14 ms·

Coding Horror - Welcome to the Post PC Era

336 points by kreutz 15y ago

bicknergseng 15y ago
"Very, very small PCs – the kind you could fit in your pocket – are starting to have the same amount of computing grunt as a high end desktop PC of, say, 5 years ago. And that was plenty, even back then, for a relatively inefficient general purpose operating system." I would argue that it's more than they need, that a service like OnLive is before its time but not more than a few years from hitting prime. I would say get ready for the Post Hardware Era.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  That's going to need some serious network infrastructure to back it up. You will essentially have every computer user in the world constantly streaming very high resolution video for 8 hours+ a day. The 1GB/month limit most carriers provide is going to be nowhere near enough, you will need more like 1/2 TB per month and it needs to be provided reliably.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    I think that's completely possible if we change the model of our current infrastructure. Here in Portugal, our main (wired) ISP has been putting Foneras[1] in every subscribers' home for a couple of years or so, which means that every subscriber they have can connect for free anywhere there's a home with their service. A couple of months ago they launched an iPhone app which can use their network of Wifi routers to make calls through them - they essentially became a mobile provider using Wifi. I can see this approach taking place on a larger scale; not only related to connectivity, but to actual computing: imagine that each router was also a beefy server, particularly in terms of CPU and GPU capabilities; these would provide the computing needs for wireless devices connected to them. Using existing ways of moving the "state" of an application between machines, you could have your wireless devices hopping from server to server as you moved around, without having a great impact on the rest of the network. This would still mean hardware in each home, of course, but it'd be a black box hidden from sight and chosen, bought and managed by some company. [1]: http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsfon http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsfon
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      The crux of the problem is that bandwidth is currently oversold since it is largely unused most of the time. Let's compare my session here on HN with how it would be if I was streaming my web browser from somewhere else. Currently I pull down a few KB of ascii every i load up a comment thread and then spend maybe 20-30 minutes reading it during which time no bandwidth is used. If I was streaming this from a browser in the cloud, I would be pulling down an order of magnitude more data since scrolling down the page could easily be a few MB vs no data at all. You could have hardware "basestations" as you suggest which would be an interesting idea. Of course locating these geographically would be a difficult task. You might end up with rural areas where it would be impossible to do any computing at all because no basestation was in range, or you would end up with urban areas where there would be massive demand. You would also have to account for what happens if somebody decides to have a big party or event somewhere and suddenly the local basestation computer goes from only having to service 10 - 100 clients to suddenly having to service 1000+?
      - icebraining 15y ago
        You could have hardware "basestations" as you suggest which would be an interesting idea. Of course locating these geographically would be a difficult task. You might end up with rural areas where it would be impossible to do any computing at all because no basestation was in range, or you would end up with urban areas where there would be massive demand. Rural would probably fallback to mobile networks and real datacenters, possibly with degraded service. Urban would just be adjusted based on trends - places with higher demand would get more powerful boxes; the same as scaling any other servers, really. You would also have to account for what happens if somebody decides to have a big party or event somewhere and suddenly the local basestation computer goes from only having to service 10 - 100 clients to suddenly having to service 1000+? Assuming a decent infrastructure, you'd only need to have enough wireless bandwidth; computing resources wouldn't necessarily have to be tied to local devices. So a party would just mean that more machines from the neighborhood would help via wired connections (I'm assuming basestations in the same neighborhood could speak to each other using local routers, without having to do a round trip to the ISP datacenter). Of course, this still means that machines shouldn't be running at 100% capacity, but that's just common sense.
- tesseractive 15y ago
  > I would say get ready for the Post Hardware Era. That's what they said in the mid-90s as the web was catching on (remember the "network computer"?). And then came Flash and Java applets and Javascript and various other things and it turned out that a dumb web client had to be pretty smart to keep up with the web. I try never to say that something is impossible, because I don't really know what the future will bring, and convincing myself that I do would be foolish. But I will have to be shown a lot more than what we've seen so far with OnLive before I'm convinced that the future of mobile devices is as dumb terminals.
  - bicknergseng 15y ago
    In the mid 90s this also happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI. We've come a long way since then and still have a ways to go before the dumb terminal model comes back... but I think it will happen. I think the problem for that model has been that the only people who have found a use for the power of a full size computer on a mobile device have been gamers, but I think this is probably because developers have never had the ability to build applications that use more than the mobile device's native hardware. OnLive needs to make a development platform on their service.
gavingmiller 15y ago
The lack of a decent point in this article makes me wonder whether Apple paid Atwood to write this piece.
- jonursenbach 15y ago
  Do you really think that Apple with all of their billions of dollars would pay someone like Jeff Atwood to write this, or anything? Come on.
  - robryan 15y ago
    There would have been a cost involved recently with giving a group of journalists private briefings on osx mountain lion recently. Which would have been done to get more press.
- chrislomax 15y ago
  Although you appear to have been marked down for this, I kind of agree. Not that Apple paid him of course but that there is no real news in this article? If any other person had written this (not mainstream), I would argue no one would read it. It certainly wouldn't have made front page HN. It doesn't teach me anything I didn't already know and even if I didn't know it, it poses no real value apart from being very sales heavy. EDIT: Spelling mistake
- dbecker 15y ago
  I thought this was an interesting post... but let's say for the sake of argument that it doesn't have a "decent point." Do you think Jeff Atwood is less likely to have a decent point if Apple is paying him for his writing?
- dinkumthinkum 15y ago
  No, I don't think Apple paid but I understand your point. This sort of fare is par for the course for Atwood. Honestly, it's pretty cliche stuff; people have been throwing "post-PC" around a lot lately.
danso 15y ago
>> iPad 3 reviews that complain "all they did was improve the display" are clueless bordering on stupidity. Tablets are pretty much by definition all display; nothing is more fundamental to the tablet experience than the quality of the display. While I agree that the display improvements are noteworthy, I would say that tablets are not "by definition all display." The tactile interaction is as much a part of a tablet's worth.
- experiment0 15y ago
  iOS devices have had there tactile interaction down since the beginning. They are so responsive compared to Android devices (from my experience), and so I don't see where Apple could have improved in this area.
  - _frog 15y ago
    Having used the new iPad I did notice that scrolling felt more responsive[1], but that's just as a result of having a more powerful GPU onboard. [1]: Although not to the extent of that Microsoft demo posted a week or two ago.
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    I don't know which Android devices you've used, but I simply haven't found this to be the case. From my experience, the touch response on high Android devices (such as the Galaxy Nexus) is indistinguishable from iOS devices.
    - dasil003 15y ago
      I'm on a Nexus One at the moment. The touch is good when it works, but it's buggy. The more quickly you tap it the more likely it is to into buggy mode where a big dead spot develops in the lower center part of the screen. It's absolutely infuriating, and it really makes me much more envious of iPhone users than any of the apps. If the Galaxy Nexus is really on par with the iPhone (and I'm highly skeptical of that) then I might stick with Android for my next phone, but otherwise I have to go iPhone just based on touch characteristics alone.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Atwood's thesis is that the new iPad improved on those things that make tablets useful. I agree with him that the updated display is the killer feature. But you have to give props to a high performance wireless network architecture too. That being said, two tablets with identical specs, I prefer an Android tablet and a more accessible ecosystem, the problem for Android right now is the R&D and supply chain investment competition. Ten manufacturers each investing 10 million in their tablet design is not nearly as efficient as one person investing 100 million in their tablet design. I keep hoping Google will address that issue by providing hardware/manufacturing R&D but it isn't one of their core competencies. When I worked there folks would call me to get in introduction to the folks designing the next Android phone, I'd chuckle and explain they had to go talk to Motorola or HTC. Perhaps now with their Motorola acquisition they will be in a place to make that investment, time will tell.
zalew 15y ago
Ok folks, let me know when you throw out your computers. I mean, seriously. I don't want to hear the 100th story about how ipad changed your life unless you literally get rid of your computer. If the number of people who replaced a computer with a tablet exceeds the number of people who still have one, we can talk about that post-pc mumbo-jumbo. So, how's gonna be?
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  I don't think people need to throw out their PCs , just maybe start using them less and then not bother replacing them after a while. Of course pending a convincing replacement for the keyboard and mouse I'm not sure how long it is until we see this in office environments. However I don't necessarily equate Post PC = Tablet , there will be other devices that fit other needs.
  - bergie 15y ago
    Exactly. I'm only using my laptop when I'm actually writing code. All the rest of the computery stuff (like HN) happens in a comfortable chair with a tablet. Eventually either somebody invents a great way to write on these devices, or I'll finish my visual programming project (see http://noflojs.org http://noflojs.org). Then (and only then) I can see my laptop usage starting to near zero.
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      That looks interesting, most of the visual programming tools I have seen or used thus far are unusable or inefficient compared to writing code but that actually looks like something I could see myself possibly using. When I think about a program in my head I basically construct it as a huge mental diagram anyway and then translate it into code. Perhaps detailed visual design is the way to go.
      - toyg 15y ago
        Visual programming has been around since the 70s and has never really taken off because it requires lots of screen real estate. The conciseness and semantic density of text will never be beaten. You don't discuss philosophy with flowcharts; why should you code that way?
ck2 15y ago
It's 264 PPI, not DPI. My monitor is 2048 x 1152 23 inches. 20.05" × 11.28" (50.92cm × 28.64cm) = 102.16 PPI, 0.2486mm dot pitch, 10437 PPI² At one foot away I still cannot see the individual dots. There's been a 200 PPI option for over a decade now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors If the ipad3 has added expense or limited availability to get ppi above 100, it was a waste.
- sounds 15y ago
  One reason Apple jumped straight to 264 PPI is to exactly double each dimension. This makes the 2x scaling beautiful. (I'm repeating hearsay, but it seems intuitively obvious to me - feel free to correct me.)
  - cageface 15y ago
    It also means you don't have to change any code that makes assumptions about pixel positions. Like the retina phone, it just doubles the coordinates.
  - ck2 15y ago
    A smartphone with 854x480 resolution on a 3.7" display also has 264 PPI (Motorola Droid, Defy, etc.) Might be related. It's "just" the same kind of matrix scaled to a three times larger display.
- josephcooney 15y ago
  Are you correcting someone? I didn't see Jeff refer to DPI in the linked article.
- mturmon 15y ago
  If you look at well-prepared documents on your display vs. on a new iPad, you will be able to see a difference (provided your eyesight is OK). The new MBP with high-res display has around 130 PPI, significantly more than your display. The new iPad has twice that. So now take a look at the page numbered 20 in this PDF: http://www.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/books/bmotion.pdf http://www.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/books/bmotion.pdf (starts with "and for each t > 0"). The difference between the MBP and the iPad is night and day. The italics, symbols, and math in the document render much more nicely on the iPad. Take a look at the parentheses and the script letters in particular. (I did this experiment.) Incidentally, the T220 is no longer available new.
firefoxman1 15y ago
"nothing is more fundamental to the tablet experience than the quality of the display" Well, I'd have to say the OS's interface and overall UX is more important. Maybe not for some, but it's a big deal for me.
jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago
Lets play to the clairvoyant, the post-tablet era is going to be glasses-PC (circa 2025) and after that is going to be micro holographic touch projectors (circa 2040); and those are going to be more like terminals with everything in the cloud.
martythemaniak 15y ago
"But until the iPhone and iPad, near as I can tell, nobody else was even trying to improve resolution on computer displays" The original Droid came out in Nov '09 and had a 265ppi screen (same as the new iPad). When I upgraded from my 1st gen iPhone to the Nexus One shortly after that and put the two side-by-side, I simply could not stop admiring how incredible the screen was. Sorry, but it really was just simple economics and we would've gotten high-DPI displays regardless.
- Xuzz 15y ago
  I don't think it's about iPhone vs Droid bs Nexus: it's about phones and tablets versus desktops and laptops. Most laptops today aren't sold with a 200+ DPI screen. I think I'd have a hard time finding any. And yet, most phones (and tablets, with the new iPad) do have these high-density, better, screens. Jeff's point is that the switch to phones and tablets is what enabled that improvement to occur.
- mediaman 15y ago
  That's true of phones, but we haven't really seen anyone try that with traditional PCs. Even Apple hasn't achieved anything there. In a broader sense, there seems to be much more innovation in tablets and phones versus traditional PCs. Some of that was sparked by Apple, some of it, such as Droid's high-res screen, was created first by someone else. But where is the comparable innovation with the PC?
- masklinn 15y ago
  > The original Droid came out in Nov '09 and had a 265ppi screen I've got a much bigger issue with this quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors Those are 22" desktop LCD screens with a resolution of 3840×2400. The T220 came out in 2001. At an original price of $18k they certainly cost an arm, a leg and half your firstborn. But there you are.
thwest 15y ago
PCs will stick around, of course. The worry for me is that when PCs serve only engineers and content creators the production scales will diminish, and prices increase.
melling 15y ago
Apple already announced the Post-PC era. It'll be a slow transition for a couple of more years. We really better input options. Fingers are great but sometimes I want precision. What's interesting about Jeff coming around is that he's a pretty hard-core Windows guy. It was funny to have Macs come up on the StackOverFlow podcast. Joel would recommend it for family, etc and you could hear it in Jeff's voice that he didn't see the need. We'll find out in 6 months if it's going to be a 3 horse race. Now Jeff has a reason to learn C. Not to worry, ObjC on iOS is not your father's C. It's a lot more fun.
mcantelon 15y ago
Laptops were way more revolutionary than *pads. "Post-pc" is just a talking point. The post-PC era will eliminate PCs like McDonalds eliminated kitchens.
- nikatwork 15y ago
  Disagree. Laptops were revolutionary for power users; post PC is revolutionary for the everyfolk. Post PC means Jill Sixpack always has a net-connected device within arms reach. This is a big step closer to constant personal net connectivity.
  - mcantelon 15y ago
    Smartphones and 3G did this before *Pads.
    - nikatwork 15y ago
      The term post-PC includes both smartphones and tablets. These devices have a distinct use case to laptops.
      - mcantelon 15y ago
        Sure, but "post" implies replacement, implying that PCs are somehow obsolete. It would be akin to heralding the introduction of compact cars to being the "post-sedan" era. "Mobile computing" is a more accurate and less marketing-driven way to say "post-PC". Mobile computing hardware, like the Palm Treo, has been around for awhile... 3G is the technology that has really helped it come of age.
- to3m 15y ago
  Unconvinced. It might seem like laptops are revolutionary, or were, but useful ones have been around for 20 years, and to what end? They've become progressively more useful in terms of screen quality and battery life, but they have consistently failed to produce any kind of revolution. And why should they? They're just a more expensive version of your desktop computer, that's small enough to carry around. I'm happy to class this as useful, but the laptop's persistent insistence on being merely a small version of the desktop falls somewhat short of "revolutionary".
j_baker 15y ago
Email has been around (in some form) since 1965. However, I think it's a bit too early to say that we're living in a "post-mail era". Will such a thing every truly happen? I don't see that happening until we invent teleporters for all the physical items we need shipped. By that same token, are we truly in a post-PC era, or is it simply an era where tablet use is on the rise and PC use is on the fall? Nifty charts and screen resolutions aside, I don't see any evidence that we're past the age of the PC. My parents still haven't replaced their computer with an iPad. Neither have any of my old friends from school. I use my tablet for more and more, but I just still can't avoid using my laptop for certain things. And I most certainly don't have a tablet or phone hooked up to my television. And how many offices have you seen where all the PCs have been replaced by mobile devices? In short, while I see things moving more towards tablets and mobile devices, I'll be convinced that we're in a post-PC era when I see it. Until then, it's all arbitrary speculation.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  However, I think it's a bit too early to say that we're living in a "post-mail era". Will such a thing every truly happen? I don't see that happening until we invent teleporters for all the physical items we need shipped. Well, we are definitely past the start of the post document-mail era. As for the rest, it's just a matter of implementation: is the advanced fabrication tech in your living room, across town, or across the ocean? So long as you get your product in a timely fashion, what's the difference? (Answer: manufacturing and supply-chain costs and how these impact profits and the consumer.)
  - j_baker 15y ago
    True, fewer and fewer documents get mailed. But I think it's still a bit early to say that we're in a post-mailed-document era. I still get documents mailed to me every day! There are still some uses of physical mail that haven't been replaced by email.
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      There are still some uses of physical mail that haven't been replaced by email. Yes, but it's clearly just a matter of time. There's no infrastructure or technology we need to wait on. There's no document transmission function that email couldn't fulfill for more than 90% of the populace, no barriers to that becoming a norm. Cars didn't cause 100% abandonment of horses instantaneously. Before the development of the largest trucks and most capable offroad vehicles, there were certain uses only draft animals could fulfill for quite awhile. Still I think the post horse-carriage era did begin with the first commercially sold cars.
pixelcort 15y ago
I'm curious how that chart would look taking into account US and international population growth in the last few decades. Perhaps devices per capita is a better ratio?
asdfpoiu 15y ago
Open hardware to the rescue of the PC! I think the (not-too-distant) future of home computing will have a lot in common with today's PCs. Articles like this one always seem to underestimate the amount of real creative or productive work people want to do -- something which is still a challenge on the iPads of today. Have YOU compared typing on a small screen to a big one? With custom manufacturing becoming affordable, as traditional computers start dying, open source hardware will start replacing them. I think we are seeing the first steps in this direction with Raspberry PI, hobbyist open hardware people, 3D printing (in the future: cheap chip printing?), CryogenMod, etc.
- asdfpoiu 15y ago
  Also, I should say, the tablets will probably start doubling as powerful PCs with a wireless connection to the display and keyboard and mouse. Uh-oh.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Interesting, maybe in the future you have 2 options either a fully closed ecosystem or a fully open one. I wonder if you will be able to use the open one to create stuff for the closed one?
  - orangecat 15y ago
    I wonder if you will be able to use the open one to create stuff for the closed one? More disturbingly, I wonder if the open ones will be allowed to have a fraction of the functionality. Hollywood would love to only allow Internet access from locked down devices, and if 98% of the population ends up on appliances, things like that actually become feasible to enforce.
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      Perhaps though the 2 devices will have massively different use cases. This is already happening for me to an extent, I run a dual boot of Linux and Windows 7. Essentially Linux is my "programming workstation" and Windows 7 is my entertainment. I would quite happily replace my Windows 7 boot with something more like iOS since the only applications I really use there are Steam and Netflix. I'm actually quite glad that Linux does not support most of my games, since this keeps my productivity high. The only irritation is when I want to watch something from netflix in the background whilst working on some code but even that is easily overcome by running netflix from a PS3 on my TV beside my computer. Regards restricting internet access only to certain devices. At a government level that would be difficult legislation to pass. I can see domestic ISPs only supporting specific devices perhaps to keep their support costs down, but I'm sure there will always be ways around this. I remember the guy who came around to install my first broadband connection insisting that I would not be able to access the internet at all from my Linux laptop until I showed him how I did it.
stcredzero 15y ago
But Steve Jobs certainly saw the Post PC era looming as far back as 1996: The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade. If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth – and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago. The fact that Steve jobs could see this coming from back in 1996 is incredible. Add to that, that Steve also knew all through the Tablet PC initiatives of the early 2000's that it was too soon, technology wasn't able to properly support the post-PC form factors yet, and that styluses were a loser proposition. Bill Gates also saw the same forces at play, but he responded in the early 2000's with a failed attempt to move the PC into the next era. I guess that's a natural reaction for the winner of the PC era -- to try and carry it on. You can see the same forces at play in the audio industry. Audio has gone beyond the early DIY tinkerer days, through a period of standardization and ubiquity, through an era where big, complicated, elaborate machinery was a status display, to a time of maturity where convenience and design prevails and the technology fades into the background. The problem with audio, is that it doesn't let us extrapolate to the future. What's next? I can see a period where feature-phones increase in capability to the point where they're like the 1st generation smartphones, but with networks that are 1000X more capable -- just in time for widespread adoption by the developing world. Will the developing world leapfrog the developed world in much the same way that it skipped over the era of hardwired networks straight to mobile? Will they be coming to economic power just as the digital realm has obsoleted many forms of material wealth?
- arn 15y ago
  I agree the quote from Steve Jobs was impressive, but it also fits the well known quote that goes "the best way to predict the future, is to invent it"
bitsweet 15y ago
Updates. Toolbars. Service Packs. Settings. Anti-virus. Filesystems. Control panels. All the stuff you hate when your Mom calls you for tech support? Sounds more like a Windows problem then a pc problem. Since converting my family to Macs, I haven't had to handle any of this stuff but when they used Windows it was a monthly annoyance.
- MarkMc 15y ago
  Let's not go overboard - both Mac and iOS have Updates and Settings and service packs, it's just that these are simpler to use than on Windows. Also the first call I got from my Mum after buying her an iPad 2 was to ask how to increase the size of the Notes font (turns out it couldn't be done).
  - Xuzz 15y ago
    (Try Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Large Text: it seems to work on my iPad for bumping notes to a larger font size.)
- MarkMc 15y ago
  What happened to web apps? Five years ago they were The Next Best Thing because they didn't have updates, toolbars, service packs, filesystems, anti-virus... Popularity for technology comes in waves.
  - codesuela 15y ago
    It's not like the days of web app development are over. Just look at Google Docs and Gmail or Amazons Cloud Reader. With the push for HTML 5, constant JS optimization and new technologies like Dart emerging it is getting more feasible every day to develop web apps. Especially in the Post PC era because web apps are cross-platform and cross-device.
justinhj 15y ago
I think the article is correct except for its timing. The iPad 1 did all of this, the updated display resolution really doesn't change the device fundamentally. Sure the fonts and icons look great to Jeff, who just bought his first iPad. But guess what? They looked great on iPad 1 too.
pygorex 15y ago
The day I can code an iPad app on the iPad is the day I enter the post-pc era. Or code, test & deploy web apps from an iPad. Or design & layout web pages on an iPad. We live in a post-mainframe era even though mainframes are still alive an kicking. But a mainframe isn't required create, test and deploy PC software. Once PCs are no longer required to create, test and deploy code for mobile devices we'll be in a post-PC era - that is, once PCs are no longer a required part of the general purpose computing ecosystem.
- commanda 15y ago
  Part of the claim was that for most people, the tablet (with the retina display) is enough for all the computing they want to do. I think "most people" excludes us - the programmers/makers. We will always need a full general computing machine.
- trimbo 15y ago
  In that way, I think of the iPad a lot like I think of game consoles. They're not self-hosting (or whatever you want to call it), and they're not designed to be anytime soon. They're designed to be a software/content distribution channel for a hardware manufacturer who takes a royalty of that in addition to selling the device.
- orbitingpluto 15y ago
  Interesting comment, because that means Apple is the biggest impediment to a post-PC era.
- hindsightbias 15y ago
  I hope all of HN is like you, much less competition in the future for the rest of us that don't define the era based on your parochial toolsets.
- jballanc 15y ago
  I think you're missing the point. The post-PC era means that only tech savvy people need/will use PCs, not that PCs will disappear completely. What I'm really waiting for is for some company to realize this and make a device that caters exclusively to developers.
ivanhoe 15y ago
There is an exponential relation between required dpi and distance of the eye from the printed material or monitor (further you are, less and less dpi is needed). Therefore I'm not sure retina screens are such a great idea for big desktop screens, in a usual desktop setup you probably just wouldn't notice that much difference.
- orangecat 15y ago
  If you can see individual pixels, as you should easily be able to on typical desktop and laptop displays, then you can use higher resolutions.
- hollerith 15y ago
  We all know what you meant, but it might interest you to know that the relationship is polynomial (of degree 2) not exponential.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I love my iPad 2, don't get me wrong. The thing is, for me the iPad supplements my MacBook Pro: acts as a second monitor, I use it for reading, and it is just large enough to be good for watching movies. The thing is, most of my computer use is programming and writing. I need a keyboard, support for a term window, Emacs and IntelliJ, TeXShop, etc. I might be able to earn a living using just an iPad by running a term app and doing development using a remote Linux server with SSH, Emacs, etc. and do writing using Pages, but that would be like running a race hopping on one foot. I think that "iPad 5" might do it for me however: a larger physical screen size, about half the weight, and great IDE support for doing Lisp, Java, Clojure, etc. I'll wait 2 years and see. I think that this will require new paradigms in writing and programming tools. Mind is open.
gtruilmopl 15y ago
I've been netbooking it for my chillin' computin' for the past couple years. Since getting an 800x400 AMOLED screen on a smartphone, I haven't even thought about getting a new netbook. There are all sorts of useful form factors. the iPad _IS_ a PC. It just uses a different CPU and proprietary hardware. Now... a small and light PC that is completely intractable with via a touchscreen, wireless data, etc... That's a goddamn miracle. Bloggers just love to historicize the present.
jroseattle 15y ago
I usually agree with most everything Jeff writes, but I'm highly skeptical that what pushed the "post-PC" era over the top was better display support. I've seen the screens, they look nice and crisp and clear and...I kind of don't care. Oh, the views on it are great, but it offers me nothing new. Quite frankly, as product releases go, I question whether Steve would have let this out the door. It's a nice product, but insanely great? In comparison to prior developments, I don't think it meets that bar.
julian37 15y ago
I think Atwood is right, PCs are on their way out simply because with tablets there is so much less that can go wrong. He mentions tech support in the article: THAT is why they will win, regardless of whether or not they will fully replace PCs, or whether or not they are better suited to writing emails. Millions of people who can't be bothered with anti-virus updates and the like will just find it a much more pleasant experience: "it just works" indeed. (I'm a Mac user and I find myself spending a lot less time on tech support type issues than back in the day when I was using Linux and Windows, still it's hard to deny that iPads are currently the epitome of simplicity, compared to their power.) And that's what I'm worried about: "No user serviceable parts inside". I'm concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow's kids' experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20. Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly. You turn it on, it's on. You put in a diskette -- well, it didn't load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, and once the game started, it was started. Things were simple and worked, for the most part, quite well. No tech support needed. But the BASIC shell was there right at your fingertips -- hell, the manual came with example BASIC programs. Quibbling over the merits of BASIC aside, it was a simple experience but it was also tremendously open. Things got much more complicated since then; network connectivity in particular introduced previously unknown threats to users, so of course this is a simplified comparison. Still, I wonder, is giving up the freedom to tinker with the system really the price tomorrow's consumers will have to pay in order to buy simplicity? And if you're thinking about replying with links to IDEs running on the iPad: no, something that runs in the cloud and has no direct access whatsoever to the internals of the machine does not qualify as a modern-day replacement for this experience, no matter how sophisticated.
- victork2 15y ago
  I think the whole question Tablet vs Computer is pretty dumb in the first place. It's not a versus, it's a peaceful cohabitation, only some evangelist and/or journalists want to push us to believe there's a war but that's really not true. Tablet and PC simply correspond to two totally different use of media. A tablet is consumption centered whereas the PC is able to produce complex goods and services than then can be consumed by a tablet. Will the tablet push away PC usage to very low level in some areas? Probably! Will it replace a PC for every usage ? Are you kidding me: Development, 3D Effect, Advanced Audio Processing, Advanced Photo processing. That's just as stupid as saying that photoshop is dead because Instagram can do sepia... PS: I will absolutely never buy a tablet, I fight every day to stay on the creator side of society, with a tablet I would just give up!
eslaught 15y ago
"all the existing HCI research tells us that higher resolution displays are a deep fundamental improvement in computing" Citations, please?
- codinghorror 15y ago
  There are some in the comments on the article.
- chalst 15y ago
  See jeff's post: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/12/printer-and-screen-resolution.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/12/printer-and-screen-... Printer and Screen Resolution (December 2006) He recapitulates Tufte's argument that information density is curcial to speed of finding information and observes that stagnation in the improvement of screen resolution is holding us back.
nikatwork 15y ago
As happens all too often at HN, these comments are devolving into a pedantic argument about definitions and irrelevant technicalities. Atwood does not say "hey throw out your PCs". In fact, he opens by stating that PCs are already ubiquitous. This article examines the idea that major innovation is currently happening in the post PC area. He posits that the new iPad display is a killer feature. This is a much more interesting talking point than "o noes but my Linux netbook is kewler".
greggman 15y ago
Really? Hi-def = no more pc? What does an iPad 3 do that an iPad 2 doesn't? How did hd res change anything? The end of the PC era may be near but it's not because of 10inch hd screens.
- rimantas 15y ago
  > Really? Hi-def = no more pc? No. Post-X does not mean "no more X". It never meant that.
PhilipG 15y ago
For me, the time per day I spend on a PC has not changed since getting a tablet. However I can count on my hands the number of times I have bothered turn on TV since getting tablet. The tablet has replaced the TV for me.
gcb 15y ago
a guy that writes a blog about coding happy that the new 'era' will not allow you any coding
- rimantas 15y ago
  Really? Where did you read that? I thought he wrote how people who never wrote a line of code in their life and never intended to do so now have their needs fulfilled by this device.
twelvechairs 15y ago
The author conflates 'PC' with 'desktop' and 'general purpose computer', which I take issue with. Three points: Firstly: The iPad is a PC, a 'personal computer' Secondly: The quotes refer to 'desktop computer' era being over (though one uses the term 'PC' in the context of 'PC wars'), so why not use 'desktop computer era is over' as the title?(more accurate though less shocking) Thirdly: Through all this conflation, the author also tries to say that the 'general purpose computer' era is over. Personally, I believe there is a big future in 'general-purpose computer' tablets/phones/etc. (non 'desktop'), as well as in desktops and there is not a shred of evidence in the article which challenges this view...
ezy 15y ago
Not yet. My wife is not an advanced user of computers by any stretch of the imagination, but I would never buy an iPad for her. She has a DSLR and 60k photos in iPhoto (~320G). iPads will eventually store this much in 3 years, but you will want it backed up somewhere (and in 3 years the "cloud" still won't be doing this much (personal) data at a reasonable personal cost compared to a physical device). And she will not be tolerant of doing edits or looking at photos on a 10" screen. Not to mention that once you increase the screen size, portability goes out the window -- you will have a monitor. And guess what? Touch input doesn't really work ergonomically on a 24" monitor. There are solutions, Airplay will obviously be involved, as will BT input devices. But it's not quite ready for prime-time yet.
- alain94040 15y ago
  Everyone's case is different of course, but it's very possible that soon, your wife will be on iPad only. For large monitors, AirPlay to the TV works great today. I can snap a picture on my iPhone, step inside my house and the next second, show the picture on a 50" TV to all my guests. Instantaneous. I don't have to connect to a computer at all. It even works for videos. Combine that with a card from Eye-Fi and cloud storage, and I'd say that in two years tops, you'll feel like it's a completely normal and safe way to manipulate your pictures. Use the iPad to arrange them in collections. Show them on the TV. Store them online.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    The only thing missing there is editing, if you are trying to do something beyond adding a few filters you are probably going to want either a mouse or something closer to a proper graphics tablet (which is quite different from a capacitive touchscreen).
sdfjkl 15y ago
Just today in the IT department (this is why it's good to occasionally work in the office): "So my old PC at home finally bought it. I've seen you're all using Macs (this guy is observant) and I've been wondering if I should get one of them. Or could I just get an iPad instead? I've been tempted to get one of them anyways". Turns out the iPad does everything he and the wife want, which is mostly surfing the web, listening to iTunes[1] and getting pictures from their point-and-shoot camera to someplace safe. Remaining issue: printing the odd document. But you can get an AirPrint enabled smearjet for £35. Our recommendation: Get the iPad now, see if it does everything you want. If it does, get another iPad for the wife instead of that Mac you'd share between you. [1] Explaining iTunes Match made his eyes light up: "So I won't need to back it up[2] to an USB disk anymore? And I don't need to buy the 64 GB iPad to fit it all on?" (Hey, it's like someone designed this service for people like him). [2] Most casual computer users seem to do this these days because they've already learnt the hard lesson of losing all their stuff once.
program247365 15y ago
Jeff is making the point that [Apple is] "fundamentally innovating in computing as a whole...". I see the iOS devices (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad), as just the beginning. Apple has made astounding progress on these mobile devices where their competitors haven't really caught up to yet: 1) The display, amazingly higher-res than HDTVs now (2048-by-1536-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi)) 2) Connectivity (Wifi/multiple carriers/LTE even) 3) Battery life to weight ratio (9hrs using cellular network, at 1.46lbs)* 4) Graphics/Processor punch (Dual A5X processor with quad-core graphics) 5) An ecosystem of applications that are on the whole, of good quality, and generate a lot of revenue (25 Billion apps sold [2]) When I say "just the beginning", I really mean that. And I don't mean that Apple will always be at the top, probably not by a long shot. What I want to ask, and I wonder why everyone else isn't asking is, what's next? Apple won't be at the tippy top forever, so won't the next generation of innovators please stand up? [1] Anyone remember lugging around their 8+ lbs Dell laptop, that had a battery that lasted maybe 2 hours in 2005? I do. My back still hurts. [2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/05Apples-App-Store-Downloads-Top-25-Billion.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/05Apples-App-Store-D...
rmk2 15y ago
What irks me the most about the "post pc era" is its genesis. It is portrayed as a revolution that will fundamentally change computing. However, by dubbing the tablet the "post-pc", its very definition still depends on the pc, being a definition ex negativo. Many of the arguments here are about whether the tablet can do everything a pc does. The tablet does not revolutionise cultural artifacts or cultural goods, it merely allows for a consumption that is somewhat different from the consumption the pc offers. The consumed goods do not change, social media, media, art and science remain exactly the same, namely consumable goods. The established dichotomy between the pc and the tablet is a fake one, used to artificially create demand that can then be met through new supplies. The tablet does not change the mode of production, it is merely another facet of consumption, this time even more openly advertised as such by being advertised a "consumer device". Calling it innovation is in my opinion a misrepresentation, because it basically reinvents the wheel once more, it undergoes the same syntheses and evolution as the pc did, just accelerated thanks to already available knowledge. The tablet is a clever remix of technologies already available. It combines different modes of consumption previously divided, but it only changes the mode of reception, not production. True innovation on the other hand has to change the modes of production first. The tablet cannot achieve anything other items cannot also do, and is thus not innovation or revolution, it is merely evolution, or even just another playing field added alongside others. Film, recorded music, books and the radio changed the means of production, as did the pc. The walkman, the tablet and the tv may have changed the modes of reception, but nothing new can be created through them that wasn't already available beforehand and is merely refined, not substantially altered. The "war" of tablets vs pc is just another sales pitch to make either more appealing to their individual audiences. >> edit (for ease of understanding, an example) As an example that is less abstract, take the "Hipster". Wearing clothing that is tattered might be "cool" to you and you wear it "ironically, as a statement". If you are poor however, you might have to wear tattered clothes because you lack the means to afford something else. Ironically or not, you are fundamentally still wearing tattered clothes. Irony does not influence the plane of action, but instead the plane of ideas, or in other words: ideology. It's the same in the debate of tablet vs pc: Whether you type a blog-post on your touchscreened tablet or with a keyboard on your pc doesn't change the underlying action, just the mode of action. Whether you prefer one over the other is ideology, the basic action remains unchanged. >> end edit
cowkingdeluxe 15y ago
An apple product changed everything? Again? Does this one even connect via USB for data transfer? What about HDMI?
mangoman 15y ago
As a hacker, I feel like I am missing out on the wonders of tablets and the Ipad that I see non-hackers getting extremely excited about. I can get super excited about my smartphone, but that's because the device(s) it replaced were infinitely less exciting (my dumbphone, my mp3 player). But for Ipads, I just feel like everything I could do with them can be done on my laptop better. My laptop has a bigger screen so movies is a more pleasant experience. I can play more fun games on my laptop (The many many years of flash games is probably more vast than the games on the Ipad). I can compose documents more comfortably than i can type on a touch screen. I can CODE on my laptop! Granted, my laptop doesn't have 10 hours of battery, or that level of pixel density (where i completely agree with Atwood, displays need to get better), but I have yet to find a reason to buy a tablet. I think that non-hackers who don't really use that many features of a PC should get VERY excited about tablets, but until I can program on a tablet comfortably, I don't think I could bite the bullet and buy one.
shahar2k 15y ago
I'd argue that there is one last barrier to these slate based computers (smartphones, tablets) and that is to take these screens and make them sunlight readable (reflective), color, same retina resolution, and same refresh rate. once the screen no longer requires a backlight, and can be readable any place a book can, computers will truly be ubiquitous. as for creation tools on these machines they are beginning to arrive now, and they will become more and more mature as time goes on. hopefully a less controlled ecosystem will win out but that much I dont know I can predict.
wisty 15y ago
To all the people who are sad - it will be OK. Workstations killed mainframes, because you didn't need that stupid command line. You could point and click. But real software engineers would install UNIX tools, or SSH (or telnet) into a server, and take advantage of the pretty display for richer reports. PCs killed workstations, because they were cheaper, and their OS was more user friendly. Unfortunately, "user friendly" meant "dumbed down". You could take advantage of innovations in IDEs, word processors, email programs, and web browser; but it was harder to instal UNIX tools. You could still SSH into a server (which would be a workstation, if you were on a tight budget) and get UNIX stuff done. You could also configure X, and do workstation stuff. Now, tablets are killing PCs, because they are cheaper, more portable, and more "user friendly" (dumbed down). There's probably no way to install UNIX tools. But you can get a virtual server for peanuts (or set up a home PC), hook up a USB keyboard, and an SSH "app", and everything is fine. The display is a bit small, but many tablets these days can power a HD display (look at the Raspberry Pi, which uses mobile phone components). Apple may or may not include the right port, but Android tablets can. And you can take advantage of innovations in touch interfaces.
ericfrenkiel 15y ago
I was so inspired by this article that I actually went to the Apple store in San Francisco and purchased the iPad this evening. After spending a couple hours with it, I'm certainly impressed by the hardware, but I've already decided to return the device tomorrow. It's a great couch device, but it's too heavy to carry with you. I don't carry a murse, and I'd rather sling a Macbook Air than this for the extra functionality. Minor things include it running too hot, and the flip cover leaving striated streaks on the display. In my opinion, iOS doesn't scale properly at this size - there is too much white space between the icons on the home screen, for example, and I would prefer to see widgets to show more information without having to open an app. Ultimately, whether you're happy with the iPad is how much you buy into the Apple cloud versus the Google cloud. In all truth, there is very little difference between the iPad 2 and the iPad HD. If you squint and peer very close to the screen you can see how high quality the screen is, but looking at the device from where it rests in your hands it's almost impossible to tell the difference.
VonLipwig 15y ago
I disagree with the post. """The slope of this graph is the whole story. The complicated general purpose computers are at the bottom, and the simpler specialized computers are at the top.""" This is a terrible graph. The Mac has always been a premium niche computer. 28 years ago computing was in its infancy and computers were expensive, unnetworked with limited benefit to the average household. Compare this the iPad / iPod Touch and iPhone. These are main stream devices that achieved immediate traction. It is unrealistic to compare Mac sales with those of main stream devices. You then have the desktop market as a whole. If you compare any single company or brand of desktop against iPad sales, desktop sales would look in trouble. However, if you compare desktop sales to tablet sales it is clear that tablets are still only in their infancy. BUT TABLETS ARE SELLING FASTER THAN DESKTOPS! I don't know if this true but it doesn't matter and it doesn't say much about the state of desktops. Everyone has a computer, the market is saturated. No one has a tablet. It makes sense that tablet sales would rocket. Buying tablets also make a lot of sense for people who just consume content. The fact is though that the iPad isn't great for productivity. It is far better for consuming content. This is what most people do. However if you want to program, edit images, write a novel, maintain spreadsheets, make movies etc a desktop / laptop is what you need. The PC isn't dead and it isn't dying. It has reached a point where people only buy replacements. Now yes, some people may switch perminantly to a tablet. Thats fine. For the forseeable future though there will be a large market of business and consumers who require more than a tablet can provide. ------ The article also touches on how great the new iPad screen is. I don't think its all that. I walked past the demo of 'the new iPad' twice before asking a sales guy to point to which one was 'the new iPad'. Yes, if you put the screen close to your face you see less pixelation on icons. For general web surfing though I saw no perceived difference. Hell, I don't really see any pixelation on my iPad2. Perhaps I am not holding it close enough to my face...
- seanmcdirmid 15y ago
  As has been pointed out in the replies about 30 times already, PostPC doesn't mean the PC is dead, it only means that the PC market is mature and innovation slows way down as everyone focuses on newer more dynamic markets. The fact that people feel no need to upgrade their PCs anymore yet they are still rushing out to buy the new iPad is symptomatic of that. Surely I'll buy a new PC in the future to replace my old one, but I don't expect my sister or dad to do the same. I once had a workmate in 1999 whose sentiment was similar to your post, just focusing on a different device. We got into an argument about whether the desktop PC market was over or not. He didn't really believe that laptops were really more than niche devices, they were too slow, displays were too small, that most people would use desktop PCs for decades to come. That you could never do more than surf the web on it, you couldn't hack serious code with it. That tablets are for consumption only...really? Diagramming (e.g., OmniGraffle), vector graphic production, sketching, mixing and producing music, editing images, updating a spreadsheet...why not? Many are using tablets for production already. Every year someone says iPad can't do X, the next year someone releases something that does X and it actually doesn't suck. I often use my iPad 2 in bed (~1 foot distance), the screen is really close and I can see the pixels. The new iPad is absolutely frigging amazing, I'll never look at my crappy DELL/HP monitors at work in a positive way again (yes, I can see the pixels!). Why have we been stuck at the same crappy 1920x1200 pixel resolution for at least 5 years now? Could it be that no one care about innovating in the PC market because they can't make any money? That a 10" iPad has a higher resolution than my 24" PC monitor is totally Post PC.
test4334 15y ago
Screen resolutions are not growing because Windows doesn't scale display well. Real world: many people and a business I know use HD resolution on Full HD displays (and 800x600 on 1280x1024 displays) just because letters are bigger. I really hate current standard resolution: 1366x768. It fits 20 lines of code in Visual Studio. Even 10 years ago we had better monitors.
malux85 15y ago
Yep, the article is right BUT it's for consumers. The iPad has allowed my grandmother (who is so old fashioned she doesn't believe woman should drive) to pick up a device and video call me on the other side of the world - we told her "It's not a computer, it's a new invention" and she picked it up and invested time in learning it. Most people here are actually producers when it comes to computers, so most people say things like "I still need to product (spreadsheet | programming | lolcat images)" and the pc will never go away. But I think this article was talking about your websurfing, facebook updating, web reading consumers.
netcan 15y ago
I think the demand for tablet-like-PCs is potentially huge. If I'm right, their first couple of years will probably tell us where the frontiers between PCs and post-PCs are and what the world will look like.
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
I realize I'm straying dangerously close to Get Off My Lawn territory, but I worry about the post-PC era. As a programmer, I worry about turning into a sharecropper on a closed platform [1]. [1] http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... As a consumer, I worry about "buying" a closed, networked device and discovering that I don't really own it, but merely have a licence to use it under draconian terms of service. I don't want to "buy" a book or a movie or a piece of software, only to have it yanked off my device remotely. Meanwhile, the government of my country (Canada) is rolling out a new copyright law that will make it a criminal offence to circumvent "digital locks", even if it's for legitimate, legal personal use. However, I still hold out hope that as the technology matures, costs fall and competitors catch up to Apple's tight vertical integration, it becomes more feasible to run a full-featured open source device with a healthy ecosystem built around it.
ridruejo 15y ago
It is probably not much the hardware itself as the concept. Everybody can figure out how to use a tablet, the app store, etc. but not everybody can figure out how to use Windows or Ubuntu or OS X. We are close to the point in which everything a 'normal' person (not a developer) may want to do with a computer, such as listen to music, watching videos, receiving and sending email, buying plane tickets he or she can do with an iPad.
kriskeyman 15y ago
Two years ago I bought my mom an iPad. I was hesitant to do so because I wasn't sure if she would actually use it. A year ago I bought her a new iMac (upgrade from a previous gen. iMac). She likes it, but now considers the iPad to be her main computing device. My 5 year old son spends 90% of his supervised 'computer time' on an iPad. He doesn't understand the concept of a pixel, or why it's good that we don't see them. He has an older iMac in his room, but still prefers using the iPad as his 'main computing device'. Talk about burning a candle at both ends! The term 'desktop' is archaic when thinking about a computer as a tool. Designers and engineers on the forefront of technology are spending their time creating devices for the 'Post PC' generation... not creating a better 'desktop'. Reading some of the comments here, I cannot help but picture the accountant who still keeps his numbers in a [paper] notebook. At least they still make pencils!

336 points by kreutz 15y ago

"Very, very small PCs – the kind you could fit in your pocket – are starting to have the same amount of computing grunt as a high end desktop PC of, say, 5 years ago. And that was plenty, even back then, for a relatively inefficient general purpose operating system." I would argue that it's more than they need, that a service like OnLive is before its time but not more than a few years from hitting prime. I would say get ready for the Post Hardware Era.

jiggy2011 15y ago
That's going to need some serious network infrastructure to back it up. You will essentially have every computer user in the world constantly streaming very high resolution video for 8 hours+ a day. The 1GB/month limit most carriers provide is going to be nowhere near enough, you will need more like 1/2 TB per month and it needs to be provided reliably.
- icebraining 15y ago
  I think that's completely possible if we change the model of our current infrastructure. Here in Portugal, our main (wired) ISP has been putting Foneras[1] in every subscribers' home for a couple of years or so, which means that every subscriber they have can connect for free anywhere there's a home with their service. A couple of months ago they launched an iPhone app which can use their network of Wifi routers to make calls through them - they essentially became a mobile provider using Wifi. I can see this approach taking place on a larger scale; not only related to connectivity, but to actual computing: imagine that each router was also a beefy server, particularly in terms of CPU and GPU capabilities; these would provide the computing needs for wireless devices connected to them. Using existing ways of moving the "state" of an application between machines, you could have your wireless devices hopping from server to server as you moved around, without having a great impact on the rest of the network. This would still mean hardware in each home, of course, but it'd be a black box hidden from sight and chosen, bought and managed by some company. [1]: http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsfon http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsfon
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    The crux of the problem is that bandwidth is currently oversold since it is largely unused most of the time. Let's compare my session here on HN with how it would be if I was streaming my web browser from somewhere else. Currently I pull down a few KB of ascii every i load up a comment thread and then spend maybe 20-30 minutes reading it during which time no bandwidth is used. If I was streaming this from a browser in the cloud, I would be pulling down an order of magnitude more data since scrolling down the page could easily be a few MB vs no data at all. You could have hardware "basestations" as you suggest which would be an interesting idea. Of course locating these geographically would be a difficult task. You might end up with rural areas where it would be impossible to do any computing at all because no basestation was in range, or you would end up with urban areas where there would be massive demand. You would also have to account for what happens if somebody decides to have a big party or event somewhere and suddenly the local basestation computer goes from only having to service 10 - 100 clients to suddenly having to service 1000+?
    - icebraining 15y ago
      You could have hardware "basestations" as you suggest which would be an interesting idea. Of course locating these geographically would be a difficult task. You might end up with rural areas where it would be impossible to do any computing at all because no basestation was in range, or you would end up with urban areas where there would be massive demand. Rural would probably fallback to mobile networks and real datacenters, possibly with degraded service. Urban would just be adjusted based on trends - places with higher demand would get more powerful boxes; the same as scaling any other servers, really. You would also have to account for what happens if somebody decides to have a big party or event somewhere and suddenly the local basestation computer goes from only having to service 10 - 100 clients to suddenly having to service 1000+? Assuming a decent infrastructure, you'd only need to have enough wireless bandwidth; computing resources wouldn't necessarily have to be tied to local devices. So a party would just mean that more machines from the neighborhood would help via wired connections (I'm assuming basestations in the same neighborhood could speak to each other using local routers, without having to do a round trip to the ISP datacenter). Of course, this still means that machines shouldn't be running at 100% capacity, but that's just common sense.
tesseractive 15y ago
> I would say get ready for the Post Hardware Era. That's what they said in the mid-90s as the web was catching on (remember the "network computer"?). And then came Flash and Java applets and Javascript and various other things and it turned out that a dumb web client had to be pretty smart to keep up with the web. I try never to say that something is impossible, because I don't really know what the future will bring, and convincing myself that I do would be foolish. But I will have to be shown a lot more than what we've seen so far with OnLive before I'm convinced that the future of mobile devices is as dumb terminals.
- bicknergseng 15y ago
  In the mid 90s this also happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUs7iG1mNjI. We've come a long way since then and still have a ways to go before the dumb terminal model comes back... but I think it will happen. I think the problem for that model has been that the only people who have found a use for the power of a full size computer on a mobile device have been gamers, but I think this is probably because developers have never had the ability to build applications that use more than the mobile device's native hardware. OnLive needs to make a development platform on their service.

gavingmiller 15y ago

The lack of a decent point in this article makes me wonder whether Apple paid Atwood to write this piece.

jonursenbach 15y ago
Do you really think that Apple with all of their billions of dollars would pay someone like Jeff Atwood to write this, or anything? Come on.
- robryan 15y ago
  There would have been a cost involved recently with giving a group of journalists private briefings on osx mountain lion recently. Which would have been done to get more press.
chrislomax 15y ago
Although you appear to have been marked down for this, I kind of agree. Not that Apple paid him of course but that there is no real news in this article? If any other person had written this (not mainstream), I would argue no one would read it. It certainly wouldn't have made front page HN. It doesn't teach me anything I didn't already know and even if I didn't know it, it poses no real value apart from being very sales heavy. EDIT: Spelling mistake
dbecker 15y ago
I thought this was an interesting post... but let's say for the sake of argument that it doesn't have a "decent point." Do you think Jeff Atwood is less likely to have a decent point if Apple is paying him for his writing?
dinkumthinkum 15y ago
No, I don't think Apple paid but I understand your point. This sort of fare is par for the course for Atwood. Honestly, it's pretty cliche stuff; people have been throwing "post-PC" around a lot lately.

danso 15y ago

>> iPad 3 reviews that complain "all they did was improve the display" are clueless bordering on stupidity. Tablets are pretty much by definition all display; nothing is more fundamental to the tablet experience than the quality of the display. While I agree that the display improvements are noteworthy, I would say that tablets are not "by definition all display." The tactile interaction is as much a part of a tablet's worth.

experiment0 15y ago
iOS devices have had there tactile interaction down since the beginning. They are so responsive compared to Android devices (from my experience), and so I don't see where Apple could have improved in this area.
- _frog 15y ago
  Having used the new iPad I did notice that scrolling felt more responsive[1], but that's just as a result of having a more powerful GPU onboard. [1]: Although not to the extent of that Microsoft demo posted a week or two ago.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  I don't know which Android devices you've used, but I simply haven't found this to be the case. From my experience, the touch response on high Android devices (such as the Galaxy Nexus) is indistinguishable from iOS devices.
  - dasil003 15y ago
    I'm on a Nexus One at the moment. The touch is good when it works, but it's buggy. The more quickly you tap it the more likely it is to into buggy mode where a big dead spot develops in the lower center part of the screen. It's absolutely infuriating, and it really makes me much more envious of iPhone users than any of the apps. If the Galaxy Nexus is really on par with the iPhone (and I'm highly skeptical of that) then I might stick with Android for my next phone, but otherwise I have to go iPhone just based on touch characteristics alone.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Atwood's thesis is that the new iPad improved on those things that make tablets useful. I agree with him that the updated display is the killer feature. But you have to give props to a high performance wireless network architecture too. That being said, two tablets with identical specs, I prefer an Android tablet and a more accessible ecosystem, the problem for Android right now is the R&D and supply chain investment competition. Ten manufacturers each investing 10 million in their tablet design is not nearly as efficient as one person investing 100 million in their tablet design. I keep hoping Google will address that issue by providing hardware/manufacturing R&D but it isn't one of their core competencies. When I worked there folks would call me to get in introduction to the folks designing the next Android phone, I'd chuckle and explain they had to go talk to Motorola or HTC. Perhaps now with their Motorola acquisition they will be in a place to make that investment, time will tell.

zalew 15y ago

Ok folks, let me know when you throw out your computers. I mean, seriously. I don't want to hear the 100th story about how ipad changed your life unless you literally get rid of your computer. If the number of people who replaced a computer with a tablet exceeds the number of people who still have one, we can talk about that post-pc mumbo-jumbo. So, how's gonna be?

jiggy2011 15y ago
I don't think people need to throw out their PCs , just maybe start using them less and then not bother replacing them after a while. Of course pending a convincing replacement for the keyboard and mouse I'm not sure how long it is until we see this in office environments. However I don't necessarily equate Post PC = Tablet , there will be other devices that fit other needs.
- bergie 15y ago
  Exactly. I'm only using my laptop when I'm actually writing code. All the rest of the computery stuff (like HN) happens in a comfortable chair with a tablet. Eventually either somebody invents a great way to write on these devices, or I'll finish my visual programming project (see http://noflojs.org http://noflojs.org). Then (and only then) I can see my laptop usage starting to near zero.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    That looks interesting, most of the visual programming tools I have seen or used thus far are unusable or inefficient compared to writing code but that actually looks like something I could see myself possibly using. When I think about a program in my head I basically construct it as a huge mental diagram anyway and then translate it into code. Perhaps detailed visual design is the way to go.
    - toyg 15y ago
      Visual programming has been around since the 70s and has never really taken off because it requires lots of screen real estate. The conciseness and semantic density of text will never be beaten. You don't discuss philosophy with flowcharts; why should you code that way?

ck2 15y ago

It's 264 PPI, not DPI. My monitor is 2048 x 1152 23 inches. 20.05" × 11.28" (50.92cm × 28.64cm) = 102.16 PPI, 0.2486mm dot pitch, 10437 PPI² At one foot away I still cannot see the individual dots. There's been a 200 PPI option for over a decade now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors If the ipad3 has added expense or limited availability to get ppi above 100, it was a waste.

sounds 15y ago
One reason Apple jumped straight to 264 PPI is to exactly double each dimension. This makes the 2x scaling beautiful. (I'm repeating hearsay, but it seems intuitively obvious to me - feel free to correct me.)
- cageface 15y ago
  It also means you don't have to change any code that makes assumptions about pixel positions. Like the retina phone, it just doubles the coordinates.
- ck2 15y ago
  A smartphone with 854x480 resolution on a 3.7" display also has 264 PPI (Motorola Droid, Defy, etc.) Might be related. It's "just" the same kind of matrix scaled to a three times larger display.
josephcooney 15y ago
Are you correcting someone? I didn't see Jeff refer to DPI in the linked article.
mturmon 15y ago
If you look at well-prepared documents on your display vs. on a new iPad, you will be able to see a difference (provided your eyesight is OK). The new MBP with high-res display has around 130 PPI, significantly more than your display. The new iPad has twice that. So now take a look at the page numbered 20 in this PDF: http://www.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/books/bmotion.pdf http://www.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/books/bmotion.pdf (starts with "and for each t > 0"). The difference between the MBP and the iPad is night and day. The italics, symbols, and math in the document render much more nicely on the iPad. Take a look at the parentheses and the script letters in particular. (I did this experiment.) Incidentally, the T220 is no longer available new.

firefoxman1 15y ago

"nothing is more fundamental to the tablet experience than the quality of the display" Well, I'd have to say the OS's interface and overall UX is more important. Maybe not for some, but it's a big deal for me.

jQueryIsAwesome 15y ago

Lets play to the clairvoyant, the post-tablet era is going to be glasses-PC (circa 2025) and after that is going to be micro holographic touch projectors (circa 2040); and those are going to be more like terminals with everything in the cloud.

martythemaniak 15y ago

"But until the iPhone and iPad, near as I can tell, nobody else was even trying to improve resolution on computer displays" The original Droid came out in Nov '09 and had a 265ppi screen (same as the new iPad). When I upgraded from my 1st gen iPhone to the Nexus One shortly after that and put the two side-by-side, I simply could not stop admiring how incredible the screen was. Sorry, but it really was just simple economics and we would've gotten high-DPI displays regardless.

Xuzz 15y ago
I don't think it's about iPhone vs Droid bs Nexus: it's about phones and tablets versus desktops and laptops. Most laptops today aren't sold with a 200+ DPI screen. I think I'd have a hard time finding any. And yet, most phones (and tablets, with the new iPad) do have these high-density, better, screens. Jeff's point is that the switch to phones and tablets is what enabled that improvement to occur.
mediaman 15y ago
That's true of phones, but we haven't really seen anyone try that with traditional PCs. Even Apple hasn't achieved anything there. In a broader sense, there seems to be much more innovation in tablets and phones versus traditional PCs. Some of that was sparked by Apple, some of it, such as Droid's high-res screen, was created first by someone else. But where is the comparable innovation with the PC?
masklinn 15y ago
> The original Droid came out in Nov '09 and had a 265ppi screen I've got a much bigger issue with this quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors Those are 22" desktop LCD screens with a resolution of 3840×2400. The T220 came out in 2001. At an original price of $18k they certainly cost an arm, a leg and half your firstborn. But there you are.

thwest 15y ago

PCs will stick around, of course. The worry for me is that when PCs serve only engineers and content creators the production scales will diminish, and prices increase.

melling 15y ago

Apple already announced the Post-PC era. It'll be a slow transition for a couple of more years. We really better input options. Fingers are great but sometimes I want precision. What's interesting about Jeff coming around is that he's a pretty hard-core Windows guy. It was funny to have Macs come up on the StackOverFlow podcast. Joel would recommend it for family, etc and you could hear it in Jeff's voice that he didn't see the need. We'll find out in 6 months if it's going to be a 3 horse race. Now Jeff has a reason to learn C. Not to worry, ObjC on iOS is not your father's C. It's a lot more fun.

mcantelon 15y ago

Laptops were way more revolutionary than *pads. "Post-pc" is just a talking point. The post-PC era will eliminate PCs like McDonalds eliminated kitchens.

nikatwork 15y ago
Disagree. Laptops were revolutionary for power users; post PC is revolutionary for the everyfolk. Post PC means Jill Sixpack always has a net-connected device within arms reach. This is a big step closer to constant personal net connectivity.
- mcantelon 15y ago
  Smartphones and 3G did this before *Pads.
  - nikatwork 15y ago
    The term post-PC includes both smartphones and tablets. These devices have a distinct use case to laptops.
    - mcantelon 15y ago
      Sure, but "post" implies replacement, implying that PCs are somehow obsolete. It would be akin to heralding the introduction of compact cars to being the "post-sedan" era. "Mobile computing" is a more accurate and less marketing-driven way to say "post-PC". Mobile computing hardware, like the Palm Treo, has been around for awhile... 3G is the technology that has really helped it come of age.
to3m 15y ago
Unconvinced. It might seem like laptops are revolutionary, or were, but useful ones have been around for 20 years, and to what end? They've become progressively more useful in terms of screen quality and battery life, but they have consistently failed to produce any kind of revolution. And why should they? They're just a more expensive version of your desktop computer, that's small enough to carry around. I'm happy to class this as useful, but the laptop's persistent insistence on being merely a small version of the desktop falls somewhat short of "revolutionary".

j_baker 15y ago

Email has been around (in some form) since 1965. However, I think it's a bit too early to say that we're living in a "post-mail era". Will such a thing every truly happen? I don't see that happening until we invent teleporters for all the physical items we need shipped. By that same token, are we truly in a post-PC era, or is it simply an era where tablet use is on the rise and PC use is on the fall? Nifty charts and screen resolutions aside, I don't see any evidence that we're past the age of the PC. My parents still haven't replaced their computer with an iPad. Neither have any of my old friends from school. I use my tablet for more and more, but I just still can't avoid using my laptop for certain things. And I most certainly don't have a tablet or phone hooked up to my television. And how many offices have you seen where all the PCs have been replaced by mobile devices? In short, while I see things moving more towards tablets and mobile devices, I'll be convinced that we're in a post-PC era when I see it. Until then, it's all arbitrary speculation.

stcredzero 15y ago
However, I think it's a bit too early to say that we're living in a "post-mail era". Will such a thing every truly happen? I don't see that happening until we invent teleporters for all the physical items we need shipped. Well, we are definitely past the start of the post document-mail era. As for the rest, it's just a matter of implementation: is the advanced fabrication tech in your living room, across town, or across the ocean? So long as you get your product in a timely fashion, what's the difference? (Answer: manufacturing and supply-chain costs and how these impact profits and the consumer.)
- j_baker 15y ago
  True, fewer and fewer documents get mailed. But I think it's still a bit early to say that we're in a post-mailed-document era. I still get documents mailed to me every day! There are still some uses of physical mail that haven't been replaced by email.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    There are still some uses of physical mail that haven't been replaced by email. Yes, but it's clearly just a matter of time. There's no infrastructure or technology we need to wait on. There's no document transmission function that email couldn't fulfill for more than 90% of the populace, no barriers to that becoming a norm. Cars didn't cause 100% abandonment of horses instantaneously. Before the development of the largest trucks and most capable offroad vehicles, there were certain uses only draft animals could fulfill for quite awhile. Still I think the post horse-carriage era did begin with the first commercially sold cars.

pixelcort 15y ago

I'm curious how that chart would look taking into account US and international population growth in the last few decades. Perhaps devices per capita is a better ratio?

asdfpoiu 15y ago

Open hardware to the rescue of the PC! I think the (not-too-distant) future of home computing will have a lot in common with today's PCs. Articles like this one always seem to underestimate the amount of real creative or productive work people want to do -- something which is still a challenge on the iPads of today. Have YOU compared typing on a small screen to a big one? With custom manufacturing becoming affordable, as traditional computers start dying, open source hardware will start replacing them. I think we are seeing the first steps in this direction with Raspberry PI, hobbyist open hardware people, 3D printing (in the future: cheap chip printing?), CryogenMod, etc.

asdfpoiu 15y ago
Also, I should say, the tablets will probably start doubling as powerful PCs with a wireless connection to the display and keyboard and mouse. Uh-oh.
jiggy2011 15y ago
Interesting, maybe in the future you have 2 options either a fully closed ecosystem or a fully open one. I wonder if you will be able to use the open one to create stuff for the closed one?
- orangecat 15y ago
  I wonder if you will be able to use the open one to create stuff for the closed one? More disturbingly, I wonder if the open ones will be allowed to have a fraction of the functionality. Hollywood would love to only allow Internet access from locked down devices, and if 98% of the population ends up on appliances, things like that actually become feasible to enforce.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Perhaps though the 2 devices will have massively different use cases. This is already happening for me to an extent, I run a dual boot of Linux and Windows 7. Essentially Linux is my "programming workstation" and Windows 7 is my entertainment. I would quite happily replace my Windows 7 boot with something more like iOS since the only applications I really use there are Steam and Netflix. I'm actually quite glad that Linux does not support most of my games, since this keeps my productivity high. The only irritation is when I want to watch something from netflix in the background whilst working on some code but even that is easily overcome by running netflix from a PS3 on my TV beside my computer. Regards restricting internet access only to certain devices. At a government level that would be difficult legislation to pass. I can see domestic ISPs only supporting specific devices perhaps to keep their support costs down, but I'm sure there will always be ways around this. I remember the guy who came around to install my first broadband connection insisting that I would not be able to access the internet at all from my Linux laptop until I showed him how I did it.

stcredzero 15y ago

But Steve Jobs certainly saw the Post PC era looming as far back as 1996: The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade. If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth – and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago. The fact that Steve jobs could see this coming from back in 1996 is incredible. Add to that, that Steve also knew all through the Tablet PC initiatives of the early 2000's that it was too soon, technology wasn't able to properly support the post-PC form factors yet, and that styluses were a loser proposition. Bill Gates also saw the same forces at play, but he responded in the early 2000's with a failed attempt to move the PC into the next era. I guess that's a natural reaction for the winner of the PC era -- to try and carry it on. You can see the same forces at play in the audio industry. Audio has gone beyond the early DIY tinkerer days, through a period of standardization and ubiquity, through an era where big, complicated, elaborate machinery was a status display, to a time of maturity where convenience and design prevails and the technology fades into the background. The problem with audio, is that it doesn't let us extrapolate to the future. What's next? I can see a period where feature-phones increase in capability to the point where they're like the 1st generation smartphones, but with networks that are 1000X more capable -- just in time for widespread adoption by the developing world. Will the developing world leapfrog the developed world in much the same way that it skipped over the era of hardwired networks straight to mobile? Will they be coming to economic power just as the digital realm has obsoleted many forms of material wealth?

arn 15y ago
I agree the quote from Steve Jobs was impressive, but it also fits the well known quote that goes "the best way to predict the future, is to invent it"

bitsweet 15y ago

Updates. Toolbars. Service Packs. Settings. Anti-virus. Filesystems. Control panels. All the stuff you hate when your Mom calls you for tech support? Sounds more like a Windows problem then a pc problem. Since converting my family to Macs, I haven't had to handle any of this stuff but when they used Windows it was a monthly annoyance.

MarkMc 15y ago
Let's not go overboard - both Mac and iOS have Updates and Settings and service packs, it's just that these are simpler to use than on Windows. Also the first call I got from my Mum after buying her an iPad 2 was to ask how to increase the size of the Notes font (turns out it couldn't be done).
- Xuzz 15y ago
  (Try Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Large Text: it seems to work on my iPad for bumping notes to a larger font size.)
MarkMc 15y ago
What happened to web apps? Five years ago they were The Next Best Thing because they didn't have updates, toolbars, service packs, filesystems, anti-virus... Popularity for technology comes in waves.
- codesuela 15y ago
  It's not like the days of web app development are over. Just look at Google Docs and Gmail or Amazons Cloud Reader. With the push for HTML 5, constant JS optimization and new technologies like Dart emerging it is getting more feasible every day to develop web apps. Especially in the Post PC era because web apps are cross-platform and cross-device.

justinhj 15y ago

I think the article is correct except for its timing. The iPad 1 did all of this, the updated display resolution really doesn't change the device fundamentally. Sure the fonts and icons look great to Jeff, who just bought his first iPad. But guess what? They looked great on iPad 1 too.

pygorex 15y ago

The day I can code an iPad app on the iPad is the day I enter the post-pc era. Or code, test & deploy web apps from an iPad. Or design & layout web pages on an iPad. We live in a post-mainframe era even though mainframes are still alive an kicking. But a mainframe isn't required create, test and deploy PC software. Once PCs are no longer required to create, test and deploy code for mobile devices we'll be in a post-PC era - that is, once PCs are no longer a required part of the general purpose computing ecosystem.

commanda 15y ago
Part of the claim was that for most people, the tablet (with the retina display) is enough for all the computing they want to do. I think "most people" excludes us - the programmers/makers. We will always need a full general computing machine.
trimbo 15y ago
In that way, I think of the iPad a lot like I think of game consoles. They're not self-hosting (or whatever you want to call it), and they're not designed to be anytime soon. They're designed to be a software/content distribution channel for a hardware manufacturer who takes a royalty of that in addition to selling the device.
orbitingpluto 15y ago
Interesting comment, because that means Apple is the biggest impediment to a post-PC era.
hindsightbias 15y ago
I hope all of HN is like you, much less competition in the future for the rest of us that don't define the era based on your parochial toolsets.
jballanc 15y ago
I think you're missing the point. The post-PC era means that only tech savvy people need/will use PCs, not that PCs will disappear completely. What I'm really waiting for is for some company to realize this and make a device that caters exclusively to developers.

ivanhoe 15y ago

There is an exponential relation between required dpi and distance of the eye from the printed material or monitor (further you are, less and less dpi is needed). Therefore I'm not sure retina screens are such a great idea for big desktop screens, in a usual desktop setup you probably just wouldn't notice that much difference.

orangecat 15y ago
If you can see individual pixels, as you should easily be able to on typical desktop and laptop displays, then you can use higher resolutions.
hollerith 15y ago
We all know what you meant, but it might interest you to know that the relationship is polynomial (of degree 2) not exponential.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I love my iPad 2, don't get me wrong. The thing is, for me the iPad supplements my MacBook Pro: acts as a second monitor, I use it for reading, and it is just large enough to be good for watching movies. The thing is, most of my computer use is programming and writing. I need a keyboard, support for a term window, Emacs and IntelliJ, TeXShop, etc. I might be able to earn a living using just an iPad by running a term app and doing development using a remote Linux server with SSH, Emacs, etc. and do writing using Pages, but that would be like running a race hopping on one foot. I think that "iPad 5" might do it for me however: a larger physical screen size, about half the weight, and great IDE support for doing Lisp, Java, Clojure, etc. I'll wait 2 years and see. I think that this will require new paradigms in writing and programming tools. Mind is open.

gtruilmopl 15y ago

I've been netbooking it for my chillin' computin' for the past couple years. Since getting an 800x400 AMOLED screen on a smartphone, I haven't even thought about getting a new netbook. There are all sorts of useful form factors. the iPad _IS_ a PC. It just uses a different CPU and proprietary hardware. Now... a small and light PC that is completely intractable with via a touchscreen, wireless data, etc... That's a goddamn miracle. Bloggers just love to historicize the present.

jroseattle 15y ago

I usually agree with most everything Jeff writes, but I'm highly skeptical that what pushed the "post-PC" era over the top was better display support. I've seen the screens, they look nice and crisp and clear and...I kind of don't care. Oh, the views on it are great, but it offers me nothing new. Quite frankly, as product releases go, I question whether Steve would have let this out the door. It's a nice product, but insanely great? In comparison to prior developments, I don't think it meets that bar.

julian37 15y ago

I think Atwood is right, PCs are on their way out simply because with tablets there is so much less that can go wrong. He mentions tech support in the article: THAT is why they will win, regardless of whether or not they will fully replace PCs, or whether or not they are better suited to writing emails. Millions of people who can't be bothered with anti-virus updates and the like will just find it a much more pleasant experience: "it just works" indeed. (I'm a Mac user and I find myself spending a lot less time on tech support type issues than back in the day when I was using Linux and Windows, still it's hard to deny that iPads are currently the epitome of simplicity, compared to their power.) And that's what I'm worried about: "No user serviceable parts inside". I'm concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow's kids' experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20. Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly. You turn it on, it's on. You put in a diskette -- well, it didn't load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, and once the game started, it was started. Things were simple and worked, for the most part, quite well. No tech support needed. But the BASIC shell was there right at your fingertips -- hell, the manual came with example BASIC programs. Quibbling over the merits of BASIC aside, it was a simple experience but it was also tremendously open. Things got much more complicated since then; network connectivity in particular introduced previously unknown threats to users, so of course this is a simplified comparison. Still, I wonder, is giving up the freedom to tinker with the system really the price tomorrow's consumers will have to pay in order to buy simplicity? And if you're thinking about replying with links to IDEs running on the iPad: no, something that runs in the cloud and has no direct access whatsoever to the internals of the machine does not qualify as a modern-day replacement for this experience, no matter how sophisticated.

victork2 15y ago
I think the whole question Tablet vs Computer is pretty dumb in the first place. It's not a versus, it's a peaceful cohabitation, only some evangelist and/or journalists want to push us to believe there's a war but that's really not true. Tablet and PC simply correspond to two totally different use of media. A tablet is consumption centered whereas the PC is able to produce complex goods and services than then can be consumed by a tablet. Will the tablet push away PC usage to very low level in some areas? Probably! Will it replace a PC for every usage ? Are you kidding me: Development, 3D Effect, Advanced Audio Processing, Advanced Photo processing. That's just as stupid as saying that photoshop is dead because Instagram can do sepia... PS: I will absolutely never buy a tablet, I fight every day to stay on the creator side of society, with a tablet I would just give up!

eslaught 15y ago

"all the existing HCI research tells us that higher resolution displays are a deep fundamental improvement in computing" Citations, please?

codinghorror 15y ago
There are some in the comments on the article.
chalst 15y ago
See jeff's post: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/12/printer-and-screen-resolution.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/12/printer-and-screen-... Printer and Screen Resolution (December 2006) He recapitulates Tufte's argument that information density is curcial to speed of finding information and observes that stagnation in the improvement of screen resolution is holding us back.

nikatwork 15y ago

As happens all too often at HN, these comments are devolving into a pedantic argument about definitions and irrelevant technicalities. Atwood does not say "hey throw out your PCs". In fact, he opens by stating that PCs are already ubiquitous. This article examines the idea that major innovation is currently happening in the post PC area. He posits that the new iPad display is a killer feature. This is a much more interesting talking point than "o noes but my Linux netbook is kewler".

greggman 15y ago

Really? Hi-def = no more pc? What does an iPad 3 do that an iPad 2 doesn't? How did hd res change anything? The end of the PC era may be near but it's not because of 10inch hd screens.

rimantas 15y ago
> Really? Hi-def = no more pc? No. Post-X does not mean "no more X". It never meant that.

PhilipG 15y ago

For me, the time per day I spend on a PC has not changed since getting a tablet. However I can count on my hands the number of times I have bothered turn on TV since getting tablet. The tablet has replaced the TV for me.

gcb 15y ago

a guy that writes a blog about coding happy that the new 'era' will not allow you any coding

rimantas 15y ago
Really? Where did you read that? I thought he wrote how people who never wrote a line of code in their life and never intended to do so now have their needs fulfilled by this device.

twelvechairs 15y ago

The author conflates 'PC' with 'desktop' and 'general purpose computer', which I take issue with. Three points: Firstly: The iPad is a PC, a 'personal computer' Secondly: The quotes refer to 'desktop computer' era being over (though one uses the term 'PC' in the context of 'PC wars'), so why not use 'desktop computer era is over' as the title?(more accurate though less shocking) Thirdly: Through all this conflation, the author also tries to say that the 'general purpose computer' era is over. Personally, I believe there is a big future in 'general-purpose computer' tablets/phones/etc. (non 'desktop'), as well as in desktops and there is not a shred of evidence in the article which challenges this view...

ezy 15y ago

Not yet. My wife is not an advanced user of computers by any stretch of the imagination, but I would never buy an iPad for her. She has a DSLR and 60k photos in iPhoto (~320G). iPads will eventually store this much in 3 years, but you will want it backed up somewhere (and in 3 years the "cloud" still won't be doing this much (personal) data at a reasonable personal cost compared to a physical device). And she will not be tolerant of doing edits or looking at photos on a 10" screen. Not to mention that once you increase the screen size, portability goes out the window -- you will have a monitor. And guess what? Touch input doesn't really work ergonomically on a 24" monitor. There are solutions, Airplay will obviously be involved, as will BT input devices. But it's not quite ready for prime-time yet.

alain94040 15y ago
Everyone's case is different of course, but it's very possible that soon, your wife will be on iPad only. For large monitors, AirPlay to the TV works great today. I can snap a picture on my iPhone, step inside my house and the next second, show the picture on a 50" TV to all my guests. Instantaneous. I don't have to connect to a computer at all. It even works for videos. Combine that with a card from Eye-Fi and cloud storage, and I'd say that in two years tops, you'll feel like it's a completely normal and safe way to manipulate your pictures. Use the iPad to arrange them in collections. Show them on the TV. Store them online.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  The only thing missing there is editing, if you are trying to do something beyond adding a few filters you are probably going to want either a mouse or something closer to a proper graphics tablet (which is quite different from a capacitive touchscreen).

sdfjkl 15y ago

Just today in the IT department (this is why it's good to occasionally work in the office): "So my old PC at home finally bought it. I've seen you're all using Macs (this guy is observant) and I've been wondering if I should get one of them. Or could I just get an iPad instead? I've been tempted to get one of them anyways". Turns out the iPad does everything he and the wife want, which is mostly surfing the web, listening to iTunes[1] and getting pictures from their point-and-shoot camera to someplace safe. Remaining issue: printing the odd document. But you can get an AirPrint enabled smearjet for £35. Our recommendation: Get the iPad now, see if it does everything you want. If it does, get another iPad for the wife instead of that Mac you'd share between you. [1] Explaining iTunes Match made his eyes light up: "So I won't need to back it up[2] to an USB disk anymore? And I don't need to buy the 64 GB iPad to fit it all on?" (Hey, it's like someone designed this service for people like him). [2] Most casual computer users seem to do this these days because they've already learnt the hard lesson of losing all their stuff once.

program247365 15y ago

Jeff is making the point that [Apple is] "fundamentally innovating in computing as a whole...". I see the iOS devices (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad), as just the beginning. Apple has made astounding progress on these mobile devices where their competitors haven't really caught up to yet: 1) The display, amazingly higher-res than HDTVs now (2048-by-1536-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi)) 2) Connectivity (Wifi/multiple carriers/LTE even) 3) Battery life to weight ratio (9hrs using cellular network, at 1.46lbs)* 4) Graphics/Processor punch (Dual A5X processor with quad-core graphics) 5) An ecosystem of applications that are on the whole, of good quality, and generate a lot of revenue (25 Billion apps sold [2]) When I say "just the beginning", I really mean that. And I don't mean that Apple will always be at the top, probably not by a long shot. What I want to ask, and I wonder why everyone else isn't asking is, what's next? Apple won't be at the tippy top forever, so won't the next generation of innovators please stand up? [1] Anyone remember lugging around their 8+ lbs Dell laptop, that had a battery that lasted maybe 2 hours in 2005? I do. My back still hurts. [2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/05Apples-App-Store-Downloads-Top-25-Billion.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/05Apples-App-Store-D...

rmk2 15y ago

What irks me the most about the "post pc era" is its genesis. It is portrayed as a revolution that will fundamentally change computing. However, by dubbing the tablet the "post-pc", its very definition still depends on the pc, being a definition ex negativo. Many of the arguments here are about whether the tablet can do everything a pc does. The tablet does not revolutionise cultural artifacts or cultural goods, it merely allows for a consumption that is somewhat different from the consumption the pc offers. The consumed goods do not change, social media, media, art and science remain exactly the same, namely consumable goods. The established dichotomy between the pc and the tablet is a fake one, used to artificially create demand that can then be met through new supplies. The tablet does not change the mode of production, it is merely another facet of consumption, this time even more openly advertised as such by being advertised a "consumer device". Calling it innovation is in my opinion a misrepresentation, because it basically reinvents the wheel once more, it undergoes the same syntheses and evolution as the pc did, just accelerated thanks to already available knowledge. The tablet is a clever remix of technologies already available. It combines different modes of consumption previously divided, but it only changes the mode of reception, not production. True innovation on the other hand has to change the modes of production first. The tablet cannot achieve anything other items cannot also do, and is thus not innovation or revolution, it is merely evolution, or even just another playing field added alongside others. Film, recorded music, books and the radio changed the means of production, as did the pc. The walkman, the tablet and the tv may have changed the modes of reception, but nothing new can be created through them that wasn't already available beforehand and is merely refined, not substantially altered. The "war" of tablets vs pc is just another sales pitch to make either more appealing to their individual audiences. >> edit (for ease of understanding, an example) As an example that is less abstract, take the "Hipster". Wearing clothing that is tattered might be "cool" to you and you wear it "ironically, as a statement". If you are poor however, you might have to wear tattered clothes because you lack the means to afford something else. Ironically or not, you are fundamentally still wearing tattered clothes. Irony does not influence the plane of action, but instead the plane of ideas, or in other words: ideology. It's the same in the debate of tablet vs pc: Whether you type a blog-post on your touchscreened tablet or with a keyboard on your pc doesn't change the underlying action, just the mode of action. Whether you prefer one over the other is ideology, the basic action remains unchanged. >> end edit

cowkingdeluxe 15y ago

An apple product changed everything? Again? Does this one even connect via USB for data transfer? What about HDMI?

mangoman 15y ago

As a hacker, I feel like I am missing out on the wonders of tablets and the Ipad that I see non-hackers getting extremely excited about. I can get super excited about my smartphone, but that's because the device(s) it replaced were infinitely less exciting (my dumbphone, my mp3 player). But for Ipads, I just feel like everything I could do with them can be done on my laptop better. My laptop has a bigger screen so movies is a more pleasant experience. I can play more fun games on my laptop (The many many years of flash games is probably more vast than the games on the Ipad). I can compose documents more comfortably than i can type on a touch screen. I can CODE on my laptop! Granted, my laptop doesn't have 10 hours of battery, or that level of pixel density (where i completely agree with Atwood, displays need to get better), but I have yet to find a reason to buy a tablet. I think that non-hackers who don't really use that many features of a PC should get VERY excited about tablets, but until I can program on a tablet comfortably, I don't think I could bite the bullet and buy one.

shahar2k 15y ago

I'd argue that there is one last barrier to these slate based computers (smartphones, tablets) and that is to take these screens and make them sunlight readable (reflective), color, same retina resolution, and same refresh rate. once the screen no longer requires a backlight, and can be readable any place a book can, computers will truly be ubiquitous. as for creation tools on these machines they are beginning to arrive now, and they will become more and more mature as time goes on. hopefully a less controlled ecosystem will win out but that much I dont know I can predict.

wisty 15y ago

To all the people who are sad - it will be OK. Workstations killed mainframes, because you didn't need that stupid command line. You could point and click. But real software engineers would install UNIX tools, or SSH (or telnet) into a server, and take advantage of the pretty display for richer reports. PCs killed workstations, because they were cheaper, and their OS was more user friendly. Unfortunately, "user friendly" meant "dumbed down". You could take advantage of innovations in IDEs, word processors, email programs, and web browser; but it was harder to instal UNIX tools. You could still SSH into a server (which would be a workstation, if you were on a tight budget) and get UNIX stuff done. You could also configure X, and do workstation stuff. Now, tablets are killing PCs, because they are cheaper, more portable, and more "user friendly" (dumbed down). There's probably no way to install UNIX tools. But you can get a virtual server for peanuts (or set up a home PC), hook up a USB keyboard, and an SSH "app", and everything is fine. The display is a bit small, but many tablets these days can power a HD display (look at the Raspberry Pi, which uses mobile phone components). Apple may or may not include the right port, but Android tablets can. And you can take advantage of innovations in touch interfaces.

ericfrenkiel 15y ago

I was so inspired by this article that I actually went to the Apple store in San Francisco and purchased the iPad this evening. After spending a couple hours with it, I'm certainly impressed by the hardware, but I've already decided to return the device tomorrow. It's a great couch device, but it's too heavy to carry with you. I don't carry a murse, and I'd rather sling a Macbook Air than this for the extra functionality. Minor things include it running too hot, and the flip cover leaving striated streaks on the display. In my opinion, iOS doesn't scale properly at this size - there is too much white space between the icons on the home screen, for example, and I would prefer to see widgets to show more information without having to open an app. Ultimately, whether you're happy with the iPad is how much you buy into the Apple cloud versus the Google cloud. In all truth, there is very little difference between the iPad 2 and the iPad HD. If you squint and peer very close to the screen you can see how high quality the screen is, but looking at the device from where it rests in your hands it's almost impossible to tell the difference.

VonLipwig 15y ago

I disagree with the post. """The slope of this graph is the whole story. The complicated general purpose computers are at the bottom, and the simpler specialized computers are at the top.""" This is a terrible graph. The Mac has always been a premium niche computer. 28 years ago computing was in its infancy and computers were expensive, unnetworked with limited benefit to the average household. Compare this the iPad / iPod Touch and iPhone. These are main stream devices that achieved immediate traction. It is unrealistic to compare Mac sales with those of main stream devices. You then have the desktop market as a whole. If you compare any single company or brand of desktop against iPad sales, desktop sales would look in trouble. However, if you compare desktop sales to tablet sales it is clear that tablets are still only in their infancy. BUT TABLETS ARE SELLING FASTER THAN DESKTOPS! I don't know if this true but it doesn't matter and it doesn't say much about the state of desktops. Everyone has a computer, the market is saturated. No one has a tablet. It makes sense that tablet sales would rocket. Buying tablets also make a lot of sense for people who just consume content. The fact is though that the iPad isn't great for productivity. It is far better for consuming content. This is what most people do. However if you want to program, edit images, write a novel, maintain spreadsheets, make movies etc a desktop / laptop is what you need. The PC isn't dead and it isn't dying. It has reached a point where people only buy replacements. Now yes, some people may switch perminantly to a tablet. Thats fine. For the forseeable future though there will be a large market of business and consumers who require more than a tablet can provide. ------ The article also touches on how great the new iPad screen is. I don't think its all that. I walked past the demo of 'the new iPad' twice before asking a sales guy to point to which one was 'the new iPad'. Yes, if you put the screen close to your face you see less pixelation on icons. For general web surfing though I saw no perceived difference. Hell, I don't really see any pixelation on my iPad2. Perhaps I am not holding it close enough to my face...

seanmcdirmid 15y ago
As has been pointed out in the replies about 30 times already, PostPC doesn't mean the PC is dead, it only means that the PC market is mature and innovation slows way down as everyone focuses on newer more dynamic markets. The fact that people feel no need to upgrade their PCs anymore yet they are still rushing out to buy the new iPad is symptomatic of that. Surely I'll buy a new PC in the future to replace my old one, but I don't expect my sister or dad to do the same. I once had a workmate in 1999 whose sentiment was similar to your post, just focusing on a different device. We got into an argument about whether the desktop PC market was over or not. He didn't really believe that laptops were really more than niche devices, they were too slow, displays were too small, that most people would use desktop PCs for decades to come. That you could never do more than surf the web on it, you couldn't hack serious code with it. That tablets are for consumption only...really? Diagramming (e.g., OmniGraffle), vector graphic production, sketching, mixing and producing music, editing images, updating a spreadsheet...why not? Many are using tablets for production already. Every year someone says iPad can't do X, the next year someone releases something that does X and it actually doesn't suck. I often use my iPad 2 in bed (~1 foot distance), the screen is really close and I can see the pixels. The new iPad is absolutely frigging amazing, I'll never look at my crappy DELL/HP monitors at work in a positive way again (yes, I can see the pixels!). Why have we been stuck at the same crappy 1920x1200 pixel resolution for at least 5 years now? Could it be that no one care about innovating in the PC market because they can't make any money? That a 10" iPad has a higher resolution than my 24" PC monitor is totally Post PC.

test4334 15y ago

Screen resolutions are not growing because Windows doesn't scale display well. Real world: many people and a business I know use HD resolution on Full HD displays (and 800x600 on 1280x1024 displays) just because letters are bigger. I really hate current standard resolution: 1366x768. It fits 20 lines of code in Visual Studio. Even 10 years ago we had better monitors.

malux85 15y ago

Yep, the article is right BUT it's for consumers. The iPad has allowed my grandmother (who is so old fashioned she doesn't believe woman should drive) to pick up a device and video call me on the other side of the world - we told her "It's not a computer, it's a new invention" and she picked it up and invested time in learning it. Most people here are actually producers when it comes to computers, so most people say things like "I still need to product (spreadsheet | programming | lolcat images)" and the pc will never go away. But I think this article was talking about your websurfing, facebook updating, web reading consumers.

netcan 15y ago

I think the demand for tablet-like-PCs is potentially huge. If I'm right, their first couple of years will probably tell us where the frontiers between PCs and post-PCs are and what the world will look like.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

I realize I'm straying dangerously close to Get Off My Lawn territory, but I worry about the post-PC era. As a programmer, I worry about turning into a sharecropper on a closed platform [1]. [1] http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla... As a consumer, I worry about "buying" a closed, networked device and discovering that I don't really own it, but merely have a licence to use it under draconian terms of service. I don't want to "buy" a book or a movie or a piece of software, only to have it yanked off my device remotely. Meanwhile, the government of my country (Canada) is rolling out a new copyright law that will make it a criminal offence to circumvent "digital locks", even if it's for legitimate, legal personal use. However, I still hold out hope that as the technology matures, costs fall and competitors catch up to Apple's tight vertical integration, it becomes more feasible to run a full-featured open source device with a healthy ecosystem built around it.

ridruejo 15y ago

It is probably not much the hardware itself as the concept. Everybody can figure out how to use a tablet, the app store, etc. but not everybody can figure out how to use Windows or Ubuntu or OS X. We are close to the point in which everything a 'normal' person (not a developer) may want to do with a computer, such as listen to music, watching videos, receiving and sending email, buying plane tickets he or she can do with an iPad.

kriskeyman 15y ago

Two years ago I bought my mom an iPad. I was hesitant to do so because I wasn't sure if she would actually use it. A year ago I bought her a new iMac (upgrade from a previous gen. iMac). She likes it, but now considers the iPad to be her main computing device. My 5 year old son spends 90% of his supervised 'computer time' on an iPad. He doesn't understand the concept of a pixel, or why it's good that we don't see them. He has an older iMac in his room, but still prefers using the iPad as his 'main computing device'. Talk about burning a candle at both ends! The term 'desktop' is archaic when thinking about a computer as a tool. Designers and engineers on the forefront of technology are spending their time creating devices for the 'Post PC' generation... not creating a better 'desktop'. Reading some of the comments here, I cannot help but picture the accountant who still keeps his numbers in a [paper] notebook. At least they still make pencils!