5 ms·

I dont get why everybody is falling for the "end of pc era" hype that is surrounding tablets and smartphones. Can someone explain to me why the ability to brow

I dont get why everybody is falling for the "end of pc era" hype that is surrounding tablets and smartphones. Can someone explain to me why the ability to browse the web from the couch without sufficient text-entry possibilities is going to challenge the amount of pc's in a world where textentry is our main method of searching, sorting and creating data. Honestly, this is not a rhetorical question, i feel i'm missing some part of the picture here.

imsky 16y ago
It's the "end of PCs" for the mainstream market, which was overrun with them for the last 10 years. Now the mobile technology is good enough that bulky desktops are going to be used primarily by professionals. You're not going to edit video/render 3D on the iPad 2, but for 90% of the population that just needs to check their email, it's good enough.
- Roritharr 16y ago
  I think that idea is overblown, simply because "Check their E-Mails" means someone has to write e-mails worth checking...
  - ugh 16y ago
    Input really is not that terrible. It’s disingenuous to act as though tablets don’t allow you to enter text.
wiredfool 16y ago
We're getting closer. Years ago, must have been 7 or 8 by now, I was talking with a friend @ Microsoft, and he was going on and on about how the phone was going to be the computer. "This Phone" and he'd hold up a generic GSM flip phone. My objection then was UI, both on the input and output side. In a way, wifi and bluetooth have solved a lot of that, as they can offload the heavy duty stuff to wireless sometimes connected displays and keyboards. At some point, we're likely to have enough power in a cellphone to run most of what you'd want to do for day to day stuff. And do it all day on a charge. Couple that with always on networking and the availability of machines in the cloud for bigger jobs, you start to be able to have the phone/tablet be most of what you need.
- apress 16y ago
  This is exactly the point and where the future is going because of Moore's law and all the various others ways ourt gadgetry gets cheaper and faster every year. Remember when laptops were too expensive and underpowered to serve as a geek's main machine? Now that's the norm. In a few more years, all the computing power, storage and connectivity most people will need will be inside a phone. The Motorola Atrix may be ahead of of its time but I think it is a harbinger of things to come.
halostatue 16y ago
I'll try to explain by personal anecdotes—two of them. In my household, there's just my wife and myself. I'm an übergeek; she's a technically competent teacher. Computers are merely tools to her. We went to Italy this past summer. We took my iPhone (data turned off), an iPad 3G, my SLR, and her camera. Because I couldn't find someone locally to sell me a photo tank, I also had to take an Airport Express, a netbook, and a card reader to save the pictures I took (I didn't have the camera connection kit at the time). Except for that, we did not use a laptop. We used the iPad extensively in Italy, paying our bills, making calls on a SIP client, browsing the web, writing blog posts, and even uploading edited photos to a photoblog at http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com. We didn't once feel like we were missing out on anything or that we needed to go to an Internet cafe. The portability was astounding. We needed a laptop in 2006 when we went to Europe to do much the same. The second anecdote is current. When I get home, I rarely get on the single "real" computer unless I'm programming. When my wife is doing report cards, I can't get on until shortly before bedtime. In years past, I would have quickly been annoyed by this and gotten a laptop by now. I don't need it for my evening browsing—because of the iPhone and iPad. The PC isn't going away, but it's not going to be the main screen soon. That screen won't be the iPad 1, either. It'll be g4 or g5, but it will happen. I don't need a "real" computer for a lot of what I do, anymore.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
The secret is to take a deep breath and realize that an absolute majority of people in the world go years at a time without writing so much as two paragraphs in a row. People do write. In Twitter-sized chunks. That is why Twitter is so popular. But you can compose a Tweet on a touchscreen keyboard. I'm sure that's especially true if you have been to middle school in this century and have lived the life of the text messager. But that's just part of the answer. The real answer is that the PC isn't going anywhere. But that's not enough to make an "era". As Bruce Sterling once said: We very likely have better flint-knife technology today than they did in the flint era, if only because the flint-knapping enthusiasts can swap secrets on the net and share a global collection of books, videos, and meetups. But that doesn't mean we are in any kind of "flint era". We have more paper and more pens available today than ever in history, but we don't speak of the pen-and-paper era. And there is more rock music being played today than in 1968 and yet we think of then, not now, as more of a "rock era". An "era" is defined by newness, disruption, and the smell of profit. The modern PC platforms are between fifteen and twenty-five years old and have changed little in the last decade. Major parts of the industry have seen their margins shrink to near zero. Others are profitable but only for a tiny handful of big players. This doesn't mean history is over - I refuse to believe that, say, Adobe Photoshop circa 2011 is the last word in image editing for the next hundred years - but to change the PC market from within is a long hard slog. The build-out of mobile will be a lot more fun to watch.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
Most of the tablets assume a hardware keyboard is going to be used for long form text entry. I think even the iPad is less fascist about this than it has been in the past.

imsky 16y ago

It's the "end of PCs" for the mainstream market, which was overrun with them for the last 10 years. Now the mobile technology is good enough that bulky desktops are going to be used primarily by professionals. You're not going to edit video/render 3D on the iPad 2, but for 90% of the population that just needs to check their email, it's good enough.

Roritharr 16y ago
I think that idea is overblown, simply because "Check their E-Mails" means someone has to write e-mails worth checking...
- ugh 16y ago
  Input really is not that terrible. It’s disingenuous to act as though tablets don’t allow you to enter text.

wiredfool 16y ago

We're getting closer. Years ago, must have been 7 or 8 by now, I was talking with a friend @ Microsoft, and he was going on and on about how the phone was going to be the computer. "This Phone" and he'd hold up a generic GSM flip phone. My objection then was UI, both on the input and output side. In a way, wifi and bluetooth have solved a lot of that, as they can offload the heavy duty stuff to wireless sometimes connected displays and keyboards. At some point, we're likely to have enough power in a cellphone to run most of what you'd want to do for day to day stuff. And do it all day on a charge. Couple that with always on networking and the availability of machines in the cloud for bigger jobs, you start to be able to have the phone/tablet be most of what you need.

apress 16y ago
This is exactly the point and where the future is going because of Moore's law and all the various others ways ourt gadgetry gets cheaper and faster every year. Remember when laptops were too expensive and underpowered to serve as a geek's main machine? Now that's the norm. In a few more years, all the computing power, storage and connectivity most people will need will be inside a phone. The Motorola Atrix may be ahead of of its time but I think it is a harbinger of things to come.

halostatue 16y ago

I'll try to explain by personal anecdotes—two of them. In my household, there's just my wife and myself. I'm an übergeek; she's a technically competent teacher. Computers are merely tools to her. We went to Italy this past summer. We took my iPhone (data turned off), an iPad 3G, my SLR, and her camera. Because I couldn't find someone locally to sell me a photo tank, I also had to take an Airport Express, a netbook, and a card reader to save the pictures I took (I didn't have the camera connection kit at the time). Except for that, we did not use a laptop. We used the iPad extensively in Italy, paying our bills, making calls on a SIP client, browsing the web, writing blog posts, and even uploading edited photos to a photoblog at http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com. We didn't once feel like we were missing out on anything or that we needed to go to an Internet cafe. The portability was astounding. We needed a laptop in 2006 when we went to Europe to do much the same. The second anecdote is current. When I get home, I rarely get on the single "real" computer unless I'm programming. When my wife is doing report cards, I can't get on until shortly before bedtime. In years past, I would have quickly been annoyed by this and gotten a laptop by now. I don't need it for my evening browsing—because of the iPhone and iPad. The PC isn't going away, but it's not going to be the main screen soon. That screen won't be the iPad 1, either. It'll be g4 or g5, but it will happen. I don't need a "real" computer for a lot of what I do, anymore.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

The secret is to take a deep breath and realize that an absolute majority of people in the world go years at a time without writing so much as two paragraphs in a row. People do write. In Twitter-sized chunks. That is why Twitter is so popular. But you can compose a Tweet on a touchscreen keyboard. I'm sure that's especially true if you have been to middle school in this century and have lived the life of the text messager. But that's just part of the answer. The real answer is that the PC isn't going anywhere. But that's not enough to make an "era". As Bruce Sterling once said: We very likely have better flint-knife technology today than they did in the flint era, if only because the flint-knapping enthusiasts can swap secrets on the net and share a global collection of books, videos, and meetups. But that doesn't mean we are in any kind of "flint era". We have more paper and more pens available today than ever in history, but we don't speak of the pen-and-paper era. And there is more rock music being played today than in 1968 and yet we think of then, not now, as more of a "rock era". An "era" is defined by newness, disruption, and the smell of profit. The modern PC platforms are between fifteen and twenty-five years old and have changed little in the last decade. Major parts of the industry have seen their margins shrink to near zero. Others are profitable but only for a tiny handful of big players. This doesn't mean history is over - I refuse to believe that, say, Adobe Photoshop circa 2011 is the last word in image editing for the next hundred years - but to change the PC market from within is a long hard slog. The build-out of mobile will be a lot more fun to watch.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

Most of the tablets assume a hardware keyboard is going to be used for long form text entry. I think even the iPad is less fascist about this than it has been in the past.