The End of the Desktop? (computerworld.com)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ComputerWorld : Of course, at one time, to get any work done with a computer, you first had to learn a lot, about computers, operating systems, commands and more. Eventually, "friendly" became the most important adverb in computing circles, and we've reached the point in user-friendliness that people don't even talk about it anymore. Today, Google has shown with its Chrome OS that most of us can pretty much do anything we need to do on a computer with just a web browser. But Google's path is not Microsoft's path. Instead, it's moving us first to Windows as desktop as a service (DaaS) via Microsoft Managed Desktop (MMD). This bundles Windows 10 Enterprise, Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security and cloud-based system management into Microsoft 365 Enterprise.

The next step, Windows Virtual Desktop, enables companies to virtualize Windows 7 and 10, Office 365 ProPlus apps and other third-party applications on Azure-based virtual machines. If all goes well, you'll be able to subscribe to Windows Virtual Desktop this fall. Of course, Virtual Desktop is a play for business users -- for now. I expect Virtual Desktop to be offered to consumers in 2020. By 2025, Windows as an actual desktop operating system will be a niche product. Sound crazy? Uh, you do know that Microsoft already really, really wants you to "rent" Office 365 rather than buy Office 2019, don't you?

But what about games, you say? We'll always have Windows for games! Will we? Google, with its Google Stadia gaming cloud service, is betting we're ready to move our games to the cloud as well. It's no pipe dream. Valve has been doing pretty well for years now with its Steam variation on this theme. So where is all this taking us? I see a world where the PC desktop disappears for all but a few. Most of us will be writing our documents, filling out our spreadsheets and doing whatever else we now do on our PCs via cloud-based applications on smart terminals running Chrome OS or Windows Lite. If you want a "real" PC, your choices are going to be Linux or macOS.

Comments

259 million PCs sold last year

[JoeyRox]

Granted sales have been declining steadily but we're about as close to the end of the desktop as we are to End times.

Re:259 million PCs sold last year

[Anne Thwacks]

On top of that mom and dad aren't buying junior a PC any longer.

Cos he's got two already!

Its not like the new ones are better. Maybe new servers are better than old ones, but now home PCs are mostly crap. A quick trip to PC Wold revealed that most of their offerings are actually worse than my seven year old laptop in every respect. They don't even have DVD drives. No wonder they are not selling them.

Re:259 million PCs sold last year

[thereddaikon]

The PC isn't fading. Its MATURE. The tech sector has never dealt with product maturity well. I think its because the silicon valley mindset pushes the notion of constant improvements. Until recently PC's have seen year over year obvious feature and performance improvements. Back in the 90's it was common to say your computer was obsolete before you got it out of the box and that was certainly true. But today you can do just fine on a computer over 5 years old depending on your workload. My primary personal laptop is a ThinkPad x230. My work laptop is a new T480 and honestly the T480 isn't all that better.Standard office work, media consumption and casual gaming can all be done on systems that a decade ago would have been tossed in the trash. The overall PC market is shrinking some, coming off of the 30 odd year growth high its had but the niches where there is never enough performance continue to see growth. Gaming PC's, media content creation, programming, scientific uses etc are all doing fine and very profitable. It just so happens to be that 90% of PC users dont fall into those categories. They check their email, watch Netflix and use Turbotax once a year. You can do that on a mid range i5 several generations old no problem.

PC's have also been pushed out of some markets where there is better suited form factors. Smartphone, tablets, chromebooks etc are common but the analysts said all of those would dethrone the PC. None of them have, tablets have actually started to take a downturn as smartphones have morphed to fill both roles. And even the phones have just about reached maturity. They definitely have reached saturation.

This is the natural evolution of markets. Eventually you get to a point where major product improvements become less common and you simply have refinement. It happened to cars, at some point in the 80's or 90's normal cars got about as good as they are today in terms of safety, reliability and performance. They didn't stop improving but a mid 90's Camry is still perfectly fine. It's reliable, its safe and it gets decent economy. A 2019 Camry is better still, but not so much that I would just toss the older one if it was still in good working order. The same couldn't be said comparing a 70's sedan to a 90's one though. Its unlikely a 70's car would have even made it into the 90's unless an unreasonable amount of money had been spent on it or if it had some collector value that makes it worthwhile.

One thing that has changed is that as technology improves it seems that it takes less and less time for a product to move from its growth stage to maturity. Cars took the better part of a century to get there. The personal computer took about 30 years. Smartphones have done it in a decade. The next cool consumer product will probably go from hot new thing to perfected in around 5 years. Again, maturity doesn't mean people stop buying it or that it doesn't get better. What it does mean is that for most consumers its "good enough". Aside from niche use cases year over year improvements become minor and the majority of sales are based on replacing attrition due to damage, failure, loss or theft. Niche an high end subsets like luxury cars, gaming PC's and $1k smartphones are broadly immune to this. But the demographics who buy into them are either dedicated enough or rich enough to be able to commit to replacing their hardware often.

Ownership

[fluffernutter]

How will I own any of my data if I don't have a place in my house to store it all?

Re:Ownership

[MrLogic17]

Too late.
Where is your E-Mail? Not many regular users have full POP clients anymore.

That just one example.

END?

[JBMcB]

1990s - Will terminal services bring the end of the desktop?
2000s - Will the internet bring the end of the desktop?
2010s - Will tablets bring the end of the desktop?

I'm guessing no.

Meet the new boss...

[msauve]

same as the old boss.

Here's your 3270, er, "pad." You can do whatever you want by connecting to our mainframe, er, "cloud." We'll send you a monthly bill for cpu time, er, "AaaS."

Microsoft Has Fought This

[Jaime2]

Windows as a service would have been widely available ten years ago if Microsoft hadn't thrown up licensing hurdles that made it pretty much impossible. This has never been an issue of whether anyone wants it or if it's possible, it has always been an issue of how Microsoft would charge for it. There's plenty of pent up demand and lots of sales will happen as soon as this becomes available. But, don't take that as a sign that everyone wants it or that the desktop market is dead.

Nope

[DarkRookie2]

Desktop are still better for gaming, multi-tasking, speed, and cost.
Laptop are close.
Phone are far off
And no cloud app will ever compare.

Uh, what?

[squiggleslash]

Today, Google has shown with its Chrome OS that most of us can pretty much do anything we need to do on a computer with just a web browser.

That's not true, which is why Google has been trying to make ChromeOS more attractive by adding support for GNU/Linux and Android applications.

The bare minimum Chromebook was suitable for some uses, but very few people bought it to use as their primary computing environment. The fact Google is putting an enormous amount of work into making it a full desktop tells you that the basis of the article is... dubious.

Oh sure, Microsoft sees managed desktops as a thing, but I'd suggest the intended market are businesses, and even then most are going to balk at the concept of something that ceases to work if their extremely high bandwidth Internet connection goes down.

The Google streaming games thing also doesn't really factor into this... at all. That's something likely to replace consoles, not PCs. If consoles didn't kill PCs, why would Google's streaming efforts do that?

Here we go again

[Dunbal]

Wasn't the desktop supposed to be dying 15 years ago, when tablets first started coming out?

We have cars. We have SUV's. We have minivans. We have trucks. We have motorcycles. No single one of them is in danger of extinction, although sales vary between the groups from year to year. The desktop is also here to stay. Only a desktop can provide the raw computing power, the flexibility, the ease of modification and programming. Try to switch the graphics card on your tablet. Try to program your console.

Now we can argue that not everyone needs or wants a desktop - I agree. But dead? Never.

Re:How will this work?

[kerashi]

Even when you are connected to the internet, the vast majority of land area in the United States lacks the level of connectivity needed to support something like the article implies things are going to. It's already annoying enough that games are no longer shipping on discs (a 24-hour download is not uncommon here) and I bet if they tried to do away with the desktop, the torches and pitchforks would come out extremely quickly.

Speaking of which, I have a few extra pitchforks in the barn if anyone needs to borrow one.