4 ms·

>The "Post PC" era is coming, have little doubt of that. I see a lot of people saying this, but I don't see much evidence for it. Anybody who has tried to edi

by tsotha 15y ago

>The "Post PC" era is coming, have little doubt of that. I see a lot of people saying this, but I don't see much evidence for it. Anybody who has tried to edit a document or spreadsheet on a tablet knows PCs aren't going anywhere.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
People in, say, 2030 won't stop using keyboards, and they won't stop using devices which have a lot of similarities to what we would call a PC today, even down to the metal chassis with PCBs inside connected to a monitor and keyboard in some cases. However, there are a lot of other very fundamental elements to the computing experience which pretty much every computer system will have which will be inherited from non-PCs (specifically tablets and smartphones). To be clear: the tablet is the first hint of the post-PC era we have, but it does not and will not define the entire extent of the post-PC phenomenon.
- sounds 15y ago
  Cool, I can agree with that. New input methods will take on a greater role. E.g. Kinect (time of flight sensors), Multi-touch, Voice, Light fields.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
Do you agree we are in the post-mainframe and post-mini eras? Yet you can still buy mainframes and (probably) mini computers. The end of the era does not mean the end of the type of computing, just that the focus of new technology development won't focus around it. We are in the post-PC era.
- tsotha 15y ago
  Mainframes and minis were replaced by PCs. Tablets and mobiles may complement PCs, but they won't replace PCs. Like I said, I don't see any actual evidence there's a "post-PC" era. It's more like a "Post-DS" era.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    Mainframes continue to be used to this day. Minis were squeezed out. PCs will likely continue to be used. Eras don't end with a switch flipping. Things fade out. PCs have started their fade as we move to mobile. We still have little idea what mobile will evolve into, but there is no question it and not PCs is what is evolving.
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      Mainframes were replaced by PCs scaled up to mainframe levels, the old mainframe lines died off. That will probably happen to some degree with mobile and PCs as well. Laptops in the future will be more like tablets with keyboards than like the laptops of today, for example. And desktop OSes may have as much heritage from mobile OSes today as from stock OS/X and Windows today.
      - rbanffy 15y ago
        > Mainframes were replaced by PCs scaled up to mainframe levels At the same time, mainframes moved on, acquiring new features PC-based servers cannot yet replicate. You'll never get the 5 nines a zSeries gives you out of a Dell. Or an xSeries IBM box. It's an incredibly sophisticated stack that goes from the user-facing applications and how you design them down to the processor microcode and processor cores dedicated to hardware management functions.
rbanffy 15y ago
Post-PC devices are not necessarily keyboardless tablets. The transition we'll see has much more to do with where the data is stored and where programs are running than with the physical format of the device.
- sounds 15y ago
  Then it needs a different name, right? "Post-PC device" implies it has left the PC model behind, and although new input methods may arrive, PC's will still be around. Specifically, laptops are what I'm thinking of when I say PC, and the even though the form factor isn't evolving rapidly, tablets have been around a long time and the form factor hasn't evolved that much. Now, maybe you'd say that the shape of an iPad is way different from the shape of a windows table from a decade ago, but it isn't. They're both as flat as possible with just a screen. The transition to SaaS and the cloud does not mark the end of the laptop.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Your idea of personal computer is something with a keyboard or the device physical form. I interpret it as something much more related to function - a device that holds and processes data locally, with locally installed applications and that you have to manage yourself, dealing with files that can be processed by different applications. This has been what a personal computer is since their invention. A "post-PC" device (and I see it as mostly a marketing term, but a useful way to refer to these devices nevertheless) is something that won't make you manage your files, that has a simple way to install/remove applications and that is tied to always-available remote storage and services. A Chromebook is much more post-PC-ish than an iPad, but that's another discussion.

by tsotha 15y ago

InclinedPlane 15y ago

People in, say, 2030 won't stop using keyboards, and they won't stop using devices which have a lot of similarities to what we would call a PC today, even down to the metal chassis with PCBs inside connected to a monitor and keyboard in some cases. However, there are a lot of other very fundamental elements to the computing experience which pretty much every computer system will have which will be inherited from non-PCs (specifically tablets and smartphones). To be clear: the tablet is the first hint of the post-PC era we have, but it does not and will not define the entire extent of the post-PC phenomenon.

sounds 15y ago
Cool, I can agree with that. New input methods will take on a greater role. E.g. Kinect (time of flight sensors), Multi-touch, Voice, Light fields.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

Do you agree we are in the post-mainframe and post-mini eras? Yet you can still buy mainframes and (probably) mini computers. The end of the era does not mean the end of the type of computing, just that the focus of new technology development won't focus around it. We are in the post-PC era.

tsotha 15y ago
Mainframes and minis were replaced by PCs. Tablets and mobiles may complement PCs, but they won't replace PCs. Like I said, I don't see any actual evidence there's a "post-PC" era. It's more like a "Post-DS" era.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  Mainframes continue to be used to this day. Minis were squeezed out. PCs will likely continue to be used. Eras don't end with a switch flipping. Things fade out. PCs have started their fade as we move to mobile. We still have little idea what mobile will evolve into, but there is no question it and not PCs is what is evolving.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    Mainframes were replaced by PCs scaled up to mainframe levels, the old mainframe lines died off. That will probably happen to some degree with mobile and PCs as well. Laptops in the future will be more like tablets with keyboards than like the laptops of today, for example. And desktop OSes may have as much heritage from mobile OSes today as from stock OS/X and Windows today.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      > Mainframes were replaced by PCs scaled up to mainframe levels At the same time, mainframes moved on, acquiring new features PC-based servers cannot yet replicate. You'll never get the 5 nines a zSeries gives you out of a Dell. Or an xSeries IBM box. It's an incredibly sophisticated stack that goes from the user-facing applications and how you design them down to the processor microcode and processor cores dedicated to hardware management functions.

rbanffy 15y ago

Post-PC devices are not necessarily keyboardless tablets. The transition we'll see has much more to do with where the data is stored and where programs are running than with the physical format of the device.

sounds 15y ago
Then it needs a different name, right? "Post-PC device" implies it has left the PC model behind, and although new input methods may arrive, PC's will still be around. Specifically, laptops are what I'm thinking of when I say PC, and the even though the form factor isn't evolving rapidly, tablets have been around a long time and the form factor hasn't evolved that much. Now, maybe you'd say that the shape of an iPad is way different from the shape of a windows table from a decade ago, but it isn't. They're both as flat as possible with just a screen. The transition to SaaS and the cloud does not mark the end of the laptop.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  Your idea of personal computer is something with a keyboard or the device physical form. I interpret it as something much more related to function - a device that holds and processes data locally, with locally installed applications and that you have to manage yourself, dealing with files that can be processed by different applications. This has been what a personal computer is since their invention. A "post-PC" device (and I see it as mostly a marketing term, but a useful way to refer to these devices nevertheless) is something that won't make you manage your files, that has a simple way to install/remove applications and that is tied to always-available remote storage and services. A Chromebook is much more post-PC-ish than an iPad, but that's another discussion.