
The PC’s Death Might Also Mean the Web’s Demise - grannyg00se
http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/death-pc-also-mean-end-web/
======
quaunaut
I couldn't possibly disagree more. I don't think apps are going anywhere
either, but I'd limit their days before I limit the web's.

* As the web gets faster and gains more capabilities, it will encompass everything apps currently consider their domain.

* By default it contains no gatekeepers, whereas apps on mobile devices primarily go through one central source. This carries with it safety, but also a higher barrier to entry: And generally, higher barrier to entry is something people are only willing to endure if given good reason to. Having the web replaced by apps doesn't leave _any_ room for that.

* The web is open and universal. This gives it infinitely more resilience than apps- if Apple were to fall into the sea, an entire ecosystem would be lost. As is, the web practically guarantees nothing can ever die permanently.

About the only weak point that the web has, is that it's more difficult to
effectively monetize one-time payments, but that's why everyone and their
sister is going to subscription models, or are working within an established
marketplace.

~~~
pjbrunet
Mobile has all kinds of problems:

1\. Battery life is a joke and that's not going to change.

2\. Tiny screen is still tiny. Big screen is more useful.

3\. Finger is not the best pointing device.

4\. 90% of mobile is games. The market has spoken, smartphone is a toy. Only
people that can't afford Internet access (kids & 3rd world) use their phone
for everything.

5\. Privacy/security is bad from so many angles. Still waiting for an Ubuntu
phone.

6\. Android is a Linux OS that blocks Linux applications--what BS. If you work
at Google, shame on all of you.

7\. Processing power is weak. As we're seeing with cryptocoins, don't forget
the value of raw computational power.

8\. Limiting keyboard. Pressing alt-function to get something simple like an
"=" sign is a huge waste of time.

~~~
icebraining
(1) 1.5h used to be good enough for a laptop, not that long ago.

(2) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-
Definition_Link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link)

(3) [http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Tablet-Mouse-
Android-910-0026...](http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Tablet-Mouse-
Android-910-002626/dp/B0058SRNZ4)

(6) No, it doesn't. I'm running ssh, git-annex and other Linux applications on
my Nexus 7.

I won't disagree about the privacy problems and poor processing power, but I
doubt those are real impediments for mobile devices to become the standard,
even if it means I'll keep my desktop.

(EDIT: Of course, the "death" of the PC is a silly idea. But I can see it
become a professional tool with a small hobbyist market, instead of the
consumer market we have now.)

~~~
pjbrunet
As far as ssh, I bet it was already installed on the device when you got it.
Can you uninstall ssh and install it again without rooting Android? If you
downloaded some ssh "app" from Play you probably just downloaded a cute
interface to the real ssh--which must place nice with the Google proprietary
JVM in order to work. Does the real JVM work on Android? Why not? There was a
presentation posted on HN recently from a Python developer explaining why he
can't code Python apps for Android. He explained it pretty well--you must use
Eclipse, you must use the Google Virtual Machine. If you do a few searches for
"code Android app" the only way is to download Eclipse and compile through the
Google Virtual Machine. I'd rather pluck out my eyeballs.

~~~
icebraining
No, ssh wasn't installed, yes, I can install it again without rooting Android,
it's a matter of copying the binary to a directory with executable permissions
and running it using at terminal.

 _f you downloaded some ssh "app" from Play you probably just downloaded a
cute interface to the real ssh--which must place nice with the Google
proprietary JVM in order to work._

I didn't need an SSH app, and no, Dalvik is not proprietary. Also, you don't
need to get apps from Play, you can just download them from the web or use
another repository.

 _Does the real JVM work on Android? Why not?_

For the same reason it doesn't work on Glendix - nobody ported it to that
userspace.

 _There was a presentation posted on HN recently from a Python developer
explaining why he can 't code Python apps for Android. He explained it pretty
well--you must use Eclipse, you must use the Google Virtual Machine. If you do
a few searches for "code Android app" the only way is to download Eclipse and
compile through the Google Virtual Machine._

No, you don't. You just need to cross-compile it to ARM, copy it and run:
[http://benno.id.au/blog/2007/11/13/android-native-
apps](http://benno.id.au/blog/2007/11/13/android-native-apps)

And this is nothing new: if you take notice, the post is from 2007.

Joey Hess writes git-annex in freaking Haskell, compiles the binary using
Cabal and I run it just fine on my non-rooted Nexus.

~~~
pjbrunet
That's fascinating, especially the C compiler, maybe I'll try it. But how to
get C applications into Play?

Still the "Allow UNSAFE Binaries?" setting is BS "WARNING: You are about to
open your device to hackers! Are you sure? Y / N." You were more patient than
I was. I downloaded F-Droid, researched the APK format, almost got an Android
emulator working in Debian, even looked at "PhoneGap" yuck. Call me crazy but
I prefer Debian over Android. Millions of people rooting their phone I think
proves my point--people are willing to risk destroying their device to get
root access. Maybe Android would be better if Google had not sold out to the
carriers? I don't know.

------
bhauer
As a consumer, I hope he is wrong. As a producer, I believe he is wrong.

As a consumer with a high-spec PC with multiple large monitors, a good phone,
and two tablets, I _strongly_ prefer consuming all content on my PC. It's
faster—by a massive margin, easier to navigate, easier to read, easier to
simultaneously consume two or more content items (video + text content, for
example), easier to pair consumption with production. It's better in every
single content consumption metric that matters to me. It has a lot of room for
improvement (see my previous rants about monitors), and I feel the lack of
innovation in desktop computing is precisely why it's flagging. But that has
more to deal with lack of innovation in desktop computing and less to do with
mobile versus desktop.

As a producer, there is no comparison. In a pinch, I can produce work product
on my Surface Pro or, in an even tighter pinch, on my Venue 8 Pro. But every
moment I do so, I will be longing to be back home in front of my desktop
computer. Unless of course I am on vacation in some beautiful environment.

Speaking of, I often feel there is a myopic view of computing that says mobile
is workable for work production because the people making the decisions are
those who _can be mobile_ —they travel extensively and don't produce a whole
lot. They may be creative, but they are not the creators. For the rest of us,
we spend a lot of time at home or at an office, two locations where we easily
can install high-performance desktop computing in one form or another.

Like others here, I don't care a whole lot precisely what is behind the
screens, keyboard, mouse; behind the projectors, hand gesture inputs, and so
on. I don't care if it's a PC in a big ATX case, a NUC or Brix, or a mobile
device that I dock on a charging plate with wireless HDMI. What matters is
that I can break free of its _mobileness_ , making it a device with a large
screen, a full-size keyboard, and a high-precision pointing device such as a
mouse. That is desktop computing, and it will evolve.

Yeah, for me, I hope he is wrong because his model of computing is one that
doesn't align with my preferences. Furthermore, in the computing model I long
for, all my mobile devices become subservient to a singular "computer" that
runs my applications. One of those applications will be a web browser.

~~~
coldtea
> _Speaking of, I often feel there is a myopic view of computing that says
> mobile is workable for work production because the people making the
> decisions are those who can be mobile—they travel extensively and don 't
> produce a whole lot. They may be creative, but they are not the creators.
> For the rest of us, we spend a lot of time at home or at an office, two
> locations where we easily can install high-performance desktop computing in
> one form or another._

What kind of "work" are you reffering to? I know top programmers,
photographers, musicians, video editors that work from their laptops, either
at home but also on the road. Work as in, deliver final results to customers.

If they, with their increased demands, can do that, who wouldn't, and what
exactly do you do?

~~~
Swizec
A laptop is a mightily different beast than a tablet or a phone. Laptops are
PC's. There's a full-sized keyboard, high precision pointing device, and even
a very decent screen.

None of that exists on things people think when they say "mobile".

I'm trying to say that a laptop fits every single specification parent poster
gave for a useful device that can break free of its mobileness. It's even got
magnificent _practical_ support for multi-tasking.

Yeah sure we can "multitask" on tablets and phones these days, but the UX is a
joke. Just trying to cross-reference two different websites, or a skype
conversation and a website, is downright painful on a true mobile device.

~~~
coldtea
Oh, I'm sorry, thought the comment was also meant against laptops (them being
mobile too and with the ending talking about having "high-performance desktop
computing" at home).

------
adventured
This will end up not being even remotely accurate. In fact, the web will
continue to expand, but at a slower rate. Homes and offices will continue to
have the big screen web experience, and this will actually become cheaper and
more awesome (simultaneously the traditional PC will decline in sales volume
while not decimating the home web browsing experience; the author doesn't
grasp the obvious).

Why? Simple: there's no way to properly distribute the truly vast array of
unrelated information the web contains, via mobile apps. Nobody is going to
want to download the thousands of mobile apps it would require to get
comprehensive access to all that information at their finger tips. I'm not a
huge fan of the mobile browsing experience, but I use Chrome constantly for
stray information tasks on my S4.

How? Smart phones will be powerful enough to begin treating them like true
home computers in the next five years. Some would argue they're already there.
We're obviously going to replace the home PC + big screen with a smart phone +
big screen, or equivalent. Android sticks and or a future more powerful
Chromecast equivalent, five years from now, will be like plugging a desktop
into your big screen. The same will be true for work monitors, eg. in a
personal office. A $50 stick for your big TV in the living room, and maybe one
for your work monitor, and optionally just use your smart phone. In this
formulation, nothing changes in the home with regards to the web except the
death of the PC as we know it today (powered by Windows), replaced by a better
solution.

~~~
nly
Hmm, I'm not sure about the "but we'd need thousands of apps!" argument. I
agree that a versatile set of markup, scripting and styling languages is
always going to be a valuable free-form, but that doesn't mean 95% of what
people use the Web for right now can't be rapidly reimplemented.

As an example: there are 100s of millions of blogs out there right now... but
most are just Wordpress with a theme. Develop a generic skin-able blog viewing
app, win people over, and you've suddenly knocked hundreds of millions of
blogs off the web and in to mobile sphere.

And what about shopping? One credit card handling interface would be a lot
more consistent and trustworthy than putting everything in to 100 different
sites that could be prone to phishing and all kinds of nasty CSRF and XSS
bugs.

I think moving a lot of things to mobile could really improve the user
experience, which is frankly awful in a lot of areas on the web.

~~~
adventured
I'm not downloading an app for all the following (off the top of my head):

game hints, movie times, stock quotes, business news, sports scores, sport
highlights, sports stats, weather information, famous quotes, game reviews,
gaming faqs, movie & actor information, tech news, hacker news, gadget
reviews, programming Q&A, movie reviews, concert info, concert reviews, music,
movies, books, book reviews, music reviews, music news, web hosting
discussion, home fix-it crap, countless shopping circumstances, diet & health
& exercise sites & discussion, drug information / supplement information &
research, cooking recipes, cooking videos, photos, political news, political
discussion, stray funny shit, local news, random blog posts on random blogs
with random engines behind them (I'm not downloading six or eight apps to
cover the blogosphere), and on and on and on and on and on

I'm not downloading apps for even the, let's say, 50 sites I visit each week
covering a couple dozen topics. With almost every one of those items, a
different site does it best (eg rotten tomatoes on reviews and imdb on raw
info).

Now that's just a tiny list, and just from my personal list, and it's not
comprehensive. There are hundreds of sites that contribute to that tiny list.
A few of those items are covered comprehensively (eg Pandora in streaming
music let's say or instagram), the rest aren't. And even in the case of
instagram, there are dozens of sites that deal in images or photos that I want
access to.

Today I wanted to know who makes rail tanker cars, and who might benefit from
their updating due to safety concerns, there's no app for that, the
information was on the web among a dozen very different sites, and that's
exactly where it'll remain. There are a thousand subjects I could spend the
next few hours rattling off as examples, from auto repair to home repair to
cooking to porn, that will not be even remotely covered by a single king app.

The web will live long and prosper, and a very select few categories will get
smashed by killer apps.

------
crazygringo
Is there a name for ridiculous fallacious arguments like this, the "x is on a
slight decline... so x or y is going to completely disappear"? It's just basic
errors in extrapolation, like these, just the inverse:

[http://xkcd.com/605/](http://xkcd.com/605/)

[http://xkcd.com/1007/](http://xkcd.com/1007/)

Go to any coffee shop, or any workplace, and you'll see a sea of laptops. The
PC isn't going anywhere. Neither is the web. The PC isn't even turning
"niche". Tablets have their place, maybe purchased devices will settle down
into a 50/50 or even 80/20 balance of tablets/laptops, but then it'll just
stay there. Tons of people's jobs, tasks, and hobbies depend on full-fledged
PC's -- _normal_ everyday people I'm talking about.

~~~
stinos
I recall this obvious reasoning error, because that indeed is what it is, is
listed here:
[http://www.logicalfallacies.info/](http://www.logicalfallacies.info/) (sorry
I don't have time at the moment to go through it, so I'll leave that as a
small exercise for you)

------
clarky07
The PC and the web aren't dying anytime soon. PC sales aren't going to 0. They
are simply at a point where they are good enough to last a bit longer than
they used to. With the replacement cycle getting lengthened, sales go down.
They will plateau though. Nobody is stopping using pc's altogether. At worst
people will be buying convertible laptop/tablets. iPad is awesome, but it
doesn't solve all problems.

The web, like pc's, is also not going to die anytime soon. Linking between
apps is far too complicated, and finding things without Google would suck. If
you know exactly what you are looking for, perhaps apps work for that. It is
the equivalent of type in direct traffic though. Otherwise, you are going to
google to find something specific, or twitter/facebook, to find something
random. Each of those things require the linking of the internet. You may or
may not use the built in browser much, but you will use the browser view in
those apps to consume the content that is out there.

~~~
mark-r
Short term you're probably right. Longer term I think tablet capabilities will
increase to a point that is unimaginable today. Meanwhile the contraction in
PC sales will absolutely stall the innovation that PCs will need to compete.

~~~
craigvn
At that point what is the difference between a PC and a tablet. There are
hybrid devices now, are they PC's or tablets? I think when people say PC they
often mean the brown box under a desk. I agree that they days of that are
limited as increasingly powerful machines can fit in a small box, you can
already hook up a Surface tablet to multiple monitors and keyboard and operate
just like a PC. As a developer I don't think we should even think about these
things, we just need to support them all popular platforms without getting
hangups over the names.

------
rwhitman
So the most powerful tool for the open sharing of information since the advent
of the printing press, that has transformed the way we live forever, will now
be discarded because people are using computers in the form of handheld
devices instead of Windows PCs? Is that what they are trying to say here?

I disagree.

~~~
waps
The game is called "which is cheaper", and mobile wins.

~~~
solnyshok
desktop is cheaper. for the price of one top smartphone, I can have a top
notch desktop that would serve me for 5 years, which cannot be said about
smartphones

~~~
daniel-cussen
Are you saying that, for ~$600, you can have a top-notch PC? Really? Maybe if
you're going for state-of-the-art of 2008.

Although given the slowing progress in PC's, that could well serve you 5
years...

~~~
solnyshok
Top notch smartphone is closer to 800$ in my book, and that gets me cpu ram
and ssd. No top gpu of course, but I was thinking about my needs - browsing,
media, webdev

~~~
daniel-cussen
Fair enough.

------
teh_klev
Maybe the real reason for the decline in PC sales is that we're keeping them
for longer, because the hardware has finally gotten well ahead of Microsoft or
Apple's best efforts to bleed every cycle out of the machines with more
"features"?

I'm still running the same Dell Precision T5400 workstation that I got back in
early 2008'ish. It's got 2 x Xeon E5450's (3Ghz 4 core), 12GB of RAM, an
nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS card and a pair of SSD's (these were a recent
upgrade). In fact I have two of these boxes, the other has a single processor.
The dual processor one I picked up for a song on ebay as a refurb. There's a
lot of good solid refurb/second hand kit to be had out there still under
warranty for peanuts. As a consumer, why buy new?

To this day it still runs Windows 7 (was Vista), VS2012, VirtualBox and a load
of bloaty stuff without feeling slow. Hell I can even run four Eve clients at
a decent quality across two 24" displays and the box doesn't feel sluggish,
though my video card could probably do with an upgrade.

I have a tablet as well but I still prefer (as do many of my non-techy
friends) doing serious work on a desktop.

~~~
SilkRoadie
PC sales are declining because more people are realising that they do not need
one. They can do most things - surf web, consume content - more comfortably on
a tablet which is a fraction of the cost of a decent computer.

Your point also holds true, PC owners are upgrading less often also.

As for the web dying it depends on your circle I guess. My partner doesn't
have a smart phone.. she does have an iPad but doesn't make use of the App
Store and instead uses the camera and Safari daily. My parents have smart
phones and tablets but hardly use apps. Instead relying on browsers and their
laptop do any real work. I can only think of one or two friends who use apps
out side of standard mail, navigation, twitter and facebook.

I think a lot of tech people are stuck in a bubble, surrounded by other tech
savvy people who are ultra dependant on technology and app's in particular
which leads to sweeping statements like "the web is dying." I see little
evidence to support such an idea at the moment.

~~~
teh_klev
"I think a lot of tech people are stuck in a bubble, surrounded by other tech
savvy people who are ultra dependant on technology and app's in particular
which leads to sweeping statements like "the web is dying." I see little
evidence to support such an idea at the moment."

Totally agree with this (from the perspective of a web hoster), I think
there's a few folks who need to get out of "the valley" a bit more.

------
glimmung
This is the most witless piece I've read on Wired for a long time. The web is
the lowest common denominator of content delivery, and is the foundation of
many apps and most content - whether the content is delivered to a browser or
an app.

The embedded tweet that says: "twitter will be for content. The web is going
away because laptops and browsers are." is hilarious. Is all our content going
to be in 140 character chunks? If not, in the absence of the web, how will a
tweet link to content? That very tweet nicely illustrates the uselessness of a
tweet to say anything of substance or with precision.

------
alan_cx
I see PC sales, as they have been, as a sort of blip bubble, which happened
while proper simple consumer devices were developed. Now we have such devices,
PCs are less and less necessary for day to day uses. So, as time goes on the
PC sales should shrink back to the people that actually need them. But then
the problem there is that PCs would become more expensive since the volumes go
down massively.

My experience has been like that. 20 (these number are very guessed) years
ago, no one cared. 15 years ago people began to get interested. 10 years ago,
everyone in my house had to have a PC. Now, most of us use tablets or phones,
but we still have 2 PCs that get used when tablets are not appropriate. I
personally use a PC 95% of the time. One of my kids who is a heavy gamer uses
his PC 99% of the time. The rest of the house, however, use tablets 95% of the
time. All those old PC are now gone. (Much better round the house now, less
desk space and wire required. Mrs Me is now much happier!! Also, less power
consumed. Less noise, less heat.)

The bit that bothers me is that back when all my kids used PCs, they nosed
around the machine and discovered things like programming. Using a tablet is
so focused, that natural discovery is lost. The tablet is just a thing they to
use to consume. Another problem is that if a tablet user asks about how to
program, they have to leave the tablet that they are used to and have to sit
at this big PC box thing, which is for them a whole mental shift, and is there
for possibly off putting.

But overall it seems to me that PC sales will and should decline in favour of
tablets because PCs are OTT for the task of consuming the internet. Game wise,
consoles are over all easier to use.

Using a PC is or was like using an aircraft carrier instead of a speed boat,
until someone invented the speed boat. Now most people buy speed boats, and
the navy can have their carriers back!!!!

------
belluchan
Question for anyone really: how many different websites did you visit today,
and how many different apps did you use today? Is that number even remotely
equal? Do you think you'd ever want as many as the former as apps installed on
your phone?

~~~
ericd
Probably 30 websites and 1 app, which happens to have a very good web version
(Google Maps).

------
Zigurd
PCs and non-general-purpose computing are headed for a divorce, and rightly
so.

PCs started as general-purpose computing for people who needed general-purpose
computing. Now, 90%+ of PC users, if asked if they need general-purpose
computing will go "Uh. Sure. Whatever."

The population of the open Web, with open standards, will shrink alongside the
population of people who actually need a Personal Computer under their total
and complete control.

90% of people want a game, a pop song, and a movie. And the publishers of
those products don't want them to steal their products. Some of that 90% will
break in the direction of open culture, on an open Web. But not most of them.

------
andrewhillman
I believe with the rapid advancements in mobile frameworks and responsive
design the desktop and mobile web will converge. Not every startup needs a
native mobile app.

If you believe the desktop web is dead... Throw out all your desktops/ laptops
and give everyone in your company iPads and see how productive your company
is. It won't be pretty.

------
banachtarski
This is a silly deduction from flawed assumptions. PC sales don't necessarily
correlate to PC usage! I don't know a single person that doesn't use a PC from
day to day, including my nontechnical friends.

------
AmVess
They still sell 300+ MM of the things globally; PC's aren't going anywhere.
The market will shrink to allow room for other players (tablets, etc), but it
will never die off.

I've been reading about the death of the PC since the early 90's...and I'm
still waiting for them to go Tango Uniform.

I'm not going to hold my breath.

------
snowwrestler
It's hard to think of an app that is more device-centric than Dropbox, which
exists solely to sync files between devices. And yet, it has a web interface.

Think of the most popular mobile apps. Do they have a web interface? Chances
are, unless it is a game, the answer is probably yes. Facebook, Gmail,
Instagram, Twitter, Google Maps, Pandora, YouTube, etc.

The Web is not going away. It's just becoming the default, lowest-common-
denominator channel.

------
aplummer
Apps will kill the web exactly like T.V killed radio and cinemas.

------
aufreak3
This seems to be a really important question out there and I'm somewhat scared
by the silence on HN about this. The silence makes me think that folks are
going "oh shit!" with frozen fingers.

It does looks like the incentives are aligned in the direction laid out in the
article. Companies can better control their user experience on mobile through
uncrawlable apps. You hear "mobile first" a lot these days. These things are
with users for longer than desktops/laptops. Anyone can carve out a section of
the web where content gets created, but cannot be linked to.

The two gaps I see are -

a) mobile devices are good for _consumption_, but are not yet on par with
*tops for _creation_, and

b) reputation systems on the internet (currently) require linking, and there's
nothing to replace that in the mobile world.

------
nly
The Web frankly just isn't evolving as quickly as mobile app platforms. HTML5
feels like ancient history, despite not even becoming a final recommendation
yet and, imho, the rise of the gigantic javascript frameworks just shows the
existing platform is sorely lacking... all it really demonstrates is the power
of having a client you can push code to easily.

Where's my standard, secure browser UI and API for secure payments using my
credit card? We've been using the web to shop for 20 years and it still sucks.

Where's decent standard authentication worthy of this millennium, let alone
this decade?

Why don't we yet have date picker and other form widgets that actually work
across browsers?

Why are bespoke markup languages like MathML and SVG actually failing or
seeing less and less adoption?

~~~
teleclimber
When things are new they tend to evolve very fast. It's normal. The web is
evolving nicely for something that's 20+ years old.

By the way why do we need a "standard UI" for taking credit cards? Is there a
single open platform out there that has a "Standard UI" for making payments?

~~~
spo81rty
I prefer to use PayPal on websites that accept it so I don't have to go find
my wallet. I buy stuff on Amazon instead of other sites because it already has
all my info and I don't have to type it. Making processing payments as simple
as possible helps streamline them and make them easier on the consumer.

------
pan69
Name me one app hat doesn't use HTTP.

The web is more than websites. Personally I believe apps will be long gone
before the web will be. It's already starting with the gazillion of apps you
need to install these days with most of them that should just have been
websites.

------
wmeredith
This seems like a non-argument. Most apps are used to access the web in some
manner. It's like saying cars will kill roads.

~~~
johnwalker
They're distinguishing between the web (DOM, browser space) and the internet.
So the claim isn't that services will go away, it's that people will
increasingly write apps instead of HTML.

~~~
wmeredith
Yeah, that sort of makes sense. But if that's the angle then web browsers are
just another app accessing the internet. I don't think any of it is going
anywhere.

------
ilaksh
I think PCs sales are going to continue to go way down, if you are not
including laptops as PCs. Can't imagine people will stop buying laptops
anytime soon. I don't really know about the web.

Its better to have a simple API for standard things that can work across
platforms without coding multiple versions of the same application. We
basically have that now in the web platform.

Its also better to be able to quickly load an application on demand. Again, we
have that with the web platform.

Its better to have a straightforward way to look up information (Google, on
the web) and to link between information and applications (the web).

What the web platform is missing is native performance and some (not all)
native mobile capabilities like easy payments and application access. Its also
missing some things like the security model of mobile applications.

The internet is an open system, but it is still using a centralizing client-
server model.

What we need is something like the web/internet that is not server-based but
data-oriented, peer to peer, and encrypted. Not centralized.

I believe that there are a number of technologies that could come together to
merge all of the features we want into a new platform.

Whether we will actually end up with this idealized platform I don't know. I
wouldn't assume that will happen. If I had resources I could try to push
things in that direction.

------
increment_i
Keith Rabois certainly seems to think so.

The mainstream, browser-based web has been around for some 20 years now. I
like the web, I use it everyday so I want to think it will last forever. But I
wonder, were people saying the same things about BBS'es and AOL-like portals,
or whatever came before them? I don't really know, as I was so young when
these things were happening. All things must pass, right?

~~~
__pThrow
[http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net-
Pred...](http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net-
Predicted-.html)

Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!: prov.

[Usenet] Since Usenet first got off the ground in 1980--81, it has grown
exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On the other hand,
most people feel the signal-to-noise ratio of Usenet has dropped steadily.
These trends led, as far back as mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent
collapse (or death) of the net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough
of these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase
“Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!” has become a running joke, hauled out
any time someone grumbles about the S/N ratio or the huge and steadily
increasing volume, or the possible loss of a key node or link, or the
potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses post copyrighted material, etc., etc.,
etc.

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grey-area
The web is not tied in any way to the desktop PC, in fact the rise of mobile
is partly down to the ease with which people could switch to a new device and
still have access to all their data, _via the web_. All Apple had to add to
the iPhone to make it incredibly useful was a usable web browser, and the same
will be true of our watches in 2018, paper thin news readers in 2020, or
phones in 2030.

Mobile binaries written to a specific binary API will have a hard time
competing with the web, because of its radical simplicity and
backwards/forwards compatibility. Of course the web will change, but I don't
think it has much to fear from binary applications (desktop or mobile) - we've
been down that road before, and we know where it leads.

Platform independence is the web's most important feature, and as mobile
ecosystems proliferate then consolidate, and hardware improves performance, I
think we'll see consumers and producers reevaluating their choice to stay
locked in to a world overseen by one corporate vendor.

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jbb555
The PC isn't dead. And it's not dying. Will people stop repeating that.

Sales have reduced because - 1) Some tasks that never needed a PC people can
do on other devices now. 2) People don't need to buy a new one every 18 months
any more.

It's SALES of new PC that's have dropped, not the PC is dying. People still
use their PCs... They just keep them for longer.

Ugh

------
pyalot2
Rampant humbug again from Wired (a web puplication, written and editorialized
on personal computers).

Even if you discount the horrible fragmentation in mobile devices, and the
difficulty this creates for developers to deploy apps, any apps, there still
remains the sheer growth of the web.

"The Web", what is that? A simple answer is it's: The internet + a browswer.
So is the internet going to die? Nope, that's growing every year, and a
majority of the worlds population hasn't gotten in on it yet. Are browsers
dying? Nope, any device imaginable these days comes with a browser. It's
become unthinkable to make a device without a browser.

So if neither of those is dying, how come the web should be dying? Because
Wired, that's why. It doesn't have to make sense, just has to be
sensationalist enough to drive more web-views, how ironic, really, wired.

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Roboprog
Well, I certainly hope that future tablets have general purpose docking
stations and enough capabilities to drive MS Windows forever from the home. I
can do quite a bit on my Nexus 7 with a bluetooth keyboard already, but it
needs a way to set it on a table and connect (with or without wires) to a
larger monitor and other peripherals when I'm home. And it needs 200 to 300 GB
storage instead of 32 GB.

How having an OS that doesn't drain the life out of low wattage CPUs will kill
the web I'm not sure. Mac and Windows have apps, but we still use the browser
for a lot of things on those. (Linux sort of has apps)

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mathattack
There is a sense that more of something means less of something else. Perhaps
this is true in terms of market share, but it doesn't happen to be true in
devices.

TVs didn't kill talk radio, though radio may have shrunk.

The PC didn't kill TV, though TV may have been augmented, and perhaps shrunk.

Mobiles didn't kill PCs, though PC use may have shrunk.

This idea that the web will be completely replaced by Facebook and mobile apps
is crazy. It's just another layer in a multi-technology world.

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graycat
Yes, the media people need a 'story'.

Yup, media people whose first and only personal contact with computing was a
smart phone can buy into the idea that "The PC’s Death".

That's about as likely as a Tesla car putting SUVs, pickup trucks, delivery
vans, 18 wheel trucks, and freight trains out of business.

A smart phone can't replace my PC, not nearly.

Let's see: 'Wired' is owned by Conde-Nast which also publishes, what, women's
fashion magazines? Figures!

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venomsnake
Why everybody is giving PC shipments as arguments FFS? Give total commissioned
PCs in use that connected and using internet. Total bandwidth consumed by PC.
It is much more important metric for the health of the PC ecosystem (and not
market).

A PC bought now could last a decade for web browsing. When the number of
decommissioned PCs start outpacing the total shipments - then it is time to
worry.

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blueskin_
I'll believe it when I see it.

Phones and glorified browsers will only ever be useful as dumb terminals (and
the latter becomes a brick when away from a connection). Even if it goes back
to the 90s where many people don't own a (real) computer, computers will still
exist as many things aren't possible to do without one.

------
johnwalker
I actually agree with this article. It's a lot more trouble to wait for the
web to standardize than it is to support a couple different versions of an
app, which usually has potential to offer a better user experience anyway.
(More developer jobs, too!) This really shouldn't be troubling to anyone.

~~~
ericd
People who make things don't want to have to make them multiple times. That
was one of the main reasons that devs hated IE6 - you essentially had to redo
or make a shadow version of whatever you'd already done to get it to work for
everyone.

------
__pThrow
I think the PC's Death in the marketplace is due to the PC being given over to
more and more web apps and the power of current PCs being nowhere near the
bottleneck it once was.

When there are compelling apps and net bandwidth that requires higher
performing PCs, we'll see PC sales trend upwards again.

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jiggy2011
So we're going to stop publishing to the web and squeeze all of our content
into 140 char tweets? Right.

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ams6110
One reason that at least partly explains the decline in new PC shipments is
that nowadays, a three or four year old (or even older) PC is still plenty
good enough for what most people do with it. My newest computer at home is a
mid-2007 iMac and it's absolutely fine for everything I do.

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fulafel
This article is about Windows!

Only Windows laptop sales have declined, Apple had a big increase. Linux
numbers aren't reported but wouldn't be representative anyway because it's
usually forcibly bundled.

Nobody is going to miss desktop Windows. Except your corporate IT department,
and maybe gamers.

~~~
dualogy
> Except your corporate IT department, and maybe gamers

Ah, just the two major _mass-markets par excellence_ then..

~~~
fulafel
Yeah, from hardware trade POV but not from the consensual user base point of
view.

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paul9290
PCs probably will go the way of dodo bird but not the web.

Nowadays you can built cross compatible mobile and desktop web apps. Ones that
are cutting edge.

We just released our streaming web app and launched it on iOS and any device
running Chrome.

Further as an interactive/audience participation app it's much easier to get
people to join/use your app via a URL then asking them to download an app.
Here's some recent press if interested
[http://bit.ly/1l6QCoH](http://bit.ly/1l6QCoH).

Anyway this article's tone is a bit over the top.

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wooptoo
This is inflamatory and wrong on so many levels. Don't forget that the web is
the network platform on which apps are built upon.

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Executor
Curious - How do you get the ability to downvote articles?

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QuantumGood
Watch what the kids do to predict the future of the web.

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return0
The web is searchable. Apps are not. Case closed.

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abhi3188
let the html5 vs native debate start in 3..2..1..

