

IBM executive says PC era is in its twilight - Grape
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20090984-64/ibm-executive-says-pc-era-is-in-its-twilight/

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ZoFreX
You can have my mouse and keyboard when you pry them from my cold, dead hands!
(Or alternatively: When you invent input devices that are genuinely better for
the purposes of inputting huge amounts of text and indicating intent on a
large display mounted in an ergonomically suitable position)

I think that our current idea of what a PC is in in its twilight, however. A
co-worker bought a brand new Macbook which proceeded to self-destruct (it
quite literally melted) 2 weeks after they purchased it. The Apple store
turned around a new one in minutes, obviously, but I couldn't help think - in
a year or two from now, all his apps would be storing their data through
Apple's cloud. The hardware would be completely fungible in that case, and
failure would be an almost non-event compared to how much hassle it is
currently.

~~~
daedhel
I'm not sure i'm convinced by the argument that the cloud is a good thing
because the hardware failures will have less consequence.

Apple sold a laptop that melted two weeks after it was bought. They could,
instead, have made a laptop that WOULD NOT melt two weeks after it was bought.

I see the cloud as the biggest threat to individual online freedom and
privacy. I will continue to buy big Thikpads, and avoid the cloud and tablets
and the likes, at all costs.

~~~
ZoFreX
No, I don't think it's great that his laptop melted after two weeks, quite the
opposite. I do think it is a good idea to plan for failure though. One thing I
like about Windows (from Vista onwards) is that it is really fault-tolerant.
I've been using OS X for about 9 months now, and while programs lock up less
frequently, when they do they do sometimes manage to lock up the entire O/S.

Windows used to do this, but programs on Windows go catastrophically wrong
that it is now expected and planned for - it's rare that a user space program
impacts performance to the point where I cannot kill it.

~~~
daedhel
It is even better with GNU/Linux! I have never witnessed a software crashing
the whole system.

~~~
ZoFreX
Whole system? No. X? Yes. And when X crashes so does every other program I am
using, so other than the shorter recovery time that isn't a lot better than
crashing the whole system (ok, I have to admit there is much less chance of
catastrophic disk corruption, as all the higher level processes will continue
unimpeeded).

While I do absolutely love being able to ctrl+alt+F(x) no matter how bad
things are and regain control, the fact that Windows has been able to recover
from the window manager, graphics card driver, or even graphics card crashing
without my music even skipping a beat for years now makes the reliance on X
(by far the least stable component at least on my install) feel wholly
unnecessary.

~~~
rbanffy
> by far the least stable component at least on my install

This is often the result of bad graphics drivers. Would you like to share your
setup?

My laptop has that ACPI bug (in that the BIOS enables ACPI on peripherals and
reports they don't support it back to the OS which then makes terrible
decisions). I had to change my screensaver to a non-3D one to prevent the
machine from seizing when entering low-power mode.

------
smoyer
Rats! And I just built a desktop on steroids so that I could run all the VMs I
wanted. Apparently I don't need a PC, I need eight of them ...

------
Sandman
PCs are definitely not going to disappear, but most of the people that don't
have a professional need for them will no longer have them in the future.

This is because the majority of the population (that is, everybody except
geeks, developers and other people that use PCs for work) don't really need a
PC. It's just that, until now, there were no devices other than PCs that would
give them everything they wanted - the ability to communicate, play games,
watch videos, listen to music, surf the web, read mail etc. - all in one
package.

Now, as smartphones and tablets get more and more powerful, it's very likely
that people will sooner or later abandon their PCs in favour of devices that
offer those same features at a lower price, and that are both simpler to use
and more portable than PCs.

PCs will survive, though. It's just that they'll no longer be used by average
consumers, but by professionals and enthusiasts.

~~~
technoslut
It should be interesting to see the potential metamorphosis of the desktop as
well. Does anybody not see Apple eventually releasing an iPad with a 30 inch
screen?

~~~
rbanffy
> Does anybody not see Apple eventually releasing an iPad with a 30 inch
> screen?

I think they have a partial product in that direction. Tt's called AppleTV and
runs iOS, but it doesn't come with the screen.

A 30 inch touchscreen doesn't make that much sense anyway.

------
asolove
There is one hole in this line of thought. All of those mobile devices, all of
the "social spaces": where do they get planned, designed, and programmed? On
desktops.

Until we have a mobile device powerful enough that you could use it to build
applications for itself, we're not going to see the full feedback loop of
better tools leading to better apps leading to better tools.

~~~
nknight
Most of the mobile devices are, in fact, powerful enough to develop for
themselves, what they lack is mostly decent input ergonomics and redesigned
UIs for the tools. (And in Apple's and a few other companies' cases, they have
an excess of lockdown.), but that's not really the point.

I'll be using my laptops for the foreseeable future (seriously, people still
use desktops?), but the IBM guy's point is that the mass market is moving on
from what we consider "PCs". Geeks will absolutely still have them, other
people not so much.

~~~
jerhewet
> seriously, people still use desktops?

Hell yes -- my desktop system is orders of magnitude faster than your laptop
for development.

~~~
hencq
Orders of magnitude? I can believe your desktop is faster than a laptop, but
100x faster seems a stretch. Still, I think there are valid reasons for
preferring a desktop. Besides it being faster, you can have bigger screens
etc.

~~~
jwn
I never understood that line of thinking. I have an wireless keyboard and
mouse hooked up to my MacBook. When I hook up my external monitor I now have
two screens, giving me more dekstop area than a single desktop. I don't see
why anyone would want a desktop unless they have serious horsepower
requirements.

------
IvarTJ
Are people actually productive on tablets? Aren’t desktops still considered to
be more ergonomic than laptops?

~~~
nknight
External monitor, keyboard, and mouse makes a laptop exactly as ergonomic as
any desktop, but still perfectly easy to pick up and go.

It eludes me why any developer would be using anything other than a laptop.
Headless machines for VMs and heavy lifting, sure, but why would a desktop be
what you're actually "working" on?

~~~
Spyro7
"It eludes me why any developer would be using anything other than a laptop."

Based on my own experiences, here are a few reasons that I can think of:

\+ Has a setup that involves 3 or more screens

\+ Needs to use 2 or more hard drives

\+ Likes the idea of having a video card that can be easily upgraded

\+ Likes the idea of having a processor that can be easily upgraded

\+ Needs to have two or more video cards

\+ Needs to have two or more optical media drives

~~~
nknight
My laptop can use 3 or more screens.

My laptop can use 2 or more hard drives.

Why does a developer need to upgrade the video card in their laptop? What is
it they're doing? There are a lot of developers, and a fairly small set of
them care about fast graphics.

Why does a developer need to upgrade their processor more than every few
years? What is it they're doing? For the relatively rare developer that still
has long compiles to deal with, why doesn't their company have a build farm?

Why does a developer need two or more video cards? What is it they're doing?
Again, most developers are not in gaming or other high-end graphics work.

My laptop can use two or more optical media drives.

Laptops are not a little black box with zero expandability. Ports exist for a
reason.

~~~
corin_
"Why does a developer need to upgrade ....?"

Because while development might be a use, or even the primary use, of a
machine, it doesn't mean it is the only use.

Some people will want to watch videos, some play games, some just want the
newest hardware to feel good about themselves, there's a bunch of reasons.

~~~
nknight
With a company-issued desktop sitting in your office... Why are you playing
games?

Anyway, my laptop is my one and only front-and-center machine, used for
development, gaming, videos (why you brought that up, I have no idea, since it
takes hardly any power at all), etc., and I have no performance problems.

~~~
corin_
Well in my case the answer would be "because I'm bored" (though I actually
have a laptop at work, and a desktop at home, So I'm playing games with a
company-issued laptop in my office).

But there are plenty of developers (on HN in particular) for home "their
machine" isn't just something that is in their office for work use, but is
what they have for personal use as well (maybe they're freelance, maybe they
work for their own startup, whatever).

