

Life after the personal computer - Toshio
http://www.cringely.com/2012/06/30/life-personal-computer/

======
EwanG
The following quote burns me everytime I see it or it's ilk on blogs:

"What matters is the data and keeping it safe, but the cloud is already
handling that chore for many of us, making the hardware more or less
disposable."

No the cloud is not handling that chore for most or many people. What it's
handling is the data we always wanted to have, but are willing to lose. IOW,
that snapshot that I probably wouldn't have taken the time to DL from my
phone, but am more than willing to post with Instagram.

When the cloud allows me to store my 4TB of photos and videos and other
creative work for a price that is competitive with a HD, and at an upload and
download speed where I can use the data where it is (rather than spend a week
uploading and pre-downloading a large file), THEN I will agree the cloud is at
a point where I could use it instead of a PC with storage.

~~~
philjohn
In many parts of the world (probably not the US due to the broken cable
monopoly system) home broadband speeds are increasing at a decent enough rate.
I've now got 38 Mbit down and 8 Mbit up, which is fast enough to sync any new
photos we take. We use JungleDisk and only pay ~ $14.00 per month for storing
a lot of treasured family photos.

If I used a portable disk drive I'd have to make sure it's always offsite.

~~~
goostavos
I'm so jealous.

I pay $50 a month for the privilege of and 8mb down/ .5mb up connection.

~~~
SleekoNiko
I have satellite internet. Not only do I have to worry about the weather, but
also 900 ms ping times, mediocre speeds, and a daily bandwidth cap.

It's painful for me, as I came from having 35 down and 1 up not long ago.
However, it has opened my eyes to the fact that many people in the US
(especially in rural areas) do not have access to decent internet.

------
msl
"Radio was invented with the original idea that it would replace telephones
and give us wireless communication. That implies two-way communication, yet
how many of us own radio transmitters?"

Um... all of us? It has been at least five years since I last made a phone
call with a landline phone. An invention over a hundred years old at the time
that quote was written is now serving us in a way Cringley apparently couldn't
envision twenty years ago. I think it's quite reasonable to expect the
personal computer still has a trick or two up its sleeve.

If the smart phone is going to replace the PC it will have to offer much of
what the PC does now - to the point where the distinction becomes irrelevant.
In fact I believe the distinction is already irrelevant and in fact downright
stupid. It only serves those who for whatever reason want to limit what those
pocket sized computers we all have can do.

A smart phone can replace the traditional PC - but only when it starts to
offer the functionality a PC has now. By which time it will seem funny to call
it a phone.

~~~
tmzt
This was written in 1991 though quite funny to read today for that reason.

------
xd
I saw something recently, a skeleton laptop that would act as a terminal for
your android phone. My money is on the mobile phone being a mobile personal
cpu/storage that can be tethered to skeleton interfaces like tablets and
laptops.

But the PC as we know it will be kept around for a long long time by gamers
alone.

~~~
mrkmcknz
I think the desktop market is here to stay maybe not for consumers (who are
aggressively changing from desktop to laptops/tablets and mobile only) but
certainly in the business and specialized markets.

Gaming will stay on desktops for some time, until at least it's effective from
a pricing point to go mobile.

Here in the UK at least I can't remember the last office I went into where
desktops weren't dominant.

~~~
pvidler
Mobile gaming is already huge. They are mostly casual games, certainly, but
they are selling quite well.

Also, I have been to a steadily increasing number of offices in recent years
where everyone had laptops (typically Dell, I think) with docking stations and
monitors. This is usually to make it easier for presentations, attending
conferences/training days and working from home.

~~~
SCdF
I have yet to find someone who thought themselves a gamer before mobile gaming
became a thing, who actually likes more than a couple of mobile games.

They are mostly utter garbage, more in the Zynga 'social' angle than anything
else. The majority of what's left have incredibly simple gameplay mechanics,
because the control schemes open to you just don't allow any more complexity.
apart from the gyroscope, which I'm not convinced anyone will ever use well,
all your input methods involve you obscuring the screen with your fingers!?
And can never provide feedback to the user!? Madness.

Mobile gaming is huge, and it makes money, but mobile gaming is a bit like
'social' gaming: it is not actually 'gaming', as gaming is on other platforms.
These things exist side by side, one does not replace the other.

~~~
pvidler
True enough, but there are also the mobile ports of older games -- notably the
touch-friendly ones like monkey island, but more serious 'gamer' games are
also coming, such as the Baldur's Gate rerelease. There are variations on C&C
and Starcraft (official for the former, less so the latter). There are board
games like monopoly and card games like poker and even magic the gathering.

On the social gaming side, I agree that very little of what you do in things
like FarmVille actually seems like gaming, but then that was also my
experience with much of World of Warcraft…

I think you just have to give it time -- gaming on mobile devices will
probably grow up with the users, who seem to be predominately younger folk and
teenagers from what I've seen (referring to mobile gamers here, not smartphone
users in general).

Also, I have high hopes for the low initial cost and easy in-app purchases
finally leading to some decent story-driven episodic games.

~~~
SCdF
I agree, there is certainly potential there. However, much in the same way
playing street fighter is crap on a keyboard compared to a joystick/pad and
any FPS is crap on a controller compared to a mouse + keyboard, a huge portion
of game types just aren't suited to the 'slate of immovable glass' form
factor.

Imo, mobile gaming is good at: \- The tiny subset of games where the controls
are naturally dragging your finger over glass (Fruit Ninja, those airplane
landing games, not much else) \- Turn-based games where the primary form of
interaction is suited to a one-click mouse / finger. Turn-based because there
is not enough feedback for accuracy in real-time games, and because it means
you pick them up and put them down really easily (as long as state is
remembered) which suits on the go play.

So stuff like Civilisation, turn-based 4x games, final fantasy style RPGs and
XCOM style games are all good deep game genres that will hopefully make a
competent jump to mobile.

I see that Frozen Synapse (XCOM style-ish) is coming to iOS, which is
particularly awesome (more awesome if it was on tablet android, but that's
just my selfishness talking)

~~~
pvidler
I actually prefer controllers for FPSs now, but mostly because I rarely game
on PC anymore.

In addition to those you list, I would say that anything largely mouse
controlled on PC should work reasonably well on mobile devices -- RTS games,
Diablo-type games (looking forward to infinity blade dungeons) and sim games
(theme hospital, etc.).

In fact, the only games I'm really missing on iOS are the FPS games. And it
really is just the attempt to have virtual dual-stick controls that I dislike
-- the games are there (mass effect infiltrator, dead space, etc.). If someone
could just produce a decent Bluetooth controller and get developers to support
it, I'd say that iOS could be the most well rounded gaming system out there --
capable of both console-style gameplay as well as game types that are weak on
consoles (RTSs and the others listed above).

I'm also excited about onlive, which I already use with the TV-connected box.
I think they were also working on a universal controller…

------
mbq
This is an oversimplification -- many (if not most) PCs are superfluous, but
this is because they belong to people who do not need a computer at all.

Even with them all replaced with tablets or whatever, PCs will still live long
and prosper in their original niches.

------
thenomad
Add me to the "nah, I'm not convinced" crowd.

Gaming and visual apps in general still require vast amounts of horsepower,
far more than most mobile computers can provide. Hell, I'm on something very
close to a top-of-the-line PC for 3D purposes, and Skyrim can still get my
computer to chug.

And if you want to discount gaming, forget Skyrim - Photoshop and After
Effects will happily chew through as much RAM, processor power and GPU as you
can throw at them.

Also, I really don't see a problem with the form-factor. Big, colour-balanced,
carefully-placed screen, ergonomic chair, easily-accessible printer, second
monitor, decent sound system and high-quality condenser mic, sit-stand desk -
I'll take that over hunching in a coffee shop staring at a tiny screen with
sciatica-inducing posture and uncomfortable earbuds any day. Sure, I can move
around with a mobile device, but how often do I really want to?

Mobile devices have their uses, and iPads and similar are clearly awesome for
some use cases, but as a universal replacement? I think not.

~~~
swalsh
You're thinking linearly. Remember, at least right now technology is growing
exponentially. In 5 years your cell phone could potentially have as much power
as your laptop today. Though i'd guess it will be more. It'll have all the
power it needs. Combine it with glasses, or some other yet unknown form
factor, we might be stumbling on something really unique. There's a lot of
value in only having 1 computer device. We're only 1 or 2 innovations away
from real pervasive computing.

~~~
SCdF
I don't think you should discount different form factors being useful in
different situations.

Tablets are great for consuming content, and creating certain types of
content, but as much as you _can_ write a novel on one, a real keyboard is
_better_ for writing one.

(yes I know you can buy a keyboard dock, but that sort of misses the point,
doesn't it?)

And as much as I _can_ play games on a tablet, unless it's a very specific
niche where the gameplay revolves around your input method being a static
slate of glass (e.g. Fruit Ninja, arguably Angry Birds) having actual buttons
for input is _better_ for gaming.

So I can totally see 'normal' people just owning one device that does
everything OK-ish (but at least it does everything) and I think for all 'new'
normal people that's basically happening, but I really don't think you're
going to see other form factors go away. Authors still want to type quickly,
gamers still want actual controls where they can exercise muscle memory, and I
hackers still want to be able to tinker with their devices and build cool new
shit.

------
jiggy2011
I like what Steve Jobs said about Cars/Trucks in this instance. However I
can't help but feel most of the "mobile" devices we have seen thus far have
been closer to motorcycles (this analogy works especially well if dumbphones
are pedal bikes).

The closest I have seen to a "desktop killer" is the MS surface devices, but I
have a feeling that people will still refer to these as "PCs".

~~~
Derbasti
Lets say scooter, not pedal bike because bicycles are awesome!

------
ShirtlessRod
"Though I had no inkling of it back in 1992, what’s rapidly replacing the PC
in our culture is the smart phone."

The desktop as a form factor will never go away. I know for me personally the
day I need to turn in my machine (including keyboard/mouse/large monitors) for
a smart phone or tablet is the day you can go ahead and just shoot me to put
me out of my misery.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Aw, don't say "never"; you're pretty much guaranteed to be proven wrong.

Monitors and mice might be replaced with a device which tracks your head and
eye movements and paints an image on your retinas with a laser. Keyboards
could be replaced by pre-speech recognition, measuring the impulses sent to
your jaw and mouth muscles, probably in the form of a headset.

Your "desktop" computing needs are filled by a headset which occupies your
entire field of view with its environment, and your "mobile" computing needs
are filled by the same headset, but it only occupies the periphery of your
field of view. When you sit at your desk and face forward, the environment
goes full-screen, and when you look away or go away from your desk, the
environment retreats to your peripheral vision.

~~~
jakejake
When I was suffering from carpel tunnel syndrome I tried many alternate mice
including on me hands- free mouse that tracked your head movement.

At the end of one day of using that my neck and back were so sore I could
barely stand to sit at my desk!

~~~
WiseWeasel
Yeah, head movement as a direct input won't work, for the reason you mention.
Eyeball-tracking, however, can likely be made to work well.

------
mark_l_watson
In this case Cringely is largely correct. I would bet that many of us will be
using Android or iPhone like devices docked when necessary with large monitors
and keyboards as our primary computers in a few years. I use my MacBook Air
now only for programming (consulting and side projects) and writing.
Everything else is my iPad and Droid and I like it that way. Setting up a term
with SSH on my iPad was initially a "I can do it and fun is good" kind of
thing but now when I want to look at a remote server, I'll often use my iPad
rather than suffering through the 15 second bootup time for my laptop.

~~~
glhaynes
I'd wager it's going the exact opposite direction.

With cloud services, documents/bookmarks/media/apps/settings/etc can all be
effortlessly in sync all the time between all the different devices so the
question is just one of form factor.

I don't want to give up any of my main form factors (phone, tablet, laptop
computer, desktop computer) because there are times when each is significantly
better than the other for the task at hand. But I don't want to be having to
plug and unplug one into the other to make the whole thing work - I just want
to grab/sit-down-at whichever is most appropriate for my context and get right
to work (or "work").

It'd be different if a processor+RAM+GPU+enough-flash-storage-to-be-usable-in-
a-mostly-cloud-environment weren't all shrinkable to a tiny chip that costs
nearly nothing to make.

But since they are [1], why should we have to deal with the hassle of
docking/undocking and not being able to use our tablet (as a tablet) while we
use our computer? Or have to unplug our phone (and not be able to use our
"computer") when a phone call comes in?

The one place I use such a solution is that all my (personal) computing
happens on a tiny laptop that I occasionally plug into a larger monitor with
wireless keyboard/trackpad. That works really well, but it's _still_ a bit of
a hassle. If that monitor had the smarts in it to actually be a computer _and_
it was constantly up-to-date with all the data from my laptop, then I'd rather
just have it be separate. Why not?

So I think we'll continue to have separate form factors and they'll all only
increase in "smart"ness. Anything else is going to be a tough sell to
customers and have marginal cost savings, at best.

[1] How much does it cost Apple to make the A5 chip in the Apple TV and the
iPad 2 at this point? How much less would it cost them to make a chip that was
_just_ for handling networking/display/user input/etc? Barely any less at all
— in fact it'd probably be cheaper for them just to keep using A5s because
they've already got full OSes to run on them.

~~~
tmzt
Yep, an easy way to look at it:

* The SoC + display is the unit of computing.

* The CPU + GPU is the unit of compute.

And storage is an opaque object storage device, with backup in the cloud.

------
dhughes
I'm glad he mentioned Google glasses I think that's what smartphones and
tablets will evolve into.

Who knows maybe we'll see blank white walls solely for staring at as a polite
area to stare at instead of someone's ass.

------
hcurtiss
What's wrong with wired docking stations?

------
mtgx
Microsoft's monopoly on computing lasted for at least 17 years, if you count
from Windows 95. I think it's time for a change of leadership in the market.
That sounds more interesting to me than 30+ years of Microsoft monopoly.

~~~
gouranga
Not sure I agree. The are the most compelling provider of IT at the moment,
simply because they've started to listen to people.

