We’re generally a Macintosh shop here in Santa Rosa. I have Windows and Linux PCs, too, but most of the heavy lifting is done on Macs. Next Wednesday I’m expecting a delivery from B&H Photo (no tax and free shipping!) of four new iMacs plus some software totaling $5,407. I fully expect these to be the last personal computers I will ever buy.
How’s that for a 2014 prediction?
Moore’s Law doubles the performance of computers every couple of years and my old rule of thumb was that most people who make their living with computers are unwilling to be more than two generations behind, so that means no more than four years between new PCs. And that’s the logic upon which the market seemed to function for many years. But no longer.
Wall Street analysts have noted the slowdown in PC sales. Servers are still doing well but desktops and notebooks are seeing year-over-year declines. Even Apple is selling fewer Macs and MacBooks than before. This trend is unlikely to be arrested… ever.
The computers I’m replacing are those of my wife and kids — three Mac Minis from 2007 and a 2008 iMac. The Minis were all bought on Craigslist for an average cost of $300 while the iMac was an Apple closeout almost six years ago.
I don’t get a new PC this time but I did spend $400 to rebuild my 2010 MacBook Pro with 16 gigs of RAM, a big hybrid drive and a new, higher-capacity, battery, which should be plenty for the next 2-3 years.
The Minis are for the most part okay, but my kids tell me that the next version of Minecraft will no longer support their GPUs. None of them can be upgraded to the latest version of OS X, either. They’ve reached the end of the line as desktops so I’ll probably use them as servers running Linux. None of them will be sold or thrown away.
The 2008 iMac has been slowly losing its mind and now goes into occasional fits of spontaneous rebooting that I think is related mainly to overheating. I’ll leave it turned off until it’s time to copy over to the new machine. Until then Mary Alyce can use her 2008 MacBook.
What we have here is a confluence of three trends. The first trend is marginal performance improvements over time. Yes, a new PC will make your spreadsheet recalculate faster but if you can’t feel the improvement — if the change isn’t measurable in your experience — is it an improvement at all? Why change?
Gamers will always want faster computers, but a second trend will probably satisfy them. That trend is exemplified by the Mainframe2 column I wrote a few weeks ago. Apps requiring a lot of processing power are starting to migrate to the cloud where massive crowds of GPUs can be applied only as needed making much more efficient use of resources and allowing a PC gaming experience on devices like tablets. Adobe especially seems to be embracing this trend as a new way to generate consumer app revenue. They will be followed eventually by all software companies, even game companies.
Deliberate obsolescence can push us toward replacing a PC, but replacing it with what? The third trend means the next PC I buy for my kids won’t be a PC at all, but a phone. I wrote about this before in my column The Secret of iOS 7.
This is the key transition and one that bears further explanation. Apple is happy with it while Microsoft and Intel are not. Apple is happy because the average length of time we go before replacing a phone is actually getting shorter just as our PC replacements are getting farther apart. Long driven by two-year cellular contract cycles, the average life expectancy of a mobile phone is 18 months and in a couple years it will probably drop to 12 months.
Look at this from Apple’s perspective. If they sell us computers every five years at an average cost of $1200 and a gross profit margin of 40 percent that’s $480 in profit over five years or $96 per customer per year. But if Apple sells us an iPhone every 18 months at a real cost of $500 (usually hidden in the phone contract) with the same 40 percent margin that’s $200 every 18 months or $133 per year. Apple makes far more money selling us iPhones than iMacs. If the phone replacement cycle shortens then Apple makes even more money from us.
No wonder Apple has little nostalgia for the Mac.
And given that the company dropped the word computer from its name back in 2007, they’ve seen this coming for a long, long time.
This year we’ll see an important structural change take place in the PC hardware market. I’m not saying there won’t still be desktop and notebook PCs to buy, but far fewer of us will be buying them. This tipping point has already come and gone and all I am doing here is pointing out its passage.
If you read about some Wall Street analyst attributing declining PC sales to the bad economy at, say, Dell or HP, well they are just being dumb. It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s a whole new market.
It should be no surprise, then, that Apple — a company known for its market timing — has just started shipping a new Mac Pro. That amazing computer is overkill for 95 percent of the desktop market. It represents the new desktop PC archetype, which is a very expensive hugely powerful machine tightly aimed at the small population of professional users who still need a desktop. Unless you are editing HD video all day every day, you don’t need a new desktop PC.
What the rest of us will get are new phones and whole new classes of peripherals. The iPhone in your pocket will become your desktop whenever you are within range of your desktop display, keyboard and mouse. These standalone devices will be Apple’s big sellers in 2014 and big sellers for HP and Dell in 2015 and beyond. The next iPod/iPhone/iPad will be a family of beautiful AirPlay displays that will serve us just fine for at least five years linked to an ever-changing population of iPhones.
Apple will skim the cream from the AirPlay display market, too, until it is quickly commoditized at which point the big PC companies can take over while Cupertino concentrates on the higher-margin iPhones.
Now imagine you no longer need or even want a desktop or notebook PC. What that means is your life becomes even more phone-centric with the result that your inclination to upgrade is further accelerated. Move the upgrade slider to 12 months from 18 and what does it do to Apple’s bottom line? Exactly.
And what does it do to Microsoft’s? Intel’s? Dell’s? HP’s?
Exactly.
Tim Cook has come under a lot of criticism for not moving fast enough at Apple but frankly this structural market change simply couldn’t have happened before now. He had to wait.
2014 will be Cook and Apple’s year and I don’t see even a chance that he will blow it.
Wow…brilliant.
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While Microsoft is spinning in the mud over Windows 8, the rest of the Windows/Intel/Android work can only watch from the sidelines.
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I remember in your 1995 interview with Steve Jobs, Steve admitting Microsoft had won. Apple’s inaction in the preceding years allowed Microsoft the time to get Windows right and take over the market. Now we have the reverse. Microsoft has lost. Years of inaction and really dumb decisions is about to bite them.
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You are right. In a few years Microsoft could become an enterprise only IT provider.
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This is so good, so scary, so logical, I think I am going to change my investments.
“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.” – Steve Jobs, 1996
With the benefit of 18 years of hindsight, we see that Steve followed through on this exactly. He said that just before he DID come back to run Apple, they DID proceed to milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth (the resurgence that started with the iMac in 1998 and continues today), and they DID get busy on the next great thing, which was the iPod and then the iPad/iPhone.
Maybe….seems dubious to me. If only because there are billions of people on this planet who are going to be in a position to get their first computers soon. If only a small fraction actually need PCs, I still have trouble seeing how that won’t lead to growth.
And personally, I just helped my girlfriend buy a new laptop, and we looked at the surfaces, the chromebooks, the lighter weight alternatives. She doesn’t need anything fancy, she’s a teacher. But those weren’t going to be sufficient for her work. They don’t yet provide an efficient workflow.
It seems like your experience buying more laptops when all the big companies are really insisting you don’t need them, is consistent with mine. We still need PCs, even if we wish we didn’t.
Those billions of people will be buying iPhones, iPads, and their Android equivalents.
Few of us need a full fledge PC — even in a corporate setting. Sending memos, corresponding through email, and updating corporate web information can easily be done on an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard. If you do need an actual PC, you can use a program like Citrix to talk to one. This will come because corporations will move to a “BYO-iPad” approach. Providing and tracking PCs is expensive. I use to work in hardware and we spent an awful lot of time tracking inventory of PCs that are just sitting around and gathering dust. That’s a lot of savings right there.
Plus, without PCs, you don’t need assigned desks. Without assigned desks, you don’t need cubicles. Without cubicles, you can shrink your real estate needs by 30%. Take a look around your office and count the number of empty cubicles. Now, how much is your company paying to have these empty cubicles? And, I’m including those cubicles stuffed with PC and related hardware that no one is using.
In the consumer world, you already know that the PC is obsolete. You don’t need a PC to watch cat videos or to post to Facebook about the latest cat video you just watched. I bought my mother an iPad, and she hasn’t turned on her PC since. She can do her on line banking, emailing, and whatever else she needs to do with her iPad.
There are few of us who will need a PC: Programmers (I like three monitors thank you, and you can’t even write programs for an iPad on an iPad.), Excel spreadsheet jockeys, video editors, etc. Here’s a great way to tell if you need a PC. Do you need more than one monitor? No? Then no PC for you!
Many people prefer a PC to a tablet because they’re use to using a mouse, seeing windows, and want their menus. After all, they’ve been doing computing that way for almost two decades. However, for others, a “computer” isn’t a beige box that sits on the floor, or a silvery laptop, but that 10″ tablet. They have no need for a PC.
Oh man
I’ve been with computers since DOS 6 and I’ve always hated mouse.
But touchscreen I hate even more.
If you count performance scores in long runs you get it man, you get it.
and yeah, I hated all these stupid keyboards too. All of them.
So – voice input may be solution.
Who knows
I hated the mechanical mice with the cords. What’s wrong with the cordless optical mouse.
I don’t need more than 1 monitor to:
– do DVD ripping (backups) and archival
– do 128-track project studio audio recording (sure, another monitor would be nice, but I don’t need it at all)
– store terabytes of data connected always to the CPU I prefer
– do video editing
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A lot, if not most, of our programmers at work still with one monitor just fine (sure, many have 2 monitors, but I’m not sure I’d even say that’s the norm).
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I realize you were indulging in a generalization, but even at that it’s simply too broad.
PS – “Sending memos, corresponding through email, and updating corporate web information can easily be done on an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard” – not any bluetooth keyboard I’ve seen. If you type more than around 80 words a minute and you’re doing any volume of content, there’s simply too many skipped and repeated keys on various keyboards. I don’t doubt it’ll get better, but it sure isn’t there yet.
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Though if you do know of a keyboard for an iPhone 4S that works as well as a keyboard on a PC for a fast touch typist, please advise. I’ve tried several, glad to try more.
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“Plus, without PCs, you don’t need assigned desks.” – only if you are also in a paperless office. Wouldn’t work in our company, too many people have materials aside form their computer that would be cumbersome to move around or to have to go to some centralized file to get. A lot of our people – meaning people in IT – still use physical notebooks (I don’t, but I am by far the unusual person in my environment, people are often surprised I usually take notes with my tablet and attached keyboard if they don’t already know). As an aside, we sure as heck don’t leave unattended PCs at unused cubicles, aside from a few rare visitors’ stations, as that’s just an invitation for theft.
Try an Apple Bluetooth keyboard
Why would Apple Bluetooth allow for faster typing?
> The iPhone in your pocket will become your desktop whenever you are within range of your desktop display, keyboard and mouse.
I have been waiting on this for years. Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone working on it.
“Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone working on it.”
I know there’s some Silicon Valley tech company known for its secrecy. On the tip of my tongue.
; )
Yeah, this kind of dreaming about BYOD will last till everyone will get its waste. Full waste.
No iphone could serve you as PC replacement. even best iPad or any Android.
Sad story about trenders who really have to follow suit
And then there would be the new variations on “butt-dialing” like blank emails being sent out “in reply”. Or imagine being “in range” of a monitor while you are viewing a confidential/compromising text (like a job inquiry) or a “porn” picture, or reading your Bible verse of the day (something to offend everyone…).
Our global company has been very proactive in ADDING iFad support where appropriate, but still is way too Windows/Office/Outlook dependent to get all that working in full heavy-duty mode for replacement by mere tablets. Our business is highly regulated, and despite significant initiatives over the last few decades to make it all “electronic”, the reseach/development/review/approval processes are still highly dependent on a lot of document and data manipulation that are way too demanding for tablet mode.
And now various security concerns are forcing them to rethink their mobile architecture – a lot of issues are cropping up now due to mobile insecurity, and they are pulling the reins back – “Whoa, horsie!”.
This is last point is becoming a concern in personal life, too. I am not comfortable with the idea of doing banking or carrying around all my financial files on my Galaxy Note 2 with the prospect of it being lost/stolen or hacked by cyber crooks (or cops) with NSA-grade tools. Some savvy people are even going back to using feature phones due to those concerns.
This decline in infrastructure robustness, economic viability, and security (we used our credit and debit cards at Target after Thanksgiving – anyone else?), and corresponding declines in civility and civil liberties need to be factored into all this starry-eyed notion of the future being driven by technology in a social/cultural/economic vacuum. The technology is not isolated from a gritty real-world context.
Yes yes yes
The security aspects of phone-based computing are not where they need to be for business, and it gets even worse when you try to mingle personal with work content. There isn’t decent device encryption on phones, the incidence of loss and theft is substantially higher than with laptops, all communication passes over the public networks, and in many cases you’re forced to rely on third party services like Dropbox for file management and sharing. And that’s before bringing up issues with remote wipe utilities destroying your data vs work data, or personal apps exposing work content to the world. And after that we get to the real problem, which is that the apps aren’t ready yet, and the distro model needs some love. You think Apple wants to yield on the 30% app tax? How about separating personal from corporate license mgmt? And actually using a spreadsheet through whatever combination of interfaces the phones of the world embrace could be ugly, to say nothing of doing it on a phone’s 4″ screen.
To the extent that consumers do home computing, phones can supplant many PCs. But outside that it’s not nearly ready, and those problems make this further away than 2014.
Don’t know if you’ve heard of this but it is VERY interesting. Quantifying good prediction.
http://goodjudgmentproject.com/blog/
Love the column, the per customer dollars business case is compelling. But when you mentioned that gamers will be happy with the off loading of large GPU processing to the cloud, your column from last year about how buffering was going to kill the internet popped into my head. I’m paraphrasing, apologies if this isn’t quite what you meant, but did I misunderstand the buffering issue or is it simply not relevant here? Or are you assuming it will be resolved along with the above trends?
Sorry for the brown nosing, but I’m a long time reader, love your stuff.
Thanks
RS
Bufferbloatis well on the way to being solved. I will write an update soon.
The real issue w/ gaming in the cloud is latency. In twitchy first person shooters (quite popular) the latency would ruin the experience – that 100+ ms round trip is way way too long and you’ll be sitting in the respawn queue before you know what happened.
It sounds like you owe the state of California $400 of use tax in April 2015. But I agree, new, high performance PCs and notebooks are not compelling purchases. You can get plenty for 95% of the population at the $400 price point.
Exactly. As a Californian you pay tax one way or another. The 3 choices are to have the retailer do it, to keep records and pay yourself on your tax return, or to lie on your tax return. Many people have done the last one and the article wording implied that path too.
Note that California has been coming down hard on the liars and the self employed, assuming a significant overlap. At one point they required refiling the previous 3 years of returns (“are you sure you want to lie again”). And if you lied in one year it is reasonable to assume you lied in other years.
So morally, legally and logistically things are not “tax free”.
I believe Robert X Cringley negotiated tax sales abatement prior to moving to the state of California.
The missing piece in the plan for phone + desktop display is replacing the laptop/notebook. Tablets aren’t enough because we still want keyboards, so unless there’s a notebook-like-thing which simply docks the phone we’re still going to want something portable that has a good input interface.
Motorola had that: Lapdock hardware with Webtop software. Webtop 3 works pretty well with my Droid Bionic running ICS, but still not a full Linux (or Windoze, BTW) notebook replacement. Even so, it has been handy for a few quick trips.
So further iterations could have made it more suitable as a replacement, but Google-ola killed off that concept once they realized it threatened their Chromebook and tablet strategies.
Just as well, since I do NOT want all my data on a mobile device that can be damaged, lost, or stolen way too easily.
I’m not sure about that. My experience is anecdotal, but I just replaced my 3 year-old laptop with a new one this month. I also just bought my wife her own laptop, as she’s been using her iphone for a few years and hates it as an interface. She’s been begging for a laptop for over a year.
If it were possible to just buy her a Bluetooth keyboard, nice monitor, mouse, and speakers that worked with her phone.. that would have been great. As of yet, it isn’t practical to do that. Yes, you can get a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, speakers, and even a wireless nice big monitor… but the iOS on her iphone doesn’t work properly with that setup. (We tried.) All her apps looked incorrect and the interface on the big screen was wonky. She hated it, so we returned the peripherals and purchased her a laptop. Now at the home she uses the laptop and she uses her phone only while away.
If there is a vendor who can come up with a truly seamless way to make an iphone/ipad/android work with a TV or big screen display… then that will be the time when your prediction comes true.
I just told you that time is 2014.
And it’s about time…
I was using my Nokia N800 “web pad” dual booting Linux to do simple photo edits ( via Gimp !!) and burn DVD’s in 2008-9 while traveling around the world. Of course there were only a few locations where I didn’t have access to an internet cafe to do things much faster ( and yet still had power to burn a dvd overnight). With todays phones and TV’s I can easily see a solution allowing practical use of one’s cell phone as their general computing device – and not just “in a pinch”.
I’ve been using a dockable umpc since 2007. But it’s not what’s possible that counts but what makes money for devices and services companies. They can get more of our money by selling us three devices instead of one along with cloud services and upgrades to keep the cash rolling in.
I agree with Bob – my wife almost never sits down at our desktop computer anymore, content to plink out paragraphs long emails on her iPhone, even though it would only take three steps to get to a full-sized keyboard and display. And I only really use the desktop when I want the screen real-estate.
Also, with regard to TV – is this where that is going as well? Chromecast and Airplay have already made it very simple to get the bits from the mobile device to the big screen (as long as the app supports it). I wonder if this is what Jobs meant by “finally cracking” TV?
Wow, I can’t help but comment that “paragraphs-long” emails on a phone without an external keyboard seems absurd when a computer with full keyboard is nearby. I’ve done that, when on a bus or plane or such, but only for lack of any choice and because it allows me to keep busy while traveling. Doing some 900 words or such on a phone is rather insane. She should at least get a keyboard to put in her lap, that’s an easy thing to do. Once in a while I will use an external keyboard with my tablet while in the living room, that works fine as it docks directly into it and it sort of works. Though a laptop is simply far superior for comfort.
I have functionally replaced my eMac 1 meg clock with a Windows 8.1 laptop, budget line. need Windows for ham shack stuff. turned on the eMac for the first time in months today to try and print a resume for my wife, and Office X can’t read Win7 office, whatever version is it, I can’t keep track. so plugged the new laptop into the printer, brought it up, noticed the printer was already auto-installed, and cranked two copies out.
can’t stand Win8.x trying to tell me to do something different than what I want to do all the time. but it’s 1/4 the price of the smallest Apple laptop and doing the job.
most of the time, I am on the iPhone instead of either computer. I lust for a larger screen.
the eMac is being kept because I have several videos to edit, and some VHS tapes to aggregate on one DVD, for which I want to use FinalCut.
it does appear that I live the prediction.
The biggest problem I’ve found with the external keyboards is simply none of them work perfectly. There’s too many duplicates when a key is pressed or missed keys. Even the best simply don’t work as well as a keyboard on a PC. You can see the reviews let alone I’ve tried several. Though I’m not saying they don’t work adequately for note-taking or casual communication, just that they are frustrating for any professional writing, assuming one types 80+ words a minute.
I do find it kind of strange that none of these external keyboards for phones/tablets work as well as the old fold-out keyboard for my Palm worked over a decade ago.
That said, the combo I have not tried is whatever it is that connects an iPhone to an iMac or other Apple computer’s keyboard. Perhaps those do work as well.
I was going to disagree but changed my mind. If someone can sell me a smart phone that connects wirelessly and seamlessly to my dual monitors, network, external storage, and peripherals, and also has the power of an i7, I’ll give up my current i7 desktops. I’m not willing to give up any functionality or performance, and I’m especially not likely to go from dual desktop monitors to a 3-inch screen that I already can’t really read. That’s why I was going to disagree, but I do see a day coming when a phone or tablet might be able to do everything my current desktops do, including that when I walk up to the desk, they realize I’m there and everything connects. I know that many customers are willing to give up functionality for portability, but I’d rather buy two devices. I’m not going to type on-screen or on a tiny keyboard, watch a tiny screen, or give up a second screen in order to try to use the wrong tool for the job, but I guess it would be naïve of me to think the day will never come when all these things work together well in a very small form factor.
I have lots of agreement with many of DavidN’s points. As an it manager, I see an increase year over year in screen realestate. I am constantly asked for second and third displays so dolls can lay out two excel sheets and copy and paste easier. Also, there is still a stranglehold on the office suite with MS formats always expected. I would only expect widespread content creation and editing on mobile devices in an enterprise after a release of MS Office for iOS (pffft, right). Also, office wifi typically suck when loaded with lots of users.
“dolls”, LOL. Autocorrect blunder trying to type on my phone on a bus. Thus another point against these devices taking off in the enterprise this year for anything other than content consumption.
Wow! The sexual harassment police will be after you big time!
The evolution of the “smart” phone into a replacement for a desktop is very intriguing. We’re seeing the mobile processors reach adequate performance levels for most people… the key (and not a difficult one for Apple et. al. to execute) is to add another “mode” of operation when Airplaying to a larger screen with a Bluetooth mouse/keyboard.
Add the functionality at the iOS level and to your mobile browser and you’re golden. Apps would need to be tweaked but developers are used to that.
“May you live in interesting times” 🙂
With the iPhone 5s having a CPU that compares very nicely to the desktop CPUs of 2007/2008 https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2424668,00.asp
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-A7-SoC.103280.0.html
I see this as very probable.
iOS 8 will likely be needed before Apple’s transition to fully 64-bit code OS and software is complete. But there is no real reason this can’t begin happening with iOS7.
the iBeacon in your 2014 4k Apple display tells your iPhone that you are close enough to use it. The iPhone (already paired) displays your logon dialog box, or more probable, just lights up the fingerprint scanner imbedded in the keyboard or touchpad. 802.11ac Wifi-Direct is used for the AirPlay display or you can dock to the display for charging and better graphics performance.
There was one piece of logic that was missed in this article. For a device to scale from being a phone to a desktop you need an operating system that can scale. Android and IOS scale between phone and tablet. However, Windows 8 can scale from phone to desktop. That puts Microsoft is a good position once the required hardware exists.
Regarding Intel, I find it hard to believe that they will just keep making desktop processors until their market disappears and they evaporate. Intel was slow to get started with low power mobile processors, but have been working hard to get there. The Atom processors are moving in that direction. They are also able to run all those x86 based applications that mankind has been building for the last 30+ years.
I believe iOS7 on A7 is 64 bit ‘desktop class’, albeit on the low side of power ratings. The A8, A9,… will improve performance significantly. The An series will probably be on the high end of power/efficiency for the next 3 years.
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The important thing is 64 bit is here/now for iOS.
64 bits allows addressing great amounts of memory, which isn’t the issue. My point was about user interface and flexibility. Mobile OSes are not built for the desktop anymore than Windows XP was built to run on a phone. Win 8 is the first attempt to work on all devices. So, Microsoft is actually positioning itself well for the future. Furthermore, existing Windows desktop will run on it.
Oh, my aching battery!
Intel can CAN build processors with low power and performance to beat ARM…. but if Intel sells a gazillion of them at ARM’s profit margin, Intel will go out of business.
Really? Well, I suppose if they actually put proper effort into it and didn’t just try to force x86 into every place that it isn’t a good fit (hmm, actually that’s pretty much everywhere…) then maybe, just maybe, they could.
But they’ve had 25 years to take a run at it and so far… pfffft. There’s an old (very old, now) saying from ARM people – “an intel CPU is a waste of perfectly good sand”.
It’s interesting that both Google hits on that Intel phrase originated from Tim Rowledge.
I don’t think Apple will get so much money with such an upgrade cycle.
Phones are usually sold on 2-year contracts. I know those people exist, but I don’t personally know anybody who replaces their phone in the middle of the contract just because a new phone came out. There are practical limits to how much you can fleece out of a given consumer in a given amount of time.
Also, a new phone is a time to reevaluate your investment in an ecosystem and possibly switch to another. Only a few of the people I know keep the same brand between upgrade cycles, though with 2-year contracts it takes a lot of waiting to see what they do next time.
That’s already changed.
https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/next.html
I knew the desktop was near dead the day I built a dual-core Win 7 box entirely from parts I pulled out of the company junk pile, and none of the company IT people cared that I was pulling parts out of the company junk pile.
So here’s the simple question. Was this article typed on a laptop or something else? My money is on the laptop with a traditional keyboard and traditional word processing software.
While I am in complete agreement that the PC decline is here to stay, I don’t believe we can do everything we need on a tablet or phone (yet). I think a large portion of PC purchases were made because they were the only options. I have purchased many laptops and desktops to do what could now be done by a tablet or Chromebook. Maybe as these devices and accessories evolve we can more easily live without a traditional PC, but today’s business environment still relies heavily on actual PC’s.
Great article and cool vision. I buy into it.
iPods did change the music industry and I see fewer and fewer CD players around, in fact practically none. Same will happen with iPhone and PCs. There will always be the hobbyist, the enthusiast as with any area, but for most folks a smartphone and tablet will suffice.
Also the tone of your article is that the iGenie is out of the bottle, long out of the bottle. I see that too as Microsoft and Intel try to play catch-up on mobile and only accelerate their own soft demise. Surely Google must see this too as Chromebooks were a big nod to the cloud and that castrated PCs were good enough, but I don’t get the sense they’re taking this to its logical conclusion the way Apple appears headed to. Wonder why that is?
Normally I’m a desktop fan. And a Mac desktop at that. Normally I rail against the idea of tablets taking over and see them as “dumbing down” for the masses (and yes I know this sounds condescending!)
However if AirPlay can work as you suggest Bob, then I’m not so sure I agree with myself anymore. The prospect of plonking my iPhone down on this desk and the full-size monitor kicking in, the keyboard and mouse connecting, is actually rather good. Reminds me of my first Thinkpad, years ago, for which I bought a desktop dock. Everything pre-connected and ready to roll once I dropped the laptop on.
The only negative I see for me, here in the UK, is that mainframe CPU/GPU concept. Whereas I don’t doubt the severs can power my software to new heights of speed and efficiency I fear all advantage will be lost when the data eventually makes it back to my “local loop” as BT call it, and my desk.
Maybe it would be helpful to look at this from a different perspective. We have a Windows and Android household. Several PC’s, file servers, printers, phones, etc. The latest version of Windows is unusable. Most non-Apple tablets will not run iTunes. Our phones do not work with our tablets which do not work with our PC’s, or servers, or printers. It is like we’re back in the 1980’s when nothing worked together. Windows on a phone is not too exciting either.
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While Apple is making the OS and some of their software free, Microsoft is trying to push us into a subscription plan for Office. XP is about to run out of support. Vista was a mess. Windows 7 was an improvement, but it has some interesting problems. Windows 8, let’s not go there. What were they thinking?
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You could make a good case Apple has a very good grand plan and is acting on it. On the other hand you could argue Microsoft now doing more damage to themselves than Apple ever could.
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About 15-20 years ago Microsoft caught a lot of heat for their monopolistic practices. There was a lot of truth behind that criticism. However, many of Microsoft’s competitors did a lot of dumb things and put themselves out of business. Firms like WordPerfect, Borland, and Novell made some really dumb business and product decisions that were, well amazing. Today Microsoft is doing the same thing, making really bad business and product decisions.
You got the concept right, but the description wrong, unless you’re going for more of an impact than it really is. What we are all witnessing is not the end of the PC, but the end of the current physical packaging of the applications that were once done on the PC. Some of these applications have gone through three or four morphings, from mainframe to mini-computer to desktop to laptop to tablet and now to the phone or tablet. Most people never needed a PC anyway, and now they don’t even use a phone fully as it stands today. The good news is that solutions keep going down in price, so a monopoly carried the US service carrier product refresh market has been established to save the techs in this business. The reality is we don’t need a new phone as often, but the monopoly will force us to pay more, just like the banking and medical monopolies do already.
Just like the mainframe is still alive, so will the PC be. Some applications just will never migrate to a new packaging for one reason or another. Economics and laziness will dictate this. Heck there’s even card systems from the 60’s still in production today.
The winner here, if I may be so bold as to predict against the Apple current, may be Blackberry or whoever picks up QNX. Not the phone, but QNX. If Apple doesn’t get going on their nirvana box for the next decade whoever exploits QNX will be the next Apple. QNX now easily already supports the changing keyboard, display and I/O environment and IOS, for now, doesn’t.
Big displays will be here and may even thrive. 3D/4D Applications, high-speed analytics an, trading, etc. demographics and a disease of the aging like you and me called presbyopia will make sure of that.
PCs are dying for consumers, true. But they are a long way from dying for producers. To produce information and content day after day, hour by hour, on a phone? Or an iPad? Not practical for the foreseeable future (ie. at least 2 generations for phones or tablet computers). The drop in productivity would be too severe.
However, it’s likely the price for “real” computers will start climbing once the volume drops low enough.
Cringely has been predicting the end of the pc for years now. Will it end abruptly in 2014 or just slowly fade, allowing him to keep predicting the end of the pc as we know it every year?
PC sales are crashing. Only Dell seems to see growth in the PC market.
You forgot Lenovo which saw increased shipments in Q4 2013 (in addition to Dell). The real declines were at HP, Acer, Asus and “other” according to IDC figures released recently…
https://www.zdnet.com/what-a-surprise-2013-was-a-lousy-year-for-pc-sales-7000025002/
Gartner is even predicting a slowing of the PC sales decline…not a resurgence, but that it may have bottomed out…PCs only sold some 315 million units in 2013…”only”.
A portion of the decline in Window PC sales may be simply due to the lack of a good current OS. I wanted to purchase 2 new Windows PCs but all that is available is Windows 8x (no thanks – if I wanted a giant phone I’d buy one) and Win 7 (green ribbon of death – takes forever to sort large directories – which I frequently need to do). I ended up building 2 PCs and purchased a couple of XP Pro OS licenses. Works fine and does everything we need.
Hope your prediction is right.
I bought a little Apple stock back in 1989. For that reason, I, who just turned 60, was able to convince my wife that it was OK for me to buy a new 27″ iMac to replace my perfectly fine 20″ mid-2007 aluminum iMac. I’m wondering if maybe, as the baby boomers get more sedentary and blind, there might not be a minor resurgence in desktop sales (specifically iMacs). I love this big-ass screen and it doesn’t have a lot of those wires that my wife hates.
Nah, probably not.
Phil Greenspun had this idea in 2005 (probably not alone, but he wrote an actual proposal about it):
http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-computer
Thanks for the link, hwilker. Wonder how the article was received in its time. Quite amazing, really, for an eight year old, & counting, article.
I can’t disagree with the article but I’m nowhere near ready to give up my laptop. I don’t do video but I do process a lot of RAW photographs. A tablet would be nice to showcase my work but I can’t (yet) imagine switching to a tablet.
There are intel i7 Windows based tablets available. They suffer from short battery life unfortunately.
Jim, Steve, Paul … My guess is that any tablet running an i7 would get far too hot trying to process RAW files. This would drain the battery and auto throttle back very quickly. No point having a very powerful tablet until the tech advances. Agreed a desktop (with nice big screen for viewing/editing) or a laptop is the only way at the moment for pro or even amateur (me) photographers to go.
@ Jim. I use a desktop for my RAW processing and graphics editing but a tablet is great for sharing photos anywhere. It can be hard to get people to view a web site later, but great to show them now. Just resize them to the size of the tablet and they will look great.
I do more and more with my iPad but IOS7 apps are still far from their PC/Mac equivalent.
This will happen but not within the next 5 years I predict.
I see the end coming too.I will have to decide when to stock up on parts so I can keep using 3 screens (4 if you count the TV. I will also have to have planes to keep old desktop boxes for basement servers and DVRs. Of course I don’t have to worry about my software supporting older hardware.
Let me see, how many years has it been since people first started talking about the death of the desktop computer? I suppose they really meant the slow down in sales, due to the rise of mobile devices and/or the coming of cloud computing. Well, change is finally upon us, I guess. But as long as I keep writing books and articles to make some money, I will always have a desktop computer.
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Will I ever get a smart phone? Maybe, if I ever get rich enough to start traveling around the world. (Just random thoughts from an old fart who first wrote programs using IBM punch cards — clack, clack.)
Well Charles you’re part of the “never-adopters” near the end of human lifespan. Most cellphone users in the US have a smartphone. You’ll never adopt, die off, then the percentage of adopters increases. Bob mentioned that in some ancient column.
Wow, when I kick the bucket, I will actually have an effect on something. My oh my.
Charles / John Don’t go kicking any buckets!! That way the blighters win! 😉
More likely I think is that when your old mobile “telephone” breaks or you drop it down a drain, there will be less and less choice of replacement *except* for a smartphone. That way you are naturally channelled into the market whether you want to be or not! The percentage of adopters has to increase.
And then, of course, someone will write an “app” that converts our smartphones into old-fashioned candy-bar “telephones” and we’ll be happy 😉
Charles.. don’t worry, the cycle might come back around. Heck, I hear Facebook is losing users.
I wonder if a broadcast-based ( i.e. non-tracking) pager service could become popular?
IBM 026 for me. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when the 029 came out and I didn’t have to multipunch so much.
About 1.5 years ago my wife’s feature phone was worn out and dying. We went to a phone store to get her a new feature phone, but all of them had tiny buttons and tiny screens. I moved a few feet, grabbed a phone, and said to the salesperson, “Oh, you have the Lumia 900”, and showed it to my wife. She fell in love with it immediately. She could read the live tiles without having to dig around and find her glasses. She had no trouble figuring out how to use the touch screen. All this from a woman was proficient with technology but never into technology. I waited until the Lumia 920 came out before I replaced my Windows Mobile phone that she never liked. Now she can’t wait until her contract is up to get a new Windows Phone 8. As a bonus, when I got my Dell Venue Pro 8, she already knew how to use it. I did show her how to swipe down from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen to close an app. Oh, the difference in price between getting a new battery for her old feature phone and the price for the Lumia 900 was about $10 after the rebates, etc. So the time you get a smart phone may be closer than you think.
While I agree with the general trend, of course, it seems wildly optimistic that in 2014 we’ll see a full deployment of being able to do gaming from the cloud and easily (enough) plugging our smartphones/tablets into a screen and keyboard at home, doing all the mundane PC tasks effectively. At the very least, smartphones like Apple’s are going to all have to be operating so they don’t cut out data/apps while on a call!
Even your own post doesn’t seem to bear out the prediction for 2014. You’re buying PCs THIS year. Seems more like the title should be “Final 2014 prediction: the last year of the PC as we knew it”
You might be right, but by the time that future IOS or equivalent based device is ready to take over the tasks we do on desktops and laptops today, it’ll just be another PC form factor, possibly with a gimmicky name. Will it not be a PC because it looks like and also functions as a cell phone? I don’t know? At work my desktop PC and laptop long since took over the tasks of making and taking calls from a dedicated phone, is that not a PC but a phone now?
In the early days of portable computers there was the “PC” and then there was the weirdo “portable computer” variant.
These days I expect when most say “my PC” they refer to a laptop of sorts.
The future device might be a small phone form factor device that you can hook up a keyboard and mouse (or equivalent input device – because lets face it; you didn’t write that article on an onscreen keyboard and I didn’t write this reply on one), a bigger screen, etc to. So what is it? Is it still just a phone? Is that why the PC is dead?
Or is it just your new personal computer? The PC might be dead. Long live the PC…
(PS: No way that’s happening in 2014 either)
I don’t see the keyboard mouse/no keyboard mouse argument as being the critical question when you look at how dictation, which is built in free to Mavericks, has improved. Surely the major switch will have us talking to our computers/devices eventually. I find Siri less than excellent but it will improve. How soon before we experience the Tom Cruise Minority Report lifestyle?
I have me doubts about working with pure vocal interactions: obviously you don’t read SF or you’d have seen examples of how its likely to operate in practice “Dear Sir dam I meant Madam backspace erase now why didn’t that work….”, and thats without considering the fun and games of verbalising the fact that the next few words are a quote or that now you want to dictate a bulleted list. However, the thought of an office full of people all using Victor Borge’s “Phonetic Punctuation” to dictate letters, memos etc. does make me giggle.
You should also think about a point that was raised some years ago when Microsoft was mooting a vocal Windows interface: think of the damage a just-fired staffer could do by running through the office shouting “File! Exit! No! Start! Shutdown! Now!”
Wow, great idea for a SF movie. The operator at an electrical generating plant is slightly drunk and says the wrong thing to the master control computer (Mr. Fudd). Then weird things start to happen. For example, the computer electrocutes the operator and then all the power on the East Coast goes out — forever!
interesting is that first part claims that main driving force behind decline of wintel platform is about miniaturization and simplification, for sheeple and office plankton. while the other part assumes that if author is hooked on AAPl then everybody else hooked too.
reality is that AAPL has own church and its servants bring everytime half-kilobuck packages, it does not necessarily means that corporate purchasing is that clinically stupid to waste money. same about people who are smart enough (and affluent enough) to escape dependency on AAPL and need in spending gigabuck. In other words, Android is good enough while not waste of money. foaming on inconvenience of Android? re-read above about AAPL sheeple – you’re one of them, no need to worry, just pass another pack of money and get your does of instant gratification. Miyzaki already stamped you enough.
most important topic missed in article – mental loops of critters now re-flown into gadgetry, so battlefield of creation will evolve too, and here is good question what/how it will evelove. I guess nobody knows yet.
What this America-centric writer and audience has missed is that the biggest smartphone markets by the end of this year will be China (already number 1) and India. Apple will not have much of chance in those markets this year and increasingly local innovation is driving those markets.
First of all, not mentioning Android or Chrome OS once in this article means Cringely is missing 70% of the market. iPhone is at 18% market share in Europe now. Windows Phone has grown to 10%. The rest is Android. It’s Android and HTML5 that determine the future. Not iOS.
Second, if you really want iOS on your desktop then I don’t get why you are critical of Windows 8. It’s a touch OS on your desktop. You can’t be positive of the one and negative of the other.
Third, people aren’t buying new phones every 18 months now. That has already slowed and will slow further and further. The iPhone 4 is about as good as the 5. No need to get a new one.
In general, most people want cheap stuff. And Google is giving it with Android and Chromebooks. Microsoft is considering making their touch OS free because of this. To get real market share, you need to be cheap. Apple’s marketshare is shrinking hard. Premium is not a strategy for world domination.
Reinier, I think you are confusing market share of current sales with market share of installed base. I doubt if Windows is on 10% of the phones used in Europe.
Some comments about the marketshare and the iPhone. Remember that marketshare + $4 gets you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
All SmartPhone users are not equal. A guy who plonks down $700 on an iPhone is a very different user from an $80 Windows Phone or Android user. One of the reasons why Enterprise is concentrating on iOS.
People who buy cheap phones aren’t all that interested in them.
One biased response to another… at least the first one made some interesting points. Cheap usually comes out ahead in tech. Anyone got a good book recomendation on why?
Specifically I’m thinking back to the opportunity Next had to save us all from Windows… but then they priced their OS at $900. Maybe it’s just as well.. we got Linux instead. Look.. there’s my bias.
Windows tablets like the Thinkpad 8 can connect to an external monitor and run both touch apps and desktop apps like Photoshop. They can do it all. iOS can’t run desktop apps and aren’t mouse and big-monitor friendly. And still Bob thinks iOS is the future because it will be able to do what Windows tablets can do now already?
Weird.
Bob, you should get a gig on CNN! Polemics are all the rage over there.
Reading this made me realize that I need the new MacPro, an iPhone, and nothing in between!
This prediction is couple of years late. Rather I would predict, phone or pads life cycle now will go beyond 2 years. Let’s see what Apple’s and Samsung’s bring so that I will change my iPad and Phone.
I like it, I’ve got four reasonably powered desktops (and two laptops) for my family. They also have a iphone/ipad each.
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Unless there are games to play, masters assignments to write, or remoting to work, all our work is done on ipads.
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All documents are currently stored in dropbox so no local storage required…
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I’m skeptical of bluetooth devices but would jump at a docking station which your ipad could sit in with all the peripherals attached while being charged.
Bob, you’re right.
I read a great explanation recently of why smartphones only have around a gig of ram. The ram is expensive in terms of battery life, because it has to be powered on all the time and it’s power hungry.
But what if your phone had a whole bunch of ram that was only powered on when you had it plugged into your docking station?
A dual core i8 chip with 8 gig of ram would be fine for a lot of jobs that people do nowadays. Quad core would be a waste; Apple won’t go there, but their competitors will and tech heads will complain that the Apple is only dual core but the Samsung has 6 cores.
Sure, there will always be a small percentage of people who need smoking hot desktops (c’est moi) for compiles or video or art or gaming, but for most people who run email, web and some word processing a modern desktop is way overkill.
This just reminded me of the final days of my college in 1975 at LaSalle. We were standing around the ‘computer room’, — a DEC 2020(?) that just replaced an IBM 360/30, joking about computers getting smaller and smaller until the day we would walk into work and a box,the size of a pack of cigarettes, would get plugged into the wall for our own personal computer.
We jumped so far ahead we couldn’t visualize all the in-between stages over the next 40+ years that would get us there.
What’s the word on the RV which was “…intended to be a stealth vehicle for my latest project”?
I predict we won’t hear a defInitive word on Cringley’s moon shot. We’ll get a promise of a future column every now and then, but that’ll be it.
I hope I’m wrong. 😎
Bob – you’re exactly right about where the hardware running iOS is going. There’s a major architectural change coming in the 2014 models with the introduction of a PCIe bus internally connecting up the processor, storage, ports, and network hardware. The reason current iOS devices don’t support .11ac, true HDMI, USB3 or ThunderBolt is that the internal bus simply isn’t fast enough, but that’s going to change. The new devices will pipe 4K video around the house, to screens smart and dumb, and Apple will drive a new realm of user experience. And like you said, the profitability on this roadmap is crazy.
This comment is only slightly off topic but… has anyone posting here heard about “Play Anywhere” Clipstream G2?
Peter posted a comment in reply to Robert’s article is what makes this question a little bit on-topic (Peter January 12, 2014 at 9:40 pm):
Bob – you’re exactly right about where the hardware running iOS is going. There’s a major architectural change coming in the 2014 models with the introduction of a PCIe bus internally connecting up the processor, storage, ports, and network hardware. The reason current iOS devices don’t support .11ac, true HDMI, USB3 or ThunderBolt is that the internal bus simply isn’t fast enough, but that’s going to change. The new devices will pipe 4K video around the house, to screens smart and dumb, and Apple will drive a new realm of user experience. And like you said, the profitability on this roadmap is crazy.”
Clipstream® purports to play instantly on all modern browsers and devices including computers, smart phones, tablets, e-readers and Internet enabled TV’s. Viewers don’t have to install or maintain plug-in player software. Because there are no plug-ins for users to maintain or upgrade, content owners will be able to reach all HTML 5 compliant browsers.
Any truth to these claims?
“The new devices will pipe 4K video around the house, to screens smart and dumb, and Apple will drive a new realm of user experience.” The important thing to me is whether they will “pipe” copy protected content. Apple still hasn’t built Bly-ray support into their iOS or OSX platforms due to onerous copy protection or competition with iTunes. I want my video on my big screen TV not small screen devices. That means HDMI (with HDCP for the “good stuff”).
I’m a software engineer and I do believe one PC (MAC/Window or Linux) will be needed for some time to handle video, photo work or engineering/scientific processes. But for the day to day operation Bob’s vision is almost here already. My Android phone works perfectly with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I type pretty quick, not 80 words a minute, but still pretty quick and I don’t get double or missed letters. I can type emails on it as fast as I can with a desktop. Android is also very mouse friendly.
There are two features missing for me. The first is that the DPI on the phone doesn’t change dynamically when I plug it into a monitor. The buttons, fonts and other UI components are far too large because it mirrors the display. The second is that it would be nice to run more than one app at a time similar to what Samsung has added and that Windows Metro provides. If the hardware could handle those things I would be where Bob envisions.
Today, I can walk up to my desk, plop my phone down, plug it into a monitor and with my Bluetooth mouse, keyboard and speaker it’s like I have a desktop but yet it is a pocket top. I love this future!
More anecdotal evidence: we have several computers in the house. My wife and I each have a Macbook Air. Hers stays on the desk in the home office because it’s “for work”. So even though she’s completed her studies, she reserves that machine for more serious stuff. It never gets used. In the living room, it’s iPhone and iPad Mini all the way.
I use my Macbook Air in the living room and find it difficult to think of living without it. I wouldn’t call myself a ‘power user’ exactly (who would?!) but I work on the web and so I guess I’m in a fairly high percentile. By which I mean to say: my experience is irrelevant. I’m the same as that guy who built his own PC and wants to do the same with his mobile phone: in marketing terms, a statistical anomaly. An irrelevant outlier.
I don’t know about the “end of the PC as we know it”. I’ve was in the tech biz in 1972 – the age of the IBM mainframe – until a few years ago. The first PC’s were total clunkers from today’s perspective. My first machine, a Compaq Portable – weighed about 20 lbs. Every generation of PC introduced since then has improved in power, capacity, utility, sophistication, etc. And so each generation has produced “the end as we know it”. That we are looking at “PCs” as small portable computing/display/storage devices was inevitable. Twenty years from now (ten?, five?) we may swallow or otherwise implante our devices – the ultimate in portability. Just a predictable evolution.
The PC will not die, it will decline in numbers as more younger people use mobile devices as their first device and don’t see a need for a PC until they need to use a specialist application. The phonographic turntable did not die, it just became less popular and is becoming more popular again. Maybe one day I will be using a mobile device docked to two monitors, several terabytes of local storage, a digital piano and a digital audio mixing desk recording 16 tracks of audio simultaneously, but I suspect I will always be in the 5%(?) of users who will have a ‘PC’. For sure, at the moment the PC (in my case a Mac Mini) is definitely the cheapest and fastest way.
The death of the desktop computer is about as likely as the death of Cobol (still going strong after all these years). Sure the world has changed and the desktop is not the only game in town but rather one of several ways of doing ones work. A real keyboard (so as to avoid one finger poking at a virtual keyboard, and a screen I can actually see are still something I prefer for most of the things I do. Mobile is fine for many things but any serious work I still needs multiple windows and two handed, ten finger typing.
For me the fact that we’re in the post-PC era already was the completely low-key (almost anonymous) debut of the new mac pro at the apple store this past weekend. The new top-of-the-line mac was sitting over in a corner. All alone. It wasn’t even connected to a monitor. Not one graphic or poster of any kind on the walls mentioned it. Nobody in the place seemed to even care… Meanwhile, the entire place is buzzing and packed with people of all ages at the tables, playing with the latest iPads, Pods, and iMacs. PCs are already over, as far as apple is concerned: pads and phones are the future.
Amazon will buy Blackberry. They need an “in” in the handset market and their platform is far enough from Google’s Android.
Only one problem I see with replacing all the home computers, Bob – you should have pulled the trigger before the end of the year to try to get the tax break for your home-based business…
You calculated profit margins wrong. If their is 40% gross profit, then the cost is 5/7 and the profit is 2/7 of the price. $480 on $1200 is a 2/3 profit margin.
40% of $1200 is $480. Apparently, that is how Bob defines “gross profit margin”, as a percentage of the cost. How would you define it?
Pretty soon television sets will have computers built in. This is a whole untapped market. I am interested to see if they will run Windows, iOS, Android, Chrome, Linux or just be thin clients.
That suggestion/prediction has been around since 1975. I’d rather have the computer built in to my mobile phone than have the mobile phone built in to my TV. 🙂
Isn’t this already true? My father-in-law’s new TV has a built-in camera, uses a cursor similar to a Wiimote, and has dozens of “apps” built-in or downloadable from Samsung (such as NetFlix, Amazon Prime, Pandora, and a host of others). My brother-in-law’s TV, a year older, has all this stuff, too.
Does nobody see the cognitive dissonance here? Bob predicts the end of the PC… while buying 4 new PCs. Doh!
I predict that Bob Cringely will make his annual prediction on the end of the PC just as he has been doing every year.
I need to know.. HOW did you get 15 Gigs of RAM into a 2010 MacBook Pro??? I need to do that big time.. but assumed it was not supported by the EFI bios or system bus/chipset/hardware?
What is the Mac Model number code for a 2010 MBP that support 16Gigs of RAM?
You can’t. According to Apple: “◾4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB” http://support.apple.com/kb/sp583 (I don’t think anyone said they could.)
Seriously, if your doing moderate to heavy duty work, these tablets simply do not compare desktops and laptops. The available software and OS just do not compare. We may need them less amd less, but make no mistake we still need them and will for a long time to come. The casual user and gamer can get by on tablets, but a serious worker cannot. As for mouses, sure complain about them but they are one of the most ingenious and efficient tools ever. Touch screens get tiring after a while, your constantly lifting your hand. Use of a mouse is just a very natural movement–particulary if you have a well designed one. Granted the cord could be very annoying. But these days we dont have to worry about that. And could you imagine using voice prompt for everythin as one commenter suggested? How annoying would that be after a short while.My prediction is that the “computer”–mouse, keyboard and all–is far from dead, it will just take on somwhat of a different form and be reserved for those who delve into more techical and involved work, such as advanced document editing, graphics, ect.
I’m inclined to agree, in view of the way software and hardware has been developing since the 90s. But the companies that make hardware and software would rather we pay on a more continuous basis. Hence the cloud, and devices to access that cloud. Note the plural “devices”. They want us to continue to buy desktops for serious work but the main feature of the desktop will be the large screen and keyboard. They can charge more for software in the cloud since they are basically renting it to us and “upgrading” it continuously.
Listening to Bob’s advice for Microsoft is like listening to a Red Sox fan say what off-season personnel moves the Yankees should make. I’m a little leery.
With regards to mobile, Windows Phone is not a commercial success, but this is familiar territory for Microsoft. XBOX struggled against Sony and Nintendo. Visual Studio struggled against Borland and Watcom C++ (and later .NET against Java). Word and Excel struggled against Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Even Windows struggled until version 3.0 in 1990. Microsoft should be applauded for exhibiting a quality few companies possess: they are persistent. They keep coming. And coming. Microsoft does not have the luxury of infinite time, but to say that it is too late for Windows Phone, or that Windows Phone is a failure, is like saying the iPhone was “too late” when Blackberry was a dominant player.
I just discovered Mr Cringely by following a link from Seeking Alpha, of all places. Mr C has more brains in his shift key than many of the authors at SA have in their whole keyboards….
The IOSification of the desktop really scares me. One of the things that bugs me the most about IOS is the hiding of the file system. If I take a photo with my iPhone, it goes to my Camera Roll. If I want to alter the photo with an app, the app has to import it (making a copy, probably in its own corner somewhere in the file system). I can then export it back to Camera Roll, making another copy. But then I may want to apply a filter from another app, making yet another local copy… in a few weeks, I may want to work on the latest copy, but what if I can’t remember which app I last used to edit the photo?
Also, a finger doesn’t replace a mouse. I can’t get 1-pixel accuracy with my finger, which is important for everything from photo editing to selecting a particular pin from a cluster in the mapping app.
And who wants to rely on the cloud for storage when there are portable USB3 SSDs and 128GB SD cards out there? If your computer is in your pocket where ever you go, you suddenly don’t need nearly as much cloud syncing because you only have one device.
I guess I would rather see OSX on the iPhone than IOS on the desktop. I’d pay a big premium for that….
Big companies like Apple and Microsoft have continuing expenses and have not had much revenue from the tip jar. So we need to contribute to their coffers by buying multiple devices (often, I might add) and a cloud service to access the data from all the devices. Next thing you know all the apps and storage will be hosted on the cloud so they can charge for that continuously also. This company went out of business after demoing their latest product at CES 2009: http://web.archive.org/web/20110725135644/https://www.oqo.com/ . The demo products sold quickly on eBay for up to $6,000 with no warranty or support available. But Apple and Microsoft keep telling us we don’t want all-in-one dockable devices nor do we want to keep track of our own data or run real programs on our own devices.
This is not “accurate.”
What has changed is the localized versus decentralized computing markets. It used to be the average person did not need a computer, but everyone now needs a cellphone.
Computing is less demanding than it was a decade ago. Apps do not push the H/W architectures and most people are content with their computing experiences being Angry Birds.
Computing switched from hardcore to casual overnight.
Apple was poised, because despite the 6800/PPC/RISC marketing schemes and demonstrations, they were NEVER a computing company.
If you’re rendering HD video, then you can not afford to decentralize the cycles; if you’re rending family photos, then it is what it is.
Remember Jobs talking about working on a way for one to take a blurred photo, hit a button, then viola? Those days never came. The computing / algorithms behind making that happen are irrelevant. Smartphone cameras have gotten to the point where a photo is a click away and if it doesn’t take, no biggie. It is no longer the days of film, where bads cost $.
Doesn’t anyone here use their computer to do work? Phones and tablets are great for watching videos and doing the occasional Facebook post. You can even send an email if it’s not too long. But what about the people who do serious work and bang away at the keyboard all day? The reason PC sales have fallen off is that a five-year-old industrial strength laptop still lets you get more work done than the low-res shortscreen toys they are selling now. When someone makes a computer that can stand up to the rigors of a 14-hour workday and is optimized for real work, it will be a huge success, even if it’s not dirt cheap. MSFT’s big mistake was to abandon a market that was guaranteed to be a cash cow for decades to come simply because it wasn’t growing fast enough – all so they could chase after a market that had high growth rates, but they couldn’t compete in. They ended up alienating their loyal customers without winning any new ones.
Does any of this show that most people really just didn’t NEED a computer to begin with?
Thought provoking article and great insights! I see the future slightly different, but similar:
If I were to envision the future of computing:
1. CPU/GPU outsourced to super computers in the cloud (uses only as needed, scales resources needed like amazon AWS does for websites)
2. Thought interaction with computers. If I think about minimizing a window or typing, it does it. We will see the rise and evolution of voice / computer interaction software before this happens.
3. Bionic Contact lens. Virtual screen through a contact lens.
4. Quantum computing, computers mind blowing power.
“Apps requiring a lot of processing power are starting to migrate to the cloud where massive crowds of GPUs can be applied only as needed making much more efficient use of resources and allowing a PC gaming experience on devices like tablets.”
I see this happening and becoming the norm. It will start with streaming full desktop apps to the browser and eventually evolve to allow it to stream to your operating system, where it is a specially designed OS or Apps that outsources much of the processes to the CPU/GPUs in the cloud, so you still get benefits of OS, but without processing power being done locally, you get great battery, cool, super fast etc. It would be like an enhanced chrome OS, which was ahead of its time and not done right, IMO. I also see an improvement of apps served through the cloud, but an ability to outsource GPU is going to happen much faster than the evolution of web app software.
-Former Apple employee