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Intels Wavering Market Dominance
Dale Chesser
writes "...or the PC is dying?
This article is rather critical of the PC's survival, citing
the evolution of the "internet appliance". " I'm not
so sure. Cheap PCs are making billions, and despite years
of hype, those Net Appliances still aren't catching on.
There's a fix for that, and it ain't hardware, stupid. (And that's not just hot air. My mother runs Linux.)
-kiowa
Is a switching device a computer? (e.g. Cisco hardware) An intelligent disk array? (e.g. NetApp)
My point is that computing devices are all around us that are non-PC technology. They are absorbed into the infrastructure, becoming ubitquitous. Perhaps a better topic would be to discuss the diminishing value of any desktop system.
Is it just me, or do net appliances sound just like a new cash cow for hardware manufacturers? I like my computer...keep your hands off. Long live the PC!
I used to believe the hype from Sun that "the network is the computer". But now I think the computer is an $80 processor and a 6 gig hardrive at less than $300. No paradigm changes anytime soon that I can see.
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"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
I find it incredible that while Intel receives so much grief for having a serial number in a CPU that NO EXISTING SOFTWARE makes use of, the NetPC (or any one of its other names) gets no attention at all.
Is it just me who finds the thought of having to have my "computer" connected to a service provider every time I want to run an application a little suspicous? How would you like to pay a fee every time you start your favorite word processor?
What about the privacy implications of your "computer" having NO local storage at all? Where do you plan keeping your private PGP keys?
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The point is, you already trust your most important data to someone else who can edit it at anyt time and only gives you limited write access to it. They're called your bank or broker.
Who needs it? I like my PC, and will always have one, thank you very much.
I personally would never use a "Network Computer" because it puts all the control back in the hands of the sysadmins... and every sysadmin I've ever known has been as surly and lazy as a Teamster. If I had to get one of them off their IRC every time I needed something done, I'd go nuts.
Yours Truly,
doodie-boy
Just to let you guys know that although this is about a Microsoft product, it does not imply that I think the Microsoft Product is useful for the purpose described.
We've implemented and are continuing to implement thin clients instead of PCs. "Windows Terminal Server" - all very fine: the clients are nice little modified Tektronix X terminals, and very stable.
One problem is that the Terminal Server(s) is/are just glorified souped-up PCs and when they go down, everyone goes down.
There are various problems, mostly arising from the fact that we're trying to run applications designed for use on PCs on non-PCs and also that we're trying to run a Thin Client server on a server system which was not originally designed with Thin Clients in mind.
There are benefits though, we only need to install most applications once and everybody gets access to those applications.
We will soon be setting up a remote office at which point the Thin Client could well come into it's own - being able to run applications over a low bandwidth link where the user gets the impression of fast access to our local network.
I am sure that the PCs market share will be diminished by these types of clients in the near future. To what extent... that is anybodies guess.
When they say that PC will disappear and turn into all the appliances, i fail to see what exactly they mean.. HD will go into a hair dryer, monitor will go into tv, ram will go to your stereo, motherboard will be somewhere in the kitchen, video card will be built into garbage disposer.. I dunno what the hell do they mean.
Somebody explain, if you can.
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
you'd be surly too if you had to deal with idiots like you all day...
.50cal sniper rifle as my wallpaper (it barely fits on my 1920x1200 desktop)..
.. and between mgmt not buying decent equipment to stupid political bullshit, I'm surprised we don't see more news reports about admins pulling out large weapons and killing lots of lusers....
... btw: last 2-3 admins I know shared my hardcore gun fetish: I got a
...is going to say that they will not 'give up the power' of their personal computer. Well of COURSE we won't. But then, we aren't joe consumer.
Joe wants something he doesn't have to think about, running as an appliance, that magically does everything he needs it to do, and is cool. Joe wants to exert as little effort as possible and achieve maximum return. Why else would WebTV make money? I've used it.. its HORRIBLE. But then, Joe doesn't know any better. Joe thinks WebTV is great, because he has a nifty remote that hooks him into the Internet, and he can look at his pr0n, or stock reports, or whatever, without leaving his couch.
Internet appliances will do well, mainly because people don't know any better. Joe thinks PGP is an Angel Dust variant.. he has no concept of what encryption means to privacy. Joe just wants his email and pretty pictures.
Does this sound bitter? Sure.. but it is absolutely true. There's one more thing that is not being addressed as well.. something I haven't seen people talk about much.. the PC saturation level right now.
There are alot of people whom own PC's right now. And they are pretty good. And I would bet that most people do what they need to do on their existing PC. They aren't looking to buy a new one anytime soon.. since the one they have cost them a few grand. PC's are moving into an auto buying cycle.. every 5 years people think about buying a new one. 5 years?!?!?! Yep. Perhaps it's a bit shorter on average, but you can still see my point.. the burning market for PC's is out there, but is being saturated. People whom own PC's already aren't upgrading at the drop of a hat, like some of us might.
So Joe, having spent $3k on his setup a few years ago, needs something better this year. He shops around and sees a sub $1k Internet appliance that promises to be fast, and flexible, and he won't have to worry about applications or software support, or anything like that. He just pays $800, and then $50 per month, and he is online, with everything he needs to function. Throw in the optional 'GamePak(tm)', a local hard drive and CDROM in a box that hot swaps into the unit, and he's good to go for QuakeIV.
The market is splitting. There will be people there to pick up those pieces. And while I don't agree that the PC is doomed, I do believe that it's market will shrink, and if Intel doesn't cater to both sides, they will get screwed.. because AMD is the shark circling the embedded PC style appliance waters, and Motorola and DEC are not far behind. Motorola won't run windows, you say? So, how hard would it be to use OSX on an internet appliance? And perhaps give it the 'feel' of Windows? Or perhaps even Virtual PC thrown in for the bargain? DEC chips already run WinNT. I'm using an AMD right now and it kicks butt. Intel should be afraid.. not right now.. but in 3 years or so.. ooooooh boy. Mind you, I don't think they will lose their shirts, but their power is diminishing, and will continue to diminish in the face of the information age's natural maturation.
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of Freedom."
Not that I'm nitpicking (so what if I am :) ). But the way comments are phrased can lead to misinterpretation and further misunderstandings by other misinformed observers.
In the recent past, the prices of PC allowed smalltime "Mom-'n-Pop" neighborhood operations to slap together components and sell a PC at a significant enough price to make a tidy profit with the tiny number of PC's being sold. With Today's economies of scale to sell a PC at the holy grail price of $300-$500 and lower, as low as "free" (cough-cough), the same "Mom-'n'-Pop" neighborhood operations needs to sell magnitudes of more PC's to continue to make the same revenue.
The drive to the cheaper and cheaper PC brings great benefits to the consumer in terms of price. It also brings benefits to the established behemoths (Sony, Compaq, HP, Toshiba, Hitachi, IBM et al) that it drives smaller competitors into increased conditions instability. One product cycle gets screwed up and you're out of business, unless you have the production scale and diversification to balance potential catastrophies.
The giant OEMs are pushing the cheap PC phenomemon as much as consumers are. The giant OEMs can make hundreds of millions of cheap PC's and make good money. This is the same direction as most/all Consumer Electronics devices have gone. VCRs, TVs, Portable CD players, Game Consoles, Microwaves etc. If you want cutting edge, you will have it, at your regularly hiked up PC price.
That is the error of Intel's way, they are still squeezing themselves into the ever shrinking high priced range that Giant OEM's and 'mass-market-consumers' are running from with wallets firmly zipped shut. Intel is trying to resurrect a market condition that is having its headstone carved today and cemetary plot dug.
...of on a near tangent...
...200Mbps USB is better than 800Mbps IEEE 1394? for almost the same price?
...PIII + 200Mbps USB vs. Future AMD K(whatever) + 800 Mbps IEEE1394, hmmmmmm....
Rant, Rant, Ramble, Ramble
i keep hearing all this vague talk about "information appliances" and "network computers" and how they are taking over the world.
Where are they?
will someone please give me one example of these things? or one person who uses them?
i'd like to dismiss them as hype, but it's hard to do that if you can't find something to dismiss. How do you ignore something that doesn't exist?
NCs or "information appliances" aren't even a product, or an API, or anything. just a vague, meaningless description. a buzzword. And yet supposedly they are completely destroying the old, monolithic, functional "PC"s. Riight.
Honestly, people have been predicting this since the dawn of the PC. I don't expect NetPC's to replace PC's any sooner than public transportation would replace the automobile.
Keep my 2.5 gig of nekkid pitchers on a public server? Not bloody likeley!
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
You're right. But we earned the right to be surly dammit! Many sysadmins started out in tech support. If that doesn't make you contemptuous of computer users, nothing will. :-)
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
And my bank is strongly regulated. My ISP is not. Plus, I have records and a paper trail to correct bank errors. Where is the paper trail if my net appliance service provider looses my magnum opus one day? Or serves my proprietary data to the wrong client?
No thanks, I think I'll just keep my data on my drive.
I think this misses the point. Yes there will be a lot of $80 cpu's and 6 meg hard disks. They will be running a network friendly OS. Some may even be running Windows consumer ( or whatever in is called in a couple of years). There will also be a lot of application specific computers that have only one common thread, they connect to the internet. Hardware and bandwidth are getting to cheap for anything else to happen.
Intel recently made an anouncement after withdrawing support for IEEE 1394 when Apple made their press release suggesting they were going to charge $1.00 per IEEE 1394 port. Intel's recent announcement was that they were going to fund future development of a 200 Mbps speed USB interface. Assumedly since Apple was going to 'charge the outrageous fee of $1.00' for IEEE 1394.
By the time Intel gets this to happen, the world will be enjoying at least 800 Mbps IEEE 1394 if not 1600 Mbps, thanks to the patent pool of Compaq, Apple, Sony, Toshiba and others *shrug*
It wasn't in the headlines, and I don't recall reading it on Slashdot either, I may be mistaken. But Intel did announce it.
Film at 11.
For decades, embedded programming has been the submerged part of the computer sales iceberg. From cars to stereos to kitchen appliances to cash registers to furbies, embedded computers abound and are mostly unremarked on.
Every once in a while, a pundit whose spent his whole career talking about the desktop and only being dimly aware of the server market, stumbles upon this fact, and immediately jumps to the conclusion that because this market is so much larger than the PC market (and it is), that PCs must inevitably be doomed. Bleh.
One additional comment- segmenting is a classic tactic of monopolies. It allows you to agressively price in segments where you are facing competition, and make up the profits by overcharging in segments where you're not facing competition. IBM did it- occasionally charging 40% under cost to undercut the competition. Microsoft is trying to do it (98 vr.s NTWS vr.s NTServer vr.s NTEnteprrise), and now Intel is doing it. No big surprise.
The network appliance stuff needs an infrastructure of applications and developers underneath it.
It *is* getting there, but you still can't get *all* your applications on an NC so you still need a PC so there's no point in giving everyone NCs yet.
It used to be that programmers had to get down to the iron because there was no operating system there to do what they needed done. Hence, their programs were tied to the machine's architecture.
Now that we have a real operating system (linux) to do the grunt work, why does 'PC' need to mean 'IBM-PC clone'? Linux has already been ported to a few architectures that don't look anything like an IBM PC. A linux program sees the same thing whether it's run on a PC, an Alpha, a SPARC, a Mac, or whatever.
I've been considering making my next computer a Mac or something else. Since I would load linux on it anyway, what difference does the hardware make? My programs still compile and run the same.
If someone were to come out with a totally new computer that was well designed and thought out, kept the design open, and then ported linux to it, I'm sure it would sell.
NC's are the transistor radios of computing devices. The basic function is to access and present information, cheap is often a benefit.
The abilities to create, manipulate, store, or randomly access information are add-ons.
For Audio, you can upgrade to hifi, stereo, quadraphonic. Get a turntable and pick your own songs. A tape deck will let you store and arrange music. Mics, mixers, amps, speakers, bigger speakers...you name it.
Draw the parallels from Audio to Computing yourself. I think transistor radios and NCs are both here to stay. Of course the transistor radio of the future, like next week maybe, will be a Palm Pilot with wireless MBone connection.
here's the NC spinoff i would suggest:
take 2 motherboard Asus P5A,one running a K6-2 400 (or better) and acting as a server (DHCP,boot and application server,add anything you see fit),the server don't need a graphic card,it would sport scsi hardware (if you find good deal on them,ATAPI if the scsi solution prove to be expensive) and a bunch good network card (if you plug the NC directly on them),if you're going to use a router or a switch,you only need 2 network card (one going to the router and the other going to the firewall host),on the other motherboard,you put in a K6-2 300 and either 2 network card or one and a modem,to that combo,add as many NC as you see fit,now,there's no need to rely on an isp or other type of service provider for your apps since you have your own server and the only thing you need from them is an internet connection......
Canadian AC
Another interesting take on Intel's future is Cringely's current column over at PBS
2 5.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit199902
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You're wrong here. Just wait...
Take a look in an old Sears catalog from way back... old DIY'er/"hacker" types would buy an item from it called a standalone electric motor. you could buy all sorts of wacky attachments for it... like shoe polishers, blenders, etc. My grandfather had one of these setups gathering in the basement.
This sounds exactly how we use computers today. True, you are saving money by adding components onto your computer instead of everything standalone, but don't expect the market to support your way of doing things forever. We have computers in the telephone, car, tele, and so on.
Sure, they are not programmable computers, but that's also the point. Only a minority of the world's population use desktop computers. You have to not think in terms of CPU and harddrive.
Apple gets it... look at the demand for the iMac (leave Apple biggotry at the door please..).
3 Com gets it with the Palm computers.
Microsoft doesn't get it with WinCE, which just looks like an effort to stuff a desktop into a smaller device, rather than trying to explore new ideas and change the way we work. (Of course, they could be just trying to dillute the handheld market the way they strategized screwing over Java , and developers).