car?
Sure, modern machines don't boot up into BASIC (though I have two that start up in bash). But there's eclipse, Code::blocks, various QT things, and if you hold your nose even community editions of Visual Poodio that you can get with a few clicks for exactly zero of Her Germanic Majesty's finest pounds.
I want to know what this person is smoking, so I can go get some.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
you know even "a 14 year old Pentium 3" has enough CPU power for numerous tasks that are artificially restricted by the operating systems of smartphones, tablets, and game consoles, right? This includes, for example, compiling and running high school computer science homework.
I read it not as "death of the PC" but as "death of PC."
Sure, with Mr. Trump as president, he and his minions will suppress political correctness, which to some may sound like a Yuge Thing, but such will reduce openness because more people on the margins of society will get bullied?
They'really asking "Y?" because newcomers often fail victim to the XY problem, in which someone asks how to perform a particular step in a process when that might not even be the best step for that process.
Normies are finally figuring out that the internet and pop entertainment being controlled by less than a dozen enormous corporations results in uninteresting content and other very bad things.
At one time, "PC" was too hard for normies. Now, we're relying on "PC" being too boring for normies until they leave. The existence of normies here means that those massive corporations will lose a little of their power over the internet and popular entertainment because fewer retards are viewing ads, buying microtransactions and otherwise allowing those giant corporations to steal their money and sell their data.
NORMIES GET OUT REEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Even if the VPS provider collects only $5 per month from you, your cellular or satellite ISP collects $5 for every gigabyte of data that you upload from your device to the VPS or download from the VPS to your device. Such data tolls for remote desktop sessions can add up.
Mobile phones need a network, and the people owning the network don't want anything open about it.
Around 2008-2011, there used to be 10 inch laptops with an Atom CPU for $200 to $300. These were usable for even lightweight programming, as a suitable font size choice on the 1024x600 pixel display allowed viewing the program and its output side by side. Now PC makers won't touch that form factor, instead making more expensive tablets that need a clip-on keyboard (sold separately) for the same use cases.
Sorry but Intel will forever make desktop, workstation, and server processors, and you wil lbe able to buy cased, power supplies, motherboards, etc...
Calling the death of the PC is one of the single most stupid trends in "journalism" I have seen in the past 5 years. I have heard these wannabe bloggers calling the death for a half a decade and it is still not even close to true.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just because the exponential growth of sales has ended, thus the PC is now in structural decline....
does not mean the PC is dead.
All it means is that New people who never owned computers before are no longer getting in at a fast rate.
There's a huge population now who have purchased desktops more than 4 years ago, but less than 8 years ago,
who already have all the Laptops and Desktops they will need for years to come. We're largely still running Windows XP and
Windows 7, if we can, or perhaps Linux, and we don't like changes Microsoft made in Windows 8 and Windows 10.
New operating systems are no longer a reason to upgrade hardware.
Our personal computers are lasting longer between upgrade cycles, and we need new ones less often.
This is a good thing for consumers, and a terrible thing for the hardware and software industry.
Industry in decline, or no longer exponentially growing does NOT mean the product is dead, it means a thing called
Market saturation was reached, new growth will not be possible, since everyone who would demand it has already
has bought it, and does not mean there is no future demand for PCs. They are rather ubiquitous in fact.....
For something that is dead I see and use an awful lot of them.
The PC isn't dying, it's more people don't need to keep buying a new PC every 4 years. The PC has matured and lucky for other technology like smartphones, tablets and such. The PC is stable enough to endure years of stable performance without needing replacement frequently. It's why I can sit at my 4 year old desktop and get a far better experience than my new iPhone. Too me all this power consumption obsession has basically produced weaker performance of flat line performance improvements. Sure I use my iPhone plenty and its way more portable than a tablet or even a ultrabook. But at home I much rather work with a big screen and more CPU power. This ideal that smartphones will replace PC's is a lie.
There are so many things wrong with the prediction that I don't know where to start.
Power: While content creation is often processor intensive, video editing is very processor intensive. Even playing 3K much less 4K video will get my i7/nvidia "mobile workstation" warm. I make youtube videos like many people. I can edit them on my notebook, but I export the media, which holds a hyperthreaded quad core at 90-100% for hours at a time. Notebooks don't not like that. Gaming computers are powerful, but I feel that few have enough airflow for having both the GPU and CPU running at the same time. Yes, video editing programs are GPU accelerated. 4K will be a bitch. My next desktop will have 8 cores.
While my notebook isn't bad a CAD/Design, because my desktop can run it's video card faster at all times, it's still faster. If I want to raytrace an animation I use my desktop because it can take the heat.
As for API's and computer languages, whatever all of you decide to use--will be used. There are a lot of computer languages out there. Companies can dictate whatever they want, but they are not going to be able to hold a platform if they are aren't on the same page as the bulk of programmers. This is a small but sill a significant part of why C/C++ is still popular.
The death of the PC is only the dream of the person who wants to sell you a service and control you information. Don't go for it.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
The "pc" isn't dead, the problem is even 4 generation old intel systems can do everything you could possibly want at home with a SSD upgrade. Pc gaming is flourishing and and making more money in micro transactions than console gaming. How many consoles have Free to play titles as big as the PC?
Also, want to know the true bottleneck? It's the user! Humans.. Pc can now run 3 games at once, but noone plays 3 games at once. High rendering or top gfx will scale with hardware. Back in the 90's loading web pages or general usage was also slow. 5 minutes to start up etc. Rendering wise, was indered by internet if we talk remote computing. I got fibre 2 months ago which has opened up personal remote clouding for high data i/o. It was the arbitrarily split off adsl with huge upload limit. I can stream hd content and remote pc from my home server to my work or friends. It's more that everything will be combined. The Pc is a vague term anyway in the sense that computing usage has become so broad in more ways than one. Consumers will probably get personal servers once someone markets towards how greatly down and up speeds people actually have as option in their homes
The only thing that can kill the PC is a better product, with a more reliable operating system, and I see nothing on the horizon that prohibits that evolutional step.
And, if under Trump, computers are outlawed (it would be a typical move for he and his kind), then only outlaws will have computers.
Pundits get paid to make outrageous predictions, only to fade into obscurity when their ignorant nightmares prove inept and ill-advised. Instead, they should think beyond their own limitations and ask: "What will supercede the Personal Computer and be even more desirable?" Quantum computers, perhaps? More likely: Things we've not yet even yet imagined, as was the Intel 4004 (which, after all, was invented because Busicom Corp. wanted a "better calculator" engine).
The only thing even reminiscent of the death of the PC that I've been seeing is Microsoft actively going out of their way trying to lock it down with their latest OS. Which they seem to be treating more as a storefront, trying to mutate the PC and ween the user into the walled garden they have enjoyed on the console side of their business.
Thankfully when push comes to shove, there are alternative operating systems available.
Ya know cause clearly an industry that has enough people willing to pay thousands for graphics cards alone to warrant a whole separate industry to supply those cards...... is totally on it's death bed. At least from the perspective of a soccermom who is hard pressed to take a break from surfing youtube and facebook on their phones to pay attention to the pedestrians they almost ran down with their SUV.
That'll be supported.
I grew up in the 90s, and compilers were too expensive for a child. A single release of a crappy 16-bit compiler cost a quarter what the computer shared by the whole family cost, so it was like a combined birthdaychristmas present to get just one of them.
Turbo Pascal ad Turbo C were $99.
Key word: "child". When I was growing up, $99 was a combined birthday and Christmas present. And it was a crime for anyone to employ me.
Your next PC just might be a smart phone. The computing power of smart phones is getting close to the power of some desktops. So we may see docking stations that you simply plug in your monitor and key board and speakers and drop in your smart phone thus eliminating that box we are all used to having
Just that computer cost me almost 3 thousand dollars. I didn't blink either - it was a cost of doing business.
Key word: "business". If you're not using a $2000 to $3000 machine as part of a for-profit venture or registered charity, it becomes cost-prohibitive.
I just installed Arch to my PC. Now that "the PC" is dead how will Arch community react? Or any Linux distribution.
As they continue to turn the dial up to "11 shocking things your mom does that may surprise you" filled with hyperbole and incoherent nonsense the more people tune out and dismiss/ignore it as noise. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The PC isn't dying. Not at all. Despite tablets and mobile devices, there's a lot of work that can't easily be done on them. There are lots of jobs that still require or are much easier when done on a PC. This question is built upon a premise that is false. As long as there's work that requires a PC, and there will be for the foreseeable future, the PC sure isn't going to die.
Precisely. Where exactly did this one come from? Are they talking about the traditional PC form factor - of a tower accompanied by a separate monitor and keyboard, or are they talking about all Wintel devices?
Either way, I just don't see that. Whenever I go to Microcenter or Best Buy, I see a whole bunch of traditional desktop PCs - mainly for gaming, that are priced anywhere from $400 and up. A number of years ago, the prediction was that those would disappear as laptops became more affordable while tablets and netbooks horned into the desktop price range. Instead, the desktop has become solely a gaming platform, while each of the other form factors seem to have found their niches
The other premise of the submitter's question - an end to openness: what exactly does it mean? Does it mean that Walled Gardens would make something inherently less open? I see no reason why companies like Canonical, Red Hat, iXsystems, et al can't make devices that include their own OSs, if the PC does for any reason go away.
AMD plans to have more pci-e then intels desktop chips.
But any ways the intel desktop boards stuff usb, storage, networking, most of the pci-e lanes all over the pci-e 3.0 X4 DMI bus.
I have all the toys in question - 2 laptops, 2 tablets and 3 cellphones. Here is how each of them is used:
1. This laptop I'm working on (w/ TrueOS) is where I do the bulk of my stuff - my shopping, banking, slashdot and a few other sites I participate in
2. My Wintel laptop, which is what I use for work, as well as anything where I need something that's only available on Windows
3. My iPad, which I use to listen to Sirius XM when I am at home and not driving, as well as some games
4. My Ellipsis, which I use to check stuff in my various accounts. While I use the laptop to do things like money transfers and stuff, I use the tablet to make payments, or check the status of a transaction. I also use it when I'm travelling - to carry my e-ticket and so on
5. My iPhone, which I use to FaceTime and WhatsApp w/ family members, and also play games while I'm waiting for something at a restaurant, or in a clinic, or at the movies
6. My Moto X, which I use as a work phone, and separate from my personal phone. If any employer were to ask for a BYOD, that would be it
7. My Lumia, which I use as a travel phone whenever I'm out of the US and in exclusively GSM territory
Of the things I listed above, granted - a lot of them can be consolidated to 2 or 3 devices. But while I have a wireless keyboard for my iOS and Android tablets, I've found that a lot less convenient than a laptop. OTOH, I can't use my laptop if I need to call Lyft for any reason, like if my car is in service.
The reason everybody has sold production to China is that previously, everything was merely outsourced to the likes of Gigabyte, Asustech, Acer, Compal, Quanta, et al, and slowly, everybody realized that they were only paying extra for the brand, but otherwise getting the same shit from an HP or a Dell. Which is why it makes more sense to buy from a Lenovo or an Acer. But end result is that the only thing the IBMs or Dells are now making are the high end boxes. As far as Apple goes, it does make more sense for them to switch to A10s and beyond for their laptops: OS X is already iOS-ized, and that would also save them from Hackintosh undercutting their Mac sales, to the extent it happens at all. There ain't a strong reason for Apple to base its computing infrastructure on x64. Even for Mac Pro, Apple can introduce multiple A8 cores or something to match the throughput, since the underlying OS is perfectly SMP capable
I can build my own computer from transistors (no really). There are books that teach this art and plenty of patents at the library that demonstrate advanced concepts. In a pinch, we could all pool our talents and open-source a true end-to-end compute platform (as is already starting to happen).
But if the network to reach other open source advocates and general online services is locked down, we're in a much more dire position. With a closed PC platform, which isn't really Personal anymore, the access methods will be cut off. Government can be bought off to allow lock down of the public access points in the name of terrorism. They will be bought by the remaining major platform and media companies in the name of profit. This profit is earned by having control, not by any form of merit (think Hollywood).
Without network access, the limited use-cases for an open PC will not draw in enough users and programmers/engineers. The open-source side will revert back to a niche geek market. The last straw will be the government and industry players painting this community as criminals, terrorists (ipad refuses to auto-complete that word), and other lessor types. In the end, open platforms will effectively become black markets.
This will take a long time. Along the way, there will be a war against removable media. It will be locked down to ensure the sneaker-net won't function between closed and open platforms. The excuse will be terrorism, malware, and security against physical theft. "Dial-in" techniques will also be locked out, no more phone modems or equivalent to allow open platform communication. Phone companies won't allow dial-in because it would compete with their cable/DSL/wireless empires (Read between the lines, over these time scales those companies will merge back into a Ma-Bell type market. Control of the platform requires there to be a homogeneous, ubiquitous network which universally enforces the rules of the closed ecosystem). Use your creativity to deduce the other attack vectors...
Key to any of this happening is the acceptance by the consumer pool (individuals at home, commodity PC buyers in IT at non-specialist shops, pro users in specialized markets, etc) and government. Each one will get a tuned marketing message. Government will be the easiest, by the time they figure it out, it'll be too late. Before then, the smarter parts of .gov will delight in the overall concepts (access capabilities) of centralized control. Home users will hear, "BOO!!! Turrists and Thieves! We'll sell you Safety". IT will hear "Lower cost and better security!". Cost will be promised on the basis of a lower cost up front (subscription sw/hw) and predictable future expenses. Pro users will also be easy to sway - they will hear all the above in addition to, "We create a barrier to entry for your competition!". Pro users will get perks at first to draw them in because allowing the most powerful systems to exist outside the closed platform puts it all at risk. These users will be "bought" and then paid for by everyone else - at least until they are boxed in and have no choice. In the end, they will pay through the nose to the point where no one can compete with the biggest remaining players. These will be the last to fall.
When the pro users are locked in (might take a worker generation, 30 years roughly), the Big Blue Mainframe mentality will have won. At that point, it will all start to unwind again, but it's not clear what group of vectors will lead to its demise...
The only ones leaving the PC market are those who didn't use it for anything but web browsing and email and even email is mostly now a browser task.
Given that, it does mean that households will no longer be an easy place for the kids to learn some of these other tools which require local CPU/RAM/storage to run but how widespread is that even. Lots of middle and high school kids have their own laptops from what I've seen.
The business sector will continue with desktops and laptops but in some cases might go with lower end models with many tasks operating from their own cloud apps. Not a complete elimination or even close IMO.
What I do see is more schools using Chromebooks and more interest and usage of Linux.
So yes, Bill Gates' idea of many Windows PCs in homes is fading quickly. And good riddance to that IMO
Also, wow to how many Mac laptops I'm seeing in the geek community. Just wow.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I agree with the commenters who are suggesting that the PCs will continue to be available, but wonder if they understand that accessibility also matters. This is anecdotal evidence, but I have a number of friends and acquaintances who do not have regular access to a PC. They have smart phones, tablets and consoles. They regularly run into issues where they can't participate, or can't do something. Simple tasks such as cutting and re-encoding a recorded video clip to post to an external site, or using a piece of FOSS group chatting software are beyond their reach.
The problem isn't the availability of PCs or even the cost (though that's mentioned frequently), it's that they're not the default computer for (some?) people anymore. To do any of the tasks above is now asking for an additional investment of time and money, which has some people not bother at all.
I fear the real loss is that the lack of an accessible PC will preclude some people (for example, the people above's children) from having the chance to become interested in computers; that their locked down systems will halt would be tinkerers in their tracks and stop them from realizing their full potential.
The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
This is my theory: The need to for upgrading a PC stops at some point (for most). Let's say that in the past there was that real reason to get a Sound Blaster sound card after Adlib. Now you need to sell some type of snake oil because human hearing has its limits. Amount of required memory has its limits too for most.
Just because someone lacks the current capability to compile and run code because all they own is a smartphone, doesn't mean they don't have the ability to get a full blown desktop if they want. The PC isn't dying. The sky is not falling. Don't cry wolf.
The horse and carriage isn't dying. Not at all. Despite motorcars and motor trucks there's a lot of work that can't easily be done on them. There are lots of jobs that still require or are much easier when done on a horse with carriage. This question is built upon a premise that is false. As long as there's work that requires a horse and carriage, and there will be for the foreseeable future, the horse and carriage sure isn't going to die.
The only thing that can kill the PC is a better product, with a more reliable operating system, and I see nothing on the horizon that prohibits that evolutional step.
You could say the same thing about the Automobile or the personal car or boat. Nothing on the horizon prohibits that evolutional step.
Nothing on the horizon shows that evolutional step will happen, either.
The demand for PCs will still exist, Until such time as a superior replacement can meet all the demand. An open platform for software development, running software, and creating things, are some of the things PCs are demanded for that nothing else provides.
Even if PCs become a niche market whose buyers are only computer scientists, engineers, makers, and other tinkerers, they still exist.
See my subject fellow ac & you hit it RIGHT on the head - the term for it is 'framing a narrative' to "box you in" & it's false.
* You're dead-on RIGHT it's marketing STOOGES, & yes, they're fucking stupid stooges, who want this narrative to be truth by repeating it constantly - best comment on page today? Yours!
APK
P.S.=> Saw Anderson Cooper TRY that crap the other day on "CNN" (false news kings themselves) vs. a trump spokesman & he got annihilated for it - badly + deservedly (& he's not that fucking dumb - just a stooge doing what he's told even when it's @ HIS expense due to his reputation as a professional going down the tubes for it)... apk
> (if you don't operate on any data).
FTFY. ISPs in the US are getting rid of, or raising the price of unlimited data plans. It's bad enough having Youtube chewing up your monthly allotment. When you start pushing years of personal photos back and forth across the net, you may find that a one-time purchase of a $2,000 PC costs less after a couple of years.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Objective-C was effectively an Apple thing only, as is Swift now. Technically they could be used on other platforms but nobody but a few academics did. Java and the API tied into Android are pretty locked down there. Microsoft tried and tried to make .net the defacto Windows language. But I just code mostly in C++ and use various SDKs to get around everything OS specific. Mostly works for me. Occasionally I have do dive in and do an Objective-C or Java thing and then wrap it in C++.
But as long as I can keep coding in C++ on any given platform I am not trapped on that platform. If Apple screws the pooch in the long term, then all my Android portable code is perfectly happy. Or if Tizen takes off then, again, I am still good.
So while I sit here on my desktop that I configured exactly as I wanted I only have a minor concern that I will someday end up cut off. To me the simple fallback position is Linux. But for now Microsoft has put on a major effort to make Windows the center of a cross platform universe, thus I am completely safe. I think that MS sees what it tried to do and realizes that if it keeps things cross platform they can lock out companies like Apple or Google from trapping people in their little ecosystems. Microsoft won't "Win" but they will prevent the others from forcing them to lose.
Will a Highly Suspect Assumption Prove Betteridge's Law of Headlines Wrong?
There still is a large population of PC gamers who are perfectly content to buy a second high end GPU for their Skyrim mods. I sincerely doubt computing power on your laptop and/or PC is going to become insignificant anytime soon, it's still the MO for any type of real work, and having a local crash and burn R&D environment will likely still be the preference of many developers/inventors. Running these environments will require a decent hamster.
you can have my PC when you pry it from my cold dead fingers
I sure can get a whole lot of work done on this handheld children's entertainment device.
And we just take it as a given?
This guy has every rep from every company throwing every future-of-gimmickry toy at him and telling him constantly that the PC is dead. You'd think over the years he might think to ask these people what these gimmick products were designed on.
I would have thought that the migration of enterprises to using virtual machines to replace their desktop fleet would be a significant reason for less physical PC sales.
Most of the technology that goes into a PC would still be actively developed for servers, embedded devices, and maybe even workstations. That's where all the hard work is done. It's really not a stretch to believe a hardware manufacturer won't see the opportunity in developing a board to hang it all off of. It's also not hard to see people hacking operating systems for it.
Stop pushing this agenda.
Didn't the PC die in like, 1998 or something? I clearly remember consoles being the end of it.
Haven't had one since then, myself. Just some tv screen with a warm box, and a typewriter/two-button remote you slide on the table for control.
Oh, are PCs dead again? What is this, the 15th consecutive year they have ceased to be?
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I expect Moore's Law, or similar, will eventually make it practical to fit a PC in your pocket, giving Android and IOS more competition.
But it's hard to predict when that point will be reached. It may also require PC applications that are not such power hogs.
Table-ized A.I.
Or at least I've been seeing these headlines for that long. Guess what? Still here, and not going anywhere. Tablets, phones, etc, are CONSUMPTION devices for information and media. People still need PCs to make things. Or even type long emails. Seriously, try typing a couple of paragraphs on a tablet, it's torture. If I have to send an email for work and it'll be longer than a quick note or reply I wait until I get to my desk to do it instead of trying my patience on my tablet.
The PC is not dying. The marked simply has matured.
The PC market has been growing for years, as more and more people discovered how it could be used for things other than gaming and programming. Now, even my parents have a PC, the only room for growing the marked is places like Africa.
Likewise, for many years, the performance of PCs was doubling every 18 months. 100 MHz went from top of the line to old as everybody else bought 200 MHz PCs. 18 months later, it was 400 MHz. Five years ago I upgraded my 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 to a 3.6 GHz Core i5. Last year I upgraded to a 3.7 GHz Core i7. 3.6 to 3.7 GHz in five years, compared to doubling every 18 months... The only reason for the upgrade was faster graphics, to play newer games. But gamers are not a large part of the market anymore. browsing and email is.
are unemployed people who've never had to produce any significant work. Everything, spreadsheets, documents, databases, code for all those cute little phones, are still produced on PCs.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
What a ridiculous article. They set up a fake scenario, 'the death of the PC', and then moan about it.
So everybody who works in an office, with a PC in front of them all day, is going to do what, exactly? There are hundreds of millions of people using PCs all day long in their job, where are they going to go?
In what world is the PC "dying?"
Yeah, a lot of people use their phones/tablets for things. But, as far as I'm concerned, the PC isn't dying, it's just not used 24/7 by consumers. I have a PC, tablet, phone, PS4, etc. I have not ONCE thought, "well, I hate my PC now, so I'll just throw it out". I mean, really?
Stupid media.
Most people prefer easy, simple 1-click type installs. App stores and locked down devices that must work accomplish that and broaden the user base. However, for those that like to tinker under the hood there are more tools than ever before. Linux, Qemu and a rich stable toolset like never seen before, filled with open source drivers fill our little playground. I am very optimistic about the future and believe that these app stores and 'walled gardens' actually increase development complexity and testing on the back-end, which further necessitates fancy workstations, test benches, standards, and open source.
I can't say I'm surprised - all in all, this will be good for those of us who were lucky enough to "come up" in an open world, but bad for the next generation that will have to fight and claw to learn how things actually work (if they ever manage to at all). It seems to me like we've been playing a sort of "musical chairs" game for the past 30 years or so and those of us who are sitting down right now are the "winners".
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
That said, why would you cancel your cable Internet for this?
A lot of people have to choose one or the other because they can't afford both $60/mo cable Internet and $60/mo cellular Internet. See the previous Slashdot story "Americans Abandoning Wired Home Internet, Shows Study".
if you imagine the development server being as locked down as a Chromebook or iDevice
By this, do you mean incapable of running programs in any language other than JavaScript?
an era when leaving Firefox open for a day with 20 or so tabs open seems to result in it eating 4+Gb of memory
Do you have privacy.trackingprotection.enabled turned on? It turns off scripts that track the user from one site to another, which tend to be big RAM hogs in my experience.
Are you wearing hockey pads?
I've been using computers since DOS 2.0. I fucking hate Windows 10 and friends and others have begged me, and even paid me, to get Windows 10 off their computers.
So you can count me in as one of those other professionals who is completely satisfied with Windows 7.
PCs are so cheap, we give them away as presents.
The PC market isn't dying. It's saturated.
Call me back when the net number of PCs in the wild starts shrinking year over year.
Doesn't help that there hasn't been any reason to buy a new PC in... what... 6-7 years?
Seriously, nowadays kids are obsessed with PC gaming, they expend hundreds of dollars of their parents money for a new processor that's only 10% or so better than their current one. Console gaming is looked down as a thing for uninformed and dumb 'peasants'; browse reddit or 9gag and you'll see hundreds of kids flashing their GTX 1080's and their kabylake i7's, shaming ps4 or xbox owners that hurry to sell their consoles in order to join the 'PC master race'. I would have figured out that even if assembled computers sales are going down (cause, of course, you can't join the master race on a dell and even pre assembled alienware desktops are frowned upon; it has to be DIY or boutique) component sales should be on the rise; specially high end ones.
Where's this "the PC is dying" drivel coming from?
The horse and buggy isn't dying. Not at all. Despite motor cars, there's a lot of work that can't easily be done on them. There are lots of jobs that still require or are much easier when done with a horse and buggy. This question is built upon a premise that is false. As long as there's work that requires a horse and buggy, and there will be for the foreseeable future, the horse and buggy sure isn't going to die.
Paperless-Office has INCREASED the Paper Consumption by 400% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
What is this time's reason for predicting "the end of PCs"? Is it something new or just the same bullshit I heard back when laptops came out, netbooks, tablets, smartphones, macs, macbooks, and a number of other things, all of which were completely wrong and with tons of assumptions and misinformation completely disconnected with reality?
Is there any evidence whatsoever?
The PC is dead.. for USELESS wastes of time. That is the role that tablets and mobile devices took over. On the areas of USEFUL work, formal communication, development, design, medicine and all others were people REALLY work (and no posting opinions about something and taking selfies is NOT WORK) PC is still unchallenged king.
Do you know what happens when your niche market becomes too small? Prices go up. Yes, engineers and scientists will be able to afford them (rather, their employers will lease them). Tinkerers... Not so much. Hacking will become history, just as those in charge want.
And then, I'm assuming, the hypervisor would put the guest operating systems into hibernation while the hypervisor restarts for security updates. Is that how it typically works?