6 ms·

The PC isn't dead

47 points by dendory 14y ago

scottscanlon 14y ago
Also, I've got used to my 4 monitors... not sure I could give those up yet.
- astrodust 14y ago
  What if the monitors themselves were computers of a sort and they could be linked together in an arbitrary fashion, sharing resources transparently? You're thinking of a PC as some box you plug things in to, but in the future that could be as antiquated as the old mainframe.
  - scottscanlon 14y ago
    Now that would be sweet, or instead of my 4 monitors, I had the wall, and I could scale, expand, place various screens in different placements. This effectively is how we use multiple monitors now, at least I do. That would solve it... although still need a way to hide certain browsers, tabs, etc.
    - commieneko 14y ago
      The joke back in the 80s was that what we really wanted was to buy 4x8 sheets of monitor at the store and cut and panel as needed. Then one day my brother said that he simply wanted a can of monitor paint ... For an interesting short animated science fiction film that gives you a glimpse of ubiquitous computer displays check out Pale Cocoon: http://www.crunchyroll.com/pale-cocoon/episode-1-ova-1-20698 http://www.crunchyroll.com/pale-cocoon/episode-1-ova-1-20698
alwaysinshade 14y ago
I sort of touched on this in a HN thread a few days ago [1]. I don’t think that mobile devices are successfully replacing conventional PCs, more so replacing objects and knickknacks that were single function devices. For instance, my wife uses an ipad to read books because she can take her whole library with her wherever she goes and download new books while sitting on the train. I use an app that turns my phones flash into a torch when I’m looking for something in the dark. My ~2 year old nephew uses a drum and piano app on an ipad to play instruments, and animated book-like apps for entertainment. Buying these objects now would be for almost purely ornamental reasons. Little things that we use each day whether for utility or entertainment are being supplanted by multi-function mobile devices because 1. We take them wherever we go and 2. Touch screens/GUIs are excellent for emulating objects. The power of the app, I think, is in emulating small things – not replacing dedicated, powerful tools. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4681135 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4681135
- jcfrei 14y ago
  Spot on. I believe in the long run smartphones are going to replace a huge part of what are now separate devices or utilities. Yet the pc might be the only prevailing device because some functionalities cannot be emulated on a smartphone.
infinii 14y ago
The "PC is dead" line is usually referring to general consumers. Obviously it doesn't apply to power users (which are a very small %). For content creators, a PC is still a necessity. For content consumers, mobile or tablets are suffice. The only argument OP makes that applies to general consumers is gaming, and that can be moved to a console.
- dendory 14y ago
  This is exactly the type of argument that doesn't hold. "tablets will suffice" Why should someone go for something that will be inferior, and simply suffice? "move to the console" Why would I want to play on a 7 year old console, which means lower graphic games? Your definition of general consumers actually applies to a very small amount, people who never do anything that could, in some way, be better off on a larger display, full sized keyboard, and more processor power.
  - groby_b 14y ago
    To put it very bluntly - most people don't give a damn. If a game is fun, it's fun. They don't need the latest and greatest graphics with all the concomitant driver nightmares. They don't need a 2 or 3 year update cycle. They don't care about some vague possible state of "better off". They want to get stuff done, and they need tools that are good enough to do it. The key word is good enough. And for the vast majority of consumers, tablets & phones are exactly that - good enough. Heck, I make my living writing software, and I barely flip on my home machine any more - bluetooth keyboard, tablet, and ssh are good enough.
  - alwaysinshade 14y ago
    > Why would I want to play on a 7 year old console, which means lower graphic games? I think that's the reason why I love consoles - I haven't had to upgrade my gaming machine since 2006. And looking at the games I've enjoyed in the last 12 months - Skyrim and MW3 (for purely multiplayer funsies) I don't feel like I've missed anything having an ancient machine. And don’t think I haven’t logged many hours playing either. A console doesn’t mean I’m just casually playing games - I take a deep delight in sitting down on my couch with a beer, dog by my side, and blapping annoying teenagers online whenever I get the chance.
zyb09 14y ago
I think at every workplace, where PCs aren't the main thing workers interact with while working, but rather only assist them, tablets will eventually replace PCs (for example hospitals, schools, workshops or retail). But if the work consists of mainly interacting with a PC, tablets are by design inferior and won't replace the PC.
angusgr 14y ago
A few weeks ago I would have largely agreed with the post, but recently I had a bubble-bursting experience. I'm currently in the middle of running an "Arduino for Beginners" workshop series at our local hackerspace. We have 25 attendees, 24 of them are brand new to the hackerspace. All the attendees are technically literate and interested, but only one or two are programmers or heavily into technology. Everyone brings their own laptop. The first hour of the first session was almost entirely spent with everyone setting up their laptop with the Arduino software. At least 3 of the attendees took closer to two hours, both with weird Windows problems and driver issues and random slowdowns, unexpected software alerts, etc. One took more than the workshop's 3 hours to get running smoothly, her laptop finally deciding it needed to install many dozen security updates. All four of the people whose Windows computers caused them such slowdowns told me "I barely ever turn this on any more, I just use my iPad/tablet and phone at home." This is purely anecdotal and it's a small sample size, could easily be non-representative. But it did make me think, if I wasn't a geek and a hobby programmer/tinkerer then I'd pretty much just do email & web browsing at home, occasionally update/print my resume or write a small flyer. Would I need a PC? Why would I bother to own one, especially if PC maintenance was of no interest to me?
- jseliger 14y ago
  >But it did make me think, if I wasn't a total geek and a hobby programmer/tinkerer then I'd pretty much just do email & web browsing at home, occasionally update/print my resume or write a small flyer. Would I need a PC? Why would I bother to own one, especially if PC maintenance was of no interest to me? I think this embodies a larger distinction: Are you mostly a consumer or a producer? The line isn't firm, but for someone who mostly consumes, a tablet or equivalent makes total sense for the reasons you enumerate. For almost anyone who produces or aspires to produce, however, I don't think that laptop/laptop-with-docking-stations/desktop-style machines are going anywhere, for the reasons that are being articulated throughout this thread. I especially like the guy with four monitors. Personally, I only have two, but one is very large, and even then I'd like to imagine that it's not the size, but how you use it.[1] Again, I don't think this distinction is hard and fast, so the person who just wrote their own operating system, followed by a 1,000 page fantasy novel, on their iPad can reframe the comment they're about to make. But I do think the distinction serves a useful purpose in talking about where things are going. [1]Technology porn photos, for interested parties: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-geekdesk-writing-space-post/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-geekdesk-writin... .
jseliger 14y ago
I've been arguing a variation of this for a while: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-going-anywhere-despite-the-growth-of-phones-and-tablets%E2%80%94because-theyre-cheap/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-g... . The basic issue is simple: PCs are really, really cheap, and cheap is good.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  But will PCs stay cheap? If more and more people find it simpler and easier to satisfy their computing needs with devices like smartphones and tablets, there could easily come a point where economies of scale start working against PCs, accelerating a decline into a niche "producer" device. Personally, I think hybrid devices are likely to prevent that because they'll be a better fit for the many users who primarily consume but still occasionally produce, but that's a separate argument.
  - jseliger 14y ago
    Could be. But right now it's possible to get a very decent setup for basic tasks for $200 - $300, monitor and all, and it's possible to buy used but functional PCs for $50 - $200 from Craigslist and eBay. I'm not about to trade in my iMac for a $300 Dell, but if I was more financially constrained, I wouldn't have an iMac. I don't have and wouldn't have an iPad. I'd probably have a $300 Dell.
  - zanny 14y ago
    As long as Google exists, commodity hardware has a place on a massive scale that can somewhat eclipse any decline in consumer sales by how datacenters are using this stuff in massive deployments for server farms. Also consider the ingredients of the modern PC. The chipsets and motherboards are Intel / AMD, and Intel won't slow down since it basically owns business workstations. AMD is kind of stuck. The motherboard makers already have entire product lines of extremely niche products (see the x79 chipset) and sata disks / DDR memory are used in mobile devices, just at different form factors. They still need wireless / usb controllers, maybe the cases get more expensive? Point is, the two markets are very tightly coupled, and there is a diverse enough pc component market that consumer demand dropping doesn't phase it too much. Worst case scenario is less R&D goes into high end parts since there is less demand for them, which is already happening (look at Ivy Bridge, barely upped performance but cut power consumption a ton).
ryannielsen 14y ago
Steve Jobs at D8: ‘PCs are going to be like trucks’ Yep. Not dead, not by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly not as ubiquitous as other devices. http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-at-d8-pcs-are-going-to-be-like-trucks/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-at...
- vacri 14y ago
  Time to tie a soft toy to the front of mine, then!
- epsylon 14y ago
  The problem with every analogy is that it's always a simplifying (hence flawed) method of reasoning. Especially here, where it is easy to remark that there are not only two kind of motorized vehicles but a wide range of them. From small city cars to full size SUVs, going through family cars, luxury cars, sports cars, sedans, motorcycles and scooters, three wheeled cars... Tablets are great for small, specialized tasks. They are great because they are lightweight, have good battery life and can be manipulated simply. However I can't help but think that they are not fit for every job, just like a small city car isn't something you want of you have a spouse and three children. Multitasking, for example, isn't practical on a tablet : I have yet to see a tablet that allows me to chat with video or text while doing research on the web or browsing my mail, for example. And doing these tasks simultaneously isn't some kind of niche or power user activity. I could find countless simple things which are as of today only doable on tablet by going through much pain. Moreover, I think that one of the biggest advantages of tablets is that because they're somewhat more intuitive, they can reach a wider audience, notably people who are less computer-literate. But making technology accessible to our elders or less educated people is a good thing, but let's not forget that the next generations are born in technology and will be more accustomed to using it in its various forms, including the more "complex" PCs (which they will most likely have to use for their work anyway). All in all, tablets and PC will both evolve, and the gap between them will be filled in. We are already seeing bigger screen, keyboards, more powerful CPUs / GPUs on tablets (which is exactly what the core i3 MS tablet will be), and on the other hand, lowered power consumption CPUs, better battery lives, weight reductions and smaller, touch-sensitive screens on PCs (again, there are a lot of products more or less matching that description). I don't think the PC will die anytime soon.
xiaolai 14y ago
Wait... 1) Who said PC is dead? 2) Who cares?
bluedanieru 14y ago
> And if you compare working with a mouse versus working with a touch screen, again there's no comparison of speed. If you're comparing touchscreens on the desktop with mice on the desktop, this is certainly true. But touchscreen input on a tablet device holds up pretty well against a mouse on a desktop. Maybe beats it.
- thomasz 14y ago
  For what tasks? Call someone on Skype? Maybe. Change the order of two paragraphs in a text, browsing hn or reddit? No way in hell
  - 6ren 14y ago
    Exactly. I've tried selecting text on an iPad, and it's not easy. Maybe you can perfect rolling your finger to do it, with practice, but it's not as intuitive as a mouse for precise selection. Fingers are too big. Actually, just having cursor keys on an iPad would be an improvement. However... game console controllers are also not as good as a mouse, and yet they now drive game sales and development.
    - ekianjo 14y ago
      > game console controllers are also not as good as a mouse I guess you mean for FPS, only ? For platform games, for fighting games, these controllers are perfectly adequate. The reason why console FPS have become more popular on consoles than on PCs is simply associated to market share of console hardware, big budget exclusive titles (Halo, Killzone, Gears of War) and is not even remotely linked to how good the controls are.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
- tsotha 14y ago
  For pushing buttons, sure. For any fine manipulation like an FPS or editing text a mouse beats a touch screen hands down.
batiudrami 14y ago
The end game that I see, is that your tablet is your PC. We've had dockable laptops forever - a dockable tablet that hooks up with your wireless mouse and keyboard and your 27" monitor at home, and when you need to go you just pull it out and have all your stuff with you, I think only a small step away. Sure, the hardware isn't quite there yet (especially if you want to be able to use it for gaming - gaming PCs are still monsters), but I think that's where PCs are headed, and where Microsoft thinks they're going also. It explains the surface, and Windows 8 perfectly - and if I (and they) are right, it gives them a huge head start.
nhebb 14y ago
Someone please tell Microsoft this. They're trying to compete in everyone else's market, while kind of forgetting about the one they dominate. Developers wanted a linker for .Net; they never got one. Viable market penetration of any given version of the .NET framework always lagged several years between the latest available. They've churned through multiple desktop development technologies in the past decade, and winforms, the only one that will meet the needs of most the market (XP -> 8), is no longer being updated. And, Visual Studio 2012 doesn't even have a built-in project deployment tool for desktop apps, instead relying on WiX or outside vendors. I realize that Microsoft can't tread water forever, but if the PC desktop does die, part of the blame will lay at Microsoft's own feet.
Semaphor 14y ago
> Web based productivity is only good for very simple tasks There are some very nice LaTeX editors found online and they aren't that bad.
lmm 14y ago
>Finally, let's look at something that may seem more like average people would do Yes, let's. >I hate on-screen keyboards, all of them, and type much slower on them than on a full size keyboard. Same here - but we're both a lot faster than average people on a keyboard. >And if you compare working with a mouse versus working with a touch screen, again there's no comparison of speed. Actually I find a touch screen much faster for most things. Has the author tried it enough? >Finally, my PC has a 19'' display, why go down to a 10'' or 4'' one? Why not? It's not like you get more pixels on the 19" these days. Given two same-resolution screens, I'll take the more portable one please. >As for the cloud, I used Google Docs, but personally find it extremely lacking. If you ever try to use a template, you quickly find out how broken their system is. The templates they offer break all over the place. "Average people" don't even know what a template is. > ask any accountant or book author who tried to use online spreadsheets or word processors to do heavy duty work what they thought of it. I wrote a novel in google docs. It was great. I especially liked the part where one of the computers I was using broke halfway through and it made no difference to me at all.
- Retric 14y ago
  Actually I find a touch screen much faster for most things. Has the author tried it enough? No, increase your mouse sensitivity I can't physically move my hand as fast as I move the mouse because the full screen is only 1 inch travel distance on my mouse. Most of this is from playing games but high DPI mice on a good surface are vary precise.

The PC isn't dead

47 points by dendory 14y ago

scottscanlon 14y ago

Also, I've got used to my 4 monitors... not sure I could give those up yet.

astrodust 14y ago
What if the monitors themselves were computers of a sort and they could be linked together in an arbitrary fashion, sharing resources transparently? You're thinking of a PC as some box you plug things in to, but in the future that could be as antiquated as the old mainframe.
- scottscanlon 14y ago
  Now that would be sweet, or instead of my 4 monitors, I had the wall, and I could scale, expand, place various screens in different placements. This effectively is how we use multiple monitors now, at least I do. That would solve it... although still need a way to hide certain browsers, tabs, etc.
  - commieneko 14y ago
    The joke back in the 80s was that what we really wanted was to buy 4x8 sheets of monitor at the store and cut and panel as needed. Then one day my brother said that he simply wanted a can of monitor paint ... For an interesting short animated science fiction film that gives you a glimpse of ubiquitous computer displays check out Pale Cocoon: http://www.crunchyroll.com/pale-cocoon/episode-1-ova-1-20698 http://www.crunchyroll.com/pale-cocoon/episode-1-ova-1-20698

alwaysinshade 14y ago

I sort of touched on this in a HN thread a few days ago [1]. I don’t think that mobile devices are successfully replacing conventional PCs, more so replacing objects and knickknacks that were single function devices. For instance, my wife uses an ipad to read books because she can take her whole library with her wherever she goes and download new books while sitting on the train. I use an app that turns my phones flash into a torch when I’m looking for something in the dark. My ~2 year old nephew uses a drum and piano app on an ipad to play instruments, and animated book-like apps for entertainment. Buying these objects now would be for almost purely ornamental reasons. Little things that we use each day whether for utility or entertainment are being supplanted by multi-function mobile devices because 1. We take them wherever we go and 2. Touch screens/GUIs are excellent for emulating objects. The power of the app, I think, is in emulating small things – not replacing dedicated, powerful tools. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4681135 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4681135

jcfrei 14y ago
Spot on. I believe in the long run smartphones are going to replace a huge part of what are now separate devices or utilities. Yet the pc might be the only prevailing device because some functionalities cannot be emulated on a smartphone.

infinii 14y ago

The "PC is dead" line is usually referring to general consumers. Obviously it doesn't apply to power users (which are a very small %). For content creators, a PC is still a necessity. For content consumers, mobile or tablets are suffice. The only argument OP makes that applies to general consumers is gaming, and that can be moved to a console.

dendory 14y ago
This is exactly the type of argument that doesn't hold. "tablets will suffice" Why should someone go for something that will be inferior, and simply suffice? "move to the console" Why would I want to play on a 7 year old console, which means lower graphic games? Your definition of general consumers actually applies to a very small amount, people who never do anything that could, in some way, be better off on a larger display, full sized keyboard, and more processor power.
- groby_b 14y ago
  To put it very bluntly - most people don't give a damn. If a game is fun, it's fun. They don't need the latest and greatest graphics with all the concomitant driver nightmares. They don't need a 2 or 3 year update cycle. They don't care about some vague possible state of "better off". They want to get stuff done, and they need tools that are good enough to do it. The key word is good enough. And for the vast majority of consumers, tablets & phones are exactly that - good enough. Heck, I make my living writing software, and I barely flip on my home machine any more - bluetooth keyboard, tablet, and ssh are good enough.
- alwaysinshade 14y ago
  > Why would I want to play on a 7 year old console, which means lower graphic games? I think that's the reason why I love consoles - I haven't had to upgrade my gaming machine since 2006. And looking at the games I've enjoyed in the last 12 months - Skyrim and MW3 (for purely multiplayer funsies) I don't feel like I've missed anything having an ancient machine. And don’t think I haven’t logged many hours playing either. A console doesn’t mean I’m just casually playing games - I take a deep delight in sitting down on my couch with a beer, dog by my side, and blapping annoying teenagers online whenever I get the chance.

zyb09 14y ago

I think at every workplace, where PCs aren't the main thing workers interact with while working, but rather only assist them, tablets will eventually replace PCs (for example hospitals, schools, workshops or retail). But if the work consists of mainly interacting with a PC, tablets are by design inferior and won't replace the PC.

angusgr 14y ago

A few weeks ago I would have largely agreed with the post, but recently I had a bubble-bursting experience. I'm currently in the middle of running an "Arduino for Beginners" workshop series at our local hackerspace. We have 25 attendees, 24 of them are brand new to the hackerspace. All the attendees are technically literate and interested, but only one or two are programmers or heavily into technology. Everyone brings their own laptop. The first hour of the first session was almost entirely spent with everyone setting up their laptop with the Arduino software. At least 3 of the attendees took closer to two hours, both with weird Windows problems and driver issues and random slowdowns, unexpected software alerts, etc. One took more than the workshop's 3 hours to get running smoothly, her laptop finally deciding it needed to install many dozen security updates. All four of the people whose Windows computers caused them such slowdowns told me "I barely ever turn this on any more, I just use my iPad/tablet and phone at home." This is purely anecdotal and it's a small sample size, could easily be non-representative. But it did make me think, if I wasn't a geek and a hobby programmer/tinkerer then I'd pretty much just do email & web browsing at home, occasionally update/print my resume or write a small flyer. Would I need a PC? Why would I bother to own one, especially if PC maintenance was of no interest to me?

jseliger 14y ago
>But it did make me think, if I wasn't a total geek and a hobby programmer/tinkerer then I'd pretty much just do email & web browsing at home, occasionally update/print my resume or write a small flyer. Would I need a PC? Why would I bother to own one, especially if PC maintenance was of no interest to me? I think this embodies a larger distinction: Are you mostly a consumer or a producer? The line isn't firm, but for someone who mostly consumes, a tablet or equivalent makes total sense for the reasons you enumerate. For almost anyone who produces or aspires to produce, however, I don't think that laptop/laptop-with-docking-stations/desktop-style machines are going anywhere, for the reasons that are being articulated throughout this thread. I especially like the guy with four monitors. Personally, I only have two, but one is very large, and even then I'd like to imagine that it's not the size, but how you use it.[1] Again, I don't think this distinction is hard and fast, so the person who just wrote their own operating system, followed by a 1,000 page fantasy novel, on their iPad can reframe the comment they're about to make. But I do think the distinction serves a useful purpose in talking about where things are going. [1]Technology porn photos, for interested parties: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-geekdesk-writing-space-post/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-geekdesk-writin... .

jseliger 14y ago

I've been arguing a variation of this for a while: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-going-anywhere-despite-the-growth-of-phones-and-tablets%E2%80%94because-theyre-cheap/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/desktop-pcs-arent-g... . The basic issue is simple: PCs are really, really cheap, and cheap is good.

fpgeek 14y ago
But will PCs stay cheap? If more and more people find it simpler and easier to satisfy their computing needs with devices like smartphones and tablets, there could easily come a point where economies of scale start working against PCs, accelerating a decline into a niche "producer" device. Personally, I think hybrid devices are likely to prevent that because they'll be a better fit for the many users who primarily consume but still occasionally produce, but that's a separate argument.
- jseliger 14y ago
  Could be. But right now it's possible to get a very decent setup for basic tasks for $200 - $300, monitor and all, and it's possible to buy used but functional PCs for $50 - $200 from Craigslist and eBay. I'm not about to trade in my iMac for a $300 Dell, but if I was more financially constrained, I wouldn't have an iMac. I don't have and wouldn't have an iPad. I'd probably have a $300 Dell.
- zanny 14y ago
  As long as Google exists, commodity hardware has a place on a massive scale that can somewhat eclipse any decline in consumer sales by how datacenters are using this stuff in massive deployments for server farms. Also consider the ingredients of the modern PC. The chipsets and motherboards are Intel / AMD, and Intel won't slow down since it basically owns business workstations. AMD is kind of stuck. The motherboard makers already have entire product lines of extremely niche products (see the x79 chipset) and sata disks / DDR memory are used in mobile devices, just at different form factors. They still need wireless / usb controllers, maybe the cases get more expensive? Point is, the two markets are very tightly coupled, and there is a diverse enough pc component market that consumer demand dropping doesn't phase it too much. Worst case scenario is less R&D goes into high end parts since there is less demand for them, which is already happening (look at Ivy Bridge, barely upped performance but cut power consumption a ton).

ryannielsen 14y ago

Steve Jobs at D8: ‘PCs are going to be like trucks’ Yep. Not dead, not by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly not as ubiquitous as other devices. http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-at-d8-pcs-are-going-to-be-like-trucks/ http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-at...

vacri 14y ago
Time to tie a soft toy to the front of mine, then!
epsylon 14y ago
The problem with every analogy is that it's always a simplifying (hence flawed) method of reasoning. Especially here, where it is easy to remark that there are not only two kind of motorized vehicles but a wide range of them. From small city cars to full size SUVs, going through family cars, luxury cars, sports cars, sedans, motorcycles and scooters, three wheeled cars... Tablets are great for small, specialized tasks. They are great because they are lightweight, have good battery life and can be manipulated simply. However I can't help but think that they are not fit for every job, just like a small city car isn't something you want of you have a spouse and three children. Multitasking, for example, isn't practical on a tablet : I have yet to see a tablet that allows me to chat with video or text while doing research on the web or browsing my mail, for example. And doing these tasks simultaneously isn't some kind of niche or power user activity. I could find countless simple things which are as of today only doable on tablet by going through much pain. Moreover, I think that one of the biggest advantages of tablets is that because they're somewhat more intuitive, they can reach a wider audience, notably people who are less computer-literate. But making technology accessible to our elders or less educated people is a good thing, but let's not forget that the next generations are born in technology and will be more accustomed to using it in its various forms, including the more "complex" PCs (which they will most likely have to use for their work anyway). All in all, tablets and PC will both evolve, and the gap between them will be filled in. We are already seeing bigger screen, keyboards, more powerful CPUs / GPUs on tablets (which is exactly what the core i3 MS tablet will be), and on the other hand, lowered power consumption CPUs, better battery lives, weight reductions and smaller, touch-sensitive screens on PCs (again, there are a lot of products more or less matching that description). I don't think the PC will die anytime soon.

xiaolai 14y ago

Wait... 1) Who said PC is dead? 2) Who cares?

bluedanieru 14y ago

> And if you compare working with a mouse versus working with a touch screen, again there's no comparison of speed. If you're comparing touchscreens on the desktop with mice on the desktop, this is certainly true. But touchscreen input on a tablet device holds up pretty well against a mouse on a desktop. Maybe beats it.

thomasz 14y ago
For what tasks? Call someone on Skype? Maybe. Change the order of two paragraphs in a text, browsing hn or reddit? No way in hell
- 6ren 14y ago
  Exactly. I've tried selecting text on an iPad, and it's not easy. Maybe you can perfect rolling your finger to do it, with practice, but it's not as intuitive as a mouse for precise selection. Fingers are too big. Actually, just having cursor keys on an iPad would be an improvement. However... game console controllers are also not as good as a mouse, and yet they now drive game sales and development.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    > game console controllers are also not as good as a mouse I guess you mean for FPS, only ? For platform games, for fighting games, these controllers are perfectly adequate. The reason why console FPS have become more popular on consoles than on PCs is simply associated to market share of console hardware, big budget exclusive titles (Halo, Killzone, Gears of War) and is not even remotely linked to how good the controls are.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
tsotha 14y ago
For pushing buttons, sure. For any fine manipulation like an FPS or editing text a mouse beats a touch screen hands down.

batiudrami 14y ago

The end game that I see, is that your tablet is your PC. We've had dockable laptops forever - a dockable tablet that hooks up with your wireless mouse and keyboard and your 27" monitor at home, and when you need to go you just pull it out and have all your stuff with you, I think only a small step away. Sure, the hardware isn't quite there yet (especially if you want to be able to use it for gaming - gaming PCs are still monsters), but I think that's where PCs are headed, and where Microsoft thinks they're going also. It explains the surface, and Windows 8 perfectly - and if I (and they) are right, it gives them a huge head start.

nhebb 14y ago

Someone please tell Microsoft this. They're trying to compete in everyone else's market, while kind of forgetting about the one they dominate. Developers wanted a linker for .Net; they never got one. Viable market penetration of any given version of the .NET framework always lagged several years between the latest available. They've churned through multiple desktop development technologies in the past decade, and winforms, the only one that will meet the needs of most the market (XP -> 8), is no longer being updated. And, Visual Studio 2012 doesn't even have a built-in project deployment tool for desktop apps, instead relying on WiX or outside vendors. I realize that Microsoft can't tread water forever, but if the PC desktop does die, part of the blame will lay at Microsoft's own feet.

Semaphor 14y ago

> Web based productivity is only good for very simple tasks There are some very nice LaTeX editors found online and they aren't that bad.

lmm 14y ago

>Finally, let's look at something that may seem more like average people would do Yes, let's. >I hate on-screen keyboards, all of them, and type much slower on them than on a full size keyboard. Same here - but we're both a lot faster than average people on a keyboard. >And if you compare working with a mouse versus working with a touch screen, again there's no comparison of speed. Actually I find a touch screen much faster for most things. Has the author tried it enough? >Finally, my PC has a 19'' display, why go down to a 10'' or 4'' one? Why not? It's not like you get more pixels on the 19" these days. Given two same-resolution screens, I'll take the more portable one please. >As for the cloud, I used Google Docs, but personally find it extremely lacking. If you ever try to use a template, you quickly find out how broken their system is. The templates they offer break all over the place. "Average people" don't even know what a template is. > ask any accountant or book author who tried to use online spreadsheets or word processors to do heavy duty work what they thought of it. I wrote a novel in google docs. It was great. I especially liked the part where one of the computers I was using broke halfway through and it made no difference to me at all.

Retric 14y ago
Actually I find a touch screen much faster for most things. Has the author tried it enough? No, increase your mouse sensitivity I can't physically move my hand as fast as I move the mouse because the full screen is only 1 inch travel distance on my mouse. Most of this is from playing games but high DPI mice on a good surface are vary precise.