5 ms·

>Post PC was never about PCs disappearing That's exactly what is was about. I don't think its fair to move the goalposts now. I think its clear that the stan

>Post PC was never about PCs disappearing That's exactly what is was about. I don't think its fair to move the goalposts now. I think its clear that the standard bog PC or laptop where the end user has admin rights to modify it, install software from arbitary sources, etc just isn't going to go away and that the mobile/touch format is extremely limiting outside of a certain use cases. There were minority voices who called this. We said that mobile/touch is wonderful for consuming and trivial tasks, but just can't compete with a big screen, big keyboard, big processor, etc. I remember the Jobsian types yelling us down. I think for all of Apple's innovations, they are still really a consumer/consumption based company. They'll never crack the enterprise productivity egg. There's something odd about seeing so many workers carrying both an ipad and a laptop to business trips. This is also why I think the MS Surface might mature into something that bridges the gap as a single device. I'm not holding my breath, but if I had to buy a new Windows laptop, I might just spring for the Surface, especially after Windows 10 comes out.

bobajeff 12y ago
"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm, but as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people." I don't see any moved goal posts.
- aetherson 12y ago
  I do. That quote doesn't just say that PC demand stagnates, it says it goes down, massively. It says that from X people who, at the time of that speech, use PC's, only 1 in the future use PC's. And we're seeing that's not true even if X=2. And X was never supposed to be as low as 2. What we are seeing is that a massive amount of computer USE moved over to phones and tablets -- tons of web browsing, tons of email browsing, calendaring, etc. Probably if you looked at the PC era and the post-PC era in terms of seconds in front of a screen or whatever instead of people, you'd see that 1/X ratio. But for people, it remains useful for almost everyone to have a PC -- even if they use that PC less than they used to.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Consumer PC demand has gone off a cliff in the last few years, to the chagrin of companies like Lenovo and HP. Corporate PC use has remained steady and even increased to pick up some of the slack (it helps that these are a bit more profitable than consumer sales). There is no point in upgrading a PC you hardly ever use, even if you don't toss it out altogether. Better to get a new iToy every one or two years instead.
- vectorpush 12y ago
  I don't think that the status quo matches that analogy. Close to 100% of tablet users are still PC users. Tablets are certainly more ubiquitous than ever before, but they're still mostly regarded as toys.
cortesoft 12y ago
I don't know about the Apple 'still really (being) a consumer/consumption based company'. Apple is, and has been for a while, the market leader in video and photo editing work, which is pretty clearly a creative endeavor. In fact, for a long time, graphic work (video/photo/modeling,etc) and education were the only two markets where Apple was doing well.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Not to mention MBPs are about the best PC you can get at their price point.
manicdee 12y ago
Take my brother's family: two adults, three kids. The kids only use the shared computer for Minecraft. Everything else is done on phone or tablet. Take my family: two adults. We have a computer each, but most of our "computing" is done on phone or tablet. I capture photos from my camera on my tablet, do some basic culling, then transfer to the desktop for archival. I have my to-do list synched across all devices. I don't actually do much with it on the desktop: again, the desktop is for archival. The only thing we really use the desktops for is playing EVE Online and being pur personal cloud. If it wasn't for my distrust of cloud storage, I could get rid of the desktop and my addiction to MMOs.
- vacri 12y ago
  Anecdata. Like my tech-naive mother who bought an ipad due to all the hype, determined to use it exclusively. She never does; it just gathers dust, and she does all her stuff (mostly social media) on her desktop. Or in my house, I use zero tablets, and my housemates only use their one tablet for casual games and watching youtube. Anything else, from facebooking to creating invoices for contracting, is done on a desktop. Phones are used as a social device, or for googling/wikipediaing away from home. Desktops seem to be dying out in favour of laptops, but desktop OSs aren't being replaced with mobile OSs in my experience.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Anecdata meets market realities. Desktops dropped off in favor of laptops a long time ago, was it 2007? Even laptop sales have gone off a cliff in the last few years: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171988-pc-business-set-for-worst-decline-ever-no-relief-in-sight http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171988-pc-business-set-fo... If you know something about the PC market that everyone else doesn't, you could make a killing in the stock market (if you are right, of course). Post PC was always a term meant for companies to make investment decisions in "can we make money on PCs?" or "is the market growing, stagnate, or shrinking;" or "will we make money on that game if it is PC only or do we need to do a bunch of console ports"? It isn't about ideology, its about money.
    - 12y ago
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
No, it was never about that; see wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-PC_era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-PC_era > The Post-PC era is a market trend involving a decline in the sales of personal computers in favor of post-PC devices; which include mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. No disappearing there. Then: > The term was first coined by MIT scientist David D. Clark. While both Microsoft and Apple's former CEO's Bill Gates and Steve Jobs also predicted a shift towards mobile devices as the primary method of computing, as a complement to the PC. Many of us use our phones and tablets more than PCs, but of course we have also expanded the way we use computing (I still need at least a laptop to write code, my PC is not going away, but my sister's has). Anyways, if you have any extra knowledge about the market and thing the analysts are wrong, you should make some money on wall street by investing in Lenovo or HP or something. But I wouldn't bet your retirement on it.

bobajeff 12y ago

"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm, but as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people." I don't see any moved goal posts.

aetherson 12y ago
I do. That quote doesn't just say that PC demand stagnates, it says it goes down, massively. It says that from X people who, at the time of that speech, use PC's, only 1 in the future use PC's. And we're seeing that's not true even if X=2. And X was never supposed to be as low as 2. What we are seeing is that a massive amount of computer USE moved over to phones and tablets -- tons of web browsing, tons of email browsing, calendaring, etc. Probably if you looked at the PC era and the post-PC era in terms of seconds in front of a screen or whatever instead of people, you'd see that 1/X ratio. But for people, it remains useful for almost everyone to have a PC -- even if they use that PC less than they used to.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Consumer PC demand has gone off a cliff in the last few years, to the chagrin of companies like Lenovo and HP. Corporate PC use has remained steady and even increased to pick up some of the slack (it helps that these are a bit more profitable than consumer sales). There is no point in upgrading a PC you hardly ever use, even if you don't toss it out altogether. Better to get a new iToy every one or two years instead.
vectorpush 12y ago
I don't think that the status quo matches that analogy. Close to 100% of tablet users are still PC users. Tablets are certainly more ubiquitous than ever before, but they're still mostly regarded as toys.

cortesoft 12y ago

I don't know about the Apple 'still really (being) a consumer/consumption based company'. Apple is, and has been for a while, the market leader in video and photo editing work, which is pretty clearly a creative endeavor. In fact, for a long time, graphic work (video/photo/modeling,etc) and education were the only two markets where Apple was doing well.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Not to mention MBPs are about the best PC you can get at their price point.

manicdee 12y ago

Take my brother's family: two adults, three kids. The kids only use the shared computer for Minecraft. Everything else is done on phone or tablet. Take my family: two adults. We have a computer each, but most of our "computing" is done on phone or tablet. I capture photos from my camera on my tablet, do some basic culling, then transfer to the desktop for archival. I have my to-do list synched across all devices. I don't actually do much with it on the desktop: again, the desktop is for archival. The only thing we really use the desktops for is playing EVE Online and being pur personal cloud. If it wasn't for my distrust of cloud storage, I could get rid of the desktop and my addiction to MMOs.

vacri 12y ago
Anecdata. Like my tech-naive mother who bought an ipad due to all the hype, determined to use it exclusively. She never does; it just gathers dust, and she does all her stuff (mostly social media) on her desktop. Or in my house, I use zero tablets, and my housemates only use their one tablet for casual games and watching youtube. Anything else, from facebooking to creating invoices for contracting, is done on a desktop. Phones are used as a social device, or for googling/wikipediaing away from home. Desktops seem to be dying out in favour of laptops, but desktop OSs aren't being replaced with mobile OSs in my experience.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Anecdata meets market realities. Desktops dropped off in favor of laptops a long time ago, was it 2007? Even laptop sales have gone off a cliff in the last few years: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171988-pc-business-set-for-worst-decline-ever-no-relief-in-sight http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171988-pc-business-set-fo... If you know something about the PC market that everyone else doesn't, you could make a killing in the stock market (if you are right, of course). Post PC was always a term meant for companies to make investment decisions in "can we make money on PCs?" or "is the market growing, stagnate, or shrinking;" or "will we make money on that game if it is PC only or do we need to do a bunch of console ports"? It isn't about ideology, its about money.
  - 12y ago

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

No, it was never about that; see wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-PC_era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-PC_era > The Post-PC era is a market trend involving a decline in the sales of personal computers in favor of post-PC devices; which include mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. No disappearing there. Then: > The term was first coined by MIT scientist David D. Clark. While both Microsoft and Apple's former CEO's Bill Gates and Steve Jobs also predicted a shift towards mobile devices as the primary method of computing, as a complement to the PC. Many of us use our phones and tablets more than PCs, but of course we have also expanded the way we use computing (I still need at least a laptop to write code, my PC is not going away, but my sister's has). Anyways, if you have any extra knowledge about the market and thing the analysts are wrong, you should make some money on wall street by investing in Lenovo or HP or something. But I wouldn't bet your retirement on it.