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The 'Post-PC Era' Never Really Happened... and Likely Won't (techpinions.com)
Mark Lowenstein, writing for Techpinions: As we head toward Apple's annual device announcement-palooza, it's an interesting exercise to consider where we are in Steve Jobs' vaunted, much quoted 'Post-PC Era.' The fact of the matter is, that era never fully arrived, and it doesn't look like it will, in the near- to medium- term future. [...] Tablets have had a good run, but sales have tailed off of late. I'd say they've had greater influence on the evolution of the smartphone and the PC, rather than leading to a significantly different nomenclature for what most of us carry around today. My Techpinions colleague Ben Bajarin says that Creative Strategies surveys indicate that only about 10% of tablet users have 'replaced their PC' -- a number that has held steady for several years. And that 10% is concentrated in a handful of industries, such as real estate and construction. PC sales aren't exactly surging, but they're steady. Your average white collar professional today still carries around a smartphone and a laptop, with the tablet being an ancillary device, used primarily for media/content consumption.
Tablets have had a significant influence on the design of smartphones and PCs. They ushered in an era of smartphone screen upsizing, led primarily by Samsung, and now reinforced by the iPhone X and the expected announcement next week of a 6.5 inch iPhone model. For those who don't want to swing both a smartphone and tablet, we have 'Phablets,' most personified in the successful Galaxy Note series, and alternative-to-keyboard input devices such as the S Pen and the Apple Pencil. We've also seen the development of some hybrid tablet/PC devices, the most innovative and successful of which is Microsoft's Surface line. But that product is competing more in the tablet category than in the PC category, with the exception of a few market segments.
Tablets have had a significant influence on the design of smartphones and PCs. They ushered in an era of smartphone screen upsizing, led primarily by Samsung, and now reinforced by the iPhone X and the expected announcement next week of a 6.5 inch iPhone model. For those who don't want to swing both a smartphone and tablet, we have 'Phablets,' most personified in the successful Galaxy Note series, and alternative-to-keyboard input devices such as the S Pen and the Apple Pencil. We've also seen the development of some hybrid tablet/PC devices, the most innovative and successful of which is Microsoft's Surface line. But that product is competing more in the tablet category than in the PC category, with the exception of a few market segments.
Smearing greasy prints on a screen, waving your shit around like an idiot, screaming at your word processor that you mean your, no, not yore, no not you're, no for fuck's sake!, or literally walking through a filesystem... All cute gimmicks that last about ten minutes.
And then you pull out the keyboard and get real work done.
Nobody has yet come up with a remotely serious idea that even has a chance at ousting the PC.
Tablets do not replace PCs and laptops. They just aren't as functional. Tablets are nice for reading and doing light work but for anything that requires real heavy-weight work, the PC reigns king.
The big difference is the OS. Mobile devices have those neutered OSes that only let you install approved software and don't give you full control over your own property. There have been attempts to do this with PCs, but so far they are still general purpose computers.
In many senses, it already happened.
How many programs did you download to your PC? My mom uses a browser and mostly nothing else. Most people I know are perfectly happy with online Office and Google apps. My e-mail client is a web application, as is my calendar, my spreadsheet and my notepad. My word processor is also a web application. What's left is the collection of compilers and system administration tools, terminals and so on most users don't need or know how to use.
The fact they are still x86-based laptops or desktops is due to manufacturing scales, mostly.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
... the big sucking sound for software is coming to close down PC's. We've seen huge gains by Vavle and the game industry to lock down PC's, couple that with smart phone games and emulators like nox and then top it off with windows 10. There is huge pressure to keep taking away control of the machine from end users largely because customers can't reach these companies to punch them in the nads for their theiverous practices. The internet has allowed companies to force policies on populations that don't want them through attrition (aka, are you not going to buy videogames forever if devs choose to release drm infested games?). The market is over and we're finally seeing our society enter a feudal like faze where capitalism is transforming itself into a new feudalism of serfs who have no rights to own the things they buy and lords you extract tribute through simply not being able to be reached by the peasants.
Eventually, the handheld devices will become so powerful that all we need is a better interface. The "docking station" will make a big comeback. I already have a little USB thing for my laptop that provides Ethernet, power, HDMI, and multiple USB ports. The same thing will happen with the "phone". Now, how long that will take is anybody's guess. So the idea of a "PC" as something different from handheld is what will go away.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
...is that devices specifically manufactured and marketed as tablets first and foremost are limited. They don't successfully replace all of the functions of a PC, in that the software written for them and the nature of how they're designed to interact with peripherals and with other systems is restricted. In some senses this can be a good thing, we don't have quite as many problems with poorly written software crashing the OS, but because of the walled-garden approach that both Android and Apple have taken, there's simply less functionality. On top of that, due to the battery-operated, portable nature of the devices, they don't do the CPU-intensive tasks as well as something designed to be plugged into the wall, or even something that carries a lot more mass in batteries.
In an ideal world, I would have a very small device that could interface to any screen and set of input devices that I so chose. It could serve as my phone, it could serve as my book reader, it could serve to watch movies, could serve as a portable computer for business functions, could serve as my full-featured desktop computer, depending on what set of peripherals I'm using with it. Unfortunately desktop computer operating systems don't do the mobile functions too well, and the mobile operating systems don't offer the freedom I need for desktop functions.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
On point in every case. This is something that is amazing to watch as the next generations cede all their agency to corporate overlords, all the while thanking them for the privilege of being misused. Sickening.
Ok, so they both died in the process, but they won. Netscape with its "browser as a platform" strategy, and Sun with its "network computing" strategy, both failed to win their early battles against Microsoft, but in the end, the PC lost its place as "the" platform. Applications are now accessed over the Internet, and they can be accessed using any device. Applications locally installed on a Wintel machine are still around, but they're no longer the primary way we do most things with computers. Remember when you had to install a special Windows program to track a FedEx package? To log in to your bank? To do your taxes? That era is over. We're in the post-PC era now, and we've been there for quite some time now.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
They are just a different form factor for convenience when performing different tasks. PCs, tablets, and smartphones are destined for convergence.
Those two statements appear to be at opposition with each other. The fact that these devices have different form factors to conveniently perform different tasks is why they will not converge. They will continue to be very similar, and perhaps the OS and apps on the devices will converge, but ultimately there is a reason each form factor exists. To use a car analogy, it is similar to why we have sedans, SUV / minivans, and trucks. Each are very similar, and often share the same frames and internal components. But they each will continue to exist because they make certain activities more convenient.
I should clarify this is at least true for mobile vs PC, since a good argument could be made that tablet sales are suffering because larger phones are causing these form factors to converge. I for one have bought two tablets in the past but probably never will again since my 6"+ mobile phone does the job well enough.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
People forget that the current way of working on a PC evolved over 150ish years....
It is still the most efficient way to work over long hours (assuming correct posture) with the least amount of effort required (imagine your arms after having to navigate for 7 hoursusing touch with 2 32" 4K displays).
Also businesses have invested BILLIONS in software that currently only run on x86-AMD64 architecture (and in fact due to their GUI and information density not really usable on touch navigation) that they are in no hurry to replace.
It's possible that one day we will replace all desktops with smartphones powerfull enough to run x86-AMD64 emulators to run legacy apps, however mouse/keyboard/screen setup is not going away any time soon.
Yes, tablets are powerful enough today to do most of what most people want to use a laptop or PC for, with one exception: Sensible input and output. Sorry, but the screen-keyboard of a tablet is useless compared to a normal keyboard. If you don't agree, show me your touch-typing on a tablet with more than 80 wpm and we'll talk.
Likewise, output is atrocious. When you're used to 22" screens as your display real estate, trying to get used to screens not even 1/4 the size is really taxing.
It's a neat tool to check your mail while on the go. I give you that. But getting any sensible work done is next to impossible on them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mobile devices have those secure OSes which only execute authorized machine code and don't give bad guys full control over your property.
Yeah, thank God those mobile device manufacturers have finally put a stop to the malware problem!
I always wonder what would have happened if Apple had decided that a keyboard and more importantly a mouse was an acceptable iPad peripheral.
I mostly liked my iPads (1 & 3) but over time felt hemmed in by the lack of a mouse. I had a keyboard case which made text input a lot better, but the lack of a mouse and the clumsy nature of screen touch made editing anything an impossible chore and even the promise of RDP to desktops unappealing for anything more than basic status checks or the most marginal of activities.
If Apple had allowed mice, would the iPad have gained more ground from PCs?
Microsoft made some serious effort toward unifying a desktop, tablet, and phone into a single unit with the Display Dock. Paired with UWP apps, this was a pretty slick little setup. Too bad the Windows phone platform never took off. https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...
Anyone who watches TV knows that a computer is a large mysterious machine that occupies a large room. It communicates via many blinking lights which is how the genius computer operators understand what the machine is directing them to do. Mere mortals are separated from computers by a large glass windows. The computer operators wear white lab coats. There is no readily apparent mechanism by which the humans communicate to the machine; but it doesn't seem to need their useless opinions.
The computer's mystery is exceeded only by its power.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Fool. The user is always supposed to have ultimate control over the device. Fuck off with your scare-mongering as an excuse for sloth and apathy. If a user refuses to learn, they deserve what they get. Dont bust out the golden shackles and try to tell me its jewelry.
Good-bye
I always saw tablets as expensive toys with limited uses, and to be fair they have legitimate uses, but as a replacement for a full-blown desktop computer or laptop? No. Too limited, too specialized. It's always been marketing hype like with anything else, trying to convince people their lives aren't complete unless they have such-and-such thing. Just like smartphones; you don't actually need it, a plain old phone would be just as good, but you want it, mainly because they convinced you you need it.
Desktop and even Laptop PCs are not commonly used for texting and driving.
That's what I read on slashdot while driving to work.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I would be very interested in a macbook body with an ipad as a display, detachable of course. Unfortunately the issues of touchbar, no ports, and no replaceable battery are huge downsides, that I see Apple never changing, even though it would increase their notebook sales.
Mobile devices have those secure OSes which only execute authorized machine code and don't give bad guys full control over your property.
That'd be fine so long as A. the owner of a device[1] has authority to authorize machine code to run on that device, and B. asserting this authority doesn't require a separate purchase from the same or an affiliated manufacturer with a price that meets or exceeds the price of the device.
[1] Or, in the case of a corporate owned device, an authenticated user chosen by the owner.
Mobile devices have those neutered OSes that only let you install approved software and don't give you full control over your own property
(Looks at rooted custom ROM Android phone) Maybe you're just using the wrong mobile device?
Anyone who watches TV knows that a computer is a large mysterious machine that occupies a large room. It communicates via many blinking lights [...] Mere mortals are separated from computers by a large glass windows. The computer operators wear white lab coats.
Still somewhat accurate, except that sort of room-filling computer is called a "server cluster" or "on-premises cloud" nowadays.
There is no readily apparent mechanism by which the humans communicate to the machine; but it doesn't seem to need their useless opinions.
Humans communicate to the machine through devices called "terminals". These come in the form of smartphones, tablets running a smartphone OS, and Chromebooks, precisely the devices that were associated with the "post-PC era".
Thanks, I prefer to have 100% control over what I install and run.
You know there's more to computing than games, right?
True, but for many users, there isn't more to local computing than games. I've gathered through conversation with other Internet users that many of them use only two categories of application: 1. web applications and 2. native games. They don't use any native non-game applications not shipped with a device's operating system. They could be satisfied with an Xbox One and a Chromebook.
when you're on /. it's easy to live in the tech bubble, but fact is most people just want tech to work. They're a means to an end not an end themselves. If they pay a little (some cases a lot) extra to have it work that's well worth it. And so it giving up the control of an old school PC experience.
Also, there's a huge difference between somebody who likes gadgets and a technophile. We often conflate the two and think there's more technophiles than there really are.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
as Fortnite just proved. You can download a dev kit right now and make and sell Android apps w/o google's permission. You do have to adhere to the OS's permission rules, meaning everytime you install an app on a user's computer it will ask them to grant permission for each thing your app does (network, camera, file system etc).
I wish Windows had that level of security. It makes Malware a lot harder since if I go install a dumb little single player game and it wants access to my network, contacts list and camera and microphone I know I'm dealing with a scam.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That ad was a brilliant piece of marketing. It pissed off so many people and they still like to bring it up.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Since you missed the joke, see the current iPad ad where a kid says exactly that: https://youtu.be/sQB2NjhJHvY
What good is a projected keyboard when fast typing requires that you don't even look at it?
What I see in 90% of homes are families that have a laptop for the mother, tablets for the little kids and smartphones for teens. Dad tends to be in the "man cave" drinking, or uses a work provided laptop, typically both.
It has become extremely rare to see desktop PC's in a home unless the person telecommutes or operates a home business on the side. Gamer's are really the only group left that stick to PC's but there is a growing trend to go with gaming laptops since they are easier to take to a friend's house/dorm.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Now could someone tell gnome this? And maybe ubuntu?
You CAN put it in developer mode, if you want to.
My biggest complaint about Chromebook developer mode is its complete lack of durability. If someone else turns it on and presses two keys as prompted, this triggers a powerwash, causing you to lose data since the last daily backup as well as the use of apps that had been installed until you have a chance to restore from backup. Until Crostini support becomes more widespread, how practical is it to carry around backup media wherever you carry your Chromebook?
Furthermore, for people who want to jump through even more hoops, you can replace the firmware.
If a Chromebook's firmware has been replaced, and its screen, keyboard, or power jack subsequently develops a fault, is its manufacturer still obligated to repair the component that has developed a fault? Or does turning the write-protect screw and patching the accidental powerwash misfeature out of the firmware void the warranty on the whole shebang?
It's not brilliant or difficult to piss people off.
Tablets have had a good run, but sales have tailed off of late.
That's because they ceased making them better. Almost every tablet I've seen is nothing more than a supersized smartphone and it runs more or less the exact same software. I haven't bought an iPad because it really does nothing for me that my iPhone doesn't do competently and if I need more computing power my PC will run rings around any tablet on the market. Tablet's exist in the space between smartphones and laptops which constrains them on both sides. They aren't as portable as smartphones and they aren't as powerful as PCs. To grow further they need to do offer something which neither smartphones or PCs can easily match.
What seems to be happening is that tablets are slowly becoming low end laptops rather than their own distinct type of device. It's not clear if this is a good thing or a bad thing but it does explain why they've plateaued.
Other problems include that the accessories for tablets tend to be complete afterthoughts. The keyboards, and covers and other periferals are not well integrated. Apple introduced the Apple Pencil which functions fine but lacks software support and has no physical integration with the device. You have to carry it separately rather than sliding it into a convenient holder where it gets charged when not in use.
It's a neat tool to check your mail while on the go. I give you that. But getting any sensible work done is next to impossible on them.
That's because the software for tablets by and large sucks. It's basically the same software designed for smartphone with minimal changes in most cases. Not powerful enough to replace a real PC but nothing much added over a smartphone even when it could be.
They should be great for a wide variety of tasks but the makers of these things got lazy. So they get treated as a poor mans laptop or a content consumption device but they could be more. Not to mention that the peripherals which could make using them better are almost always total afterthoughts and poorly integrated.
The problem is that when those fools refuse to learn, they hurt those of us who do learn. Whether it is allowing their machines to become part of a DDOS attack, or leaking all their stored data (which can include our private data), or becoming penetration points for our networks, or whatever. There's a need for some sort of "herd immunity", to borrow a concept from vaccinations. I don't know what that looks like, but the phones are much more secure, and I've often wished desktops had some security rails like the phones. Something like training wheels that you have to consciously remove.
If Apple had allowed mice, would the iPad have gained more ground from PCs?
No because it would have allowed software makers to get lazy (in a different way) about how the device would be used. Look at styluses for an example. Software makers tended to use these as nothing more than mice when given the chance even though a stylus makes a terrible mouse. Styluses are best for drawing and only drawing and to treat them as a substitute for a mouse (or worse keyboard) is a recipe for failure. If you want a mouse get a machine designed with that in mind - aka a PC. Tablets have finger input and it's not really easy to reconcile that with mouse input. Microsoft has come closest with their Surface machines but there are problems with that they haven't yet overcome.
As it is tablets are basically supersized smartphones which creates a whole different set of lazy design decisions by software makers. They basically make a smartphone app and then don't change much for the tablet. This means that the tablet is underutilized.
Personally I think the way tablets should differentiate themselves is through pen input. They should be the ultimate note taking and document editing machines. Anywhere you would use a pad of paper you should be able to use a tablet instead. Finger input of course and keyboards when helpful but no mice.
To use a car analogy, it is similar to why we have sedans, SUV / minivans, and trucks.
Back in the '90s, the proverbial "killer app" to get everyone to buy a personal computer was The Internet. You needed your email and web surfing and the only way to do that was with a personal computer--despite some attempts to make it otherwise.
Which was great for companies that made personal computers. Because while you had competition, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Whether I buy a Dell, HP, Asus, or Toshiba, I'm still essentially buying the same thing. One might be "better" than the other, but these companies compete against each other for essentially the same thing.
The problem is that the tide is starting to go out. People aren't buying as many traditional personal computers. Phones are now personal computers--while it can only do about 50% of what a personal computer can do, it can do 100% of what most people want to do with their personal computer. The economies of scale that made the generic personal computer so successful are now threatened--the personal computer my Mom bought to surf the web is a 3 year-old version of the top-of-the-line computer that I bought to develop software when it first came out. But this time she bought a tablet--something different. The company that made that high-end computer can't move their costs down after a year or two for a wider audience because that market is fragmented.
In some ways, that means higher prices up front for the latest and greatest because they'll have a harder time selling last year's model. My Mom is no longer subsidizing my cheap hardware by buying the three year-old model of what I bought.
They are just a different form factor for convenience when performing different tasks. PCs, tablets, and smartphones are destined for convergence.
Those two statements appear to be at opposition with each other. The fact that these devices have different form factors to conveniently perform different tasks is why they will not converge. They will continue to be very similar, and perhaps the OS and apps on the devices will converge, but ultimately there is a reason each form factor exists.
I'm leaning towards the hardware converging but the software not. For example a tablet can simply be a removable laptop screen, or if you want to look from the "other" side laptops become docks for tablets. To use Apple as an example I would expect the screen to run iOS when undocked and macOS when docked.
... :-)
Smartphone being part of the convergence is trickier given the pocket sized requirement. For longer work sessions that laptop sized screen would seem a necessity. There might be convergence in the sense that one day nearly all laptops and tablets may have cellular capability but I expect two devices to persist, one a 24/7 pocket companion, one for more serious work sessions.
Oh damn, we forgot the watch
People aren't buying as many traditional personal computers.
While there is some truth to the idea that some activities are more convenient on a phone or tablet, I think the larger culprit in declining PC sales is their increased longevity. We are long past the point where the computational power of a PC has exceeded the needs of many users, where a new computer has no perceptible performance increase over a three year old computer for many users. Now granted I installed ample RAM in my 8 year old PC when I built it but it is still a useful machine, even for many video games with a video card upgrade every 2-3 years.
Phones are now personal computers--while it can only do about 50% of what a personal computer can do, it can do 100% of what most people want to do with their personal computer.
Perhaps "many" not "most". For longer endurance activities, outside of gaming, larger screens and real keyboards are more necessary. Phones and PCs will likely remain complementary devices, in the developed world people will likely continue to have both. Tablets and PCs, there we may have convergence, a "laptop" becoming a "dock" and a detachable "screen".
My Mom is no longer subsidizing my cheap hardware by buying the three year-old model of what I bought.
Similar story in my family. The "retired" folks who just wants email, Skype, web browsing and online shopping in moderate proportions is finding a tablet quite satisfactory. And this includes people who had used computers for many years at work.
But for people in school or still working, I think PCs will be hard to replace with tablets.
Much as Apple et all would like it to.
Corporatism != Free Market
If the "consumer" market for desktop computing dries up, the market for home-tinkerable desktop computing will expand in comparison.
My Mom doesn't care about soldered-down RAM and SSDs, but I do, a lot.
Anything that makes the market in general (and Apple in particular) listen more to people who just want to add more RAM later when they actually need it, is a good thing in my book.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I remember when the claim of a post-pc era hit slashdot. I laughed. I was more than a little skeptical. Then I was a little scared. In the weeks and months that followed, I argued passionately that there will be no end of the pc era. That these devices are toys, useless, no good to anyone. And they were. The early dozen generations of mobile devices really sucked for anything but playing thumbzilla and watching netflix. It all seemed like a waste.
My job never changed. Not really. Now the corporation makes me use a mac instead of a thinkpad. The tools I use to write code continue to get better in leaps and bounds, and it's a lot less painful to do the kind of work I do than it used to be.
But you know something?
My brother owns two android phones and a tablet. He barely knows how to read, hates computers, and lives on disability. In fact, most low income people I know now check their email. I hired a mechanic on craigslist, one of these little guys from the sticks, and even he's got an iphone.
Mobile devices are everywhere. Just as a matter of course, these days, we build for responsive, rather than adaptive control sets with a mobile first approach, because the sites we work with have more mobile traffic than pc traffic. Especially on the local level, for services that you might try to find as you're driving. We only use the full resolution version of any given site as a sales tool, to show clients how cool their business looks. But we know full well that they'll get most of their leads from people on mobile.
I still don't see mobile becoming more useful than PC's. It's made some headway, but it's just not here yet. Then again, I don't know if it matters now since the advent of home ai's that tie all of your devices together, and can do things like stream to your tv, and tell terrible pun laden jokes.
Anyway, I think we are living in a post pc age, if by post pc, you mean an age in which the PC is no longer the sole media/internet center of everyone's life. Just don't know if Jobs really deserves credit for predicting that.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Fool. The user is always supposed to have ultimate control over the device. Fuck off with your scare-mongering as an excuse for sloth and apathy. If a user refuses to learn, they deserve what they get. Dont bust out the golden shackles and try to tell me its jewelry.
There are a LOT more users that don't give a shit about having "ultimate control" than you assume. What you call golden shackles the average user calls blissful ignorance; and they're quite happy not knowing or being responsible for their hardware.
In fact, most of the shit you own and operate today you don't have "ultimate control" over, so I'm not really sure where your delusional demands are stemming from here.
Basically 3-4 mainboard manufacturers and 2 CPU/GPU manufacturers are entirely enough, especially as things have massively slowed down performance-wise. That means hardware designs live longer and hence design cost is lower. Manufacturing cost is not that much of an issue either, as savings from large volumes only go so far. Even if the PC market drops down to 10% of its current volume, it will not go away. And since PC gaming is also not going away, it will remain much larger.
My take is the "end of the PC" stories are and always have been just clueless "journalists" looking for some doom-and-gloom story to write.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That is a person that does complicated computations for science and engineering. Recently they all lost their jobs and were replaced with machines.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I think the reason PCs didn't get replaced by tablets is that there didn't arrive any reasonable method for content creation on touch-only machines. This can be done (think Minority Report) but requires a tremendous amount of work in establishing a sufficiently sophisticated input method, way beyond what's available on today's smartphones, and that never happened. I think people quickly realized that tablets are great for content consumption, but beside putting cute little ears and noses on pictures, not so much for content creation.
As a photographer, I really thought, years ago, that there would come a time when I could leave my PC at home and bring a tablet into the field for post-processing. There were even products that looked like they were going to provide that function, but years later they're still toys. Great for preparing photos taken with the built-in camera for publishing on social media, not sufficient for serious work.
And I totally realize -- this is what the market wants. There just isn't enough demand for feature rich content creation on a tablet to do the work necessary to get there. But I'm not surprised at all that now that the shininess has worn off, tablets have settled into their own little niche, which only intersects partially with the PC feature set.
I own a tablet, but haven't booted it up in quite awhile. My PC is immensely more capable, and my phone is more portable. (In fairness, I don't use entertainment streaming services. Wife does, and she uses her tablet daily. But that only serves to illustrate the point.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
All I really meant was the hardware interface....
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
A child asking what's a computer angered that many people?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
... Yes, we are in a post-hammer world now. Screwdrivers have displaced them, and now rule!
For fuck's sake people, how about 'the right tool for the job'? Some stuff that PC's were used for in the past can now be conveniently handled by phones and tablets. Some can not.
Some tasks require keyboards and big displays and tons of storage and RAM and CPU, and some do not.
And some of us old geezers need keyboards and big displays, because we don't have the eyesight we once did.
And some of us who fought in the trenches of the PC Revolution in the 70's and 80's are appalled to see the trend back to mainframe/terminal. Which is all this 'Cloud' crap is - don't kid yourself. Your stuff is out of your control, and your stuff is being finely sifted to build a profile of you.
I am not OK with that.
for: making and editing videos (like with screenflow and others), doing cad (like with autocad and others), doing reverse engineering (like with IDA PRO and others), the list goes on...no tablet does that...and never will...
nothing to see here - move along
Really? I can't do any useful professional work on a phone, except to phone people. I can't use the tablet to write software, interface with lab equipment, and it reduces my typing words-per-minute to single digits. The tablet can however be used to read some simple emails, useful for trips to the loo. On a computer I can do real work. I can't imagine how these will converge unless every human becomes merely a content consumer.
Is the future. A hybrid
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
What's a computer?
A sign of an educational problem affecting children who appear in Apple adverts.
No one was angered by the child with a learning disability. They were angered by the implications of the marketing that Apple's toy somehow replaced a computer for doing work.
We know you've given up and have no spine. That doesn't mean the rest of us will give in so easy.
People like you are what I can "yea men"
Whatever the industry throws at you it's "yea man, that's how it has to be"
Fuck off.
And you think you're going to change the world.
You might as well go fuck off to the world of FOSS, and enjoy all the "freedom" you demand, because your voice (or mine) sure as shit isn't going to change what greed demands. I never said I disagreed with the concept of consumers having total control, I merely said you are delusional in thinking you've really got control over anything you own, or that you would change the winds of capitalism at this point.
As I said before, there's always FOSS. Don't like insecure solutions? Go roll your own.
Fool. The user is always supposed to have ultimate control over the device. Fuck off with your scare-mongering as an excuse for sloth and apathy. If a user refuses to learn, they deserve what they get. Dont bust out the golden shackles and try to tell me its jewelry.
There are a LOT more users that don't give a shit about having "ultimate control" than you assume. What you call golden shackles the average user calls blissful ignorance; and they're quite happy not knowing or being responsible for their hardware.
These users don't give a shit until they need power over their devices... Then they give a lot of shits. See Facebook for a good example, 2008 "Oh no one cares, so what if they collect data, not like they're gong to do anything with it." Fast foward to 2018 "Waaahhhhhhh Facebook, STOP SPYING ON ME" and in the mean time I'm there saying... I told you so Karen, I told you so.
So the entirety of end users are dependent on us few geeks who care enough about maintaining control that in 5 or 10 years they don't wake up and realise they lost something important. Its a thankless task, one that you're not helping with but we like martyrdom.
This is why I'm glad Apple never gained control of the smartphone market. When people wake up and realise that their access has been restricted they have a way out, we've made sure of that (not that I expect to be thanked for it, its a terrible life, probably have terrible death, but at least is consistent).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What do you think windows 10 is you idiot?
Neither Windows 10 nor Intel Trusted Execution Technology blocks use of games purchased from GOG, Itch, Humble, or publishers' own websites (such as EA's Origin).
For early-stage startup game developers and their users, the most worrying DRM measure was introduced long before Windows 10. It's Windows 8 SmartScreen, which establishes a "reputation" system for executables downloaded from the Internet and strongly recommends that users delete executables that have not yet had a chance to build reputation. The only way to allow a publisher's reputation to leak from one application from another from the same publisher is to buy a code signing certificate, as SmartScreen appears not to allow self-signed code signing certificates to build reputation. And the only way to skip SmartScreen entirely is to form a corporation or LLC and use its D-U-N-S number to buy an EV code signing certificate.
It's what is known as a "Phyrric victory".
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
You can take my desktop from my cold dead hands!
Just thought I'd mention that "they" have been calling for the death of the desktop for ages. Sure there are more laptops now, but they haven't gone away. They said the same thing for tablets and phones (silly).
If anything, bitcoin has probably had a bigger impact on the availability of desktop PC's due to the skyrocketing price of video cards as a result...
the trend was to move all new big budget games into locked down games
Your issue is with specific publishers of big-budget games. Had Valve not introduced Steam digital restrictions management, there would be more disc-based DRM and game installers that install DRM-related rootkits. There would also be even more publisher-specific online DRM platforms for PC games than there are today: Blizzard's Battle.net, EA's Origin, Ubisoft's Uplay, and Microsoft's Microsoft Store (formerly Windows Marketplace).
But a PC user has the choice to abstain from these abusive publishers' output and choose smaller-budget games instead. Console gamers lack this choice because console operating systems lack a way to install a program with no online or offline DRM. Both disc games and downloadable games on consoles have offline DRM. This goes all the way back to code signing on the Atari 7800 ProSystem and the MCUs in the Control Deck and Game Pak on the Nintendo Entertainment System that run a synchronized RNG. Thus a smaller-budget game might get released on consoles later if ever.