
Intel proves once and for all that PCs are not coming back - angersock
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/09/18/intel-proves-pcs-coming-back/
======
breckinloggins
It's a rant, so I'm not going to critique this post _too_ much, but I'd like
to call this out:

    
    
        [...] Intel is desperately trying to figure out what to
        do to combat the phones and tablets that are eating them
        alive from the ankles up. It is pretty obvious that the
        company both doesn’t understand what the problem is and 
        is actively shutting out all voices that explain it
        to them.
    

I don't think this is true. Intel certainly understands the market and where
it's headed. However they are committed to x86/64\. What Intel is doing in my
view is taking a series of huge but calculated risks. They seem to be betting
that:

\- Laptops will stick around and have Intel Inside for quite a while. The
market may be boring, but it will be there for _years_. Corporate America
helps.

\- Servers won't be switching to ARM any time soon (I'd argue this is the
riskiest bet).

\- The desktop and enthusiast/gamer PC market will be around for a while, and
also won't be switching to ARM any time soon.

So all of these "shoe-ins" buy them time, and I believe they think that in
time they can pull off the biggest risk of all:

\- Intel is betting that the biggest differentiating factor is and will be
performance per watt. They are willing to gamble that they will eventually
eclipse ARM cores in this area. In their view, if they have an x86/64 core
that trounces competing ARM architectures in ppw then phone, tablet, and set
top manufacturers won't have a problem putting those chips in their devices.

Granted, I'm not saying I think Intel is 100% correct or that they'll succeed
with their long term bets; I just don't think they are as clueless as this
rant makes them out to be.

No doubt about it, though, UltraBooks DO suck.

EDIT: I'm going to revise my statement on UltraBooks. Not all of them suck. In
particular, the Lenovo Yoga is fantastic.

~~~
nightski
What makes them suck so much? The Lenovo Yoga is a damn fine device if you ask
me.

~~~
breckinloggins
I actually agree. My roommate bought one and I'm lusting after it. But I would
count Lenovo as the exception rather than the rule, here.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I'm strongly considering getting the new high res Yoga.

But even Lenovo has a bad reputation compared to the fruit company, I mean,
they do ok for value, but the hardware can be flaky.

~~~
knappe
Their customer services sucks. When I bought my last Thinkpad, I had to buy it
_3_ times, over the course of two weeks before they finally built it and wait
a month to have it shipped once the order actually went through. It was a
solid machine (except for the speakers and screen), but I'll never buy another
device from them. Instead, I'm typing this up on a fruit company device.

~~~
spongle
I've not had any problems myself buying new machines for my company but
personally I tend to buy 2-3 year old ThinkPads off a eBay. They are less than
20% of the retail cost and are in perfect condition always.

I'm typing this on a T400 Core 2 2.4 Duo, Radeon HD, 8GB RAM, 1440x900 screen,
9-cell unit with 3G card built in and windows 7 x64 pro license sticker
purchased in absolutely perfect unused condition for £145 (!). The battery had
done charge 11 cycles to give you an idea. Chucked a Samsung 840 Pro in it for
£102 and it's a perfect machine.

I have 2 spare ones (T61's) lying around as well so I always have a spare
handy.

This puts me in a better position than a new Lenovo or fruit purchaser.

I'm a firm believer of letting someone else pay for the immediate depreciation
in value! :)

~~~
Ecio78
Uhm I searched on ebay and found it for 199€ (+49€ for 8GB and +29€ for UMTS
so a bit more). The seller seems to have many of them, unfortunately it's in
Germany (i'm in Europe too but I want a QWERTY keyboard)

~~~
spongle
You have to wait for them to turn up patiently. They do every month or so,
usually when some corporation has a stock clear out.

------
zedpm
>...change tact

Ugh. Change tack[1], which is a sailing reference[2]. As for the actual
content, I feel this analysis lacks nuance. Mobile is booming, of course, but
the PC is not dead, nor will it be dead five years from now. There are a
hundred use cases for which a desktop or laptop is the only practical
solution. Fantasize all you want about businesses abandoning real machines for
iPads; reality begs to differ.

[1]
[http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/change+tack](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/change+tack)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tack_(sailing)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tack_\(sailing\))

~~~
jacques_chester
"Change tack" is like "would of" \-- people haven't made the connection
between the written and the spoken word. Then you add almost-homonyms and it
gets worse. I am often amused to find people "flaunting the law".

~~~
MaysonL
"would have", no?

~~~
lotsofcows
I think he meant "change tact" is like "would of".

~~~
axefrog
Until general literacy improves, we're just going to have to make due with
whatever people want to post.

~~~
lotsofcows
Eye halve a spelling chequer...

------
taspeotis
> During this time Windows 8 came out and PC sales dropped 15% in the first
> full quarter after launch.

I don't think it's all Windows 8's fault. The average desktop PC is just too
powerful.

I've been using Visual Studio 2010/2012/2013 with an i3 and an SSD for years
now and I rarely run against any sort of performance bottleneck.

To compare what sort of performance requirements I have: in the project that I
work on I have a solution with 28 projects that takes about 50 seconds to
build from a clean build. Visual Studio takes care of incrementally building
the projects during normal development, so usually I'm looking at ~5 seconds
to build then launch the debugger.

I have absolutely no need to upgrade. No need = no sale.

I'm using Windows 8 as my operating system. It takes one step forward and one
step backwards. I'm looking forward to Windows 8.1 but there's nothing so
seriously wrong with Windows 8 that I _need_ 8.1.

When I'm sitting in front of my PC and using Visual Studio, I'm not thinking
"I wish this was actually a docked tablet". I have an iPad for mobility.

PC sales are probably undergoing a bit of a course correction as people who
are satisfied with tablets buy tablets instead of PCs. But I suspect PCs will
be around for a long time to come and, until that day, there's nothing for
them to "[come] back" from.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Same here. 4 years ago I bought 2 desktops, one for work and one for home. I
quit contracting and got employed, so both sit in my office at home now. I
still use them, develop on them, do everything else on them and they are fine.
I wont' be buying a new desktop for at least another year if then. And I
CERTAINLY won't be 'upgrading' to win8.

~~~
jyrkesh
I would really reconsider your upgrading decision. It's easy to get past the
start screen-ness or spend 5 minutes setting up a 3rd party taskbar and making
sure opening files (e.g. jpg, pdf) default to the "non-Metro" applications.
After that, you'll have an OS that is functionally identical to Windows 7 with
better boot times (non-fresh upgrade install from 7 to 8 HALVED my boot time),
an even more stable kernel (I've literally NEVER had a BSOD since upgrading
from 7), and better performance.

The FUD surrounding Win8 is kind of crazy. You want to know the easiest,
fastest way to launch an application? Hit Windows key, type application name.
Same on Win7, same on Win8...hell, it's the same on Ubuntu.

~~~
julianz
OTOH, you want to know the easiest, fastest way to relaunch a recently used
document? You can't, because they got rid of that.

~~~
ivoflipse
Through the jump list of the application you opened that document in recently?
Obviously this requires you to know both what you opened it in and have it
pinned to your taskbar, but I really like that feature for reopening files I
recently closed on a per app basis.

~~~
taloft
Ah jump lists. I used Win7 since it came out and never found those. Only
discovered them since I've been on Win8 through some random mention and a
video. They aren't intuitive or very we'll known. People at work now see me
use them and every time are surprised and ask me how I did that.

------
pmelendez
Oh well... This rant has little sense and a lot of angriness. The phrase "The
PC is over and PC sucks" appears several times with little explanation other
than citing the grow of other markets. The true is there is no replacement for
the PC and it doesn't seem to have a serious replacement any time soon.

People can't make movies, edit images properly, use a compiler, debug, use a
nontrivial spreadsheet,etc in phones or tablets. Until that doesn't change the
desktop PC won't die. They might not been as popular as before nor have the
same upgrade cycle as before, they might had lost relevance as a growing
market, but they are far from dead.

~~~
ekianjo
Well, that's a very popular position taken recently in the media. "the PC is
dying... Tablets will replace everything we know... look, the sales are going
up, it means it's a zero sum game and PC share will go down to ZERO!".

As you mentioned the future is fragmentation, certainly not a monolithic
tablet-only future. There are still too many incentives to keep using PCs for
many, many usages.

~~~
everyone
Also for me this is all very familiar. As a pc gamer for _years_ , maybe a
decade! I have been hearing about how pc gaming is dying or dead. All the
while playing the best games which are usually not released on consoles with
the best graphics and performance + controls and setup that I want.

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah, and playing on Full HD since a while, while all the consoles out there
rely on crappy upscaling to fake Full HD. It's been a while I did not take my
Xbox360 or PS3 out. And I'm far from being convinced by the PS4 and XboxOne
even after playing with them in the last week.

------
bhauer
My own thoughts on the negligence and indolence of the PC industry are full of
rage. But this guy makes my rants seem a little tame. I love it!

I believe I have an unpopular opinion about desktop PCs. The conventional
thinking is that desktop computing is boring because a modern PC does
everything it is intended to do just fine. That may be true, but the problem
is that the industry is not interested in establishing _new usage patterns_
—new things the PC _should do_.

At the end of last year, I started a series of rants about how modern
technology sucks [1] with particular emphasis on the frustrating stagnation of
desktop computing and the bothersome way every new portable computing device
wants to be a center of attention.

I was pleasantly surprised that the author of the linked article hits the
target squarely when he lists off what PCs need. The first item: better
displays. He may be speaking more about laptops (and they are deserving of the
shame), but allow me to rant a bit about my preferred computing
medium—desktops.

The stagnation of desktop displays is, and has been for a decade, the crucial
failure of desktop computing. Display stagnation is the limitation that allows
all other limitations to be tolerated. It is the barrier that leads the
overwhelming majority of users (and even pundits!) who tolerate mediocrity to
declare everything else—from processors, to memory and GPUs—as "good enough."
I absolutely seethe when I hear any technology declared good enough (at least
without a very compelling argument).

Desktop displays, and by extension, desktop computing is so far from good
enough that it _should_ be self-evident to anyone who observes users
interacting with tablets or mobile phones(!) while seated at a desktop PC.
Everything that is wrong with modern computing can be summarized in that
single all too common scene:

1\. Desktop displays are not pleasant to look at. They are too small. They are
too dark. They are too low-fidelity. And they often have annoying bezels down
the middle of your view because we routinely compensate for their mediocrity
by using more of them, side-by-side.

2\. The performance of desktop computers is neglected because "how hard is it
to run a browser and Microsoft Office?" This leads to lethargy in updating
desktop PCs, both by IT and by users ("I don't want the hassle"). In 2013, I
suspect many corporate PCs in fact _feel_ slower than a modern tablet or even
mobile phone.

3\. Desktop operating systems are actively attempting to move away from (or at
least marginalize) their strong suits of personal applications and input
devices tailored for precision and all-day usage.

4\. Desktop computers--and more accurately personal home networks--have lost
their role as the central computing hub for individuals by a misguided means
of gaining application omnipresence: what I call "the plain cloud." This is
because none in the desktop industry (Microsoft most notably) are working to
make personal networks appreciably manageable by laypeople.

5\. Mobile phones and tablets are often free of IT shackles and therefore
enjoy more R&D (more money to be made).

Desktop displays stopped moving forward in capability in 2001, and in large
part regressed (as the article points out) since then. Had they continued to
move forward--had the living room's poisonous moniker of "HD" spared computer
monitors its wrath--I believe we would have breathtaking desktop displays by
now. In that alternate universe, my desktop is equipped with a 50+" display
with at least 12,000 horizontal pixels.

Desktop computing needs to leverage immersion (without nausea; VR goggles need
not apply, yet). Large form-factor super-high-definition displays would bring
all manner of new technology needs with them:

1\. Gesture controls.

2\. Ultra high-bandwidth wired networking (win for wired network folks) to
move super high definition files.

3\. Ultra high-capacity storage.

4\. Extremely fast processors and GPUs to deal with a much greater visual
pipeline.

Such a computing environment is a trojan horse for today's tablets: it turns
tablets into subservient devices as seen in science fiction films such as
Avatar. The tablet is just a _view_ on your application, allowing you to take
your work away from the main work space briefly until you return. I say trojan
horse, but that's not quite right because I actually _want_ this subservient
kind of tablet very much. I _do not_ want a tablet that is a first-class
computing device in its own right (even less do I want a phone to be a first-
class computing device). I only want one first-class computing device in my
life, running singular instances of applications for me and me only, and I
want all my devices to be subservient to that singular application host.

For the time being, that should be the desktop PC. In the long haul, it could
be any application host (a local compute server, a compute server I lease from
someone else, or maybe even a portable device as envisioned by Ubuntu's
phone). But for now, the desktop should re-assert its rightful role as a chief
computing environment, making all other devices mobile views.

[1] [http://tiamat.tsotech.com/technology-
sucks](http://tiamat.tsotech.com/technology-sucks)

~~~
sillysaurus2
One thing desktop displays desperately need is a way for each pixel to become
brighter than its surrounding pixels at will. A lot brighter. Like, 50x
brighter.

Dynamic brightness range is a necessary step for writing a 3D renderer that
makes you feel like you're looking out a window. 256 levels of brightness
aren't nearly enough.

We don't need the ability to specify that a pixel should be brightness level
64823 vs 64824. It doesn't need to be that fine-grained. What we need is the
ability to overdrive the brightness of specific pixels. That way sunlight
filtering through tree leaves will actually give the impression of sunlight
filtering through tree leaves.

~~~
bhauer
That is a great point. I would really love that.

Tangentially related, it reminds me that OLED has utterly failed to become a
thing on the desktop, and it breaks my heart. It was a decade ago when I read
that OLED was the next hot thing and it would bring unprecedented contrast and
brightness to displays.

Today, I like OLED mobile phone displays.

But my Dell U3014s are disappointing crystal-over-backlight garbage. Not only
that but expensive crystal-over-backlight garbage.

~~~
Mikeb85
OLED will come. It's just now finding it's way into TVs, and still costs a
fortune... When you think about it, a 5" OLED screen comes in a 700 dollar
phone, most PCs cost that. Not many people would be willing to pay 2000 for a
laptop with an OLED screen. Some people maybe, I know I would, but most
wouldn't.

I think in 2-3 years you'll see Samsung Chromebooks and Ultrabooks with OLED
screens...

------
everyone
I dont get this article. Seems to be nothing but hearsay and opinion with no
references to facts.

Also point of author just seems nonsensical to me. I have a big-ass powerful
pc and I love it! Use it for gaming, game development, 3d modelling, music
making. I built it myself from components, set up OS and software exactly the
way I want with win7 and Crunchbang (linux). No other device would be able to
do exactly what I want like this. Maybe _most_ people dont want that but most
people have never been technically minded, if theyre happier with tablets then
thats fine.

~~~
dgrant
Just want to validate this... I feel the same way. PCs are faster than they've
ever been and cheaper than they've ever been. I just bought a custom smoking
fast computer for my parents in an awesome tiny mini-ITX case with a fast SSD
drive and an awesome i5 Ivy processor (I think 3570k?). Including monitor it
was < $1000. I priced out even cheaper PCs with cheaper, larger cases for
$300. I also have a big-ass powerful PC and I love it.

------
Bahamut
I'm on the complete opposite boat - I think the laptop experience generally
sucks still. Battery life only recently got improved to a great point in the
past few years, but performance is still generally lacking.

Meanwhile a great desktop lasts longer than ever, is cheaper than ever, and
does everything extremely fast. I have a 5 year old desktop that outperforms a
lot of laptops out there, including my new Macbook Air & my work laptop (not
even a month old), and that desktop pales compared to my half year old desktop
(which costs maybe $200 more than the 13" cheapest Macbook Air).

I think part of the shift in the market is due to the great state desktops
have become as long lasting devices (& thus declining sales), and some of the
improvements on more mobile devices - I'm highly skeptical of any call that
the desktop is going away anytime soon though, because the mobile experience
is still seriously lacking in the sweet spot of performance, battery life,
weight, and price.

------
mmohsenazimi
Steve Jobs said PCs are trucks of our time. Companies make trucks, some people
use trucks but not everyone needs a truck.

I hope this trend do not lead to slowness in PC innovation.

~~~
melling
What PC innovation? PC's are the same trash can size devices they were two
decades ago. They just get a little faster every couple of years.

Innovation will be driven by mobile (both phones and tablets). It requires a
lot more innovation to build these smaller devices that operate all day on a
battery.

~~~
ekianjo
> Innovation will be driven by mobile

That's only true because mobile started from scratch a few years ago. You just
see innovation because this market (for "smartphones and tablets") barely
existed 6 years ago. Obviously this will tone down very fast as performances
stop increasing significantly. You see that the latest ARM chips are only
marginally more powerful than the previous ones in terms of operations/Watts.

So, they will, also, get only "a little faster every couple of years." Do not
kid yourself.

------
TheLegace
I think people are really underestimating where things like perception
computing are going. Something Intel is also invested in.

But maybe people start looking at which jobs require using a computer to get
essential work done vs. not needing one and therefore not using it. If people
really think that entire generations of people are not going to need computers
to do work are seriously mistaken, especially in BRIC/developing countries. I
don't think the question really is are PC dying, the question should what the
hell can I do with the ~$1000 machine other than look at cat pictures. We can
thank Microsoft mostly for that. Seriously I think people really underestimate
how turned off the entire industry is from Windows 8, especially when they
need to upgrade the only reasonable choice is Apple.

Remember Apple is the only company that is actually increasing sales to
laptops(MBA models). Clearly there is a market it's just not being served by
current parties.

~~~
justincormack
What sorts of jobs do you think these people will have then? If you aren't
using a computer your job can be replaced by one...

------
gph
>The basic PC experience sucks

As opposed to what... tablets? Or are you suggesting we leap forward to
Computer Terminals right out of the Hitchhiker's Guide.

I couldn't read much further than that. Really bad article.

~~~
epochwolf
Apple products perhaps?

The computers people currently own?

~~~
lelandbatey
Wait, what? I don't feel the Apple experience is a lot better than the PC one,
and I say that as someone who fully bought into the dream (I used a MBP as my
main machine for 2 years, and an iMac as a desktop for that same two years).
After those two years where up, I totally went back to PC, built my own
desktop, bought a nice Lenovo laptop and called it a day.

However, I guess I really don't understand why everyone's getting so uptight
about. What we're seeing is not everyone in the world suddenly making a change
to mobile for no discernible reason. It's not as though suddenly the winds
changed and now PC is mysteriously dying.

No, what happened is what always happens: someone made a better tool for the
mass market to do what they want to do, which is to consume content and be
entertained. Magic wireless Netflix screens that fit in their pockets are just
better at that than PC's are _and there 's nothing wrong with that._ It's
evolution, and even as a PC enthusiast and power user, I'm more than glad to
see people better able to do what they enjoy.

That's not to say I'll be giving up my hand picked keyboard, large screen, and
heavy tower, but I'm not to worried. There's always going to be money in
serving the needs of people who get work done on computers, even if it's not
quite as much money as it used to be.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
> I don't feel the Apple experience is a lot better than the PC one

That comes across like you do think it _is_ better, if maybe not by a lot. But
then you write the following:

> I totally went back to PC, built my own desktop, bought a nice Lenovo laptop
> and called it a day.

I don’t understand. You hated your Macs so much that you bought 2 new
computers? If it was just OS X that you hated, you could’ve simply kept the
Macs and ran a different OS. So what was it about the hardware that you
disliked so much?

~~~
lelandbatey
Well, after two years it was just time to upgrade and I decided not to renew
with OS X. I've gone back to a Windows/Linux workflow and I really enjoy it.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
To each their own, but that really didn’t answer any of my questions.

------
uslic001
Total Apple fanboy rant. The latest Ultrabooks are superior to the Macbook Air
IMO. They are faster with better battery life and cost less. I prefer Windows
8 and 8.1 over Mac OS X ML and over IOS 7. I will never buy another iPad or
iPhone ( I have an I iPad 3 and iPhone 5 atm) as I prefer the flexibility of
my Ultrabook and Android phones have leapfrogged iPhones in almost all
aspects.

~~~
rossjudson
The article is a giant pile of stupid. Umm...I think my Air is a nice laptop.
It's packed full of Intel stuff. Why the anti-Intel rant? He's dumb or a liar.
Intel doesn't care whether Apple/Intel wins, or Microsoft/Intel wins, or
??/Intel wins.

~~~
jfoutz
Intel should care if Apple wins. Apple is in the best position to change
architectures. Again. Ubuntu is probably in good shape. But Linux by nature
can't really switch primary architecture in an afternoon quite the way Apple
did.

~~~
Raphael
Sure it can. Linux can be compiled for ARM.

~~~
jfoutz
I'm not saying linux can't be compiled for ARM. I'm saying it's easy for Apple
to just declare all new hardware that runs OSX is now ARM. It's not possible
(or remotely desirable) for Linus to one day say, that's it, ARM only.

------
kayoone
_What do users want and ask for vocally? Screens that aren’t garbage quality,
resolutions that are not worse than mainstream laptops from 2007, SSD instead
of error prone and driver dependent ‘hybrid’ garbage, an OS that isn’t grating
to the user, decent Wi-Fi, good build quality, and a decent price._

Do they really ? Imo most consumer couldnt care less about any of that, its a
tech savy minority that wants higher quality screens and SSDs. Thats exactly
the reason why we are seeing zero innovation in the PC monitor space, because
the market doesnt really care. It cares for price most importantly which leads
to popularity of low res screens and slow HDDs in the first place.

------
nly
This 'the PC is dead' nonsense will come full circle eventually. Phones and
tablets _are_ PCs, we just haven't yet got to point where we can
satisfactorily dock them with a full desktop accessory set.

I personally see a scenario where everyone has a nice big LCD screen, full
sized QWERTY, and probably still a mouse, in their study at home but carry
their 'beige box' in their pocket. Just 5-10 years out imho. Unfortunately I
think Windows is still positioned best to make this happen.

~~~
nitrogen
_Unfortunately I think Windows is still positioned best to make this happen._

Have you looked at the Ubuntu phone OS? It's designed to be the same software,
hardware, and UX from phone to desktop. I don't necessarily like it, but it
shows promise of doing exactly what you say Windows is best positioned to do.

~~~
nly
Yep, and I'd put them at #2. I'm pragmatic, I don't necessarily think the best
solution will triumph. One thing Ubuntu phone is doing wrong is dismissing
Android. Dual booting is absurd, it doesn't promote sharing app data or a
seemless user experience.

------
zobzu
This article sucks? why? because it's not semi-accurate, it's totally
inaccurate, everywhere. And writing "sucks" every paragraph doesn't make it
right.

10% speed improvement a year isn't nothing. The small battery improvement this
year? Oh.. We went from from 6H battery life to 13H.. it's only double, it
sucks! Heck, it's better than my smartphone with screen on.

The rest is on windows, which is an OS, not the OS. (Which isn't even a _bad_
OS, despite the hate for Microsoft)

------
bane
What's actually happening is that the PC market is basically saturated with
machines that pretty much do whatever anybody asks of them.

The market has pretty much plateaued. Pretty much everybody has a PC at home
and work. Most households already have multiple computers. Heck, I know
entirely non-technical powerwasher/gutter cleaner guys who have 2 or 3
computers. In fact, I don't know a single person older than 10 years old who
doesn't have at least one Personal Computer of some kind.

Any commodity off-the-shelf PC will pretty much do whatever you ask of it (at
least for most consumers). I used to replace my computer every year or two
just so I could run modern software. I haven't felt compelled to do so for the
last 6 years and even then I'm 50/50 on doing it. The rMBP my work issued to
me is fantastic for virtualization, but unbelievable overkill for everything
else I do (mostly email, word and web).

There's just not much of a reason to buy more machines outside of regular
replacement rates due to failure and total obsolescence and new humans buying
them as they get old enough.

It's not that PCs aren't coming back, it's that the constant growth in the
market has plateaued.

Everybody was hoping China, India and Africa would explode 3/5s of the world's
humanity moved into the middle-class and needed computers, but the growth has
been far slower than was hoped and these first time computer buyers won't
really be constantly upgrading like previous markets did -- the market
characteristics are such that it won't be a simple repeat of the 80s, 90s and
early 2000s.

Smartphones and Tablets are an entirely new segment and still growing (though
showing some signs of flattening out as well). That's why they're exciting,
because _those_ markets are still building out and upgrading. But there are
signs that those segments are flattening as well.

Tablets and phones are awesome, but they're definitely not a replacement for a
general purpose PC. Even my mother and father, who're quite the luddites,
regularly needs capabilities that don't work well on a tablet -- like doing
taxes. Even if those things were magically fixed and working awesomely
tomorrow, they'd still want a bigger screen than a tablet afford.

PCs aren't going anywhere, it's just that the market has to shift to
sustaining the market not growing it (which is infinitely more expensive,
meaning loads more money sloshing around in the secondary markets). This is
fundamentally the problem that both Intel _and_ Microsoft are dealing with.
Apple escaped it largely because they _created_ new segments to grow into.

Heck, the one new market segment that PC makers _did_ manage to get into,
netbooks, they managed to screw up so bad that the entire segment was dead
within just a few years. (If you think of where netbooks needed to go as a
segment, the Surface Pro would probably be a reasonable outcome, except that
market is totally hosed now and Microsoft has to rebuild it).

~~~
sien
Your comment is much better than the article.

Also it becomes even better by imagining it in Bane's voice.

Netbooks didn't get screwed up, it's just that what most people want from a
cheap device is primarily content consumption which is done better by tablets.

The upgrade cycle with phones and tablets might be starting to slow as well.

~~~
crdoconnor
>Netbooks didn't get screwed up

Oh they did. Every new generation of netbooks was actually worse than the
previous one (I don't even know how that was possible, but it happened).

Hard disk space converged on 320GB, RAM on 1/2GB, display size was never
seemingly available greater than 1024x768 and battery plateaued at ~5 hours.

I adored my first netbook. My second was blah. By the third I was starting to
think everybody in the PC market was certifiably insane. What on earth made
them think they should release computers that get worse year on year???

~~~
dsr_
Margins.

A netbook that gets better every year for $250-350 will have a razor-thin
profit margin. If it has to have Microsoft Windows Special Edition on it,
10-30% of the price tag goes to MS. Joe Average wouldn't buy a computer that
doesn't run whatever brand name he recognizes, so Windows is a requirement.

A tablet isn't a "computer", so it doesn't need to run Windows in order to
sell, it needs to run Facebook and Angry Birds. It can sell for $250-350 and
have a decent margin, and then there are so many of them being made that the
parts cost drops and the margin gets better.

A Google Nexus 7 now has everything except a keyboard in terms of netbook
hardware, but it gives up no margin to MS and has a market big enough for
economies of scale.

Meanwhile, whatever Intel is pushing as an Ultrabook can go for $1000-1400
because it starts as a high-end desktop replacement and then gets features
shaved away. Except nobody with any sense buys them, and the usual bulk
purchasers of laptops that don't make sense (Fortune 500 companies) aren't re-
buying machines as often, and when they do, sometimes it's a fruit machine in
offices which would never have bought those five years ago.

(Why? because of you, dear HN reader. The alpha suits know that the alpha
techs demand the best hardware, and they can see the logos glowing on the back
of your screen better than you can.)

~~~
crdoconnor
>Margins.

Bullshit.

>A netbook that gets better every year for $250-350 will have a razor-thin
profit margin. If it has to have Microsoft Windows Special Edition on it,
10-30% of the price tag goes to MS.

And if you count all of the payments they get for preinstalling crap, I think
it cancels out most if not all of the windows license.

Or they could just install linux. Some did (not enough though).

>Joe Average wouldn't buy a computer that doesn't run whatever brand name he
recognizes, so Windows is a requirement.

The entire netbook industry was kicked off by the linux brand name. So that
makes little sense.

>A tablet isn't a "computer", so it doesn't need to run Windows in order to
sell

Android or iOS are as much brands as windows or linux are.

>A Google Nexus 7 now has everything except a keyboard in terms of netbook
hardware, but it gives up no margin to MS and has a market big enough for
economies of scale.

Netbooks also had a market big enough for economies of scale too.

------
mentat
For those who didn't make it to IDF, it felt dead. There was very little
attendance in most sessions and the expo floor was also pretty much empty.
They actually moved food into demo areas so it looked like there was buzz. I'm
pretty sure the "outside of Intel" attendee count was remarkably low.

------
rayiner
PCs are dead, but Intel will be fine. Bay Trail will be the beginning of the
end for ARM as Intel brings its massive lead in fab technology to bear on the
mobile market.

You heard it here first.

~~~
JetSetWilly
Except that the apple A7 has already trounced baytrail, despite being hobbled
by a 28mm process: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-
iphone-5s-review/5](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/5)

baytrail has the vast expense of cutting edge foundries and the entire
expensive might of intel r&d behind it, and it just got beaten by a cpu
produced with far less engineering and r&d expense on a last generation
foundry.

Doesn't look good for baytrail then.

~~~
rayiner
Lets wait for a fuller set of independent benchmarks. There is a lot of
speculation on RWT and my conclusion is that nobody really knows what's
causing the difference. Also note that a lot of these benchmarks use JS, which
puts the quality of the JS engine into the equation.

~~~
JetSetWilly
That is very true. Also, bay trail still won a lot of benchmarks on said page.

I cannot shake the feeling through, that while bay trail is competitive and
will be very interesting for many purposes (looking forward to getting a small
home server based around the new atoms) - it needs to truly _trounce_ arm to
initiate an industry change.

------
exodust
The fact that tablet devices and phones have entered the market, reducing the
need to do everything on a PC, doesn't spell the end of PCs. It just means
they aren't the only go-to computer anymore, which is a good thing for
everyone.

A rock solid PC in the home connected to a nice big monitor and other useful
peripheral devices, is a good thing to have. Be it a compact PC, laptop or
desktop, Windows or something else.

"Post PC" is a stupid agenda-driven term. We live in a "post horse and cart"
world, but the PC has no inherent limitations preventing it from evolving. If
you bother to look, there's currently more enclosures, cases, and interesting
"desktop" configuration variety for PCs than ever before, cheaper than ever
before.

In short, the article sucks.

------
pasbesoin
Well, I am currently shopping for some used ThinkPad T60's and T61's because I
cannot stand the shite keyboards (and also, not infrequently, displays) that
have taken over current designs.

This doesn't really speak to market trends, I guess, but making your products
physically unpleasant to use probably isn't helping your cause.

I should delete this comment as a pointless rant... but, I'm shopping for 7
year old laptops, dammit. I want to type quickly and pain-free, and also have
some vertical context without eyestrain.

------
shearnie
I don't think PCs are dying. I think computing consumption is increasing so
desktop productivity looks like it is declining.

I think when a dock for tablets or phone finally happens for consumers,
they'll just get it. Desktop mode is not intended for using your fat fingers
on a touch screen. "Metro" mode is for that. Windows 8 is all about for when
you get off the bus in consumption tablet mode and dock into your desk and
your dual monitor with keyboard and mouse lights up and you go into
productivity mode.

------
kayoone
I dont really buy his arguments. I think the Surface2 is a good example of
where the PC and Windows 8 is headed. For most people such a tablet with the
option to use it as a desktop pc trough a docking station is all the computing
they need. The Surface2 seems to do this job very well and with Haswell
finally has decent performance and battery life.

In 5-10 years, i am pretty sure that the real desktop PCs will be for
professionals only, while most consumers are using some mobile tablet/laptop
hybrids.

------
PhasmaFelis
"Then comes the hardware, you know the part Intel does. It sucks too. Why?
Because for the last 5 or so generations it doesn’t actually do anything
noticeably better for the user. Sure the CPU performance goes up 10% or so
every generation, battery life gets better at a slightly faster pace, and
graphics improving extra-linearly but that is irrelevant if you aren’t
benchmarking."

In a sane world, this would be a feature, not a bug. PCs are now mature enough
that you can buy a decent machine and expect that it will not be hopelessly
outdated in two years. This is a good thing.

The problem is that hardware and software manufacturers have a mutually
beneficial relationship whereby new software just won't function without that
extra 10% hardware capacity you get from a new computer. Even if it's a word
processor or a not-terribly-impressive game. (Remember "DirectX 10 requires
the power of Vista", which requires a much faster computer that XP?)

And the other problem is that doofuses like the article writer have been so
thoroughly gulled by the planned-obsolence treadmill that they actually think
that's how it's _supposed to be_ , and throw tantrums if this year's hardware
isn't at least 10 times shinier and more sparkly than last year's.

~~~
orangecat
_In a sane world, this would be a feature, not a bug._

Being able to get use out of older hardware is a feature. New hardware not
providing any new possibilities is a bug, and that's where we've been for the
last 5 years at least.

I think the core point of the article is valid. It's ridiculous that my $230
tablet has a better resolution than nearly every "high end" laptop. And
apparently nobody has any ideas for using our tremendously powerful multicore
CPUs and near-teraflop GPUs other than rendering increasingly bloated
websites.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
My point is, there's only so much benefit that one person can get from
exponentially increasing processing power. Web browsers and word processors
gain new bells and whistles, but the basic functionality is the same as it
ever was. You can run a bajillion windows at once, watch Netflix at HD
resolution, and not slow down. Games are near-photorealistic. What more do we
_want_ a computer to do, exactly?

You mention resolution--once the pixels are smaller than the naked eye can
distinguish at typical viewing distance, everything else is polish and
marketing. Yes, I know, retina displays are indefinably "crisper", or
something. But you can't functionally cram any more useful information on to
them, because the user won't be able to make it out.

We're seeing features like this because we've reached the point of diminishing
returns on desktops. There aren't going to be any more massive game-changing
jumps in raw processing power. In the 90s, we went from Wolfenstein 3D to Doom
in a year and a half, and from there to Quake in another two and a half years
--all of them gigantic, envelope-pushing leaps in gaming technology. In this
century, we've gone from Half-Life 2 in 2004 to...what? Crysis 2? The latest
Call of Duty? When was the last time a PC game got the same kind of uproar
over graphics that Doom did? The degree of change that used to come once a
year is now coming every ten. That's not because everything got boring, it's
because we're getting asymptotically close to perfection, at least from a
practical home-user standpoint. That's bad if you're in the business of
convincing people they need new computers every year, but it's decidedly good
if you're a user.

~~~
ericd
Have you ever used a retina display on a laptop? Every reviewer that I've seen
comment on it has said that they cannot go back, and not because of
indefinable crispness. Also, some people do run their screens with 2-4x as
much info crammed onto it - this would be the main reason I would use one.

------
ehutch79
oh man, I know all the people at work using solidworks are going to be pissed
that they have to start using it on an ipad now...

seriously though, can someone break down the article, i'm having a tough time
figuring out what it's trying to say.

~~~
breckinloggins
It appears to be a stream-of-consciousness rant (as all good rants are), so it
is not quite as structured as one would like, but the tl;dr seems to be:

"Things in the PC space suck, and absolutely no one seems to be interested in
making them suck less. Instead, they keep putting different shades of lipstick
on the same pig and calling it 'innovation'."

~~~
nfoz
Thanks for the tl;dr.

Isn't this the same for most industries, and for pretty much everything?
Genuine innovation takes lots of effort building things that people don't know
they want yet, even IF they are in fact monetizable. And a LOT of things are
not monetizable, or face serious difficulties gaining marketshare in
environments with deeply entrenched players and expectations.

The history of computing has much more to do with "innovation" in monetization
schemes rather than computing itself. Great things get built only when someone
discovers some hackish way to get people to purchase it. The monetization
itself usually makes the product/technology worse than it would be without the
monetization (e.g. DRM, copyright, ads, preinstalled spyware).

------
InTheSwiss
I still run on a Core 2 Duo from January 2009 as my main machine (a laptop)
and it is still plenty fast enough for me. I just don't find the latest
generation CPUs to offer me anything that I don't have except doing things "a
little bit quicker" but that isn't all that noticeable to me. I suspect this
machine will die (in a way that makes fixing it financially unviable) before I
out grow it. Visual Studio 2012 starts in ~1 second (warm startup) and
performs great. The only issue I have is that Hyper-V (as part of Win8)
requires SLAT which my CPU does not support which is annoying but I just use
VMware Workstation instead.

For me there has not been enough improvement in CPU features since the Core 2
range was introduced for me to need to upgrade. Sure a Haswell would be nice
from a battery life POV but as I am plugged in 99.9% of the time that isn't an
issue to me.

------
ivanbrussik
I don't feel like the title matches the content of this piece. I thought it
was going to primarily be about how users are shifting away from PCs (which it
did touch on).

But really it was just an angry rant about chips not getting better, even
though Intel makes _the_ best chip on the market.

U mad bro?

------
bigphishy
wewll... at least the website domain name is pretty accurate.

------
silveira
I just bought a overpriced ultrabook with Windows 8 (Microsoft tax). The
Windows 8 experience is indeed terrible for touch screen. Seems like someone
made an amateur touch screen mod for Windows 7. The product isn't ready. I can
fell the Steve Ballmer signature in this product.

I just wanted a PC because I tough it would be easier to install a traditional
Linux on it, but UEFI. Oh the humanity, UEFI is the most disgraceful scam the
industry ever did. How they could be so wicked?

I don't want to live in a world that the only good option is a monopoly of
Apple machines and software but the PC industry is not even trying.

------
frozenport
1\. Its not sucking if its only meeting 95 out of 100 of your requirements. My
desktop can do everything my iPod can do, with difference. There is a very
select group of tasks, ie eBook or drawing surface, that the table excels at
but these are not shared by desktops. They are two different products with one
offering a miniaturized and inferior version of the former.

2\. Users see laptops that run faster on desktop relevant applications: games,
spreadsheets and programs like Adobe CS and MATLAB. The rest don't count as
they arent' motivation to buy a desktop.

------
Mikeb85
PCs are not coming back in the sense that they won't see growth like they used
to, but at the same time they're not going away. To be fair, most people don't
actually need a PC. My wife uses a Nexus 7 as her main computing device, and
loves it (she prefers it to a PC).

As an aside, Chrome OS devices are gaining alot of traction... Probably
because they're more than adequate for most people's needs as is, and
developers can always switch on development mode for a full set of Linux-y
features...

------
Tichy
I don't understand why people don't like Ultrabooks. They like MacBook Airs,
so what's wrong about creating slim and lightweight notebooks in general?

That some vendors produce crap is irrelevant. But there are nice offerings out
there.

I've seen a Samsung in the shop recently that looked and felt great. They only
screwed it up in offering max 4GB RAM and their lineup is so confusing that I
don't even know which one I would have to look at online. But that is not a
general issue of "Ultrabooks".

~~~
glogla
My problem with ultrabooks is what is intel doing with the brand. At first,
ultrabooks were supposed to be laptops with good battery life, high-resolution
IPS screen and a SSD. Also it should be thin, which I think is meaningless,
but whatever.

However, it seems that this disappeared somewhere, and now laptop with
1366*786 15" TN screen and rotary storage (with a measly 16 GB "SSD cache"
that does pretty much nothing to make it faster), but it is required to have
Windows 8 and touchscreen.

The brand lost meaning, it went from "Apple quality from someone else than
Apple" (so we can buy nice computer without supporting walled garden approach)

~~~
mratzloff
You do realize you can install whatever you want on a Mac, right?

~~~
andyzweb
I will check back on this comment 5 years from now to see if that still holds
true

~~~
mratzloff
So many developers use Macs now that I would be surprised if Apple went this
direction. I'm sure they _want_ to go this direction--I'm just not sure they
feel like they can without angering developers.

To be fair, all OS companies (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) want to go this
direction. It would probably be enough to push me back onto Linux.

------
Fuxy
Yes the PC seems to be stuck I bought a desktop PC in 2005 and replaced it
this year love the built in graphics and more powerful processor but anything
extra is useless crap i don't want.

It's amazing how hard it is to find a screen with a decent pixel density and
how expensive these average screens are.

I'm actually considering buying I-Pad screens off e-bay and creating a wall of
them to get what i need. How deplorable is that?

The PC needs to become the main machine of the house and to do that it needs
to step up its game.

------
pvdm
Last time I looked MacBooks are x86.

------
alexchamberlain
Argh, PCs never died. I am reading this on a PC in an office full of PCs. I
can't develop code for other people's PCs on a tablet - I couldn't develop
code for a tablet on a tablet, it would be horrible. I need a PC.

------
general_failure
I don't see how Intel can fix the windows/software problem.

Just try out [http://html5dev-software.intel.com](http://html5dev-
software.intel.com) and judge yourself what Intel can do in software.

------
otikik
One thing I would add to the list of requests is: being quiet. Ideally,
fanless.

For that I need processors that don't become small suns 20 minutes after
booting up.

------
walshemj
The reason Intel can rest on its laurels and only release incremental updates
is that AMD has such a poor product line up

------
drill_sarge
>Semiaccurate

Please stop reading this. Also the "PC is dead" discussion pops up every 5
years or so.

------
tsenkov
I assume this discussion is already more about the transition from desktop to
laptop, than about the PC to Mac etc.

Have you looked at Windows on 27" Thunderbolt display? The first time I saw
that display with Mac OS X rendering on it, I thought: "Wow, that looks
awesome. The glare from the glass is bothering, so there's that, but placed
right in the room, it's totally fine and well worth for that size and
clarity.".

Then I went to the specs and saw that the PPI of this monitor was exactly 6
points above my own (1920x1080, 21.5", 102 ppi vs. 108 ppi)? Is it possible 6
points to be such a differentiator?

Of course, it turned out it wasn't - I immediately tried windows on the same
Mac machine and there it was - everything looked almost as badly as on my own
PC.

So, I asked the guy that owns the machine (he is a graphic designer), why
there is such a difference and he said: "Microsoft simply doesn't care enough
about detail. Check the default icon sizes in the OS - OS X's icons on
regular-density display (non-retina) are 4x bigger (512x512 vs. 256x256 on
windows) and on retina this grows to 16x more pixels (1024x1024)."

So factor #1, IMHO, is people ditch Desktop PCs because of Microsoft's lack of
flexibility and innovation - they decided "If we have a monopoly over desktop
computing, why should we care what our users say? They still buy 'it'.".

Factor #2 - Microsoft still has the numbers!!! They have locked the enterprise
tight, and still don't care about "personal" user experience.

So we have this giant corporation that gets enough money and has no incentive
to innovate and we hope it will bring us the great singularity of software and
hardware we have all been waiting for...

And the last factor I will point out is relevant mostly to developers - Mac
hardware runs it all. Then having a Windows and a Mac machine, doesn't really
make sense, both as expenses and simplicity of work.

Apple made the, arguably, "evil-corporate" decision to be totally in control
of the hardware running its OS. So you, developers, have the option to buy:

\- iMac, that sits tight on your desk + Macbook (probably Air) for your work
on the go;

\- Mini + Thunderbolt + Macbook (probably Air);

\- Pro + Thunderbolt + Macbook (definitely Air after what you paid for the
previous 2);

\- Macbook Pro.

Well, as I see it, most developers are headed for the Macbook Pro with
eventually adding a Thunderbolt.

For developers in need to support the Mac ecosystem, this is not even #3
reason - it's #1. I had to make this transition and I am glad I did, because
Mac OS X turned out to be no less then great, and although smaller in size, my
15.4" retina display got me into the 21st century. :)

~~~
jheriko
this is a good example of how microsoft fail. they have actually fixed this
problem - but their fear of changing anything because of the enormous
community backlash means that this functionality is not the default. they are
doing more with Windows 8 on the tablets, but the desktop version in the
desktop mode is like Windows 7, which has its legacy from Windows Vista, and
XP etc... which is why the icons are tiny and don't adjust to DPI without you
changing your settings afaik.

My problem with Macs (i use one as my main dev platform at the moment) is that
they unpolished features are extremely weak. As a technical person doing
development work on a Mac its a constant headache vs. Windows - VS is ugly,
but its much /much/ MUCH!! more functional than xcode (it has what... a 15
year headstart though?) even in areas where Apple traditionally excel - e.g.
the tab interface in Xcode requires more, less intuitive, user actions than
the equivalent feature in visual studio, and it doesn't allow side by side
docking of the tabs (afaik).

The other thing about Apple and displays is that they cheat a little and use a
very good color profile which is vaguely related to sRGB at best. Try
calibrating an Apple monitor - its basically impossible in my experience, even
if you use their 'sRGB' setting. On the other hand, my well calibrated HP
monitor does look like garbage by comparison... this is also a problem for
development, because most people not using a Mac or iPhone do not see what you
see when you work on there...

------
AsymetricCom
Coming back? Where did they go? When did they arrive? I don't think there was
ever a time where the PC enjoyed significant market saturation. If anything,
the PC "bubble" is deflating back down to normal levels.

It may be popular and "obvious" to accept that Intel and Microsoft own the PC
market and decide where it goes, but the reality is that the market makes the
demands and Intel either meets them or they don't. I think this is clear when
AMD pushed 64 bit first and Intel adopted it. This is also illustrated with
the fact that PC sales have declined along with the stagnation of Moore's Law.
That last point seems counter-intuitive but it shows that Intel can't force a
market if it doesn't deliver.

Now both CPUs and GPUs are "as fast as they're going to be" for some time now.
For some reason, next gen GPUs are joining the theoretical ranks of "Moore's
Law is more threat to economics and security than fruit of civilization,"
giving us 10% yoy speed improvements but doubling up on security and
management overhead, added coupling, APIs for compilers only, dedicating more
silicon to hypervisors and management that should go to the programmer and his
compiler.

IT has become a completely dysfunctional market at the macroscale. The demand
doesn't know what they want or how to shop for it, and the supply is to scared
to deliver anything new.

At the micro-level, those who know what they want are still taking it one step
at a time with their own feet, to their own drummer, but the mess that is the
macro-market is just destroying knowledge and value like a wildfire. However,
those few programmers who know what the Internet should look like, instead of
one that's built to be profitable for thing manufactures, aren't able to keep
up with the complete mess big software is doing to the collective wisdom of
the netizens and the internet infrastructure, both physical and social.

~~~
Raphael
You have good insight here, but it's hard to follow.

