8 ms·

The decline of PCs and the rise of smartphones and tablets was predicted in 1993

53 points by damian2000 14y ago

bztzt 14y ago
To me what Myhrvold is vaguely describing as the "IHC" in this memo seems more like a set-top box or game console than a phone or tablet. I think this may have influenced Microsoft's decision to pour resources into the Xbox starting in 2001. They got it right that there would be an "IHC" but misjudged what sort of thing it would be.
JacksonGariety 14y ago
I now predict that in 15 years, the tablet will be on the decline. I called it, everyone remember.
- mooism2 14y ago
  Bullshit. You have to say why it will decline. You have to say whether it will be replaced, and if so by what. You have to present your reasoning and justify it. Microsoft's then CTO presented his reasoning and justified it. So should you. (And if you're going to whine that you were just making a joke? No. You were spewing a cheap little piece of cynicism.)
  - smoyer 14y ago
    Hmmm ... This could be an interesting HN topic by itself. I think the most obvious answers are wearable computing, brain-machine interfaces (not implants) and vocal/sub-vocal input. Practical and common implants seem further than 15 years away to me.
  - barrkel 14y ago
    The memo is extremely vague about what it is predicting. It's basically agreeing with Sun ("the network is the computer" (c) 1984) / Larry Ellison ("Network Computer") / etc. - that something networked will outflank PCs. But that's a prediction heavily dependent on timing (both those concepts failed to take off) and IMO misses what actually got the next generation of computing to take off (wireless networking, high-res screens and capacitive touch) and it also misses what is the main thrust of the next generation, mobility rather than connectedness.
  - utopkara 14y ago
    He is right on target. Hindsight is 20/20, and it is an illusion that MS CTO had any deep insight. People are predicting that mobile devices will be replaced by implants, or one of the many alternatives currently being prototyped, for reasons trivially linked to the relative strengths of the replacement. Check out Engadget and similar outlets for such predictions, they are dime a dozen. Imagine one of those articles nailing it; if you don't look at the other crap on Engadget, it will look like they actually knew what they were talking about. Hence, no bullshit.
  - jemeshsu 14y ago
    Tablet is just a "smartphone" with a bigger screen. So it will be replaced by the "smartphone" when wireless display tech is both direction, i.e. display and input. In future, when I need to write/read a book, I bring out a foldable LCD display, "airplay" connect to it with my "smartphone" (Siri hit the screen please!). Or go to a meeting room with such screen, airplay to it to present my ideas. Or in StarBuck, pull out the LCD screen on the table, and airplay to it. Or the screen might have Kinect like sensor so I can interact with it like Minority Report. Or the screen might be by a corner of my glass (Google glass), so I can "airplay" to it. All this from my "smartphone" device hidden in my pocket. By then screen is needed less due to Siri version X, as most interaction and info search is by voice. For x-Apple people, just substitute Siri/AirPlay with similar tech names.
nivertech 14y ago
In 1998 non-PC or post-PC devices was "a next big thing". I worked on a startup building corporate portal server software for non-PC devices like voice and WAP-enabled "smart"-phones. Wrong timing. Apple didn't hit it first time with Newton, but second time with iPhone and iPad was a big hit.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  We started to see it more clearly with the first smartphones - much like the modem quickly became the most useful peripheral for my Apple II, even the slowest connection to a data network made PDAs much more useful and allowed them to become stand-alone, even if minimalistic, devices rather than what Microsoft then called "PC companions".
pyrotechnick 14y ago
The decline of the blogosphere was predicted in 2012 by the inhabitants of Earth.
PaulHoule 14y ago
This article gets some things right but it gets plenty of them wrong. In particular, " Technically speaking, the industry is mired in hardware standards (Intel and Motorola CISC processors) with growth rates that are flattening out relative to the state of the art - just as the 360/3090 and VAX architectures did." The Motorola 68k line really did reach the end of its rope in the 1990s and everybody from Sun to Apple to Amiga had to plan an exit strategy or go out of business. The Intel x86, on the other hand, continues to outpace everything else on practical performance. ARM is coming on strong in tablets and smartphones, but overall, the x86 platform has lasted a long time. Not long after he wrote this, IBM's System/360 architecture went through an amazing transformation that's kept it competitive. From the beginning, the System/360 was based on bipolar logic that consumes much more power than the CMOS logic microprocessors are based on. In the early 90's, IBM realized that further development of bipolar logic was impossible because of power and heat dissipation issues. IBM had to go to CMOS, but CMOS logic wasn't as fast as bipolar logic at the time, leaving IBM unable to produce mainframes as powerful as the last generation -- unable to handle the requirements of existing customers. IBM's answer was "Parallel Sysplex", a clustering solution that presents a single-system image of a group of mainframes. With Parallel Sysplex, IBM produced microprocessor-based mainframe clusters that scaled beyond the last generation of bipolar mainframes. Some architectures end up being dead ends, but if something is commercially successful, it's amazing how long it can sometimes be strung along.
- glhaynes 14y ago
  Just curious: if the 68k series had had the same amount of resources put behind it as x86, there's no reason to think it wouldn't be similarly competitive today, is there? (Obviously this was historically impossible because nobody had the incentive that Intel/AMD have had, so I'm just asking from a technical standpoint.)
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    For a long time, the Motorola 68K family was ahead of Intel in every respect. What it didn't have was the whole PC industry depending on it and feeding it with endless financial resources.
meaty 14y ago
Lets get it right: PC sales are declining and tablets are hyped. PC usage isn't declining. There is just no reason to upgrade any more. A bottom end PC from 2 years ago doesn't give you anything more than a brand new one. Our dev workstations are 3 years old and still spot on performance-wise. Everyone I know with a tablet has a PC and uses it heavily. The tablets are but a small diversion. However, that is until you realise that Microsoft actually got this when they designed Windows 8 and surface. They worked out how to provide one device which fills both niches. Now Windows 8 and surface aren't perfect, but they will become in time... Then the PC is dead. Oh no it's not - it's a tablet shaped PC. Again it evolves...
- badclient 14y ago
  Everyone I know with a tablet has a PC and uses it heavily. The tablets are but a small diversion. My extended is full of uncles and aunts who use their tablet and iPhone significantly more than their PC. I myself spend much more time surfing and writing emails from my iPhone than my PC. Just another data point.
- wisty 14y ago
  Windows 8 is like a queen sacrifice. Windows knows it's burning its bridges, but forcing people to get used to Windows surface. People will hate it on the desktop (because change is bad), but pick a Windows tablet because they've already learnt (unwillingly) how to use it. I'm not saying it's a crap OS, just different. People hate different. Once they get used to it on their PC, it won't be different and they'll buy a Windows tablet. Then Microsoft can roll back the interface on Windows 9 (making Metro a secondary interface), and corporate buyers will upgrade just to get away from Metro.
  - meaty 14y ago
    And I'm 100% happy with that. I don't like change. My desktop, which still aims to be as NT4 like as possible: http://i.imgur.com/4fFLq.png http://i.imgur.com/4fFLq.png Added Excel 97 vs Excel 2010 for an interesting discussion point as well...
cdooh 14y ago
Top brass at Microsoft have known for a long time that the PC will be replace by something more portable; Bill Gates has tried, and failed, to launch a tablet for a while now. What they got wrong was execution and execution is everything....
jnazario 14y ago
the author writes: In his second last paragraph, Myhrvold predicts the winners will be those who "own the software standards on IHCs" ... this is exactly why it has been so important that internet standards remain neutral, open, and free. without that, we'd truly be at the mercy of a single vendor (DEC, MSFT, etc) and you know what that stagnation looks like. app stores are a risk of that alternative future (that honestly the phone companies also mapped out and drooled over, and slowly doled out with insane per-line item charges).
Jabbles 14y ago
But predicting something without giving a timeframe is completely useless. Imagine if this had influenced Microsoft's strategy from 1993. They'd have missed out on the enormous influence of the PC, whose recent competitors such as tablets and smartphones have only really surfaced in the last 5 years.
- lambda 14y ago
  Actually, Microsoft did move to the tablet before anyone else. They created a tablet version of Windows 10 years ago. Do you remember those? I had some friends who had those machines; mostly in the form of laptops that had a screen that would rotate into a tablet form factor, with a stylus for input. Those were a market failure. It wasn't until Apple re-invented the tablet, and Android showed that there is actually a tablet market and not just an iPad market, that Microsoft re-entered the game with the Surface.
  - archangel_one 14y ago
    Yeah, I remember those machines and did even see one used in person once. Aside from any Apple magic and all the associated style factors, I think technology was just not ready then; they were just a laptop with a reversible screen, which was too heavy and bulky to be used in the ways people actually want to use a tablet rather than a laptop. You might have gotten two hours of battery life, for the first week of its life. And the stylus wasn't exactly inspiring either - it smacked more of a way to easily translate mouse-driven software than the best way to interact with the device. That's a lot more obvious in hindsight, of course.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    I believe they were reacting to competition, either the GridPad or the Momenta (I remember the Momenta getting lots of press for its innovative GUI - you can see it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0XE08BjQDQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0XE08BjQDQ)
  - wildgift 14y ago
    The Apple Newton was out around 1994.
laurentoget 14y ago
The end of the world was also predicted numerous times in the past.
shmerl 14y ago
Is there any decline of PC? I didn't notice.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Tablet sales are surpassing sales from all the largest PC manufacturers - combined.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    How does it show any decline? PC market is stable and only grows. Especially in the corporate sphere. All this talk about tablets killing PC - is pure idiocy. Tablets are toys in comparison to PCs. Only when mobile computers will develop to be real PC alternatives (i.e. offering equivalently ergonomic user interfaces - hollographic and what not), one can start talking about them replacing PCs. While they use touchscreen input, they'll remain alongside PCs.
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      When people use less and less their PCs they are less inclined to buy newer ones in the future. When it's time to replace my mom's PC, I doubt she'll need more than a small HDMI plug sized Android device connected to a large screen.
      - shmerl 14y ago
        Some people, who don't use computers extensively. But most - are using both, PCs and mobile computers. Current interface of mobile devices isn't comparable and can't possibly replace PC ergonomics (keyboard, monitor and etc.). Real alternative would be some holographic interface that pops out in the air from a computer a size of a grain. That's an alternative to PC ergonomically. Not the current day tablets or handsets.
        ricardobeat 14y ago
        For many activities you don't need to replace PC ergonomics. Take store clerks for example: the work they do (looking up products, inventory, processing payments) can be done just as well or better using a touchscreen device with a specialized interface.
neya 14y ago
Tablets and PC will co-exist. You see, no one gets the fact that tablets are limited by their size. If you want to stuff in power, you are going to compromise on something, especially size, in this context. Tablets are over-hyped and all they have is the cool factor. They are GREAT for consuming content, but not for producing them. And people who produce content are a huge majority. Let's take web developers and designers for example, I can't even imagine them (or me) working on their designs with 'an app' with a tablet. At least not until if it has a mouse; and if it has a mouse, it is automatically an evolution of the PC. There are so many many segments which the tablet can never fulfil. As a 3d artist, I can tell you how important the Graphics processor is to me, when I'm rendering my artwork. And rendering is not something instantaneous, depending on the complexity of the scene, it could take anywhere between a few seconds to a dozen hours to a couple of days for a single frame. And a remember, one second of a video (for film) has 24 frames. So I need to wait for 24frames*12hrs (assume 1 frame = 12 hrs avg.) to get one second of video rendered. And this is just one example I'm able to think of, but there are many many industries like Animation or 3d that are heavily dependent on PC's and tablets can NEVER replace them. Performance-centric industries are a huge portion of the PC market, until they make the transition to tablets (which is not in the near future), this tablet replacing PC's is just over-hyped BS that's a waste of everyone's time.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Despite all you said, the Cintiq, a very precise tablet, not a computer and mouse, is the dream of every graphic artist. The "great for consumption, bad for creation" line has become a bozo-bit flipper for me.
  - chongli 14y ago
    First of all, you can't use a Cintiq without a computer. Secondly, when people say "great for consumption, bad for creation" they are referring to the design of tablet operating systems like iOS. Artists who use a Cintiq typically have multiple monitors and are multitasking with many different applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, ZBrush etc). This sort of workflow is just not possible on an iOS, WinRT or Android device.
  - 14y ago
snowwrestler 14y ago
Prescient visions of today's computing go back much farther than that, to the research of Alan Kay and others at PARC. I don't have the materials in front of me but my summary from memory is that they proposed the existence of small computers you would have with you at all times, which could access wireless networks. The small computers would use that access to retrieve information for their user, and to report location to an environment that would respond. It's not too far from what we have with smart phones now. And Alan Kay in particular conceived of a tablet computer very similar to the tablets we have today. I believe all this work was done in the 1970s and 1980s.
- mpweiher 14y ago
  Yes, the dynabook concept was created by Kay in 1968. He claimed that the idea hit him when he was in a lecture by Gordon Moore explainig his law...you know the one... Anyway, knowing something about exponentials he did some quick calculations and voilà, iPad, er, Dynabook. Also, the Alto "PCs" that Xerox built during the 70ies, the ones with the bitmap display, mouse and Ethernet networking, were known as "Interim Dynabooks", so very consciously and deliberately approximations of the tablet computers to come. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook
wildgift 14y ago
I think the PCs are in decline among lower-income individuals and working class people who don't need to read a lot or write a lot. They were never that popular a purchase in the first place, but because they never got deep into the games and computer culture, phone and tablet products are adequate for their needs, and have some advantages. The main advantage is always-on mobile networking, so that sms, twitter, email, facebook, etc. are always available everywhere. It's also a phone and a camera. The clearest evidence I have of this shift is observing coworkers who don't have internet at home, or lack a PC at home. They tend to run a lot more apps on their iphones and android phones. I'd say, typically, a dozen or more. The phone is their computer. They also are considering tablets. Personally, I make data: text, code, graphics, and now videos etc. My PC is my primary platform. My satellite system is my netbook. My smartphone is a distant third. I have maybe eight apps on my two smartphones: This American Life, Facebook, Twitter, GasBuddy, LATimes (just a bookmark really), Google Maps (again, a bookmark), RedLaser, Cut the Rope, and some visual mandala thing. I don't feel like I need a tablet. I'm probably going to get one, because I've been writing toy apps on android... but that's partly for my resume. Tablets are just like video game consoles. They're going to be more popular than general purpose PCs and will be a huge market, for better or worse. The PC made a lot of people smarter. It taught people to control their computers, and even to program them. It created a culture of creativity. It was kind of like buying a car, and then finding there's a set of tools and a small machine shop in the trunk. We lose all of that with tablets. A tablet is like a car with the hood bolted shut, and a gas cap that only lets you fill up at specific gas stations. It's fine for mechanics and the gas stations, but crap for drivers. Mhyrvold's prediction wasn't quite right though. Early demand was not for videophone. It was for sms and twitter and email. Low-bandwidth, immediate services. The killer video app is still video on demand. High costs for data impede some applications. Price was not cheaper by an order of magnitude. It was around half, or a bit more than half. Gaming has been consuming CPU so quickly that it became its own category of computer. Gaming, videophone and phone have only started to work on the internet in the past five years or so. Network latency has been a problem.
unimpressive 14y ago
Predicting the future is much like a sweepstakes. Many will enter, few will win.

53 points by damian2000 14y ago

bztzt 14y ago

To me what Myhrvold is vaguely describing as the "IHC" in this memo seems more like a set-top box or game console than a phone or tablet. I think this may have influenced Microsoft's decision to pour resources into the Xbox starting in 2001. They got it right that there would be an "IHC" but misjudged what sort of thing it would be.

JacksonGariety 14y ago

I now predict that in 15 years, the tablet will be on the decline. I called it, everyone remember.

mooism2 14y ago
Bullshit. You have to say why it will decline. You have to say whether it will be replaced, and if so by what. You have to present your reasoning and justify it. Microsoft's then CTO presented his reasoning and justified it. So should you. (And if you're going to whine that you were just making a joke? No. You were spewing a cheap little piece of cynicism.)
- smoyer 14y ago
  Hmmm ... This could be an interesting HN topic by itself. I think the most obvious answers are wearable computing, brain-machine interfaces (not implants) and vocal/sub-vocal input. Practical and common implants seem further than 15 years away to me.
- barrkel 14y ago
  The memo is extremely vague about what it is predicting. It's basically agreeing with Sun ("the network is the computer" (c) 1984) / Larry Ellison ("Network Computer") / etc. - that something networked will outflank PCs. But that's a prediction heavily dependent on timing (both those concepts failed to take off) and IMO misses what actually got the next generation of computing to take off (wireless networking, high-res screens and capacitive touch) and it also misses what is the main thrust of the next generation, mobility rather than connectedness.
- utopkara 14y ago
  He is right on target. Hindsight is 20/20, and it is an illusion that MS CTO had any deep insight. People are predicting that mobile devices will be replaced by implants, or one of the many alternatives currently being prototyped, for reasons trivially linked to the relative strengths of the replacement. Check out Engadget and similar outlets for such predictions, they are dime a dozen. Imagine one of those articles nailing it; if you don't look at the other crap on Engadget, it will look like they actually knew what they were talking about. Hence, no bullshit.
- jemeshsu 14y ago
  Tablet is just a "smartphone" with a bigger screen. So it will be replaced by the "smartphone" when wireless display tech is both direction, i.e. display and input. In future, when I need to write/read a book, I bring out a foldable LCD display, "airplay" connect to it with my "smartphone" (Siri hit the screen please!). Or go to a meeting room with such screen, airplay to it to present my ideas. Or in StarBuck, pull out the LCD screen on the table, and airplay to it. Or the screen might have Kinect like sensor so I can interact with it like Minority Report. Or the screen might be by a corner of my glass (Google glass), so I can "airplay" to it. All this from my "smartphone" device hidden in my pocket. By then screen is needed less due to Siri version X, as most interaction and info search is by voice. For x-Apple people, just substitute Siri/AirPlay with similar tech names.

nivertech 14y ago

In 1998 non-PC or post-PC devices was "a next big thing". I worked on a startup building corporate portal server software for non-PC devices like voice and WAP-enabled "smart"-phones. Wrong timing. Apple didn't hit it first time with Newton, but second time with iPhone and iPad was a big hit.

rbanffy 14y ago
We started to see it more clearly with the first smartphones - much like the modem quickly became the most useful peripheral for my Apple II, even the slowest connection to a data network made PDAs much more useful and allowed them to become stand-alone, even if minimalistic, devices rather than what Microsoft then called "PC companions".

pyrotechnick 14y ago

The decline of the blogosphere was predicted in 2012 by the inhabitants of Earth.

PaulHoule 14y ago

This article gets some things right but it gets plenty of them wrong. In particular, " Technically speaking, the industry is mired in hardware standards (Intel and Motorola CISC processors) with growth rates that are flattening out relative to the state of the art - just as the 360/3090 and VAX architectures did." The Motorola 68k line really did reach the end of its rope in the 1990s and everybody from Sun to Apple to Amiga had to plan an exit strategy or go out of business. The Intel x86, on the other hand, continues to outpace everything else on practical performance. ARM is coming on strong in tablets and smartphones, but overall, the x86 platform has lasted a long time. Not long after he wrote this, IBM's System/360 architecture went through an amazing transformation that's kept it competitive. From the beginning, the System/360 was based on bipolar logic that consumes much more power than the CMOS logic microprocessors are based on. In the early 90's, IBM realized that further development of bipolar logic was impossible because of power and heat dissipation issues. IBM had to go to CMOS, but CMOS logic wasn't as fast as bipolar logic at the time, leaving IBM unable to produce mainframes as powerful as the last generation -- unable to handle the requirements of existing customers. IBM's answer was "Parallel Sysplex", a clustering solution that presents a single-system image of a group of mainframes. With Parallel Sysplex, IBM produced microprocessor-based mainframe clusters that scaled beyond the last generation of bipolar mainframes. Some architectures end up being dead ends, but if something is commercially successful, it's amazing how long it can sometimes be strung along.

glhaynes 14y ago
Just curious: if the 68k series had had the same amount of resources put behind it as x86, there's no reason to think it wouldn't be similarly competitive today, is there? (Obviously this was historically impossible because nobody had the incentive that Intel/AMD have had, so I'm just asking from a technical standpoint.)
- rbanffy 14y ago
  For a long time, the Motorola 68K family was ahead of Intel in every respect. What it didn't have was the whole PC industry depending on it and feeding it with endless financial resources.

meaty 14y ago

Lets get it right: PC sales are declining and tablets are hyped. PC usage isn't declining. There is just no reason to upgrade any more. A bottom end PC from 2 years ago doesn't give you anything more than a brand new one. Our dev workstations are 3 years old and still spot on performance-wise. Everyone I know with a tablet has a PC and uses it heavily. The tablets are but a small diversion. However, that is until you realise that Microsoft actually got this when they designed Windows 8 and surface. They worked out how to provide one device which fills both niches. Now Windows 8 and surface aren't perfect, but they will become in time... Then the PC is dead. Oh no it's not - it's a tablet shaped PC. Again it evolves...

badclient 14y ago
Everyone I know with a tablet has a PC and uses it heavily. The tablets are but a small diversion. My extended is full of uncles and aunts who use their tablet and iPhone significantly more than their PC. I myself spend much more time surfing and writing emails from my iPhone than my PC. Just another data point.
wisty 14y ago
Windows 8 is like a queen sacrifice. Windows knows it's burning its bridges, but forcing people to get used to Windows surface. People will hate it on the desktop (because change is bad), but pick a Windows tablet because they've already learnt (unwillingly) how to use it. I'm not saying it's a crap OS, just different. People hate different. Once they get used to it on their PC, it won't be different and they'll buy a Windows tablet. Then Microsoft can roll back the interface on Windows 9 (making Metro a secondary interface), and corporate buyers will upgrade just to get away from Metro.
- meaty 14y ago
  And I'm 100% happy with that. I don't like change. My desktop, which still aims to be as NT4 like as possible: http://i.imgur.com/4fFLq.png http://i.imgur.com/4fFLq.png Added Excel 97 vs Excel 2010 for an interesting discussion point as well...

cdooh 14y ago

Top brass at Microsoft have known for a long time that the PC will be replace by something more portable; Bill Gates has tried, and failed, to launch a tablet for a while now. What they got wrong was execution and execution is everything....

jnazario 14y ago

the author writes: In his second last paragraph, Myhrvold predicts the winners will be those who "own the software standards on IHCs" ... this is exactly why it has been so important that internet standards remain neutral, open, and free. without that, we'd truly be at the mercy of a single vendor (DEC, MSFT, etc) and you know what that stagnation looks like. app stores are a risk of that alternative future (that honestly the phone companies also mapped out and drooled over, and slowly doled out with insane per-line item charges).

Jabbles 14y ago

But predicting something without giving a timeframe is completely useless. Imagine if this had influenced Microsoft's strategy from 1993. They'd have missed out on the enormous influence of the PC, whose recent competitors such as tablets and smartphones have only really surfaced in the last 5 years.

lambda 14y ago
Actually, Microsoft did move to the tablet before anyone else. They created a tablet version of Windows 10 years ago. Do you remember those? I had some friends who had those machines; mostly in the form of laptops that had a screen that would rotate into a tablet form factor, with a stylus for input. Those were a market failure. It wasn't until Apple re-invented the tablet, and Android showed that there is actually a tablet market and not just an iPad market, that Microsoft re-entered the game with the Surface.
- archangel_one 14y ago
  Yeah, I remember those machines and did even see one used in person once. Aside from any Apple magic and all the associated style factors, I think technology was just not ready then; they were just a laptop with a reversible screen, which was too heavy and bulky to be used in the ways people actually want to use a tablet rather than a laptop. You might have gotten two hours of battery life, for the first week of its life. And the stylus wasn't exactly inspiring either - it smacked more of a way to easily translate mouse-driven software than the best way to interact with the device. That's a lot more obvious in hindsight, of course.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  I believe they were reacting to competition, either the GridPad or the Momenta (I remember the Momenta getting lots of press for its innovative GUI - you can see it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0XE08BjQDQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0XE08BjQDQ)
- wildgift 14y ago
  The Apple Newton was out around 1994.

laurentoget 14y ago

The end of the world was also predicted numerous times in the past.

shmerl 14y ago

Is there any decline of PC? I didn't notice.

ricardobeat 14y ago
Tablet sales are surpassing sales from all the largest PC manufacturers - combined.
- shmerl 14y ago
  How does it show any decline? PC market is stable and only grows. Especially in the corporate sphere. All this talk about tablets killing PC - is pure idiocy. Tablets are toys in comparison to PCs. Only when mobile computers will develop to be real PC alternatives (i.e. offering equivalently ergonomic user interfaces - hollographic and what not), one can start talking about them replacing PCs. While they use touchscreen input, they'll remain alongside PCs.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    When people use less and less their PCs they are less inclined to buy newer ones in the future. When it's time to replace my mom's PC, I doubt she'll need more than a small HDMI plug sized Android device connected to a large screen.
    - shmerl 14y ago
      Some people, who don't use computers extensively. But most - are using both, PCs and mobile computers. Current interface of mobile devices isn't comparable and can't possibly replace PC ergonomics (keyboard, monitor and etc.). Real alternative would be some holographic interface that pops out in the air from a computer a size of a grain. That's an alternative to PC ergonomically. Not the current day tablets or handsets.
      - ricardobeat 14y ago
        For many activities you don't need to replace PC ergonomics. Take store clerks for example: the work they do (looking up products, inventory, processing payments) can be done just as well or better using a touchscreen device with a specialized interface.

neya 14y ago

Tablets and PC will co-exist. You see, no one gets the fact that tablets are limited by their size. If you want to stuff in power, you are going to compromise on something, especially size, in this context. Tablets are over-hyped and all they have is the cool factor. They are GREAT for consuming content, but not for producing them. And people who produce content are a huge majority. Let's take web developers and designers for example, I can't even imagine them (or me) working on their designs with 'an app' with a tablet. At least not until if it has a mouse; and if it has a mouse, it is automatically an evolution of the PC. There are so many many segments which the tablet can never fulfil. As a 3d artist, I can tell you how important the Graphics processor is to me, when I'm rendering my artwork. And rendering is not something instantaneous, depending on the complexity of the scene, it could take anywhere between a few seconds to a dozen hours to a couple of days for a single frame. And a remember, one second of a video (for film) has 24 frames. So I need to wait for 24frames*12hrs (assume 1 frame = 12 hrs avg.) to get one second of video rendered. And this is just one example I'm able to think of, but there are many many industries like Animation or 3d that are heavily dependent on PC's and tablets can NEVER replace them. Performance-centric industries are a huge portion of the PC market, until they make the transition to tablets (which is not in the near future), this tablet replacing PC's is just over-hyped BS that's a waste of everyone's time.

ricardobeat 14y ago
Despite all you said, the Cintiq, a very precise tablet, not a computer and mouse, is the dream of every graphic artist. The "great for consumption, bad for creation" line has become a bozo-bit flipper for me.
- chongli 14y ago
  First of all, you can't use a Cintiq without a computer. Secondly, when people say "great for consumption, bad for creation" they are referring to the design of tablet operating systems like iOS. Artists who use a Cintiq typically have multiple monitors and are multitasking with many different applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, ZBrush etc). This sort of workflow is just not possible on an iOS, WinRT or Android device.
- 14y ago

snowwrestler 14y ago

Prescient visions of today's computing go back much farther than that, to the research of Alan Kay and others at PARC. I don't have the materials in front of me but my summary from memory is that they proposed the existence of small computers you would have with you at all times, which could access wireless networks. The small computers would use that access to retrieve information for their user, and to report location to an environment that would respond. It's not too far from what we have with smart phones now. And Alan Kay in particular conceived of a tablet computer very similar to the tablets we have today. I believe all this work was done in the 1970s and 1980s.

mpweiher 14y ago
Yes, the dynabook concept was created by Kay in 1968. He claimed that the idea hit him when he was in a lecture by Gordon Moore explainig his law...you know the one... Anyway, knowing something about exponentials he did some quick calculations and voilà, iPad, er, Dynabook. Also, the Alto "PCs" that Xerox built during the 70ies, the ones with the bitmap display, mouse and Ethernet networking, were known as "Interim Dynabooks", so very consciously and deliberately approximations of the tablet computers to come. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

wildgift 14y ago

I think the PCs are in decline among lower-income individuals and working class people who don't need to read a lot or write a lot. They were never that popular a purchase in the first place, but because they never got deep into the games and computer culture, phone and tablet products are adequate for their needs, and have some advantages. The main advantage is always-on mobile networking, so that sms, twitter, email, facebook, etc. are always available everywhere. It's also a phone and a camera. The clearest evidence I have of this shift is observing coworkers who don't have internet at home, or lack a PC at home. They tend to run a lot more apps on their iphones and android phones. I'd say, typically, a dozen or more. The phone is their computer. They also are considering tablets. Personally, I make data: text, code, graphics, and now videos etc. My PC is my primary platform. My satellite system is my netbook. My smartphone is a distant third. I have maybe eight apps on my two smartphones: This American Life, Facebook, Twitter, GasBuddy, LATimes (just a bookmark really), Google Maps (again, a bookmark), RedLaser, Cut the Rope, and some visual mandala thing. I don't feel like I need a tablet. I'm probably going to get one, because I've been writing toy apps on android... but that's partly for my resume. Tablets are just like video game consoles. They're going to be more popular than general purpose PCs and will be a huge market, for better or worse. The PC made a lot of people smarter. It taught people to control their computers, and even to program them. It created a culture of creativity. It was kind of like buying a car, and then finding there's a set of tools and a small machine shop in the trunk. We lose all of that with tablets. A tablet is like a car with the hood bolted shut, and a gas cap that only lets you fill up at specific gas stations. It's fine for mechanics and the gas stations, but crap for drivers. Mhyrvold's prediction wasn't quite right though. Early demand was not for videophone. It was for sms and twitter and email. Low-bandwidth, immediate services. The killer video app is still video on demand. High costs for data impede some applications. Price was not cheaper by an order of magnitude. It was around half, or a bit more than half. Gaming has been consuming CPU so quickly that it became its own category of computer. Gaming, videophone and phone have only started to work on the internet in the past five years or so. Network latency has been a problem.

unimpressive 14y ago

Predicting the future is much like a sweepstakes. Many will enter, few will win.