
The PC is dead. Why no angry nerds? - pauljonas
http://futureoftheinternet.org/the-pc-is-dead-why-no-angry-nerds
======
typicalrunt
_Why no angry nerds?_

Because nerds are still using their PCs to create mobile and web-based
software. The PC may (just may) be dead for the hordes of average consumers
out there, but it'll never be dead for those people creating things -- that
is, until you can adequately create a mobile or web application on an
iPad/iPhone.

Does anyone truly believe that scores of software developers writing financial
software for banks are going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device?
Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term).

~~~
astine
The complaint that the author makes isn't about consumption vs production
devices, it's about curated experiences. Apple can veto your income on the
insistence of popular opinion or on a whim, or with no stated reason at all.
The author extrapolates that this can lead to an effective restriction of
freedom of the press by Apple and other gatekeepers.

This is a real problem and is not alleviated just because _you_ still use a PC
to write software.

~~~
onemoreact
Your forgetting about the web. Apple does not veto websites just things in
their little walled garden.

~~~
bad_user
Considering how Apple controls the operating system, the app store, the
browser and the whole device in general, it wouldn't be technically hard for
Apple to censor websites either.

Plus, Apple is restricting the browser on purpose, to make it less useful.
Tell me, how can you create an online image editing software, if Apple doesn't
allow you to upload files from iPhone's browser?

And what Apple is doing today would have been unthinkable a couple of years
ago. Censoring the web is perfectly within their grasp and you should see
that, otherwise you're not seeing the forest from the trees.

~~~
onemoreact
The most popular home computers have always been walled gardens where the
manufacture got a cut from every peace of software sold. A huge chunk of all
consumer software runs on them and there approval could easily make or break a
software development house. We just called them 'game consoles' and
conveniently forgot that their approval process was far more expensive and
difficult than anything Angry Birds needed to bother with.

So, I don't think there is anything all that novel about the iOS approach and
I find it hard to think of such things as an erosion of control when consoles
predated the PC in most peoples homes and tended to be far more draconian than
iOS. Do you even remember how bad phones and their app stores where like pre
Apple?

PS: Microsoft had no problem getting skin into this game and started taking
their cut well before Apple produced iOS. Despite what the article says.

~~~
bad_user
People mention 'game consoles' a lot, as if that's a good thing.

However, the best games have always been running on PCs first, often with
exclusivity. Starcraft, The Sims, World of Warcraft, Half Life, Counter
Strike, SimCity, Quake, Diablo 1 & 2 and the list can go on.

I own a Wii as it came free with my Internet subscription. It's gathering dust
since last year. The games are simply not addictive. And this feeling I had on
PS 2 too - the games feel too dumb and non-engaging, lacking taste. Which is
why I never bothered.

Some people like these games consoles. I never did.

~~~
lloeki
> However, the best games have always been running on PCs first, often with
> exclusivity. [list]

Confirmation bias. See Mario, Contra, Chrono Trigger, Sonic, Final Fantasy,
Resident Evil, Halo, Alan Wake, Uncharted, Metroid, Heavy Rain, Sega Rally,
Gran Turismo, Tekken, Street Fighter, Soul Edge, Forza Motorsport and the list
can go on.

------
vladd
I saw in the supermarket the other day a group of parents buying for their
young child a so-called "mini-laptop" that costs $100 and probably only knows
to do addition, multiplications and some basic word-games on a cheap LCD
screen. And I realized that for them, and for a large portion of the end-
users, lack of education in IT makes it very difficult for them to see the
difference between the said laptop and a regular PC device.

Apple realized first what this lack of knowledge can do: the ability to lock-
in a product so that it runs only your AppStore's apps is not only good for
the high-end of the market that is willing to sacrifice freedom in the name of
usability and beautiful design, but rather more importantly it's good for the
ignorant masses that don't even realize this fact when they buy the product
just because it's fashionable to do so.

~~~
k33n
You think Apple cares about locking down a device just for the sake of taking
advantage of the ignorant masses?

The truth is a lot simpler than that. They aren't trying to enslave humanity.
They are just control freaks with a culture of creating art. It's ingrained in
their corporate culture that people shouldn't decide how to use Apple's
products. They believe that they should control that.

Whether you agree with that or not is your own choice. But it's just plain
stupid to say that there is some kind of plot against "freedom" here.

~~~
smallblacksun
I agree that they aren't plotting against freedom, but not for the same reason
as you. I think that they want to make money, and think that controlling
content is best the way to do that.

~~~
k33n
Of course they want to make money though. They are a business. However,
they've forgone more profitable business models in the past in favor of
tighter control and they'll likely continue to do that.

~~~
troyastorino
It's hard to argue that they've forgone more profitable business models, as
they are in the top 10 most profitable companies in the US, and are the most
valuable company.

------
WiseWeasel
I'm optimistic for several reasons:

1) Less need for IT support for family and friends;

2) I'm well-served with the computers I assemble and purchase, and even if
mainstream operating systems continue their slide towards not serving my needs
well (from my vantage point looking at OS X Lion and Windows 8), I am
confident that there will be solutions out there, possibly increasingly
exemplified by Linux, that facilitate web development and mundane user
empowerment;

3) The web has become the democratic platform for publishing interactive
content to the masses, which no vendor would dare attempt to exert control
over.

Now, the real question is who's going to capitalize on this amusingly-phrased
headline and come out with the Angry Nerds mobile game, where you launch a
variety of nerds at iPads hidden in the temporary safety of their elaborate
Apple Stores? Let's see, there's the fat, bearded nerd, the pale, skinny, tall
one, the kid with glasses, the token girl nerd with freckles and glasses, and
the $1.99 in-game purchase Darth Vader helmet nerd.

[Edit]

Looks like I wasn't the first one to think along these lines:

<http://www.atlassian.com/en/angrynerds>

[/Edit]

------
dasil003
> _The iPhone restricts outside code, but developers could still, in many
> cases, manage to offer functionality through a website accessible through
> the Safari browser. Few developers do, and there’s work to be done to ferret
> out what separates the rule from the exception._

I don't want to be paranoid, but I feel like what Apple has done is
brilliantly nefarious. They've given developers an offer they can't refuse:
for 30% we'll sell your software frictionlessly. Sure you are giving up
control, but how much does requiring a payment form and non-standard, non-
obvious, potentially painful installation process cost an indie developer. 30%
is always far less than the losses of a traditional website sales funnel,
potentially by 2 orders of magnitude. The App Store simply _sells more
software_.

Of course it has corrosive effects on the developer community in that prices
are driven down (maybe not as much as volume increases, but still) and control
is forked over the Apple. But what can developers do? It's a game theory
problem. If everyone refuses to play Apple's game then maybe developers and
innovation win, but if one breaks the line they stand to make a fortune.

I'm really not looking forward to the day when Macs go App Store only. If that
happens it will probably mean I have to switch to Linux. It saddens me that
the future of computing may be completely locked down, but it's hard to argue
against it if for no other reason than it offers the most promise for actually
making users safe as malware proliferates and becomes more sophisticated. Part
of me thinks the free software and Internet as we know them today can not
last, and if it wasn't the App Store it would be some other powerful interest
eroding our digital freedom in the name of profit or control. This line of
thought makes me think that maybe RMS is not such an extremist after all, but
merely an equal counterbalance to the forces of power and greed shaping out
future.

~~~
zmmmmm
> 30% is always far less than the losses of a traditional website sales
> funnel, potentially by 2 orders of magnitude. The App Store simply sells
> more software.

I don't understand how your maths works. You are asserting that a traditional
website sale costs 3000%, thus losing the seller 29 x the price of the item?
Obviously I am misunderstanding you but I don't know how to make sense of what
you are saying.

I'm always curious about the people who say 30% is a good deal. I sell
software directly over the web. PayPal charges me something like 0.50 + 2.5%.
I do host my web site but I would have a web site anyway. Bandwidth associated
with sales is negligible, support is a cost but again, Apple wouldn't do that
for me. 30% is bigger than the cut I give to generic resellers who actually
come to me to ask to list my software in their stores. I can see that Apple's
store can increase volume (but then, we have nothing to compare it to - we
will never know how well iOS software might have sold without the app store) -
but I don't see how it's anything other than extremely expensive in terms of a
way to sell software.

~~~
dasil003
Losses on the sales funnel means the number of people that drop off from the
first page of your website all the way through purchasing the product. Getting
someone to pull out a credit card is a huge challenge, there's no way you can
make it anywhere near as effective a one-click purchase like Amazon or iTunes
has. This is not even counting the discovery aspect of the store which is a
powerful discover channel completely supplemental to whatever marketing you
are doing on your own.

------
mikemarotti
People have been saying the PC is dead just about as long as I've been
Personal Computing.

The role of the PC may be changing, but that is far from meaning that it's
dead.

------
jsz0
There are definitely angry nerds out there but they are in a position of
arguing against a better user experience for the vast majority of people who
don't want to have malware, a broken OS, their personal data stolen, etc. They
should be trying to find less restrictive solutions that provide the same
benefits. Otherwise the companies that are moving forward with making a better
end user experience are going to win in the long run.

~~~
bad_user
Do you feel secure when using an iPhone?

JailbreakMe is a website that can root your iOS - so let me emphasize this - a
freaking website that can get root access on your iPhone just by visiting that
website.

It originally relied on some bug in the PDF reader. Then Apple released an
update. Then JailbreakMe got upgraded to use a FreeType parser security flaw,
again in that same PDF reader and so it works with iOS 4.3.3 - then Apple
released iOS 4.3.4 to patch it. But now an update for iOS 5 is apparently in
the works.

At this point you may now feel that Apple is in control, that they are
patching iOS at a rapid pace and so on. However, these vulnerabilities are
PUBLIC. Even the source-code for JailbreakMe was published. Bad people don't
do that ;-)

So you can argue all you want against malware, a broken OS or about evil
people stealing your data, however the iOS platform is nothing more than
security theater - it keeps the script kiddies out, it gives you an illusion
of safety, but it won't keep out the people with the right resources and
experience. And those people are the people you should be worried about.

~~~
dextorious
"Do you feel secure when using an iPhone?"

Yeah, I do. There is a site that can take advantage of some vulnerability? Not
impressed. Until there are tons of such sites, like they are for PCs, and
until there are tons of actual iPhones harmed that way, as PCs are, I feel
secure.

"however the iOS platform is nothing more than security theater - it keeps the
script kiddies out, it gives you an illusion of safety, but it won't keep out
the people with the right resources and experience."

I don't care about those people. I'm not targeted by some Dr. No style guy. I
care about general experience and the law of large numbers.

And, statistically, I'm totally safe using an iPhone. When that changes, you
can write to me again.

~~~
bad_user

         until there are tons of actual iPhones harmed 
         that way, as PCs are ...
    

In 2008 an estimated 1 billion PCs or more were in use and 95% of those had
Windows on it. By contrast, in 2011 by Apple's statement 100 million iPhones
were sold to that date and let's be reasonable here - many of those were
upgrades, so the total number of users is less than that.

So you can feel safe, but only because your platform is not popular enough
right now, or useful enough for anybody to bother (PCs are wonderful for
building botnets).

    
    
         I don't care about those people. I'm not targeted
         by some Dr. No style guy.
    

But you should, as those people are the people with the means to distribute
mallware on a massive scale. And they will, sooner or later.

    
    
         And, statistically, I'm totally safe using an iPhone.
    

Statistically? I just gave you as an example a freaking website that can do
whatever the author wants on your iPhone and you're giving me statistics?

Seriously?

~~~
dextorious
"""So you can feel safe, but only because your platform is not popular enough
right now, or useful enough for anybody to bother"""

That's a stupid fallacy. In the 90's the Mac had a tiny marker share, nothing
like the near 10% it has today, and it still had tons of viruses. And even
platforms like the Amiga and Atari had viruses, while having insignificantly
less market share than PCs at the time. The OSX Macs, on the other hand, has
only seen a few trojan horses and no actual virus distributed outside of some
lab or something.

So, it's not just numbers or units, or relative percentage of market share.
Other things count, stuff like the UNIX like permissions OS X had from the
start, compared to the silly Windows 3->XP user being automatically admin.

"""Statistically? I just gave you as an example a freaking website that can do
whatever the author wants on your iPhone and you're giving me statistics?"""

I'd care about that website when ACTUAL iPhones in the wild ACTUALLY VISIT
websites such as this and are hacked, in large numbers.

Until then, I could care less.

It's the difference between being scared of violence in a seedy neighborhood
and being scared of being targeted by a serial killer. Yeah, they do exist.
What are you chances?

------
howeyc
I'm not as quick to discount the point as the others here,

Look at it this way, assume in the not so distant future you can do it all on
the tablet as opposed to the desktop and no longer nead desktops, having them
die a slow, slow death: Counter-Strike, WoW, Development (Github text editing,
Cloud9 IDE,... etc), word processing, browsing, you get the idea.

But instead, the applications are vetted and controlled by the tablet OS
maker. Now instead of law makers trying to get every search engine to block
something, or tear-down registars all over the world, they just go to tablet
OS maker 1 and 2 and have them take down access to website/app. No more
website/app for anyone as desktops are dead and the tablet is so locked to
shit you can't change a thing (secure boot anyone?)

Now, I'm not sure death is as current as suggested, but I see the trend the
blog post is referring too.

~~~
roc
Why would Apple be any more willing to turn off web access to a domain than
the dominant ISP or backbone provider or the dominant PC vendor or even just
the ISP/DNS provider for the site in question?

It seems silly to imply the situation is somehow more plausible/likely with a
tablet-based computing landscape.

~~~
howeyc
I don't believe any ISP/DNS provider is "willing" to turn off web access to
any paying customer (domain owner). However, it has nothing to do with
willingness but instead with "force" (Judges, Congressman, Clothing
manufacturers, ...), people and companies don't like paying fines and going to
jail. Let's say there's 250 domains that are unliked, on 5 different
registrars, 10 different ISPS, but only two tablet OSs with walled gardens,
which place would you logically force to stop access? Of course if it's apps
you don't like instead of domains the answer is trivial.

Now, we are not in this scenario right now no matter how horrific you think
walled gardens are. Probably not worth speculating too much further as the
future is hard to predict, and this is just a possibility of the blog post
trend extrapolated forward X number years.

------
jes5199
People don't use PCs as general purpose platforms anymore, anyway. I can code
anywhere that there's a unix environment - or a connection to AWS. And people
can use my software anywhere there's a browser. The ability to build and run
.exe files hasn't really been a major enabler of geekery since, I dunno,
Napster, I guess wa s the last time.

------
vectorpush
The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to
productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow
enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the
PC, or perhaps that which we call a rose by any other name will smell just as
sweet. I don't see how a tablet is any different from a PC except for form
factor, especially when they catch up with PCs in terms of general utility.

~~~
dextorious
"""The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to
productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow
enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the
PC"""

How about, in 10 years most people just get a tablet + keyboard or something,
and the PC doesn't die, but get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of
demand?

~~~
vectorpush
_get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of demand?_

Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a
touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of
battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs.

My point is that PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply
transition into tablets as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse =
a PC.

~~~
dextorious
"""Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a
touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of
battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs. My point is that
PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply transition into tablets
as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse = a PC""".

It's not that simple. What you describe is desktop PC vs laptop.

Tablets on the other hand have different operating systems (at least the only
tablet that people > 1% actually buy, the iPad) than PCs.

We can imagine a feature where most people use tablets, perhaps equally
capable as any PC, but WITHOUT today's full PC OS flexibility, and PCs are
left for only small professions (programmers, creatives, etc).

~~~
vectorpush
_tablets on the other hand have different operating systems (at least the only
tablet that people > 1% actually buy, the iPad) than PCs._

This is only true in today's world. In a future where tablets are so capable
and ubiquitous that they've displaced laptop and desktop computers, both
paradigms will have long merged. Microsoft, Google, Canonical, and others are
all in the process of transitioning their platforms into x86 or ARM (whichever
they lack). Additionally, AMD and Intel both have true x86 answers to ARM on
the horizon. The flexibility of the x86 platform is not going anywhere any
time soon.

------
rplnt
Last time the PC was dead, it was because of the gaming consoles. All the
games are there, web browsers too.. why would anyone want a PC? That was half
a decade ago and PCs are still here.

------
VladRussian
instead of 1 single core single cpu PC shared with my wife, we now have
(counting only ours, not company issued laptop and 2 Mac desktops) 3 PCs (1
desktop type and 2 are server dual quad cores opterons (and 1 old dual dual
core)), 2 laptops and 1 netbook, and 3 iOS devices. And i'm looking to get
soon new SB 2[5|6|7]00K (or may be even indulge with 3930 - it is Christmas
time :) + mobo + pile of DDR3 to upgrade the desktop. I'm a happy nerd as
RAM/CPU/HDD and big LCDs are so cheap these days.

Edit: just today a new store opening nearby got several cargo pallets of new
Dell's PC based hardware (POS and pure PC).

In the next few years 5+ billions of people will get their first computing
device (and the rest 2 bilions - their first 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... computing
device). The vast majority of this growth will not be a PC. That's clear. Yet
this growth in mobile devices will "synergize" an unprecedented growth in
PC/server hardware dwarfing whatever we've seen so far.

------
sliverstorm
The mainframe is dead too.

By the way, on an unrelated note, did you know mainframes are still IBM's
biggest business?

~~~
antidaily
It's not consulting?

~~~
sliverstorm
Maybe, I'm not an IBM insider. That's just what I've heard.

Maybe they are consulting for their mainframe customers?

~~~
flomo
Some years ago, most of their consulting revenue was derived from IBM
platforms. Since then they've absorbed a number of other consulting companies
though.

------
pawn
A lot of people here are quick to discount the title "The PC is dead", but I
think the actual meat of what he was getting at merits consideration - walled
gardens are a lot more popular today than they used to be. No doubt, there are
certain innovations that we may never see because of this. For example, what
if there's a Mac developer out there who has ideas for a better browser than
Safari. You're never going to see it, because Apple won't let you. Today, he
has the option of bringing it to PC, but that might be too big of a barrier
for him to jump if he's one of those guys who won't buy one.

Also, its not too hard to imagine a day when Microsoft follows Apple and makes
their own marketplace. Probably won't be anytime soon, but it would be naive
to say it could never ever happen. The main thing stopping them is probably
the fact that they're still the big dog and can't get away with doing what
Apple does. People judge them differently. In a few more years though, I could
see them pointing at what Apple does and saying, "There's precedent here.
Let's go for it." Some people would jump ship and move onto Linux, and say "I
still have freedom" but what about your mom and dad who will keep buying the
Walmart special every Black Friday? As an indie developer these things are
limiting what you can do.

I think the solution here is to take a look at what people like about these
marketplaces - a convenient way to find apps, and duplicate it - without the
bad stuff. Make a marketplace and don't limit what goes on it. Also, make less
profit for yourself than what your competitor (Google and/or Apple) makes. The
toughest thing is traction. Getting it in front of eyes as something to use
instead of the other one. Get past that, and you're set. Am I missing
anything? Has this been done and I just don't know about it?

~~~
GHFigs
_Also, its not too hard to imagine a day when Microsoft follows Apple and
makes their own marketplace._

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-app-store-
will-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-app-store-will-be-the-
only-source-of-metro-apps/14873)

------
caller9
The scary part is when parents who just need a consumption device only buy a
tablet. How many of you would've been able to program at a young age if your
parents didn't buy the family PC.

~~~
stan_rogers
Some of us wrote our programs out carefully on paper, debugged them as well as
we could by stepping through them mentally (and making register annotations,
etc., on paper when required), then transcribed them to electrographic "punch"
cards for the school's batch run on the local university's mini/mainframe once
a month.

Having a computer makes programming more convenient and less theoretical (bugs
happen occasionally despite correct code), but it's not essential to learning.
It's a lot less likely to happen in that way in the current environment (with
ubiquitous PCs), but if we ever get to the point where PCs (or their
equivalent) aren't everywhere anymore, the interested geeks will find a way --
just like we did in the old days.

------
giulivo
It will probably make me look pathetic (angry nerd maybe), but I don't have a
tablet and I don't use much my smartphone, if not for calling people.

I found these devices to be very uncomfortable for my tipical usage. The only
good addon I've got in my smartphone was the GPS navigation.

I could never browse the internet on a smartphone and I could never look at a
tablet more than 30mins while also being comfortable in using it.

And if I had to plug in into a tablet a standard keyboard and a nicer monitor
to make it "usable", I would rather buy some mini PC.

------
darksaga
I remember when a friend of mine got his first i-pad. We're both developers
and he said he could do some basic editing with one of the included apps.
First thing I thought was, "Oh yeah, I'm going to write code on a 7" screen as
opposed to my 23" monitor."

The PC isn't dead and it won't be for a long time. Although there are a lot of
lines being blurred between devices (tablets vs. smartphones vs. laptops),
there's still a TON of people working at large corporations who you'll have to
pry their PC's out of their cold, dead hands.

------
jroseattle
> Why no angry nerds? Mostly because very few people really believe the PC is
> actually dead.

Mobile is the big wave, yet I don't know anyone who says "I have a phone, I
sure don't need a desktop/laptop."

The closest possible thing is a tablet. Yet, the most common refrain about any
tablet to do that I've heard is "well, it doesn't do this" or "it doesn't do
that". On the flip side, I've yet to hear anyone state that they wished they
didn't own a PC, since their tablet does everything they need.

~~~
ricardobeat
Your friends are not representative of the whole market. Mobile is larger than
desktop in Africa: [http://www.gomonews.com/mobile-internet-usage-soars-past-
fix...](http://www.gomonews.com/mobile-internet-usage-soars-past-fixed-web-in-
africa/) (and this is from 2010).

Kids 5 years from now will find desktop computers and current laptops strange
and kludgy.

~~~
dimmuborgir
In most so called third-world countries mobile is much larger than desktop
simply because mobile is more affordable.

------
qdog
I was just looking at building a new computer, I was contemplating a dual-cpu
setup for using vm's, hoping it would be easy to run copies of various OS's on
one box and use all the different streaming technologies for tv output.

Looks like about $2k or more.

While it would be great to be able to coordinate all the streaming media using
my phone as a remote, my phone doesn't do most of the 'computing' tasks I
like, and reading HN on a 4" screen is handy, but not optimal.

I think his point is exactly that if I want everything to work, I need an
Apple and a Windows machine running (nevermind whether it's legal to run Apple
in a VM, I'm under the impression they don't want you to, but if I purchase a
copy of OSX, it's not clear I wouldn't have the right), and maybe a Chrome
machine, because they DON'T WORK TOGETHER BY ARBITRARY RESTRICTIONS.

I think there is another guy that likes to rant about this walled garden
approach. Personally, I've been trying to use iTunes on a windows box to play
to an apple tv recently and it is sucking. Music plays fine from an iPhone. So
now, my wife is all ready to pay the Apple Tax for a new computer. To just get
music to play. They fact that apple makes a cool device is fine, the fact they
don't want to play nice with any of my other equipment makes me loathe to buy
a new one, but apparently I'm not with the mainstream on this one. But count
me as one of the angry nerds.

~~~
Tobu
Dual-CPU? You can get a dual-core or more for _far_ cheaper than that. Look to
AMD Phenom IIs for the middle-range, you get better performance for the buck
especially if you factor in the motherboard.

Besides being faster, this kind of machine is far cheaper than a hand held,
locked down device. Here are the costs of ownership, about $2000 for two
years:
[http://www.steamenginefinancialcoaching.com/2011/02/14/the-r...](http://www.steamenginefinancialcoaching.com/2011/02/14/the-
real-cost-of-ownership-iphone-4/)

------
iamandrus
The PC isn't dead. It never will be. Sure, it's changing roles in a
smartphone/tablet world, but it'll never "go away."

------
quadyeast
Why does Sophos block this site? This is the first time in 3 years that I have
seen this warning:

High Risk Website Blocked

    
    
        Location: futureoftheinternet.org/the-pc-is-dead-why-no-angry-nerds
        Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/ObfJS-CB has been found on this website.

------
chc
For any writers who want to talk about how the PC is dead: Try guesstimating
the number of people who will use a PC on a given day, then look at how many
people read your blog/newspaper/magazine in a given YEAR. (Hint: Not even
HuffPo will win this one.)

------
jl6
Not sure what it means for a particular technology to "die". A lot of "dead"
technologies are "alive" and kicking in the Enterprise world. Perhaps "undead"
is the word you're looking for...

------
cavilling_elite
Wow, I've been blinded. I have never equated what Apple is doing with the app-
store/"taxing" and the MS IE anti-trust case.

The empowerment of the censor. Scary words.

~~~
vacri
Apple's store is a standard retail cut, it's nothing like taxes. Do you
complain about the middleman cut with every other thing you puchase?

The monopoly issue is a different beast to the retail cut issue.

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vph
If you believe that in the future, people do accounting on the ipads, write
papers/programs on the cell phones, then the PC is dead.

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quellhorst
PCs are trucks for getting serious work done.

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libraryatnight
I'm too busy doing awesome things on my super awesome PC to be angry.

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georgieporgie
Alarmist fluff.

 _And every app sold for the iPhone would have 30 percent of its price (and
later, that of its “in-app purchases”) go to Apple. Famously proprietary
Microsoft never dared to extract a tax on every piece of software written by
others for Windows—perhaps because, in the absence of consistent Internet
access in the 1990s through which to manage purchases and licenses, there’d be
no realistic way to make it happen._

Microsoft never provided a complete distribution channel for software, either.

Complying with Apple requirements and limitations is annoying. However, the
consumer gets reasonably vetted software, and the developer gets a single
method of distribution.

What's the complaint, again?

~~~
dmethvin
iPhone owners are prohibited from going to any other store. It's a monopoly.

Sure, Mussolini was a dictator, but he made the trains run on time.

~~~
shaggyfrog
Sigh. Yes, of course, Apple is _just_ like a violent dictator who supported
genocide.

~~~
jsight
_Whoosh_

The point isn't that Apple is just like a violent dictator.

The point is that these statements are (mostly) irrelevent to each other. The
trains can run on time without a dictator.

The user can have a fine walled-garden experience but still retain the option
to (in a reasonably supported way) tear down the walls.

~~~
scott_s
I'm not sure that your last sentence is possible. That is, if a device
explicitly has an option to go outside of the garden, then I think most
consumers will _expect_ to still have full support.

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cq
The PC is dead to idiots. It's actually still quite awesome for those of us
who are producers, not consumers.

~~~
pclstyle
And what good are producers without consumers?

~~~
gujk
The consumers are still here, on iPads.

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contextfree
zero out of two - the PC isn't dead, and there are plenty of angry nerds.

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killnine
I am angry. really angry.

What is the solution to make the gatekeepers and the gatekeeper-supporters
obsolete?

I don't need them- why do you?

