I don't know why the electronics industry as a whole is in such a rush to declare the desktop PC dead. You could of course make the first assumption that they want to sell more handheld gadgets to fill the void, but really they make money from selling PCs too, you know. The PC made the computing industry what it is today.
(By the way, a note to Apple-ites: YEEEEEEEESSSSSSS I include "Macs" when I say "desktop PC!" Is it a computer? Is it your personal property? Is it on your desk? Then it's a desktop PC. Even if it's from Mars. Moving right along...)
Just recently it's BIOS, a standard PC firmware interface going bye-bye - of course, that's declared so by the company that wants you to replace it with what they're offering. A short while ago it was no less than Google insisting that desktop PCs will go away in three short years. For that matter, you can't swing a mouse without hitting another article about the death of the PC.
Really, I know of no other industry but the computing one that has so many premature funerals. Floppy disks were supposed to die, but I'll be smacked if the desktop PCs I bought brand new over the last year didn't all come with a floppy drive. I can't think of any programming language that hasn't been declared dead, and yet they're still hiring for so many of them. And of course there's the famous IE6 funeral... oh, if only it were that easy! Even Microsoft can't get its own users to give up on IE6, which shows you what kind of a corner you paint yourself into when you make the lowest common denominator your base.
Desktop PCs are never going away. They might be marginalized to a smaller market, which is a good thing, but going away, no. Mainframes are still out there too, you know. Like PCs, they have applications which are more industrial than end-consumer. Now the PC will always have uses for production just like that.
Oh, if I could wave a magic wand and make the PC market be composed entirely of industrial users and no end-consumers at all, I would be just as happy! That day may come. But the day will never come when everybody is using a handheld gadget and nobody has a desktop box. For the simple reason that the handheld gadgets are for consumers only.
I'm typing this on a laptop right now. I've loved having a laptop since I finally got one, because it frees me up to be portable and even take my act on the road if need be. But it's never going to be good for more than a few things. Those things are (a) casual web use, (b) viewing streaming video, (c) writing, and (d) some light coding and scripting.
Because this laptop, bought just this year, is taxed to its disk-buzzing, fan-blowing maximum if I have five tabs in Firefox, a text editor, and a terminal open at the same time. How am I going to compile tarballs, render ray-traced 3D scenes, or compose large multimedia presentations on this thing?
For another point, interfaces on gadgets will always be limiting. I wonder how many people out there complaining about the interface for Gimp and Blender are actually trying to use it on a netbook? I've tried Gimping on this laptop - it has one of those touchpads - and it's nowhere near the control you have with a mouse or tablet. Yes, I can plug my tablet into the laptop and work from there, but now I'm defeating the purpose of a "laptop" - I can't balance a laptop and a tablet on my lap and get any work done. Might as well have a desk. And Blender becomes really, really, really hard without that 105-key IBM-type keyboard with the separate number pad. Even SVG editing on a laptop is painful, though least of all out of vector, raster, and 3D meshing. So, again, how can I design graphics on a professional scale if the world offers only handheld gizmos?
That's what the desktop's for.
I have complained for many, many years that the solution to "desktop usability" for Joe Sixpack is NOT to stupid down the desktop until it's fit only for a doggy chew-toy, but rather to take that desktop AWAY from Joe and patiently explain to him that he needs to buy one of those handheld shiny toys. Joe isn't going to make anything to save his life, beyond a MySpace profile and a Twitter account for him to hurr and durr on. Do you sell a backhoe to every granny who comes into the car lot looking for a car that will just get her to the grocery store and weekly bingo game? Then why do we sell a PC to every granny who just wants to check her email and look at her grandkid's photos? And now it looks like I'm finally going to get my wish. The for-dummies-only crowd lost and I won.
So yeah, as far as the muggles are concerned, the desktop PC is going to be extinct. Good, that's great, shhhhh! Don't tell them! The desktop PC will go back to being by producers for producers (and the hobbyist hardcore gamer who needs that kind of power). Let me tell you, when the PC desktop market becomes all developers all the time, you'll see them singing a different tune about the market share of Linux systems.
At this rate, September might even end!
Update 6/21/10: Here's a great example of the kind of story I'm talking about, published just six days after this post: Three Reasons the PC Era Is Coming To An End. Summary of Techi.com's post:
- Reason #1: The Cloud! The Cloud!
- Reason #2: OMGWTFBBQ! THE CLOOOUUUUD!
- Reason #3: Tablets! Because, dude, the Cloud!
I am at one mind with Larry Ellison regarding Cloud Computing. Uncle Larry speak big heap wisdom. Tablets are just what I'm talking about when I say you can't replace the desktop PC.
Don't get me wrong: If these dainty little TOYS had decent power, I'd be singing a different tune. But we're about 20 years further away from that time, if it ever gets here at all. The bottleneck is battery power and overheating.
8 feedbacks
Comments:
I guess my point is that UEFI is great...but coreboot (http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot, formerly known as LinuxBIOS), with it's "text-only" interface, is BETTER! It is far more advanced from a truly technological and useful perspective. It has ideas such as remote management in mind allowing for "mind blowing" things (at least "mind blowing" to the "click interface" crowd) as booting the BIOS to make an SSH connection to your PC and update the BIOS. Imagine that. Still for UEFI and it's "click" interface?
The average user doesn't care about BIOS, coreboot, EFI, SSH or even how their files are stored. I like a machine I can use for running various BSDs and MINIX, but then that's obviously not what the majority of computer owners are after. These people are not knuckle dragging "dumb terminal" users any more than the average car owner should be considered dumb for wanting to buy a car with an engine pre-installed and designed to operate to specification with little scope for modification. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure a dumb terminal is not what you think it to be.
Whether or not hardcore gamers stay with any platform pretty much depends on where the action goes. Consoles have clearly eaten in to the PC/Mac gaming business, and a quick look around most game shops is proof of that. Still, I don't see PC gaming dying out any time soon. Some games work better on PCs, and certainly there is a market for people who will spend a weekend tuning a machine to get another 5 fps out of TF2.
Lefty, I'm not sure you're aware of the irony you have going on in your post.
Pete, nice blog. I enjoyed your earlier Angband post.
> "The average user doesn't care... blah blah ...These people are not knuckle dragging 'dumb terminal' users"
Go ahead, I get whipped for it daily! :)
Look, I'm terribly sorry to be calling people knuckle-dragging anythings, but "the average user" is about to become "the average trampled dictatorship subject," and I dare say they still wouldn't give a scrambled damn even when that fabled boot is grinding their neck into the muck.
See this? ASCAP is gunning for shutting down Creative Commons, "public knowledge," and the EFF. And it's going to go through, mark my words, while the average user just goes on not caring.
You think that the biggest issue is The Rich about to try to control more of the publishing avenues? It isn't. There are other areas in politics, for example, which are much more important and just as corrupted.
While I don't think it's fair to label you the knuckle-dragging citizen for not following
politics closely (if you cared as much about politics as these issues I'd argue you'd blog about the former also. If you do then I'll switch to another important topic) for you to say others are knuckle-dragging citizens for not following your topic of choice lies close to hypocrisy. We can't know about everything.
> "There are other areas in politics, for example, which are much more important and just as corrupted."
Lucky us, the few intrepid citizens who can find out about that corruption, because we dig through piles of fluff in the media until we find the real news. But that task gets harder and harder the more controlled the media gets. I'd argue that media freedom is penultimate in importance. I might not be right, but I could make an argument.
Secondly, completely agree that there are far too many sheeple in this country. With the ACTA, the corporations are people law and our continued erosion of civil liberties under every party of government we are fast moving away from freedom to security and leisure, which is just a pretty prison. there's a reason they dropped critical thinking from the curriculum.
Actually this is great news for Indie software types. Look at the market they get now that the dumb terminal people have left. Now we won't have to deal with crippleware for stupid people, we can have fully featured programs that intellgient people can actually use!
Let the knuckle dragging, low brow, lip droolers have their little shiny dumb terminals!