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For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline, even if the author's romantic notions of repurposing an old machine ring true. While they m

For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline, even if the author's romantic notions of repurposing an old machine ring true. While they may be suitable for old games on an unnetworked, phone-activated WinXP, or as a power-hungry Linux machine that will perform admirably as long as web browsers aren't involved, both fates are the same: frozen in time, locked out of the dizzying speed of evolution of online services and the portals through which they are viewed. Stallman's right yet again: the offline programs will run just the same, but the online programs are subject to change at a moment's notice, from Apple shedding support of 32-bit hardware, to application makers shedding support for old OS versions, to online backends forcing mandatory updates. It feels worse with the iPad because its marketing made an impression of a sleek, "just-works" kind of device. Of course, its utility is tied exclusively to applications from a captive marketplace, and often, to remote services frontended by those apps or the browser, making its elegance a leaky abstraction. Today's Chromebooks, another "just-works" device, will be in the same situation in five years. But with Chromebooks, or Android phones (if you're lucky), or x86 or x64 PCs, you can replace the stock OS and repurpose the device on the hardware's own remaining merits. An iPad is just stuck.

GSimon 9y ago
The decline is similar but not nearly the exact same. PCs can generally do tasks they once did years later without compromise, iPads get slower and hardware is forced to update to a newer OS just to run existing applications, making tasks like simple note taking slower and more of a process than before. With iPad you can't keep your past experience because your product's ecosystem isn't your own vacuum you can't keep it away from forced updates.
- oflannabhra 9y ago
  >you can't keep it away from forced updates I fail to see how that is the case? Apple neither forces OS updates, nor forces app updates. An iPad will perform exactly the same, given the same software, after 5 years or 10 years, and the user is in control of that software. If you are speaking of services, well, that's not unique to iPads, or Apple, but is a consequence of the Internet.
  - GSimon 9y ago
    > Apple neither forces OS updates, nor forces app updates In practice they do. I recently deleted a timelapse app from my new phone (se) because the app wouldn't work with the new update. That may not be the best airtight example as the new OS update I did 'choose' to upgrade to which did somehow break the app, and the creator didn't release an updated version for the new OS, but in a real world scenario are you going to discontinue OS updates on a device you purchased months earlier for a few apps? Meanwhile there's decade old computers running windows xp that have no problems starting photoshop 7.0. There's also this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1BKPSGcxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1BKPSGcxQ showing Windows upgrades from earliest versions to newest and software like excel being compatible from earliest versions onward.
    - krrrh 9y ago
      Except Microsoft officially stopped supporting Windows XP in 2014[1], and they had already extended support much longer than they had wanted to because XP was so long-lived and customers pushed back against having to upgrade to Vista. Vista support completely ended last year, and mainstream support for 7 ended in 2015, and 8.1 last month[2]. If you upgraded that decade-old computer to a secure OS then it will almost certainly run terribly. It's fine to run Photoshop 7 on an old PC that's not connected to the internet, but how realistic or useful is that? Under the old desktop upgrade model it's easier to run an unmaintained OS, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Edit: Obviously running a lightweight linux distro is an option for the more technically minded, and it would be great to see projects like https://www.postmarketos.org https://www.postmarketos.org become more widespread for extending the life of tablet and phone hardware. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/14223/windows-xp-end-of-support https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/14223/windows-xp-en... [2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=Windows%208 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=W...
      - GSimon 9y ago
        There's lots of software that is still being used on machines running Windows XP, some aren't connected to the internet and others are -gasp- risking the lack of windows support (which was generously offered for nearly two decades.) exposing their photoshop to vulnerabilities. You can be pedantic and alarmist about my specific example and ignore the general point of software compatibility if you want I guess. IRL there are 3yr old dated, useless iPads everywhere and that's not the same with even most 5yr+ year old PCs (which would have the specs to upgrade to a new OS and not break your existing software, if you choose to do so)
pastage 9y ago
Yes old PCs can be unusable too, but I can still use desktop PCs released in the same era as the first smartphones, and with upgraded graphics, memory and SSD they last even longer. As a counter point I recently got a 12 year old MacPro to fix up and it is almost impossible to make usable even though the specs are better than some old PCs I've given away. So it's an design issue and Apple is a real crook in this regard.
- artimaeis 9y ago
  As a counter point to your counter point I've used a 2010 Macbook Pro as my primary laptop for years. I upgraded the RAM and added an SSD and it still run great at most tasks. A 2006 Mac Pro though? What issue is it giving you? Admittedly - the processor will no-doubt show some age. And it's not qualified for the latest releases of Mac OS in quite a while. But it had user upgradable RAM and disk drives. Throw your preferred distro of Linux on there and I imagine it would be a sufficiently capable machine.
larrik 9y ago
Well, a top-end PC from 5+ years ago can still easily outperform a lower end PC made today. This is true even if you don't have an SSD in either. A "top end" iPad will lose in performance to the "bottom end" of the very next generation of iPads. Granted, that isn't the same thing, but the point stands.
- sundvor 9y ago
  Yeah I was going to mention my 2560k, which has been running at 4.3ghz for the longest time now. 7 years? Something like that. With 16gb of memory, a Samsung 850 Pro and a NVIDIA 980, this PC which is now my spare / 7 year old son's is still going very strong indeed.
- GeekyBear 9y ago
  How long has it been since we saw large performance increases year after year in the PC space? >Intel's Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K is what happens when a chip company stops trying. The top-end Kaby Lake part is the first desktop chip in a brave new post-"tick-tock" world—which means that instead of major improvements to architecture, process, and instructions per clock (IPC), we get slightly higher clock speeds and a way to decode DRM-laden 4K streaming video. Huzzah. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intel-core-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-review/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intel-core-i7-7700k-...
ksk 9y ago
People like to shit on MS, but Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility allows you to keep the same OS and use your PC to use all the software you paid for, for FAR longer than any Apple or Linux PC.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  In Linux world, the problem is mitigated by availability of specialty distributions and desktop environments. Even older but open software can usually be salvaged with a few patches too. And once you have the hardware new enough to run hardware virtualization well, there are truly no limits other than raw RAM and CPU.
  - ksk 9y ago
    Assuming I have the source code (a big if), I will still need authorization from the vendor to modify the source. And even if I do get that, as an end user, all I want to do is double-click on the icon. I am not going to be writing any patches, or wanting to pay someone to write patches. I prefer to simply pay the $100 Microsoft tax when I purchase my PC and let MS worry about it.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Thought that RAM and CPU can hit you. I'd add disk -- swapping spinning rust for SSD should make an improvement. I've revive an iMac 5,1 under Debian, and it runs. But with 1 GB RAM, it's good for only a small handful of Web browser pages before starting to swap heavily. The system should be good for memory and HD upgrade, though I've yet to look into that. Compared to a newer Retina iMac, it's actually the screen which is one of the elements that's got me hesitating on an update. The resolution (and brightness) are sufficiently poor that even an update wouldn't give it all that much utility. Given the cost of modest new generic PC hardware, I've got to question the validity of that. For non-Web use, basic apps, shell, and server roles, it's just fine. It's browsers that are absolute resource monsters.
- j3097736 9y ago
  Yeah, until a few years ago when they started doing things like - Automatically upgrading devices to Win10 - Announce that they will keep adding upgrades to win10 instead of creating new releases - Office 365 - Require win10 to develop for windows phone 10 and important software companies like adobe/autodesk moving to subscription model isn't gonna help.
NicoJuicy 9y ago
Pc's are for producing, I don't think that will decline. An iPad is just an iPhone with a larger screen for consuming. Haven't met a Chromebook that can replace the production "experience"
- qplex 9y ago
  It depends on what you are producing. Eg. For writing purposes a Chromebook or a pad with Bluetooth keyboard can be quite sufficient.
thekevan 9y ago
"For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline" Maybe eventually, but not within 5 years. I'm currently typing on a 2011 Dell with an i3 proc and 6GB of RAM, running Ubuntu. I have 19 other tabs open in Chrome. It dual boots Win7. I can use this 7ish year old PC for social media, email, HD videos and streaming music with few annoyances due to performance, in either OS. Not so with the 5 year iPad he describes. While I can do several of those things at once, it seems he has trouble with even just one.
- majormajor 9y ago
  Not anymore, but it's only recently that that's been spun as a good thing. Tell someone around 2000 that a 7ish year old PC would be adequate and you'd get laughed at. 1993 to 2000, for instance: You'd be comparing a Pentium at 60Mhz (some quick googling says 60Mhz was first hit this year) on the high end to a 1Ghz Athlon. Probably >20x real performance improvement (the clock alone is 16.7x). Mobile devices will catch up and stagnate too, sadly.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    But it's largely because today's improvements have gone into lower CPU consumption than core count. But it could have gone core count, it just 99% of users wouldn't know what to do with more cores and would rather take the battery life.
    - romwell 9y ago
      >it just 99% of programmers wouldn't know what to do with more cores Fixed that for you. Remember that every time you experience an unresponsive GUI anywhere, and that's the easy case. Beyond that, parallelization is generally not easy.
      - cm2187 9y ago
        I think the vast majority of the time unresponsive GUI are because of blocking network or IO calls. A faster CPU won't do anything. I rarely max out my CPU.
feiio11 9y ago
I'm still using the PC I built in 2008. I've had to replace a few things, but not much. I can still browse the web. I run the latest packages in my linux distro. I can still work with all my old files. The apps I rely on are mature, well supported, and won't be going away any time soon. And in 10 years I'm betting it will still run. I might have to replace a component or two. I might have to give up web browsing, if sites keep getting fatter and fatter. But it'll still run, and I could find a use for it.
SilasX 9y ago
Stallman may have been right about the dangers, but he was also a key impetus behind moving everything behind online APIs — the harder it is to keep stuff closed source (legally and socially) the more services will switch to an online-only model, which then can optimize for frequent updates.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Wait. Not sure if I understand you correctly here. As far as I can tell, keeping stuff closed source is one of the biggest reasons people like SaaS model (you can't even in principle have Stallman-style free software in SaaS model), another big reason being full control over access and user data. I'm not sure how he was a key impetus behind that - in fact, all of his teachings were strongly against this, but people ignored it and now here we are.
  - jacoblambda 9y ago
    I believe the insinuation is that GNU, GPL, and FOSS forces the hands of many organisations that would traditionally release closed source software. Additionally it proposes that if it is not open source, an open source alternative will quickly begin competing with it.
gdulli 9y ago
When I had an iPhone it stopped being usable after 2 years and the last 2 non-Apple phones I had lasted 3 and 4 years and both got replaced on my terms, while still usable. You can't just handwave and declare that Apple doesn't do a worse job than others when the evidence is mounting that it does.
- sjwright 9y ago
  The same would have been true if your first phones were Android and your most recent ones were iPhone. In other words, your experience has nothing to do with Android vs iPhone, rather that earlier devices simply didn't have the same amount of resource headroom as more recent ones. Ever since the iPhone 4S, they've been usable for at least 3 years before expectations catch up to them. And now I think since the 6S and SE—which have the same hardware generation—iPhones can claim to have 4+ year lifetimes. (At 3.5 years old, the iPhone 6 is still a great device today, particularly with a cheap battery replacement.)
romwell 9y ago
>For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline Nope, they aren't. My home PC hails from 2008, runs the latest Windows 10 update, and a range of software from early 2000s to 2018. It runs modern games, too (I like playing indie games that aren't too demanding). Secret sauce? Modern SSD and a GPU from a few years back, plus an HDD to serve as a repository of all my data. But even without the benefit or running Win 10 and hardware upgrades: I also spun up my old 2006 laptop the other day to rip a CD (my other machines don't have a drive), and guess what, FF Quantum runs well on it. Bring on your web apps, that XP machine will run 'em. My point is that the PC's really don't suffer from the level of planned obsolescence that device like iPad do. The PCs, ultimately, have one large window to see the online world with: the browser, and as long as that runs, the PCs don't lose any utility: whatever task they have enough computational power for today, they will be able to handle in a decade. The mobile devices, with their shift to the app-for-everything ideology pioneered by Apple, have thousands that are easily broken, prompting you to upgrade.
- brians 9y ago
  You know, you can keep the same computer and get even more of a performance improvement by replacing the CPU (and motherboard, of course).
  - rahimnathwani 9y ago
    To my mind, replacing the Mobo/CPU is akin to building a new PC, but reusing some of the parts from the old one. Because it's a costly upgrade, and you might need to buy a different type of RAM. Adding an SSD or RAM or GPU to an existing system are relatively quick and painless.
    - alwaysnotright 9y ago
      I did exactly this to my PC, and it feels almost like new again. I think my i7-2600k might give up soon, but for a seven year old CPU, it is running suprisingly well. 500$ was all I spent altogether for RAM (16 GB Corsair), GPU (GTX 1060 Ti) and SSD (Samsung 500 GB 850-EVO).
mastazi 9y ago
> But with [...] x86 or x64 PCs, you can replace the stock OS and repurpose the device on the hardware's own remaining merits. That's exactly the point. You know all the bazillion things that people usually do with their Raspberry PIs? An old PC can do all of that, and often much more. My old PCs are used for: - HTPC (Home Theatre PC) - NAS (Network Attached Storage) - Retro gaming (this is the same box as the HTPC) - Network-wide ad-blocker (same box as the NAS) - Print server (same box as NAS) Now back to the iPad. I am thinking to repurpose my old iPad Mini as an external screen using Duet Display (I would use it as a GPS display in a flight sim cockpit) but in general finding purpose for an old iPad is much, much harder than a desktop PC.
pharo70 9y ago
I have a ten-year-old Dell that I still use for some development and testing, and it runs the latest Debian and Fedora releases just fine.
masswerk 9y ago
However, if the vendors on your alternate OS marketplace chose to go the same route as App Store providers, there's not much to gain. It's not so much about the OS, but about the ecosystem and the culture of this ecosystem, including online services. (As far as I do know, there's no reason why you couldn't support legacy iOS versions and hardware via the App Store. It's just not part of the predominant business model. The same is true for most commercial websites.)
scarface74 9y ago
Yes it could happen. But today February 8th, 2018. Every iPad that ever existed can view videos on Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, CW, etc. They can all connect to a standard mail server or Exchange server, sync Calendars using standard protocols, read ebooks from Apple, play music with Spotify, Airplay to the latest devices, or use Bluetooth, print to any AirPrint compatible printer (most consumer wireless printers), etc. I know because I own a first generation iPad that does all of the above - after a reset last year and downloading older versions of apps. The only thing I can't do is view the modern web with a tablet with a measly 256MB of RAM. The capabilities of the first generation iPad in 2010 compared to a modern iPad is like night and day. I have a 2008 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz laptop with 4GB of RAM, Gigabit ethernet, that runs the latest version of Windows. The average consumer laptop only comes with 8GB of RAM and gigabit ethernet is still the fastest consumer networking protocol. It serves as my Plex Server. A modern iPad has 8 times the amount of RAM, a processor that's orders of magnitude faster, etc. You can't compare the improvements in mobile to the lack of improvements in desktop computers. Back in 2008, could you imagine using a 10 year old computer and still expecting support from a new OS like you can with a 10 year old computer today?
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
It's worse than that. My gaming PC was top-of-the-line six years ago, and it still works great for browsing and work tasks, and runs many modern games effectively on lower settings. My Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone was top-of-the-line six years ago, and is essentially useless now. Just switching from an app back to the homescreen takes multiple seconds, and launching or switching between apps often takes upwards of 15 seconds. It takes more than half a minute to start Kindle Reader and open a book. These are all things that happened almost instantly when it was new. I've wiped it and reinstalled Android multiple times, and it only helps a little.
- animal531 9y ago
  Very dodgy. I'm still using my S3 Mini and it's fine. I have however seen some apps that just won't work 100% and will drain your battery because of bugs etc.
rateofchange 9y ago
I have a 15 year old Windows 2000 machine running a PCI based piece of test equipment. No problems or performance issues. It has not been on the network for at least 10 years, if not 15. On the rare occasion a data transfer is needed it's either a floppy (yes!), CD or thumb drive. Works fine.
squarefoot 9y ago
"For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline" PCs have a much broader choice of operating systems and software to install whilst maintaining compatibility. Take Voyage Linux as an example (http://linux.voyage.hk); http://linux.voyage.hk); it's a stripped down Debian system for embedded devices which can fit down to 256MB of storage, but nothing prevents you from apt-getting more software and make it grow to a full featured desktop system depending on the underlying hardware capabilities. Mobile devices as of today cannot even dream a fraction of this modularity, but we already know why: they're black boxes intended to be consumed then thrown away, and their OSes reflect that nature. Mobile manufacturers should be forced to publish all hardware source code after a reasonable time (say after 3 years) so that "old" devices can be repurposed instead of being littered into landfills.
upofadown 9y ago
My Athlon(tm) II X2 250 processor was released on Jun 2, 2009. It goes at 3 GHz. The 3 GB of memory comes from the same era. It is pretty much the only thing I ever do web stuff on. It is fast and I have no intention of replacing it any time soon. What has happened is that maximum hardware performance has levelled off. Modern web design is slowly converging to a place where everyone needs maximum hardware performance everywhere.

GSimon 9y ago

The decline is similar but not nearly the exact same. PCs can generally do tasks they once did years later without compromise, iPads get slower and hardware is forced to update to a newer OS just to run existing applications, making tasks like simple note taking slower and more of a process than before. With iPad you can't keep your past experience because your product's ecosystem isn't your own vacuum you can't keep it away from forced updates.

oflannabhra 9y ago
>you can't keep it away from forced updates I fail to see how that is the case? Apple neither forces OS updates, nor forces app updates. An iPad will perform exactly the same, given the same software, after 5 years or 10 years, and the user is in control of that software. If you are speaking of services, well, that's not unique to iPads, or Apple, but is a consequence of the Internet.
- GSimon 9y ago
  > Apple neither forces OS updates, nor forces app updates In practice they do. I recently deleted a timelapse app from my new phone (se) because the app wouldn't work with the new update. That may not be the best airtight example as the new OS update I did 'choose' to upgrade to which did somehow break the app, and the creator didn't release an updated version for the new OS, but in a real world scenario are you going to discontinue OS updates on a device you purchased months earlier for a few apps? Meanwhile there's decade old computers running windows xp that have no problems starting photoshop 7.0. There's also this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1BKPSGcxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1BKPSGcxQ showing Windows upgrades from earliest versions to newest and software like excel being compatible from earliest versions onward.
  - krrrh 9y ago
    Except Microsoft officially stopped supporting Windows XP in 2014[1], and they had already extended support much longer than they had wanted to because XP was so long-lived and customers pushed back against having to upgrade to Vista. Vista support completely ended last year, and mainstream support for 7 ended in 2015, and 8.1 last month[2]. If you upgraded that decade-old computer to a secure OS then it will almost certainly run terribly. It's fine to run Photoshop 7 on an old PC that's not connected to the internet, but how realistic or useful is that? Under the old desktop upgrade model it's easier to run an unmaintained OS, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Edit: Obviously running a lightweight linux distro is an option for the more technically minded, and it would be great to see projects like https://www.postmarketos.org https://www.postmarketos.org become more widespread for extending the life of tablet and phone hardware. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/14223/windows-xp-end-of-support https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/14223/windows-xp-en... [2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=Windows%208 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=W...
    - GSimon 9y ago
      There's lots of software that is still being used on machines running Windows XP, some aren't connected to the internet and others are -gasp- risking the lack of windows support (which was generously offered for nearly two decades.) exposing their photoshop to vulnerabilities. You can be pedantic and alarmist about my specific example and ignore the general point of software compatibility if you want I guess. IRL there are 3yr old dated, useless iPads everywhere and that's not the same with even most 5yr+ year old PCs (which would have the specs to upgrade to a new OS and not break your existing software, if you choose to do so)

pastage 9y ago

Yes old PCs can be unusable too, but I can still use desktop PCs released in the same era as the first smartphones, and with upgraded graphics, memory and SSD they last even longer. As a counter point I recently got a 12 year old MacPro to fix up and it is almost impossible to make usable even though the specs are better than some old PCs I've given away. So it's an design issue and Apple is a real crook in this regard.

artimaeis 9y ago
As a counter point to your counter point I've used a 2010 Macbook Pro as my primary laptop for years. I upgraded the RAM and added an SSD and it still run great at most tasks. A 2006 Mac Pro though? What issue is it giving you? Admittedly - the processor will no-doubt show some age. And it's not qualified for the latest releases of Mac OS in quite a while. But it had user upgradable RAM and disk drives. Throw your preferred distro of Linux on there and I imagine it would be a sufficiently capable machine.

larrik 9y ago

Well, a top-end PC from 5+ years ago can still easily outperform a lower end PC made today. This is true even if you don't have an SSD in either. A "top end" iPad will lose in performance to the "bottom end" of the very next generation of iPads. Granted, that isn't the same thing, but the point stands.

sundvor 9y ago
Yeah I was going to mention my 2560k, which has been running at 4.3ghz for the longest time now. 7 years? Something like that. With 16gb of memory, a Samsung 850 Pro and a NVIDIA 980, this PC which is now my spare / 7 year old son's is still going very strong indeed.
GeekyBear 9y ago
How long has it been since we saw large performance increases year after year in the PC space? >Intel's Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K is what happens when a chip company stops trying. The top-end Kaby Lake part is the first desktop chip in a brave new post-"tick-tock" world—which means that instead of major improvements to architecture, process, and instructions per clock (IPC), we get slightly higher clock speeds and a way to decode DRM-laden 4K streaming video. Huzzah. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intel-core-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-review/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intel-core-i7-7700k-...

ksk 9y ago

People like to shit on MS, but Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility allows you to keep the same OS and use your PC to use all the software you paid for, for FAR longer than any Apple or Linux PC.

AstralStorm 9y ago
In Linux world, the problem is mitigated by availability of specialty distributions and desktop environments. Even older but open software can usually be salvaged with a few patches too. And once you have the hardware new enough to run hardware virtualization well, there are truly no limits other than raw RAM and CPU.
- ksk 9y ago
  Assuming I have the source code (a big if), I will still need authorization from the vendor to modify the source. And even if I do get that, as an end user, all I want to do is double-click on the icon. I am not going to be writing any patches, or wanting to pay someone to write patches. I prefer to simply pay the $100 Microsoft tax when I purchase my PC and let MS worry about it.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Thought that RAM and CPU can hit you. I'd add disk -- swapping spinning rust for SSD should make an improvement. I've revive an iMac 5,1 under Debian, and it runs. But with 1 GB RAM, it's good for only a small handful of Web browser pages before starting to swap heavily. The system should be good for memory and HD upgrade, though I've yet to look into that. Compared to a newer Retina iMac, it's actually the screen which is one of the elements that's got me hesitating on an update. The resolution (and brightness) are sufficiently poor that even an update wouldn't give it all that much utility. Given the cost of modest new generic PC hardware, I've got to question the validity of that. For non-Web use, basic apps, shell, and server roles, it's just fine. It's browsers that are absolute resource monsters.
j3097736 9y ago
Yeah, until a few years ago when they started doing things like - Automatically upgrading devices to Win10 - Announce that they will keep adding upgrades to win10 instead of creating new releases - Office 365 - Require win10 to develop for windows phone 10 and important software companies like adobe/autodesk moving to subscription model isn't gonna help.

NicoJuicy 9y ago

Pc's are for producing, I don't think that will decline. An iPad is just an iPhone with a larger screen for consuming. Haven't met a Chromebook that can replace the production "experience"

qplex 9y ago
It depends on what you are producing. Eg. For writing purposes a Chromebook or a pad with Bluetooth keyboard can be quite sufficient.

thekevan 9y ago

"For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline" Maybe eventually, but not within 5 years. I'm currently typing on a 2011 Dell with an i3 proc and 6GB of RAM, running Ubuntu. I have 19 other tabs open in Chrome. It dual boots Win7. I can use this 7ish year old PC for social media, email, HD videos and streaming music with few annoyances due to performance, in either OS. Not so with the 5 year iPad he describes. While I can do several of those things at once, it seems he has trouble with even just one.

majormajor 9y ago
Not anymore, but it's only recently that that's been spun as a good thing. Tell someone around 2000 that a 7ish year old PC would be adequate and you'd get laughed at. 1993 to 2000, for instance: You'd be comparing a Pentium at 60Mhz (some quick googling says 60Mhz was first hit this year) on the high end to a 1Ghz Athlon. Probably >20x real performance improvement (the clock alone is 16.7x). Mobile devices will catch up and stagnate too, sadly.
- cm2187 9y ago
  But it's largely because today's improvements have gone into lower CPU consumption than core count. But it could have gone core count, it just 99% of users wouldn't know what to do with more cores and would rather take the battery life.
  - romwell 9y ago
    >it just 99% of programmers wouldn't know what to do with more cores Fixed that for you. Remember that every time you experience an unresponsive GUI anywhere, and that's the easy case. Beyond that, parallelization is generally not easy.
    - cm2187 9y ago
      I think the vast majority of the time unresponsive GUI are because of blocking network or IO calls. A faster CPU won't do anything. I rarely max out my CPU.

feiio11 9y ago

I'm still using the PC I built in 2008. I've had to replace a few things, but not much. I can still browse the web. I run the latest packages in my linux distro. I can still work with all my old files. The apps I rely on are mature, well supported, and won't be going away any time soon. And in 10 years I'm betting it will still run. I might have to replace a component or two. I might have to give up web browsing, if sites keep getting fatter and fatter. But it'll still run, and I could find a use for it.

SilasX 9y ago

Stallman may have been right about the dangers, but he was also a key impetus behind moving everything behind online APIs — the harder it is to keep stuff closed source (legally and socially) the more services will switch to an online-only model, which then can optimize for frequent updates.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Wait. Not sure if I understand you correctly here. As far as I can tell, keeping stuff closed source is one of the biggest reasons people like SaaS model (you can't even in principle have Stallman-style free software in SaaS model), another big reason being full control over access and user data. I'm not sure how he was a key impetus behind that - in fact, all of his teachings were strongly against this, but people ignored it and now here we are.
- jacoblambda 9y ago
  I believe the insinuation is that GNU, GPL, and FOSS forces the hands of many organisations that would traditionally release closed source software. Additionally it proposes that if it is not open source, an open source alternative will quickly begin competing with it.

gdulli 9y ago

When I had an iPhone it stopped being usable after 2 years and the last 2 non-Apple phones I had lasted 3 and 4 years and both got replaced on my terms, while still usable. You can't just handwave and declare that Apple doesn't do a worse job than others when the evidence is mounting that it does.

sjwright 9y ago
The same would have been true if your first phones were Android and your most recent ones were iPhone. In other words, your experience has nothing to do with Android vs iPhone, rather that earlier devices simply didn't have the same amount of resource headroom as more recent ones. Ever since the iPhone 4S, they've been usable for at least 3 years before expectations catch up to them. And now I think since the 6S and SE—which have the same hardware generation—iPhones can claim to have 4+ year lifetimes. (At 3.5 years old, the iPhone 6 is still a great device today, particularly with a cheap battery replacement.)

romwell 9y ago

>For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline Nope, they aren't. My home PC hails from 2008, runs the latest Windows 10 update, and a range of software from early 2000s to 2018. It runs modern games, too (I like playing indie games that aren't too demanding). Secret sauce? Modern SSD and a GPU from a few years back, plus an HDD to serve as a repository of all my data. But even without the benefit or running Win 10 and hardware upgrades: I also spun up my old 2006 laptop the other day to rip a CD (my other machines don't have a drive), and guess what, FF Quantum runs well on it. Bring on your web apps, that XP machine will run 'em. My point is that the PC's really don't suffer from the level of planned obsolescence that device like iPad do. The PCs, ultimately, have one large window to see the online world with: the browser, and as long as that runs, the PCs don't lose any utility: whatever task they have enough computational power for today, they will be able to handle in a decade. The mobile devices, with their shift to the app-for-everything ideology pioneered by Apple, have thousands that are easily broken, prompting you to upgrade.

brians 9y ago
You know, you can keep the same computer and get even more of a performance improvement by replacing the CPU (and motherboard, of course).
- rahimnathwani 9y ago
  To my mind, replacing the Mobo/CPU is akin to building a new PC, but reusing some of the parts from the old one. Because it's a costly upgrade, and you might need to buy a different type of RAM. Adding an SSD or RAM or GPU to an existing system are relatively quick and painless.
  - alwaysnotright 9y ago
    I did exactly this to my PC, and it feels almost like new again. I think my i7-2600k might give up soon, but for a seven year old CPU, it is running suprisingly well. 500$ was all I spent altogether for RAM (16 GB Corsair), GPU (GTX 1060 Ti) and SSD (Samsung 500 GB 850-EVO).

mastazi 9y ago

> But with [...] x86 or x64 PCs, you can replace the stock OS and repurpose the device on the hardware's own remaining merits. That's exactly the point. You know all the bazillion things that people usually do with their Raspberry PIs? An old PC can do all of that, and often much more. My old PCs are used for: - HTPC (Home Theatre PC) - NAS (Network Attached Storage) - Retro gaming (this is the same box as the HTPC) - Network-wide ad-blocker (same box as the NAS) - Print server (same box as NAS) Now back to the iPad. I am thinking to repurpose my old iPad Mini as an external screen using Duet Display (I would use it as a GPS display in a flight sim cockpit) but in general finding purpose for an old iPad is much, much harder than a desktop PC.

pharo70 9y ago

I have a ten-year-old Dell that I still use for some development and testing, and it runs the latest Debian and Fedora releases just fine.

masswerk 9y ago

However, if the vendors on your alternate OS marketplace chose to go the same route as App Store providers, there's not much to gain. It's not so much about the OS, but about the ecosystem and the culture of this ecosystem, including online services. (As far as I do know, there's no reason why you couldn't support legacy iOS versions and hardware via the App Store. It's just not part of the predominant business model. The same is true for most commercial websites.)

scarface74 9y ago

Yes it could happen. But today February 8th, 2018. Every iPad that ever existed can view videos on Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, CW, etc. They can all connect to a standard mail server or Exchange server, sync Calendars using standard protocols, read ebooks from Apple, play music with Spotify, Airplay to the latest devices, or use Bluetooth, print to any AirPrint compatible printer (most consumer wireless printers), etc. I know because I own a first generation iPad that does all of the above - after a reset last year and downloading older versions of apps. The only thing I can't do is view the modern web with a tablet with a measly 256MB of RAM. The capabilities of the first generation iPad in 2010 compared to a modern iPad is like night and day. I have a 2008 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz laptop with 4GB of RAM, Gigabit ethernet, that runs the latest version of Windows. The average consumer laptop only comes with 8GB of RAM and gigabit ethernet is still the fastest consumer networking protocol. It serves as my Plex Server. A modern iPad has 8 times the amount of RAM, a processor that's orders of magnitude faster, etc. You can't compare the improvements in mobile to the lack of improvements in desktop computers. Back in 2008, could you imagine using a 10 year old computer and still expecting support from a new OS like you can with a 10 year old computer today?

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

It's worse than that. My gaming PC was top-of-the-line six years ago, and it still works great for browsing and work tasks, and runs many modern games effectively on lower settings. My Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone was top-of-the-line six years ago, and is essentially useless now. Just switching from an app back to the homescreen takes multiple seconds, and launching or switching between apps often takes upwards of 15 seconds. It takes more than half a minute to start Kindle Reader and open a book. These are all things that happened almost instantly when it was new. I've wiped it and reinstalled Android multiple times, and it only helps a little.

animal531 9y ago
Very dodgy. I'm still using my S3 Mini and it's fine. I have however seen some apps that just won't work 100% and will drain your battery because of bugs etc.

rateofchange 9y ago

I have a 15 year old Windows 2000 machine running a PCI based piece of test equipment. No problems or performance issues. It has not been on the network for at least 10 years, if not 15. On the rare occasion a data transfer is needed it's either a floppy (yes!), CD or thumb drive. Works fine.

squarefoot 9y ago

"For what it's worth, PCs are subject to the exact same slow decline" PCs have a much broader choice of operating systems and software to install whilst maintaining compatibility. Take Voyage Linux as an example (http://linux.voyage.hk); http://linux.voyage.hk); it's a stripped down Debian system for embedded devices which can fit down to 256MB of storage, but nothing prevents you from apt-getting more software and make it grow to a full featured desktop system depending on the underlying hardware capabilities. Mobile devices as of today cannot even dream a fraction of this modularity, but we already know why: they're black boxes intended to be consumed then thrown away, and their OSes reflect that nature. Mobile manufacturers should be forced to publish all hardware source code after a reasonable time (say after 3 years) so that "old" devices can be repurposed instead of being littered into landfills.

upofadown 9y ago

My Athlon(tm) II X2 250 processor was released on Jun 2, 2009. It goes at 3 GHz. The 3 GB of memory comes from the same era. It is pretty much the only thing I ever do web stuff on. It is fast and I have no intention of replacing it any time soon. What has happened is that maximum hardware performance has levelled off. Modern web design is slowly converging to a place where everyone needs maximum hardware performance everywhere.