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I came across a quote from Alan Kay that came to mind when reading this: > It’s worth pondering this. One argument against mine, is that “people need and want
by swatson741 6y ago
I came across a quote from Alan Kay that came to mind when reading this:
> It’s worth pondering this. One argument against mine, is that “people need and want ‘appliances’ “ that only have one function.
This was in response to a more widely known quote of his:
> Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
The only people who need specialized personal workstations are people working with large data. But, even with that the cost of the cloud has made workstations a poor investment in most cases. I don't think I'd agree with the notion that the demise of the workstation is "untimely." Maybe in a retro, nostalgic or, cultural way it's demise is upsetting but, in the larger pragmatic sense it's quite welcomed. Workstations always felt like a stop-gap solution for what we have now.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoFor a long time I thought the market would bifurcate again. With consumption devices at one end and creation devices at the other. Sadly it looks that isn’t happening and we will end up with nothing more than a web browser on our desks and anything complex running in the cloud. I don’t like this model at all and it isn’t about culture or nostalgia but rather the loss of control and agency.
- swatson741 6y agoWhy would you think that for a long time when the trend has clearly been towards where we are today? PC's kept getting more powerful and sophisticated architectures. Workstations never had a future. I remember even back in the 2000's personal workstations were considered legacy. PC's had networking capabilities that were more than enough for what many organizations were doing and they didn't want to support or purchase workstations.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoWhether it is called a PC or a Workstation is immaterial, it's the capacity for work that is the distinction.
- michael1999 6y agoHasn't it? I think you're looking up, when the split happened down. Phones and tablets for consumption, laptops and desktops for creation. When you need more oomf, temporary cloud resources. A decent linux box with a good monitor seems just like my old SPARC IPC. I have an optical mouse (wireless and any surface!), ctrl-alt-meta keys on both sides, a compiler suite and and an X server. 1989 is still here if you squint.
- batty_alex 6y agoI still like to pour one out for workstations, myself. With the cloud, we’re back to paying a big company for their time share machines in the sky.