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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 o

by 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.
- neya 14y ago
  I have a Cintiq, I always somehow end up using my PC, because I need to still use my mouse to get certain things done precisely (For example compound Boolean operations for Logo designing). But hey, yours is a very good point, but it is rather very specific to a certain type of artists (In my opinion).
swalsh 14y ago
I for one would NEVER say the PC will be king, because it is more powerful. There's too many ways around the problem. First technology evolves. By 2020 your google glasses will probably be more powerful then the imac i'm currently using to type this comment. If you still don't have enough processing power, there's always the cloud. 5g will be just about ready, with speeds around 1Gbps a second, so bandwidth won't be a major issue either. However, your point about screen size is really important. The major benefit a PC has today is the giant monitor that's attached to it. But let's look at mainframes. Its true giant IBM mainframes are still around today, but thats more of an issue of legacy software as opposed to hardware benefits. The trend for performing those same tasks today in new development seems to be hundreds of servers with commodity hardware running scalable software. The hardware changed, and the software changed to adapt to it. I think that's a really interesting concept. The idea that the application will adapt to the hardware, instead of the hardware adapting to the application. While I feel more confortable with having a large monitor with a million graphical interface apps open at once, its not necessarily the best solution for productively producing new content. Google glasses for instance allow a glimpse into a possible future. What if instead of working at a desk doing 3D modeling with a mouse and computer, you used your hands to sculpt a model like it's clay with augmented reality? What if interfaces like Emotiv replace the need for a mouse?
- wildgift 14y ago
  Mainframes are also hundreds of computers running scalable software. The hardware facebook uses is not commodity - it's a stripped down PC. I think google still uses commodity PCs, but I suspect they alter the power system. The use of the PC is driven by the software, which originated on PCs running linux. They're not going to rewrite it all to run on a mainframe.
flogic 14y ago
I think the primary limiting factor of tablets is UI bandwidth. A large chunk of what people do with computers is select and modify. It's really hard to beat the mouse at the select step. Then there's the whole real keyboard thing. With a physical buttons you can be slightly off and get tactile feed back where as with on screen buttons you don't.
mpweiher 14y ago
Regarding the "power" issue: iPads today are 1.x (1.4?) GHz Dual Core computing beasts with graphics coprocessor performance that's just amazing. My NeXT Cube 2nd gen had a 25 MHz 68040, so even giving some slack that's a factor 40-50 slower, and it was not just OK as a content-creation machine, it was awesome. When software is slow, it is usually the fault of the software, not a limitation of the hardware. That doesn't mean that other cases don't exist, and rendering certainly sounds like one of them, but they are rare, and may then be better handled by remote server farms anyway.

by neya 14y ago

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.
neya 14y ago
I have a Cintiq, I always somehow end up using my PC, because I need to still use my mouse to get certain things done precisely (For example compound Boolean operations for Logo designing). But hey, yours is a very good point, but it is rather very specific to a certain type of artists (In my opinion).

swalsh 14y ago

I for one would NEVER say the PC will be king, because it is more powerful. There's too many ways around the problem. First technology evolves. By 2020 your google glasses will probably be more powerful then the imac i'm currently using to type this comment. If you still don't have enough processing power, there's always the cloud. 5g will be just about ready, with speeds around 1Gbps a second, so bandwidth won't be a major issue either. However, your point about screen size is really important. The major benefit a PC has today is the giant monitor that's attached to it. But let's look at mainframes. Its true giant IBM mainframes are still around today, but thats more of an issue of legacy software as opposed to hardware benefits. The trend for performing those same tasks today in new development seems to be hundreds of servers with commodity hardware running scalable software. The hardware changed, and the software changed to adapt to it. I think that's a really interesting concept. The idea that the application will adapt to the hardware, instead of the hardware adapting to the application. While I feel more confortable with having a large monitor with a million graphical interface apps open at once, its not necessarily the best solution for productively producing new content. Google glasses for instance allow a glimpse into a possible future. What if instead of working at a desk doing 3D modeling with a mouse and computer, you used your hands to sculpt a model like it's clay with augmented reality? What if interfaces like Emotiv replace the need for a mouse?

wildgift 14y ago
Mainframes are also hundreds of computers running scalable software. The hardware facebook uses is not commodity - it's a stripped down PC. I think google still uses commodity PCs, but I suspect they alter the power system. The use of the PC is driven by the software, which originated on PCs running linux. They're not going to rewrite it all to run on a mainframe.

flogic 14y ago

I think the primary limiting factor of tablets is UI bandwidth. A large chunk of what people do with computers is select and modify. It's really hard to beat the mouse at the select step. Then there's the whole real keyboard thing. With a physical buttons you can be slightly off and get tactile feed back where as with on screen buttons you don't.

mpweiher 14y ago

Regarding the "power" issue: iPads today are 1.x (1.4?) GHz Dual Core computing beasts with graphics coprocessor performance that's just amazing. My NeXT Cube 2nd gen had a 25 MHz 68040, so even giving some slack that's a factor 40-50 slower, and it was not just OK as a content-creation machine, it was awesome. When software is slow, it is usually the fault of the software, not a limitation of the hardware. That doesn't mean that other cases don't exist, and rendering certainly sounds like one of them, but they are rare, and may then be better handled by remote server farms anyway.