14 ms·

The PC is dead. Why no angry nerds?

98 points by pauljonas 15y ago

typicalrunt 15y ago
Why no angry nerds? Because nerds are still using their PCs to create mobile and web-based software. The PC may (just may) be dead for the hordes of average consumers out there, but it'll never be dead for those people creating things -- that is, until you can adequately create a mobile or web application on an iPad/iPhone. Does anyone truly believe that scores of software developers writing financial software for banks are going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device? Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term).
- kevinherron 15y ago
  This is exactly what I came here to say. I think there will be a continuous widening of the gap between devices meant for producing and devices meant for consuming. The two can't exist without each other, however, so there's no reason to worry.
  - swah 15y ago
    But devices for producing only became affordable because they were also for consuming.
    - recoiledsnake 15y ago
      Not just that but also the fact that the devices used for producing are much less likely to be bought in homes if they already have a consumption device. In the post-PC world, a home(especially in low income homes and the developing world) having iPads are much less likely to have Windows or Mac machines (on which an enterprising kid might install and play with Eclipse, Visual Studio Express or XCode, or even Linux). This effect will be further amplified when the PC prices rise to lower demand.
    - LarryMade 15y ago
      which several decades previous that was the case for microcomputers... While now it is a given concept that there will be a consumer level device, but sooner or later a new generation of home-based hackers will work up some new ways to be productive within these walled gardens, those will be exploited into apps and companies will be doing business on them - and then it will have started all over again. I wouldn't consider it an end but part of a progression.
- interknot 15y ago
  I mostly agree with you, though I'm concerned that the economies of scale that make PC-style computing affordable will become unsustainable.
- astine 15y ago
  The complaint that the author makes isn't about consumption vs production devices, it's about curated experiences. Apple can veto your income on the insistence of popular opinion or on a whim, or with no stated reason at all. The author extrapolates that this can lead to an effective restriction of freedom of the press by Apple and other gatekeepers. This is a real problem and is not alleviated just because you still use a PC to write software.
  - onemoreact 15y ago
    Your forgetting about the web. Apple does not veto websites just things in their little walled garden.
    - yannickt 15y ago
      True, but if people spend more time in apps than browsing the web, then web apps might be harder to monetize than native apps on mobile devices.
      - dextorious 15y ago
        And god forbid if we let users spend more time to the kind of apps they love, instead of forcing them to use the web so we can monetize it better...
    - bad_user 15y ago
      Considering how Apple controls the operating system, the app store, the browser and the whole device in general, it wouldn't be technically hard for Apple to censor websites either. Plus, Apple is restricting the browser on purpose, to make it less useful. Tell me, how can you create an online image editing software, if Apple doesn't allow you to upload files from iPhone's browser? And what Apple is doing today would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. Censoring the web is perfectly within their grasp and you should see that, otherwise you're not seeing the forest from the trees.
      - onemoreact 15y ago
- timwiseman 15y ago
  Well said. Now admittedly the people I know tend to be on the "computer oriented" side, so there is a sampling bias, but I have yet to meet anyone that chose to have a tablet instead of a PC. I know a lot of people that have a tablet in addition to their PC, but that hardly makes the PC dead for them. When tablets become much more powerful and able to integrate seemlessly with things like additional large monitors, keyboards, and mouses (or whatever eventually really replaces keyboards and mouses) then the PC will likely become a niche product, but then tablets will also have become hard to distinguish from a PC with an added ability to undock one monitor to take it with you.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    My wife is not technically inclined. She uses a netbook instead with Windows on it. I just don't get all this tablet love - I can make my laptop sit on my lap without stressing my hands. The display is big enough that I can do whatever I want on it, like when watching movies, the bigger, the better. I can type ~ 100 WPM on it. I can save a file on my desktop from one app and then open it from another (basic functionality that's just fucked up on the iPad). The iPhone or the competing Android phones ARE GAME CHANGERS. But the big difference between an iPhone and a tablet is that an iPhone sits in your pocket and goes with you everywhere, even when you're at your local grocery store, buying some milk, even when you're inside a public toilet. A phone is always with you. That's progress. But a Tablet? It's just a cool-looking but dumb device. It has potential, true. But not until it can do all of the things a laptop can.
    - orev 15y ago
      I am an extremely technical user (15 yrs Linux admin) and I have both a netbook and an iPad. As soon as I got the iPad I stopped using the netbook. The experience on the iPad is far FAR superior as a consumption device than a netbook. If you are trying to use the tablet for the same things as your laptop, you're using it wrong. It sounds like you don't have a tablet, so you really don't have the credibility to weigh in on it. Also, I would suspect that your wife would highly prefer a tablet if given the chance to try it out. The netbook experience is truly horrible -- she just might not know that something better is out there.
- pvarangot 15y ago
  > Does anyone truly believe that scores of software > developers writing financial software for banks are > going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device? > Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term). Not to mention most professional cases of photo/video/sound editing, and graphic design for magazines or billboards. Sometimes a laptop screen size is truly an impediment. Fast hard disks also help in this tasks.
- jseliger 15y ago
  In addition, I suspect most of the people buying mobile devices still have a PC and will for the foreseeable future—because their PCs and laptops are cheap, as I discuss in detail here: http://jseliger.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-going-anywhere-despite-the-growth-of-phones-and-tablets%E2%80%94because-theyre-cheap/ http://jseliger.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-going-anywh... . It's not going to be "or"; it's going to be "and."
- BrainInAJar 15y ago
  " Does anyone truly believe that scores of software developers writing financial software for banks are going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device? Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term). " iPad, wireless keyboard & SSH and I can do all my work more or less the same way I do now
  - freehunter 15y ago
    I actually do this right now, but without SSH. I recently started writing my code on an HP Touchpad with a bluetooth keyboard. It started to get difficult to sync my work across multiple computers, especially when there was no network present at a place I wish I could work from. I got a Touchpad, installed Ubuntu on it, and now I can have my entire development studio and all my code wherever I go without needing to worry about getting to my Git repository. There are times when I cannot test my code on the tablet, but at the very least I can write it wherever then push it back to Git and pull it to my test machine when I get back.
- neutronicus 15y ago
  You also can't really get through college with just an iPad. Apparently students are trying, and grousing when they realize that the kinds of software your classes demand that you run doesn't run on the iPad. I'm guessing that the world of academic software will blink second.
mikemarotti 15y ago
People have been saying the PC is dead just about as long as I've been Personal Computing. The role of the PC may be changing, but that is far from meaning that it's dead.
iamandrus 15y ago
The PC isn't dead. It never will be. Sure, it's changing roles in a smartphone/tablet world, but it'll never "go away."
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
chc 15y ago
For any writers who want to talk about how the PC is dead: Try guesstimating the number of people who will use a PC on a given day, then look at how many people read your blog/newspaper/magazine in a given YEAR. (Hint: Not even HuffPo will win this one.)
sliverstorm 15y ago
The mainframe is dead too. By the way, on an unrelated note, did you know mainframes are still IBM's biggest business?
- antidaily 15y ago
  It's not consulting?
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Maybe, I'm not an IBM insider. That's just what I've heard. Maybe they are consulting for their mainframe customers?
    - flomo 15y ago
      Some years ago, most of their consulting revenue was derived from IBM platforms. Since then they've absorbed a number of other consulting companies though.
- qntm 15y ago
  What percentage of that is stream revenue from existing mainframe customers?
howeyc 15y ago
I'm not as quick to discount the point as the others here, Look at it this way, assume in the not so distant future you can do it all on the tablet as opposed to the desktop and no longer nead desktops, having them die a slow, slow death: Counter-Strike, WoW, Development (Github text editing, Cloud9 IDE,... etc), word processing, browsing, you get the idea. But instead, the applications are vetted and controlled by the tablet OS maker. Now instead of law makers trying to get every search engine to block something, or tear-down registars all over the world, they just go to tablet OS maker 1 and 2 and have them take down access to website/app. No more website/app for anyone as desktops are dead and the tablet is so locked to shit you can't change a thing (secure boot anyone?) Now, I'm not sure death is as current as suggested, but I see the trend the blog post is referring too.
- tehayj 15y ago
  I agree but only if more of the stupid masses pay for getting locked up in something like the Apple walled garden. They trade some of their freedom for thinking even less. Considering how "smart" the general human population is they will be happy to opt in for no choice just to have the latest iOS device and think they are cool.
- roc 15y ago
  Why would Apple be any more willing to turn off web access to a domain than the dominant ISP or backbone provider or the dominant PC vendor or even just the ISP/DNS provider for the site in question? It seems silly to imply the situation is somehow more plausible/likely with a tablet-based computing landscape.
  - howeyc 15y ago
    I don't believe any ISP/DNS provider is "willing" to turn off web access to any paying customer (domain owner). However, it has nothing to do with willingness but instead with "force" (Judges, Congressman, Clothing manufacturers, ...), people and companies don't like paying fines and going to jail. Let's say there's 250 domains that are unliked, on 5 different registrars, 10 different ISPS, but only two tablet OSs with walled gardens, which place would you logically force to stop access? Of course if it's apps you don't like instead of domains the answer is trivial. Now, we are not in this scenario right now no matter how horrific you think walled gardens are. Probably not worth speculating too much further as the future is hard to predict, and this is just a possibility of the blog post trend extrapolated forward X number years.
vladd 15y ago
I saw in the supermarket the other day a group of parents buying for their young child a so-called "mini-laptop" that costs $100 and probably only knows to do addition, multiplications and some basic word-games on a cheap LCD screen. And I realized that for them, and for a large portion of the end-users, lack of education in IT makes it very difficult for them to see the difference between the said laptop and a regular PC device. Apple realized first what this lack of knowledge can do: the ability to lock-in a product so that it runs only your AppStore's apps is not only good for the high-end of the market that is willing to sacrifice freedom in the name of usability and beautiful design, but rather more importantly it's good for the ignorant masses that don't even realize this fact when they buy the product just because it's fashionable to do so.
- TheCapn 15y ago
  One lesson I took away from my university economics class is that in a large enough market all competitive products are virtually identical. One may offer X better than the other while that 2nd one may offer Y better than the first but for the most part that is all smoke & mirrors to the consumer. The point is that people cannot tell the difference without marketing to try and exaggerate one thing over another. Its why people buy inferior products at inflated rates and don't get upset. It is also why marketing is so very important in a saturated marketplace. This is exactly what happened in your scenario. The well thinking mothers were lead to believe that any `laptop` can be just as good as another because someone told them it can be. They believed it without understanding it was all a ploy to gain a customer.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
    Either that or they fully understood its limitations and were satisfied with them. I'll happily get my 2 year-old a Leapfrog/LeapPad type device and he'll be happy with it and learn from it. Even if I could get a laptop at the same price point, I wouldn't. Why? The LeapFrog type devices are made to be handled by toddlers. That means they can take being thrown across the room, tossed out a window, and used as a hammer and still come up smiling. Try that with a laptop! Not to mention that with the specialized device I don't need to be concerned about loading DVDs, CDs, etc: the media is similarly rugged. Don't be too quick to discount what those parents were doing: they may have a better idea than you what type of environment the device operates in.
jes5199 15y ago
People don't use PCs as general purpose platforms anymore, anyway. I can code anywhere that there's a unix environment - or a connection to AWS. And people can use my software anywhere there's a browser. The ability to build and run .exe files hasn't really been a major enabler of geekery since, I dunno, Napster, I guess wa s the last time.
vectorpush 15y ago
The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the PC, or perhaps that which we call a rose by any other name will smell just as sweet. I don't see how a tablet is any different from a PC except for form factor, especially when they catch up with PCs in terms of general utility.
- dextorious 15y ago
  """The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the PC""" How about, in 10 years most people just get a tablet + keyboard or something, and the PC doesn't die, but get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of demand?
  - vectorpush 15y ago
    get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of demand? Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs. My point is that PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply transition into tablets as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse = a PC.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      """Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs. My point is that PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply transition into tablets as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse = a PC""". It's not that simple. What you describe is desktop PC vs laptop. Tablets on the other hand have different operating systems (at least the only tablet that people > 1% actually buy, the iPad) than PCs. We can imagine a feature where most people use tablets, perhaps equally capable as any PC, but WITHOUT today's full PC OS flexibility, and PCs are left for only small professions (programmers, creatives, etc).
qdog 15y ago
I was just looking at building a new computer, I was contemplating a dual-cpu setup for using vm's, hoping it would be easy to run copies of various OS's on one box and use all the different streaming technologies for tv output. Looks like about $2k or more. While it would be great to be able to coordinate all the streaming media using my phone as a remote, my phone doesn't do most of the 'computing' tasks I like, and reading HN on a 4" screen is handy, but not optimal. I think his point is exactly that if I want everything to work, I need an Apple and a Windows machine running (nevermind whether it's legal to run Apple in a VM, I'm under the impression they don't want you to, but if I purchase a copy of OSX, it's not clear I wouldn't have the right), and maybe a Chrome machine, because they DON'T WORK TOGETHER BY ARBITRARY RESTRICTIONS. I think there is another guy that likes to rant about this walled garden approach. Personally, I've been trying to use iTunes on a windows box to play to an apple tv recently and it is sucking. Music plays fine from an iPhone. So now, my wife is all ready to pay the Apple Tax for a new computer. To just get music to play. They fact that apple makes a cool device is fine, the fact they don't want to play nice with any of my other equipment makes me loathe to buy a new one, but apparently I'm not with the mainstream on this one. But count me as one of the angry nerds.
- Tobu 15y ago
  Dual-CPU? You can get a dual-core or more for far cheaper than that. Look to AMD Phenom IIs for the middle-range, you get better performance for the buck especially if you factor in the motherboard. Besides being faster, this kind of machine is far cheaper than a hand held, locked down device. Here are the costs of ownership, about $2000 for two years: http://www.steamenginefinancialcoaching.com/2011/02/14/the-real-cost-of-ownership-iphone-4/ http://www.steamenginefinancialcoaching.com/2011/02/14/the-r...
cq 15y ago
The PC is dead to idiots. It's actually still quite awesome for those of us who are producers, not consumers.
- tehayj 15y ago
  They have iOS for idiots now.
- jfruh 15y ago
  Right, because people who don't want to do all the things with a computer that you want to do with a computer are idiots. Gotcha.
- pclstyle 15y ago
  And what good are producers without consumers?
  - jarek 15y ago
    Ask the 1980s.
  - gujk 15y ago
    The consumers are still here, on iPads.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
jsz0 15y ago
There are definitely angry nerds out there but they are in a position of arguing against a better user experience for the vast majority of people who don't want to have malware, a broken OS, their personal data stolen, etc. They should be trying to find less restrictive solutions that provide the same benefits. Otherwise the companies that are moving forward with making a better end user experience are going to win in the long run.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Do you feel secure when using an iPhone? JailbreakMe is a website that can root your iOS - so let me emphasize this - a freaking website that can get root access on your iPhone just by visiting that website. It originally relied on some bug in the PDF reader. Then Apple released an update. Then JailbreakMe got upgraded to use a FreeType parser security flaw, again in that same PDF reader and so it works with iOS 4.3.3 - then Apple released iOS 4.3.4 to patch it. But now an update for iOS 5 is apparently in the works. At this point you may now feel that Apple is in control, that they are patching iOS at a rapid pace and so on. However, these vulnerabilities are PUBLIC. Even the source-code for JailbreakMe was published. Bad people don't do that ;-) So you can argue all you want against malware, a broken OS or about evil people stealing your data, however the iOS platform is nothing more than security theater - it keeps the script kiddies out, it gives you an illusion of safety, but it won't keep out the people with the right resources and experience. And those people are the people you should be worried about.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    >however the iOS platform is nothing more than security theater - it keeps the script kiddies out, it gives you an illusion of safety, but it won't keep out the people with the right resources and experience. And those people are the people you should be worried about. You should be worried about the script kiddies too. Security is all about layers and vectors. Installing an innocent looking wallpaper pack by casual users shouldn't lead to malware infestation. That is much easier for the bad guys to do rather than get people to visit a malicious website. Reducing the attack surface definitely makes you safer on relative terms. It does not make you absolutely safe. >Do you feel secure when using an iPhone? If I had an iPhone I would feel safer installing a whole bunch of unknown third party apps compared to doing the same on, say an Android phone. I would not feel "secure" though.
quellhorst 15y ago
PCs are trucks for getting serious work done.
rplnt 15y ago
Last time the PC was dead, it was because of the gaming consoles. All the games are there, web browsers too.. why would anyone want a PC? That was half a decade ago and PCs are still here.
georgieporgie 15y ago
Alarmist fluff. And every app sold for the iPhone would have 30 percent of its price (and later, that of its “in-app purchases”) go to Apple. Famously proprietary Microsoft never dared to extract a tax on every piece of software written by others for Windows—perhaps because, in the absence of consistent Internet access in the 1990s through which to manage purchases and licenses, there’d be no realistic way to make it happen. Microsoft never provided a complete distribution channel for software, either. Complying with Apple requirements and limitations is annoying. However, the consumer gets reasonably vetted software, and the developer gets a single method of distribution. What's the complaint, again?
- dmethvin 15y ago
  iPhone owners are prohibited from going to any other store. It's a monopoly. Sure, Mussolini was a dictator, but he made the trains run on time.
  - georgieporgie 15y ago
    Nobody is forcing you to use an iPhone. You have plenty of other options.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - shaggyfrog 15y ago
    Sigh. Yes, of course, Apple is just like a violent dictator who supported genocide.
    - jsight 15y ago
      Whoosh The point isn't that Apple is just like a violent dictator. The point is that these statements are (mostly) irrelevent to each other. The trains can run on time without a dictator. The user can have a fine walled-garden experience but still retain the option to (in a reasonably supported way) tear down the walls.
libraryatnight 15y ago
I'm too busy doing awesome things on my super awesome PC to be angry.
VladRussian 15y ago
instead of 1 single core single cpu PC shared with my wife, we now have (counting only ours, not company issued laptop and 2 Mac desktops) 3 PCs (1 desktop type and 2 are server dual quad cores opterons (and 1 old dual dual core)), 2 laptops and 1 netbook, and 3 iOS devices. And i'm looking to get soon new SB 2[5|6|7]00K (or may be even indulge with 3930 - it is Christmas time :) + mobo + pile of DDR3 to upgrade the desktop. I'm a happy nerd as RAM/CPU/HDD and big LCDs are so cheap these days. Edit: just today a new store opening nearby got several cargo pallets of new Dell's PC based hardware (POS and pure PC). In the next few years 5+ billions of people will get their first computing device (and the rest 2 bilions - their first 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... computing device). The vast majority of this growth will not be a PC. That's clear. Yet this growth in mobile devices will "synergize" an unprecedented growth in PC/server hardware dwarfing whatever we've seen so far.
cavilling_elite 15y ago
Wow, I've been blinded. I have never equated what Apple is doing with the app-store/"taxing" and the MS IE anti-trust case. The empowerment of the censor. Scary words.
- vacri 15y ago
  Apple's store is a standard retail cut, it's nothing like taxes. Do you complain about the middleman cut with every other thing you puchase? The monopoly issue is a different beast to the retail cut issue.
WiseWeasel 15y ago
I'm optimistic for several reasons: 1) Less need for IT support for family and friends; 2) I'm well-served with the computers I assemble and purchase, and even if mainstream operating systems continue their slide towards not serving my needs well (from my vantage point looking at OS X Lion and Windows 8), I am confident that there will be solutions out there, possibly increasingly exemplified by Linux, that facilitate web development and mundane user empowerment; 3) The web has become the democratic platform for publishing interactive content to the masses, which no vendor would dare attempt to exert control over. Now, the real question is who's going to capitalize on this amusingly-phrased headline and come out with the Angry Nerds mobile game, where you launch a variety of nerds at iPads hidden in the temporary safety of their elaborate Apple Stores? Let's see, there's the fat, bearded nerd, the pale, skinny, tall one, the kid with glasses, the token girl nerd with freckles and glasses, and the $1.99 in-game purchase Darth Vader helmet nerd. [Edit] Looks like I wasn't the first one to think along these lines: http://www.atlassian.com/en/angrynerds http://www.atlassian.com/en/angrynerds [/Edit]
killnine 15y ago
I am angry. really angry. What is the solution to make the gatekeepers and the gatekeeper-supporters obsolete? I don't need them- why do you?
caller9 15y ago
The scary part is when parents who just need a consumption device only buy a tablet. How many of you would've been able to program at a young age if your parents didn't buy the family PC.
- stan_rogers 15y ago
  Some of us wrote our programs out carefully on paper, debugged them as well as we could by stepping through them mentally (and making register annotations, etc., on paper when required), then transcribed them to electrographic "punch" cards for the school's batch run on the local university's mini/mainframe once a month. Having a computer makes programming more convenient and less theoretical (bugs happen occasionally despite correct code), but it's not essential to learning. It's a lot less likely to happen in that way in the current environment (with ubiquitous PCs), but if we ever get to the point where PCs (or their equivalent) aren't everywhere anymore, the interested geeks will find a way -- just like we did in the old days.
- colomon 15y ago
  Sure, but that was a world where a new computer cost $1000. Right now that price is more like $100, and if Raspberry Pi works soon it will be $25. Any interested kid could easily earn that much in a month mowing lawns...
pawn 15y ago
A lot of people here are quick to discount the title "The PC is dead", but I think the actual meat of what he was getting at merits consideration - walled gardens are a lot more popular today than they used to be. No doubt, there are certain innovations that we may never see because of this. For example, what if there's a Mac developer out there who has ideas for a better browser than Safari. You're never going to see it, because Apple won't let you. Today, he has the option of bringing it to PC, but that might be too big of a barrier for him to jump if he's one of those guys who won't buy one. Also, its not too hard to imagine a day when Microsoft follows Apple and makes their own marketplace. Probably won't be anytime soon, but it would be naive to say it could never ever happen. The main thing stopping them is probably the fact that they're still the big dog and can't get away with doing what Apple does. People judge them differently. In a few more years though, I could see them pointing at what Apple does and saying, "There's precedent here. Let's go for it." Some people would jump ship and move onto Linux, and say "I still have freedom" but what about your mom and dad who will keep buying the Walmart special every Black Friday? As an indie developer these things are limiting what you can do. I think the solution here is to take a look at what people like about these marketplaces - a convenient way to find apps, and duplicate it - without the bad stuff. Make a marketplace and don't limit what goes on it. Also, make less profit for yourself than what your competitor (Google and/or Apple) makes. The toughest thing is traction. Getting it in front of eyes as something to use instead of the other one. Get past that, and you're set. Am I missing anything? Has this been done and I just don't know about it?
- GHFigs 15y ago
  Also, its not too hard to imagine a day when Microsoft follows Apple and makes their own marketplace. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-app-store-will-be-the-only-source-of-metro-apps/14873 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-app-store-will-...
vph 15y ago
If you believe that in the future, people do accounting on the ipads, write papers/programs on the cell phones, then the PC is dead.
dasil003 15y ago
> The iPhone restricts outside code, but developers could still, in many cases, manage to offer functionality through a website accessible through the Safari browser. Few developers do, and there’s work to be done to ferret out what separates the rule from the exception. I don't want to be paranoid, but I feel like what Apple has done is brilliantly nefarious. They've given developers an offer they can't refuse: for 30% we'll sell your software frictionlessly. Sure you are giving up control, but how much does requiring a payment form and non-standard, non-obvious, potentially painful installation process cost an indie developer. 30% is always far less than the losses of a traditional website sales funnel, potentially by 2 orders of magnitude. The App Store simply sells more software. Of course it has corrosive effects on the developer community in that prices are driven down (maybe not as much as volume increases, but still) and control is forked over the Apple. But what can developers do? It's a game theory problem. If everyone refuses to play Apple's game then maybe developers and innovation win, but if one breaks the line they stand to make a fortune. I'm really not looking forward to the day when Macs go App Store only. If that happens it will probably mean I have to switch to Linux. It saddens me that the future of computing may be completely locked down, but it's hard to argue against it if for no other reason than it offers the most promise for actually making users safe as malware proliferates and becomes more sophisticated. Part of me thinks the free software and Internet as we know them today can not last, and if it wasn't the App Store it would be some other powerful interest eroding our digital freedom in the name of profit or control. This line of thought makes me think that maybe RMS is not such an extremist after all, but merely an equal counterbalance to the forces of power and greed shaping out future.
- zmmmmm 15y ago
  > 30% is always far less than the losses of a traditional website sales funnel, potentially by 2 orders of magnitude. The App Store simply sells more software. I don't understand how your maths works. You are asserting that a traditional website sale costs 3000%, thus losing the seller 29 x the price of the item? Obviously I am misunderstanding you but I don't know how to make sense of what you are saying. I'm always curious about the people who say 30% is a good deal. I sell software directly over the web. PayPal charges me something like 0.50 + 2.5%. I do host my web site but I would have a web site anyway. Bandwidth associated with sales is negligible, support is a cost but again, Apple wouldn't do that for me. 30% is bigger than the cut I give to generic resellers who actually come to me to ask to list my software in their stores. I can see that Apple's store can increase volume (but then, we have nothing to compare it to - we will never know how well iOS software might have sold without the app store) - but I don't see how it's anything other than extremely expensive in terms of a way to sell software.
jl6 15y ago
Not sure what it means for a particular technology to "die". A lot of "dead" technologies are "alive" and kicking in the Enterprise world. Perhaps "undead" is the word you're looking for...
darksaga 15y ago
I remember when a friend of mine got his first i-pad. We're both developers and he said he could do some basic editing with one of the included apps. First thing I thought was, "Oh yeah, I'm going to write code on a 7" screen as opposed to my 23" monitor." The PC isn't dead and it won't be for a long time. Although there are a lot of lines being blurred between devices (tablets vs. smartphones vs. laptops), there's still a TON of people working at large corporations who you'll have to pry their PC's out of their cold, dead hands.
jroseattle 15y ago
> Why no angry nerds? Mostly because very few people really believe the PC is actually dead. Mobile is the big wave, yet I don't know anyone who says "I have a phone, I sure don't need a desktop/laptop." The closest possible thing is a tablet. Yet, the most common refrain about any tablet to do that I've heard is "well, it doesn't do this" or "it doesn't do that". On the flip side, I've yet to hear anyone state that they wished they didn't own a PC, since their tablet does everything they need.
- ricardobeat 15y ago
  Your friends are not representative of the whole market. Mobile is larger than desktop in Africa: http://www.gomonews.com/mobile-internet-usage-soars-past-fixed-web-in-africa/ http://www.gomonews.com/mobile-internet-usage-soars-past-fix... (and this is from 2010). Kids 5 years from now will find desktop computers and current laptops strange and kludgy.
  - dimmuborgir 15y ago
    In most so called third-world countries mobile is much larger than desktop simply because mobile is more affordable.
contextfree 15y ago
zero out of two - the PC isn't dead, and there are plenty of angry nerds.
quadyeast 15y ago
Why does Sophos block this site? This is the first time in 3 years that I have seen this warning: High Risk Website Blocked Location: futureoftheinternet.org/the-pc-is-dead-why-no-angry-nerds Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/ObfJS-CB has been found on this website.
giulivo 15y ago
It will probably make me look pathetic (angry nerd maybe), but I don't have a tablet and I don't use much my smartphone, if not for calling people. I found these devices to be very uncomfortable for my tipical usage. The only good addon I've got in my smartphone was the GPS navigation. I could never browse the internet on a smartphone and I could never look at a tablet more than 30mins while also being comfortable in using it. And if I had to plug in into a tablet a standard keyboard and a nicer monitor to make it "usable", I would rather buy some mini PC.

98 points by pauljonas 15y ago

Why no angry nerds? Because nerds are still using their PCs to create mobile and web-based software. The PC may (just may) be dead for the hordes of average consumers out there, but it'll never be dead for those people creating things -- that is, until you can adequately create a mobile or web application on an iPad/iPhone. Does anyone truly believe that scores of software developers writing financial software for banks are going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device? Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term).

kevinherron 15y ago
This is exactly what I came here to say. I think there will be a continuous widening of the gap between devices meant for producing and devices meant for consuming. The two can't exist without each other, however, so there's no reason to worry.
- swah 15y ago
  But devices for producing only became affordable because they were also for consuming.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    Not just that but also the fact that the devices used for producing are much less likely to be bought in homes if they already have a consumption device. In the post-PC world, a home(especially in low income homes and the developing world) having iPads are much less likely to have Windows or Mac machines (on which an enterprising kid might install and play with Eclipse, Visual Studio Express or XCode, or even Linux). This effect will be further amplified when the PC prices rise to lower demand.
  - LarryMade 15y ago
    which several decades previous that was the case for microcomputers... While now it is a given concept that there will be a consumer level device, but sooner or later a new generation of home-based hackers will work up some new ways to be productive within these walled gardens, those will be exploited into apps and companies will be doing business on them - and then it will have started all over again. I wouldn't consider it an end but part of a progression.
interknot 15y ago
I mostly agree with you, though I'm concerned that the economies of scale that make PC-style computing affordable will become unsustainable.
astine 15y ago
The complaint that the author makes isn't about consumption vs production devices, it's about curated experiences. Apple can veto your income on the insistence of popular opinion or on a whim, or with no stated reason at all. The author extrapolates that this can lead to an effective restriction of freedom of the press by Apple and other gatekeepers. This is a real problem and is not alleviated just because you still use a PC to write software.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  Your forgetting about the web. Apple does not veto websites just things in their little walled garden.
  - yannickt 15y ago
    True, but if people spend more time in apps than browsing the web, then web apps might be harder to monetize than native apps on mobile devices.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      And god forbid if we let users spend more time to the kind of apps they love, instead of forcing them to use the web so we can monetize it better...
  - bad_user 15y ago
    Considering how Apple controls the operating system, the app store, the browser and the whole device in general, it wouldn't be technically hard for Apple to censor websites either. Plus, Apple is restricting the browser on purpose, to make it less useful. Tell me, how can you create an online image editing software, if Apple doesn't allow you to upload files from iPhone's browser? And what Apple is doing today would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. Censoring the web is perfectly within their grasp and you should see that, otherwise you're not seeing the forest from the trees.
    - onemoreact 15y ago
timwiseman 15y ago
Well said. Now admittedly the people I know tend to be on the "computer oriented" side, so there is a sampling bias, but I have yet to meet anyone that chose to have a tablet instead of a PC. I know a lot of people that have a tablet in addition to their PC, but that hardly makes the PC dead for them. When tablets become much more powerful and able to integrate seemlessly with things like additional large monitors, keyboards, and mouses (or whatever eventually really replaces keyboards and mouses) then the PC will likely become a niche product, but then tablets will also have become hard to distinguish from a PC with an added ability to undock one monitor to take it with you.
- bad_user 15y ago
  My wife is not technically inclined. She uses a netbook instead with Windows on it. I just don't get all this tablet love - I can make my laptop sit on my lap without stressing my hands. The display is big enough that I can do whatever I want on it, like when watching movies, the bigger, the better. I can type ~ 100 WPM on it. I can save a file on my desktop from one app and then open it from another (basic functionality that's just fucked up on the iPad). The iPhone or the competing Android phones ARE GAME CHANGERS. But the big difference between an iPhone and a tablet is that an iPhone sits in your pocket and goes with you everywhere, even when you're at your local grocery store, buying some milk, even when you're inside a public toilet. A phone is always with you. That's progress. But a Tablet? It's just a cool-looking but dumb device. It has potential, true. But not until it can do all of the things a laptop can.
  - orev 15y ago
    I am an extremely technical user (15 yrs Linux admin) and I have both a netbook and an iPad. As soon as I got the iPad I stopped using the netbook. The experience on the iPad is far FAR superior as a consumption device than a netbook. If you are trying to use the tablet for the same things as your laptop, you're using it wrong. It sounds like you don't have a tablet, so you really don't have the credibility to weigh in on it. Also, I would suspect that your wife would highly prefer a tablet if given the chance to try it out. The netbook experience is truly horrible -- she just might not know that something better is out there.
pvarangot 15y ago
> Does anyone truly believe that scores of software > developers writing financial software for banks are > going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device? > Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term). Not to mention most professional cases of photo/video/sound editing, and graphic design for magazines or billboards. Sometimes a laptop screen size is truly an impediment. Fast hard disks also help in this tasks.
jseliger 15y ago
In addition, I suspect most of the people buying mobile devices still have a PC and will for the foreseeable future—because their PCs and laptops are cheap, as I discuss in detail here: http://jseliger.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-going-anywhere-despite-the-growth-of-phones-and-tablets%E2%80%94because-theyre-cheap/ http://jseliger.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-going-anywh... . It's not going to be "or"; it's going to be "and."
BrainInAJar 15y ago
" Does anyone truly believe that scores of software developers writing financial software for banks are going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device? Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term). " iPad, wireless keyboard & SSH and I can do all my work more or less the same way I do now
- freehunter 15y ago
  I actually do this right now, but without SSH. I recently started writing my code on an HP Touchpad with a bluetooth keyboard. It started to get difficult to sync my work across multiple computers, especially when there was no network present at a place I wish I could work from. I got a Touchpad, installed Ubuntu on it, and now I can have my entire development studio and all my code wherever I go without needing to worry about getting to my Git repository. There are times when I cannot test my code on the tablet, but at the very least I can write it wherever then push it back to Git and pull it to my test machine when I get back.
neutronicus 15y ago
You also can't really get through college with just an iPad. Apparently students are trying, and grousing when they realize that the kinds of software your classes demand that you run doesn't run on the iPad. I'm guessing that the world of academic software will blink second.

mikemarotti 15y ago

People have been saying the PC is dead just about as long as I've been Personal Computing. The role of the PC may be changing, but that is far from meaning that it's dead.

iamandrus 15y ago

The PC isn't dead. It never will be. Sure, it's changing roles in a smartphone/tablet world, but it'll never "go away."

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

chc 15y ago

For any writers who want to talk about how the PC is dead: Try guesstimating the number of people who will use a PC on a given day, then look at how many people read your blog/newspaper/magazine in a given YEAR. (Hint: Not even HuffPo will win this one.)

sliverstorm 15y ago

The mainframe is dead too. By the way, on an unrelated note, did you know mainframes are still IBM's biggest business?

antidaily 15y ago
It's not consulting?
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Maybe, I'm not an IBM insider. That's just what I've heard. Maybe they are consulting for their mainframe customers?
  - flomo 15y ago
    Some years ago, most of their consulting revenue was derived from IBM platforms. Since then they've absorbed a number of other consulting companies though.
qntm 15y ago
What percentage of that is stream revenue from existing mainframe customers?

howeyc 15y ago

I'm not as quick to discount the point as the others here, Look at it this way, assume in the not so distant future you can do it all on the tablet as opposed to the desktop and no longer nead desktops, having them die a slow, slow death: Counter-Strike, WoW, Development (Github text editing, Cloud9 IDE,... etc), word processing, browsing, you get the idea. But instead, the applications are vetted and controlled by the tablet OS maker. Now instead of law makers trying to get every search engine to block something, or tear-down registars all over the world, they just go to tablet OS maker 1 and 2 and have them take down access to website/app. No more website/app for anyone as desktops are dead and the tablet is so locked to shit you can't change a thing (secure boot anyone?) Now, I'm not sure death is as current as suggested, but I see the trend the blog post is referring too.

tehayj 15y ago
I agree but only if more of the stupid masses pay for getting locked up in something like the Apple walled garden. They trade some of their freedom for thinking even less. Considering how "smart" the general human population is they will be happy to opt in for no choice just to have the latest iOS device and think they are cool.
roc 15y ago
Why would Apple be any more willing to turn off web access to a domain than the dominant ISP or backbone provider or the dominant PC vendor or even just the ISP/DNS provider for the site in question? It seems silly to imply the situation is somehow more plausible/likely with a tablet-based computing landscape.
- howeyc 15y ago
  I don't believe any ISP/DNS provider is "willing" to turn off web access to any paying customer (domain owner). However, it has nothing to do with willingness but instead with "force" (Judges, Congressman, Clothing manufacturers, ...), people and companies don't like paying fines and going to jail. Let's say there's 250 domains that are unliked, on 5 different registrars, 10 different ISPS, but only two tablet OSs with walled gardens, which place would you logically force to stop access? Of course if it's apps you don't like instead of domains the answer is trivial. Now, we are not in this scenario right now no matter how horrific you think walled gardens are. Probably not worth speculating too much further as the future is hard to predict, and this is just a possibility of the blog post trend extrapolated forward X number years.

vladd 15y ago

I saw in the supermarket the other day a group of parents buying for their young child a so-called "mini-laptop" that costs $100 and probably only knows to do addition, multiplications and some basic word-games on a cheap LCD screen. And I realized that for them, and for a large portion of the end-users, lack of education in IT makes it very difficult for them to see the difference between the said laptop and a regular PC device. Apple realized first what this lack of knowledge can do: the ability to lock-in a product so that it runs only your AppStore's apps is not only good for the high-end of the market that is willing to sacrifice freedom in the name of usability and beautiful design, but rather more importantly it's good for the ignorant masses that don't even realize this fact when they buy the product just because it's fashionable to do so.

TheCapn 15y ago
One lesson I took away from my university economics class is that in a large enough market all competitive products are virtually identical. One may offer X better than the other while that 2nd one may offer Y better than the first but for the most part that is all smoke & mirrors to the consumer. The point is that people cannot tell the difference without marketing to try and exaggerate one thing over another. Its why people buy inferior products at inflated rates and don't get upset. It is also why marketing is so very important in a saturated marketplace. This is exactly what happened in your scenario. The well thinking mothers were lead to believe that any `laptop` can be just as good as another because someone told them it can be. They believed it without understanding it was all a ploy to gain a customer.
- HeyLaughingBoy 15y ago
  Either that or they fully understood its limitations and were satisfied with them. I'll happily get my 2 year-old a Leapfrog/LeapPad type device and he'll be happy with it and learn from it. Even if I could get a laptop at the same price point, I wouldn't. Why? The LeapFrog type devices are made to be handled by toddlers. That means they can take being thrown across the room, tossed out a window, and used as a hammer and still come up smiling. Try that with a laptop! Not to mention that with the specialized device I don't need to be concerned about loading DVDs, CDs, etc: the media is similarly rugged. Don't be too quick to discount what those parents were doing: they may have a better idea than you what type of environment the device operates in.

jes5199 15y ago

People don't use PCs as general purpose platforms anymore, anyway. I can code anywhere that there's a unix environment - or a connection to AWS. And people can use my software anywhere there's a browser. The ability to build and run .exe files hasn't really been a major enabler of geekery since, I dunno, Napster, I guess wa s the last time.

vectorpush 15y ago

The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the PC, or perhaps that which we call a rose by any other name will smell just as sweet. I don't see how a tablet is any different from a PC except for form factor, especially when they catch up with PCs in terms of general utility.

dextorious 15y ago
"""The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the PC""" How about, in 10 years most people just get a tablet + keyboard or something, and the PC doesn't die, but get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of demand?
- vectorpush 15y ago
  get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of demand? Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs. My point is that PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply transition into tablets as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse = a PC.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    """Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs. My point is that PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply transition into tablets as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse = a PC""". It's not that simple. What you describe is desktop PC vs laptop. Tablets on the other hand have different operating systems (at least the only tablet that people > 1% actually buy, the iPad) than PCs. We can imagine a feature where most people use tablets, perhaps equally capable as any PC, but WITHOUT today's full PC OS flexibility, and PCs are left for only small professions (programmers, creatives, etc).

qdog 15y ago

I was just looking at building a new computer, I was contemplating a dual-cpu setup for using vm's, hoping it would be easy to run copies of various OS's on one box and use all the different streaming technologies for tv output. Looks like about $2k or more. While it would be great to be able to coordinate all the streaming media using my phone as a remote, my phone doesn't do most of the 'computing' tasks I like, and reading HN on a 4" screen is handy, but not optimal. I think his point is exactly that if I want everything to work, I need an Apple and a Windows machine running (nevermind whether it's legal to run Apple in a VM, I'm under the impression they don't want you to, but if I purchase a copy of OSX, it's not clear I wouldn't have the right), and maybe a Chrome machine, because they DON'T WORK TOGETHER BY ARBITRARY RESTRICTIONS. I think there is another guy that likes to rant about this walled garden approach. Personally, I've been trying to use iTunes on a windows box to play to an apple tv recently and it is sucking. Music plays fine from an iPhone. So now, my wife is all ready to pay the Apple Tax for a new computer. To just get music to play. They fact that apple makes a cool device is fine, the fact they don't want to play nice with any of my other equipment makes me loathe to buy a new one, but apparently I'm not with the mainstream on this one. But count me as one of the angry nerds.

Tobu 15y ago
Dual-CPU? You can get a dual-core or more for far cheaper than that. Look to AMD Phenom IIs for the middle-range, you get better performance for the buck especially if you factor in the motherboard. Besides being faster, this kind of machine is far cheaper than a hand held, locked down device. Here are the costs of ownership, about $2000 for two years: http://www.steamenginefinancialcoaching.com/2011/02/14/the-real-cost-of-ownership-iphone-4/ http://www.steamenginefinancialcoaching.com/2011/02/14/the-r...

cq 15y ago

The PC is dead to idiots. It's actually still quite awesome for those of us who are producers, not consumers.

tehayj 15y ago
They have iOS for idiots now.
jfruh 15y ago
Right, because people who don't want to do all the things with a computer that you want to do with a computer are idiots. Gotcha.
pclstyle 15y ago
And what good are producers without consumers?
- jarek 15y ago
  Ask the 1980s.
- gujk 15y ago
  The consumers are still here, on iPads.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

jsz0 15y ago

There are definitely angry nerds out there but they are in a position of arguing against a better user experience for the vast majority of people who don't want to have malware, a broken OS, their personal data stolen, etc. They should be trying to find less restrictive solutions that provide the same benefits. Otherwise the companies that are moving forward with making a better end user experience are going to win in the long run.

bad_user 15y ago
Do you feel secure when using an iPhone? JailbreakMe is a website that can root your iOS - so let me emphasize this - a freaking website that can get root access on your iPhone just by visiting that website. It originally relied on some bug in the PDF reader. Then Apple released an update. Then JailbreakMe got upgraded to use a FreeType parser security flaw, again in that same PDF reader and so it works with iOS 4.3.3 - then Apple released iOS 4.3.4 to patch it. But now an update for iOS 5 is apparently in the works. At this point you may now feel that Apple is in control, that they are patching iOS at a rapid pace and so on. However, these vulnerabilities are PUBLIC. Even the source-code for JailbreakMe was published. Bad people don't do that ;-) So you can argue all you want against malware, a broken OS or about evil people stealing your data, however the iOS platform is nothing more than security theater - it keeps the script kiddies out, it gives you an illusion of safety, but it won't keep out the people with the right resources and experience. And those people are the people you should be worried about.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  >however the iOS platform is nothing more than security theater - it keeps the script kiddies out, it gives you an illusion of safety, but it won't keep out the people with the right resources and experience. And those people are the people you should be worried about. You should be worried about the script kiddies too. Security is all about layers and vectors. Installing an innocent looking wallpaper pack by casual users shouldn't lead to malware infestation. That is much easier for the bad guys to do rather than get people to visit a malicious website. Reducing the attack surface definitely makes you safer on relative terms. It does not make you absolutely safe. >Do you feel secure when using an iPhone? If I had an iPhone I would feel safer installing a whole bunch of unknown third party apps compared to doing the same on, say an Android phone. I would not feel "secure" though.

quellhorst 15y ago

PCs are trucks for getting serious work done.

rplnt 15y ago

Last time the PC was dead, it was because of the gaming consoles. All the games are there, web browsers too.. why would anyone want a PC? That was half a decade ago and PCs are still here.

georgieporgie 15y ago

Alarmist fluff. And every app sold for the iPhone would have 30 percent of its price (and later, that of its “in-app purchases”) go to Apple. Famously proprietary Microsoft never dared to extract a tax on every piece of software written by others for Windows—perhaps because, in the absence of consistent Internet access in the 1990s through which to manage purchases and licenses, there’d be no realistic way to make it happen. Microsoft never provided a complete distribution channel for software, either. Complying with Apple requirements and limitations is annoying. However, the consumer gets reasonably vetted software, and the developer gets a single method of distribution. What's the complaint, again?

dmethvin 15y ago
iPhone owners are prohibited from going to any other store. It's a monopoly. Sure, Mussolini was a dictator, but he made the trains run on time.
- georgieporgie 15y ago
  Nobody is forcing you to use an iPhone. You have plenty of other options.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- shaggyfrog 15y ago
  Sigh. Yes, of course, Apple is just like a violent dictator who supported genocide.
  - jsight 15y ago
    Whoosh The point isn't that Apple is just like a violent dictator. The point is that these statements are (mostly) irrelevent to each other. The trains can run on time without a dictator. The user can have a fine walled-garden experience but still retain the option to (in a reasonably supported way) tear down the walls.

libraryatnight 15y ago

I'm too busy doing awesome things on my super awesome PC to be angry.

VladRussian 15y ago

instead of 1 single core single cpu PC shared with my wife, we now have (counting only ours, not company issued laptop and 2 Mac desktops) 3 PCs (1 desktop type and 2 are server dual quad cores opterons (and 1 old dual dual core)), 2 laptops and 1 netbook, and 3 iOS devices. And i'm looking to get soon new SB 2[5|6|7]00K (or may be even indulge with 3930 - it is Christmas time :) + mobo + pile of DDR3 to upgrade the desktop. I'm a happy nerd as RAM/CPU/HDD and big LCDs are so cheap these days. Edit: just today a new store opening nearby got several cargo pallets of new Dell's PC based hardware (POS and pure PC). In the next few years 5+ billions of people will get their first computing device (and the rest 2 bilions - their first 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... computing device). The vast majority of this growth will not be a PC. That's clear. Yet this growth in mobile devices will "synergize" an unprecedented growth in PC/server hardware dwarfing whatever we've seen so far.

cavilling_elite 15y ago

Wow, I've been blinded. I have never equated what Apple is doing with the app-store/"taxing" and the MS IE anti-trust case. The empowerment of the censor. Scary words.

vacri 15y ago
Apple's store is a standard retail cut, it's nothing like taxes. Do you complain about the middleman cut with every other thing you puchase? The monopoly issue is a different beast to the retail cut issue.

WiseWeasel 15y ago

I'm optimistic for several reasons: 1) Less need for IT support for family and friends; 2) I'm well-served with the computers I assemble and purchase, and even if mainstream operating systems continue their slide towards not serving my needs well (from my vantage point looking at OS X Lion and Windows 8), I am confident that there will be solutions out there, possibly increasingly exemplified by Linux, that facilitate web development and mundane user empowerment; 3) The web has become the democratic platform for publishing interactive content to the masses, which no vendor would dare attempt to exert control over. Now, the real question is who's going to capitalize on this amusingly-phrased headline and come out with the Angry Nerds mobile game, where you launch a variety of nerds at iPads hidden in the temporary safety of their elaborate Apple Stores? Let's see, there's the fat, bearded nerd, the pale, skinny, tall one, the kid with glasses, the token girl nerd with freckles and glasses, and the $1.99 in-game purchase Darth Vader helmet nerd. [Edit] Looks like I wasn't the first one to think along these lines: http://www.atlassian.com/en/angrynerds http://www.atlassian.com/en/angrynerds [/Edit]

killnine 15y ago

I am angry. really angry. What is the solution to make the gatekeepers and the gatekeeper-supporters obsolete? I don't need them- why do you?

caller9 15y ago

The scary part is when parents who just need a consumption device only buy a tablet. How many of you would've been able to program at a young age if your parents didn't buy the family PC.

stan_rogers 15y ago
Some of us wrote our programs out carefully on paper, debugged them as well as we could by stepping through them mentally (and making register annotations, etc., on paper when required), then transcribed them to electrographic "punch" cards for the school's batch run on the local university's mini/mainframe once a month. Having a computer makes programming more convenient and less theoretical (bugs happen occasionally despite correct code), but it's not essential to learning. It's a lot less likely to happen in that way in the current environment (with ubiquitous PCs), but if we ever get to the point where PCs (or their equivalent) aren't everywhere anymore, the interested geeks will find a way -- just like we did in the old days.
colomon 15y ago
Sure, but that was a world where a new computer cost $1000. Right now that price is more like $100, and if Raspberry Pi works soon it will be $25. Any interested kid could easily earn that much in a month mowing lawns...

pawn 15y ago

A lot of people here are quick to discount the title "The PC is dead", but I think the actual meat of what he was getting at merits consideration - walled gardens are a lot more popular today than they used to be. No doubt, there are certain innovations that we may never see because of this. For example, what if there's a Mac developer out there who has ideas for a better browser than Safari. You're never going to see it, because Apple won't let you. Today, he has the option of bringing it to PC, but that might be too big of a barrier for him to jump if he's one of those guys who won't buy one. Also, its not too hard to imagine a day when Microsoft follows Apple and makes their own marketplace. Probably won't be anytime soon, but it would be naive to say it could never ever happen. The main thing stopping them is probably the fact that they're still the big dog and can't get away with doing what Apple does. People judge them differently. In a few more years though, I could see them pointing at what Apple does and saying, "There's precedent here. Let's go for it." Some people would jump ship and move onto Linux, and say "I still have freedom" but what about your mom and dad who will keep buying the Walmart special every Black Friday? As an indie developer these things are limiting what you can do. I think the solution here is to take a look at what people like about these marketplaces - a convenient way to find apps, and duplicate it - without the bad stuff. Make a marketplace and don't limit what goes on it. Also, make less profit for yourself than what your competitor (Google and/or Apple) makes. The toughest thing is traction. Getting it in front of eyes as something to use instead of the other one. Get past that, and you're set. Am I missing anything? Has this been done and I just don't know about it?

GHFigs 15y ago
Also, its not too hard to imagine a day when Microsoft follows Apple and makes their own marketplace. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-app-store-will-be-the-only-source-of-metro-apps/14873 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-app-store-will-...

vph 15y ago

If you believe that in the future, people do accounting on the ipads, write papers/programs on the cell phones, then the PC is dead.

dasil003 15y ago

> The iPhone restricts outside code, but developers could still, in many cases, manage to offer functionality through a website accessible through the Safari browser. Few developers do, and there’s work to be done to ferret out what separates the rule from the exception. I don't want to be paranoid, but I feel like what Apple has done is brilliantly nefarious. They've given developers an offer they can't refuse: for 30% we'll sell your software frictionlessly. Sure you are giving up control, but how much does requiring a payment form and non-standard, non-obvious, potentially painful installation process cost an indie developer. 30% is always far less than the losses of a traditional website sales funnel, potentially by 2 orders of magnitude. The App Store simply sells more software. Of course it has corrosive effects on the developer community in that prices are driven down (maybe not as much as volume increases, but still) and control is forked over the Apple. But what can developers do? It's a game theory problem. If everyone refuses to play Apple's game then maybe developers and innovation win, but if one breaks the line they stand to make a fortune. I'm really not looking forward to the day when Macs go App Store only. If that happens it will probably mean I have to switch to Linux. It saddens me that the future of computing may be completely locked down, but it's hard to argue against it if for no other reason than it offers the most promise for actually making users safe as malware proliferates and becomes more sophisticated. Part of me thinks the free software and Internet as we know them today can not last, and if it wasn't the App Store it would be some other powerful interest eroding our digital freedom in the name of profit or control. This line of thought makes me think that maybe RMS is not such an extremist after all, but merely an equal counterbalance to the forces of power and greed shaping out future.

zmmmmm 15y ago
> 30% is always far less than the losses of a traditional website sales funnel, potentially by 2 orders of magnitude. The App Store simply sells more software. I don't understand how your maths works. You are asserting that a traditional website sale costs 3000%, thus losing the seller 29 x the price of the item? Obviously I am misunderstanding you but I don't know how to make sense of what you are saying. I'm always curious about the people who say 30% is a good deal. I sell software directly over the web. PayPal charges me something like 0.50 + 2.5%. I do host my web site but I would have a web site anyway. Bandwidth associated with sales is negligible, support is a cost but again, Apple wouldn't do that for me. 30% is bigger than the cut I give to generic resellers who actually come to me to ask to list my software in their stores. I can see that Apple's store can increase volume (but then, we have nothing to compare it to - we will never know how well iOS software might have sold without the app store) - but I don't see how it's anything other than extremely expensive in terms of a way to sell software.

jl6 15y ago

Not sure what it means for a particular technology to "die". A lot of "dead" technologies are "alive" and kicking in the Enterprise world. Perhaps "undead" is the word you're looking for...

darksaga 15y ago

I remember when a friend of mine got his first i-pad. We're both developers and he said he could do some basic editing with one of the included apps. First thing I thought was, "Oh yeah, I'm going to write code on a 7" screen as opposed to my 23" monitor." The PC isn't dead and it won't be for a long time. Although there are a lot of lines being blurred between devices (tablets vs. smartphones vs. laptops), there's still a TON of people working at large corporations who you'll have to pry their PC's out of their cold, dead hands.

jroseattle 15y ago

> Why no angry nerds? Mostly because very few people really believe the PC is actually dead. Mobile is the big wave, yet I don't know anyone who says "I have a phone, I sure don't need a desktop/laptop." The closest possible thing is a tablet. Yet, the most common refrain about any tablet to do that I've heard is "well, it doesn't do this" or "it doesn't do that". On the flip side, I've yet to hear anyone state that they wished they didn't own a PC, since their tablet does everything they need.

ricardobeat 15y ago
Your friends are not representative of the whole market. Mobile is larger than desktop in Africa: http://www.gomonews.com/mobile-internet-usage-soars-past-fixed-web-in-africa/ http://www.gomonews.com/mobile-internet-usage-soars-past-fix... (and this is from 2010). Kids 5 years from now will find desktop computers and current laptops strange and kludgy.
- dimmuborgir 15y ago
  In most so called third-world countries mobile is much larger than desktop simply because mobile is more affordable.

contextfree 15y ago

zero out of two - the PC isn't dead, and there are plenty of angry nerds.

quadyeast 15y ago

Why does Sophos block this site? This is the first time in 3 years that I have seen this warning: High Risk Website Blocked Location: futureoftheinternet.org/the-pc-is-dead-why-no-angry-nerds Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/ObfJS-CB has been found on this website.

giulivo 15y ago

It will probably make me look pathetic (angry nerd maybe), but I don't have a tablet and I don't use much my smartphone, if not for calling people. I found these devices to be very uncomfortable for my tipical usage. The only good addon I've got in my smartphone was the GPS navigation. I could never browse the internet on a smartphone and I could never look at a tablet more than 30mins while also being comfortable in using it. And if I had to plug in into a tablet a standard keyboard and a nicer monitor to make it "usable", I would rather buy some mini PC.