3 ms·

or a PC in general: > Global PC shipments tumbled to 56.9 million in the first quarter, down 29% from the same period a year earlier https://www.wsj.com/artic

• JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Yeah, that's my bigger worry: that "desktop" (and then "laptop") are going to become niche platforms that only old-timers use. I dread our only-phone future.
  • brink 4y ago
    Maybe we took our older generation's wisdom for granted.
  • lukevp 4y ago
    If you could dock a phone and use it with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and it had all the software you used, whorls you still be worried? Microsoft did this with Continuum in windows phone 10, and iPadOS is trying to grow up to support more multitasking and a keyboard+mouse. It’s not too far of a leap that the iPhone could do the same thing. This would also be a lot cheaper than also purchasing a laptop.
    • brink 4y ago
      Sure, that sounds fine on paper. But the problem would be that you can't install whatever you want on your iPhone. So iPhones would have to drastically open up before that becomes some kind of utopia. We want a future where people own their hardware, and going to a phones-only world currently wouldn't be a move in that direction.
    • seneca 4y ago
      I would be even more worried, because then they have a bigger excuse to kill off product lines for real computers. The problems isn't just the form factor. It's primarily that phones and tablets are significantly dumbed down, closed, and more user hostile devices. Windows is already trending more toward the phone experience with dumbed down interfaces, forced updates, telemetry, and ads baked in and it has made it all but unusable. I want less of that, not more. Computers need to work for, and be owned by, the user. We had that, and we're rapidly losing ground.
    • UncleEntity 4y ago
      I doubt they would let me get bored one day and figure out how the Bluetooth stack worked without being told “no, I really can’t be an iBeacon, get over it”. Also, text editor and gcc is all I ever need. How many hoops would I have to jump through to get GPL programs unprohibited on iOS?
    • lloeki 4y ago
      I wanted to love that but it failed for me. My desktop is a dedicated workstation machine that I want to be running even when I lug my phone around the house. You can basically s/phone/laptop above and it still doesn't quite work for me. Doing it with a phone only makes it worse. Maybe for some it can work, it just doesn't for me. I very much prefer the concept of continuity, where I have a number of devices that I can pickup, and whatever I want to do can be carried over in a transparent way across all of them, while having each device be the best at what it is, some able to do unique stuff and some having overlaps in functionality.
  • 999900000999 4y ago
    To be fair, a Bluetooth keyboard/ mouse , plus HDMI out gets you to what most people use computers for. I'm more afraid of laptops turning into phones, via Microsoft Store/ App Store, scary "unknown publisher" warnings, etc. It's getting harder and harder to run what you want on computers.
  • simplotek 4y ago
    > (...) "desktop" (and then "laptop") are going to become niche platforms (...) Will desktop and laptops become niche, or are smartphones/tablets finding a far broader and popular market? You can grab your smartphone and even tablet while you're riding the subway/train/bus/whatever, but you would never use a desktop I'm that scenario. Same goes for the line in your supermarket, a quick trip to the restroom, during lunch, etc. The smartphone didn't replaced the desktop. It replaced the newspaper/magazine/mobile phone The truth of the matter is that the smartphone form factor is far more suited for a broader range of usages than your desktop/laptop, and the combination of those use patterns with technology limitations do warrant specialized app life cycles and UX patterns. Desktop/laptops are suited for entirely different use patterns.