People snack on smartphones, dine on tablets, and cook on PCs.
A lot of people don't want to cook, so are happy with smartphones and tablets.
Why buy a desktop or laptop when an iPad will do everything you need for a fraction of the price? That's what people mean when they sound the death knell for the PC.
Why cook when you can eat chips and order pizza? Probably because it's better for you and because cooking has cultural significance that goes beyond simply replenishing calories.
People who cheerfully proclaim that PCs are dead forger that PCs aren't just devices, they also attained a certain level of cultural significance. IF the death of PCs also means the death of PC culture (which involves things like game modding, hobby website making and so on), then the death of PCs is a really, really bad thing.
Division of labor. Not everyone has to be a producer in every sphere; it's okay to be a producer in some, and a consumer in others.
Plenty of people are too busy with other aspects of their lives — doing things which may, for all we know, be of great cultural significance — to spend time being a producer in the digital sphere as well.
Some people devote their lives to cooking for others; others devote their lives to other pursuits, and only ever consume food produced by others.
That's where the analogy falls apart, people who only eat out are a small percentage of the overall popular whereas people who only need a tablet are purportedly the norm.
The numbers don't have to be the same for the analogy to work.
In any case, I think you're underestimating the number of people who never cook, or cook very infrequently. In your average family household, one person typically cooks the vast majority of the meals.
To clarify, by cooking I mean real cooking — beginning with raw ingredients, going through numerous stages of preparation requiring some degree of skill, etc.
It’s awesome to do cool, fulfilling things and for some of those things you need a computer. For others you don’t.
I really don’t see why everyone should use a computer, given the wealth of possibilities out there.
Also, I’m pretty sure the death of the PC doesn’t mean any of what you are insinuating. It will be more like the death of horse riding after the advent of the car. (If I want to go horse riding there is a club that offers that not five minutes from where I’m living. Horse riding is dead – but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible or even hard to go horse riding today.) Only that PCs will probably be an order of magnitude more relevant than horses are today and, while not always as relevant as in the past in certain contexts (at home), they will still be relevant in others (some work, academia, …).
I’m still pretty confident in the prediction that the PC at home will die. (Which will not mean that no one will have one at home. Just far less people than today.) I’m also pretty sure that the PC at work and in academia will not die.
That stuff is never going away. "Death of PCs" doesn't mean the complete disappearance of them, just their death as a dominant consumer item. Professionals and prosumers will never stop needing PCs, and they're the ones who constitute the groups you mentioned.
A 64gb model of the iPad costs $700 (because 48gb of storage should cost $200 to pad those juicy margins).
I bought an amazing desktop from HP last year on a black friday sale for $779. For what's in it, you couldn't have assembled it from Newegg at that price.
In another generation or two the typical Chromebook will be superior to the iPad on performance, while being half the price.
You should buy a desktop or laptop because you get drastically more computing power at the same price.
As for me, I'd much rather have my personal chauffeur carry around my full kitchen and always fresh ingredients so I can eat in luxury any time I wish.
Thank goodness for tablets with full XWindows support to my desktop and the university supercomputer. I like broken metaphors.
Does a tablet really constitute a full kitchen, with no compromise?
To me a tablet is a cramped working space (small screen, limited memory), difficult to use (requiring additional utensils like a keyboard, mouse to make certain tasks bearable), with limited storage space (no cupboards), limited processing power (more like a camp stove than an oven), and only usable in short bursts.
Edit: In any case, the analogy is as much about the time, effort and skill required to cook as it is about having the relevant equipment at your disposal.
A lot of people don't want to cook, so are happy with smartphones and tablets.
Why buy a desktop or laptop when an iPad will do everything you need for a fraction of the price? That's what people mean when they sound the death knell for the PC.