4 ms·

A tablet or phone can't truly replace a desktop/laptop. It was a given.

jinushaun 12y ago
Jobs' "truck versus car" analogy. Everyone switching over to cars as their daily driver doesn't eliminate the usefulness and necessity of owning trucks. It's just a new equilibrium.
- aetherson 12y ago
  Well... sort of. But it's probably more aptly a bicycle versus car analogy. Like, suppose that originally there were 1,000,000 people who all owned PCs. There are a few ways that could change: a. All of those people, or 950,000 of them or some other gigantic number of them, could give up their PCs and start to use a phone and/or tablet instead. This is what you might call the naive death-of-the-PC scenario, in which the PC either disappears or becomes an unusual tool for specialists. b. 500,000 of those people or somewhere in that vicinity give up their PCs and start to use a phone and/or tablet instead. This is what you might call the realistic death-of-the-PC scenario -- the PC doesn't disappear in any way disappear, but demand for it is permanently massively lower. c. Few people give up their PCs at all. Instead, large numbers of them get phones/tablets in ADDITION to their PCs, and move some of the work they used to do on their PCs to their phones/tablets, but everyone or a large majority of everyone keeps their PCs and still do some work on them. This is the rise of the smartphone without a corresponding fall of a PC. I think that scenario C has turned out to be the reality. Smartphones and tablets have replaced the PC heavily for some use cases, but have not replaced the actual device very commonly at all. It's somewhat unlike a car/truck tradeoff -- while some people need trucks, most people don't, and have cars instead. It's more like a car/bicycle tradeoff -- most people who have bicycles, even ones who use their bicycles regularly, also have cars.
  - camillomiller 12y ago
    Nice analogy. Jobs was once quoted saying that computers are like bycicles for the mind. That somehow closes the Jobs-quoting circle, I guess.

Jobs' "truck versus car" analogy. Everyone switching over to cars as their daily driver doesn't eliminate the usefulness and necessity of owning trucks. It's just a new equilibrium.

aetherson 12y ago
Well... sort of. But it's probably more aptly a bicycle versus car analogy. Like, suppose that originally there were 1,000,000 people who all owned PCs. There are a few ways that could change: a. All of those people, or 950,000 of them or some other gigantic number of them, could give up their PCs and start to use a phone and/or tablet instead. This is what you might call the naive death-of-the-PC scenario, in which the PC either disappears or becomes an unusual tool for specialists. b. 500,000 of those people or somewhere in that vicinity give up their PCs and start to use a phone and/or tablet instead. This is what you might call the realistic death-of-the-PC scenario -- the PC doesn't disappear in any way disappear, but demand for it is permanently massively lower. c. Few people give up their PCs at all. Instead, large numbers of them get phones/tablets in ADDITION to their PCs, and move some of the work they used to do on their PCs to their phones/tablets, but everyone or a large majority of everyone keeps their PCs and still do some work on them. This is the rise of the smartphone without a corresponding fall of a PC. I think that scenario C has turned out to be the reality. Smartphones and tablets have replaced the PC heavily for some use cases, but have not replaced the actual device very commonly at all. It's somewhat unlike a car/truck tradeoff -- while some people need trucks, most people don't, and have cars instead. It's more like a car/bicycle tradeoff -- most people who have bicycles, even ones who use their bicycles regularly, also have cars.
- camillomiller 12y ago
  Nice analogy. Jobs was once quoted saying that computers are like bycicles for the mind. That somehow closes the Jobs-quoting circle, I guess.