

Weak PC Market Catches Up to Microsoft - Toshio
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/technology/weak-pc-market-catches-up-to-microsoft.html

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bhauer
Every time I read a report about the weak PC market, I am left stunned by the
lack of innovation we've seen in desktop computing for the past ~10 years. I
routinely reference my blog rants on the subject, and I'll do so again [1].
The desktop in 2013 needs to differentiate itself from portable devices--to
stand out as providing something that simply cannot be achieved with a small
screen. Desktops should be evolving toward immersion. The clearest path toward
immersion is to make displays much larger and higher quality.

Microsoft and all of the desktop PC hardware manufacturers should be investing
heavily in larger form-factor, high-density displays. I believe that combining
an immersive display format with the ongoing developments toward gesture and
touch input would give desktop computing a necessary renaissance.

These companies should feel ashamed that it took ~8 years to progress past the
30" 2560x1600 form factor to a $3,500 ASUS "4k" monitor. In 2013, a "4k"
monitor on the desktop should be _entry-level_ technology. After all, _entry-
level_ phones pull off still higher density. (Yes, I know that manufacturing a
high-density large screen is expensive and that's the point; it's expensive
because hardly any R&D is going into that channel and these companies have no
idea how to stir up demand for something new and innovative on the desktop.)

A 4k LCD monitor should be entry level. Had desktop displays progressed
steadily rather than regressing (thanks to the taint of "HD") after the T220,
an enthusiast desktop today should be ~8k OLED or better.

[1] [http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-
key](http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-key)

~~~
harrytuttle
Why?

I think they got desktop computing pretty much spot on. It's ubiquitous,
cheap, reliable and good enough.

People aren't buying stuff because they're pretty happy with what they've got.

And 4k on the desktop? Fuck I really don't care if it's a 1280x800 or
1920x1080 display still.

~~~
dman
Technical progress depends on getting people to be unhappy with what they have
because theres something new that is genuinely better.

~~~
harrytuttle
Exactly. The problem is nothing is genuinely better. Its just turd polish.

The only thing that has made a difference to me in the last decade is an SSD.
On a daily basis, I can't tell the difference between my 2007 laptop and my
2013 high end workstation.

~~~
onli
I made the step back from a HP Veer to an older Samsung Smartphone. The
difference in DPI is enormous, and only after using a different font and a
nice theme to hide the effects of low-DPI as far as possible I was able to
stand the Android.

Which means for me that I'm sold on 4k Displays (and higher), if the effect is
even only near to the one I experienced, if you get used to it, you won't want
to get back. I image it to be equal to the effect of old CRTs with the curved
display, which was unbearable after getting used to a (good) TFT or even one
of the modern CRT without the curve.

The resolution change we experienced earlier, or at least I did, was always
with a bigger screen. A 17" with 1024x768, a 22" with 1280x1024 and now ~24"
with 1920x1080. So most(?) of us never experienced a real DPI increase on the
desktop, only on smartphones or tablets.

I really hope it will be the next step after the SSD. Higher DPI-displays are
genuinely better.

~~~
bhauer
Precisely. Those who are ensconced and comfortable with the inertia of "good
enough," may feel that way simply because they don't know how much they would
enjoy a high-definition full-view desktop display because nothing like that
exists.

I've said elsewhere that without the iPad 3, we'd still have 1024x768 on
tablets and there would be those of us shouting for higher resolution tablets,
only to be frustrated by counter-arguments of "1024x768 is fine!"

If you disagree with me--if you believe that a high-density large-profile
desktop display is just plain silly--I hope that one day if and when we do
actually see such a device become available, and you sit down in front of one
and mutter, "wow!" that you will remember this conversation. :)

------
cognivore
If you’re a technical person who uses computers for your work, a weak PC
market is a blessing.

There is absolutely no reason the general public should be using the
traditional desktop computer. They should be using limited use devices
tailored to the things that people want to do the most – prattle, get
directions, browse the web, and buy stuff. They can use their smart phone or
tablet for these. Such devices fit the technical commitment level of the
general public, not demanding much in the way of learning or expertise.

Computers should be for computer people who are willing to make the investment
that they require to use properly and effectively. The general public has
consistently shown they do not have this capability, and only serve as drag on
those technical.

As we move forward and the majority of the population is on phones and tablets
those who have made the investment to use computers well will have a decided
advantage in our increasingly technological world.

~~~
purplelobster
Interesting point of view. I wonder if the people growing up on smart-phones
and tablets today will be unable to use productivity devices in the future, or
whether tablets will become the new productivity device. My guess is that at
some point in school, most students will need word processing and various
other productivity tools, and will become acquainted with them that way.

------
th0ma5
My Dell Mini 9 still has some killer features that I can't seem to find on the
market:

1\. < $300

2\. No fan

3\. SDD

4\. GPU

5\. x86

Because of the need to support Windows a lot of netbooks are missing the SSD
and add the fan. A lot of the Chromebooks are Atom. The one Samsung one maybe
fits this bill, but I think it is on its way out.

I had hope for Haswell, but turns out it may break #1.

Anyway, I guess I need to start thinking about Atom and what kinds of OpenGL
ES kinds of things maybe, and forget about OpenCL or some such, which is
probably appropriate anyway.

The point of how awesome the machine is that it is small, quiet, and an
amazing terminal into the various clusters I utilize.

Thanks Microsoft, for killing them off.

~~~
astrodust
It's arguably point #1 that's killing the PC market. $300 isn't much money to
work with, and there's a _huge_ difference between a $500 computer and a $300
one. At the lower price-point, you're getting bargain-bin everything, every
corner cut.

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mariusmg
It's called market saturation. Most people don't need hardware upgrades for
facebook and shitty flash games.

~~~
dspillett
If developers were pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities on PCs there
would be more demand for upgrades, but instead most games target the current
console standards and offer little else extra if they find more power
available.

I suspect there will be a blip over the next 18-to-24 months as the next
generation of consoles become common and developers start targeting them
rather than the last generation, so what is not "bog standard" on the desktop
will not be good enough, then it'll settle again once the people that care for
high spec games on the PC have upgraded.

~~~
mhurron
The most common use for PC's is Microsoft Office, web browsing, and email.
None of those should be 'pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities.' Most
people aren't gamers or enthusiasts, those groups don't drive the market
anymore.

Lets also keep in mind that most publishers would like to sell games to more
then the 4 (size artificially small for emphasis) people who buy the latest
graphics card every 6 months. That means targeting hardware on a 1-2 year lag
at least. Hard core gamers, while a market that spends money, is very small.
Targeting the most powerful doesn't make sense.

------
Yrlec
The big question though is if sales are falling because people are switching
to tablets/smartphones entirely or because they are buying tablets for a
subset of their use cases. I'm a big PC fan and I would never replace my
laptop with a tablet as my primary computing device. However, my next purchase
will be a tablet, because I don't have one at the moment and it's great for
surfing the web from the sofa. The marginal return of purchasing tablet is
therefore higher. That doesn't mean my PC is going anywhere soon.

~~~
imissmyjuno
Another possibility is that older PCs are still good enough. My 4 year old
Core 2 Duo MacBook with an SSD has felt speedy enough for all my day-to-day
tasks (including driving a 24" display) that I just haven't bothered
upgrading.

How well do Windows 7 and 8 perform on older hardware?

~~~
rlu
A computer that came with XP (let's say prior to 2006? 2005?) will probably
still run faster with XP (though XP is literally 12 years old now..). However,
from what I understand a computer that came with Vista will run faster with
Windows 7, and faster still with Windows 8.

Vista upped system requirements from XP, but since then, MS has lowered system
requirements and OS footprint on each release.

Remember though that there are PCs that were genuinely quite good (back then)
which came with XP and then could also easily run Vista. This is sort of what
I was trying to get at with the 2005/2006 limit. Meaning that some PCs that
came with XP might still be able to run faster with Win7/8\. Just don't count
on it if you got it in 2001 :)

------
mwfunk
I've long thought that it may have actually been better for Microsoft in the
long run if the antitrust trial had resulted in breaking them up. Who knows
though.

The constant forays into new markets isn't new- they've been doing that since
the mid-90s at least. At that time they had essentially "won" the PC market
and achieved 90%+ market share with Windows and Office. Those products grew
and grew until they had nowhere to go. You'd think that would be great for
them (and it has been), but stock prices for the tech industry are driven by
growth, not profits. If you aren't constantly growing and expanding, your
stock price will flatline or start declining. So, for the last 15-20 years
Microsoft has been taking the profits from their cash cows and throwing them
into one attempt at expansion after another- MSN, Web TV, Zune, Xbox (which
was ultimately successful, but not especially profitable)...on and on.

Hardly any of their expansion attempts worked out for various reasons. Often
their products were clones of some other company's already successful product,
and coming out with something just as good (or even a little better) a year or
two later is just not good enough to unseat a firmly established competitor.
They also push the Microsoft and Windows branding hard, on everything they
make, but those are just not brands that most consumers have positive
associations with.

That's the fate of many tech companies, and it's kind of depressing: they have
huge success with some core products, blow up over a short period of time, and
effectively achieve monopolies with those products. The core products become
cash cows, reliably raking in tons of money quarter after quarter, but they
have nowhere left to go. So the company dedicates itself to throwing that cash
cow money at one (usually) failed attempt at expansion to new markets after
another, but hardly anything takes hold and they are punished by the stock
market and their shareholders, despite the fact that they are still insanely
profitable. In the worst case, some sea change in the industry comes along
after a decade or two, and all of a sudden their dependable cash cow starts
drying up. It happened with IBM, it's been happening with Microsoft, and it'll
probably happen to many of the top tech companies right now. It sucks and it's
stupid, but that's the nature of the tech industry; being publicly traded is a
double-edged sword because if you're not constantly growing and expanding,
your shareholders think you are failing. I wish more companies could settle
into a state of doing one thing really well and not have constant pressure to
expand, because that's ultimately what kills them.

------
themstheones
MS should just calve off it's different divisions. Seems like they are getting
dragged down by forays into markets they aren't good in, e.g. tablets.

~~~
VintageCool
That's not necessary. Microsoft's net income this quarter was $4.97 billion.
They're doing great. They failed to meet Wall Street's expectations this
quarter, but that doesn't mean they're getting dragged down.

Additionally, the first few revisions of any new Microsoft product tend to do
poorly, but Microsoft has huge stockpiles of cash that they can throw at the
problem until they break into a market, dominate it, and start producing
positive revenue.

------
DanielBMarkham
The desktop/PC market has lost all innovation. I'm not sure why. Things that
we take for granted in other form factors: touchscreens, built-in battery
backups, seamless bluetooth integration, voice commands -- should be standard
by now in desktops. Once they assimilate what's great from other form factors,
they can leverage the space on the desk to do things the other ones can't.
Things like 3-D, very-large screen formats, wall displays, and gesture
recognition.

Instead, somehow the desktop crowd started chasing gamers, creating faster and
faster video cards and overclocked processors on the high-end. That was a nice
crutch for a few years, but it's not a growth strategy. For the
desktop/household PC to _grow_ , it needs to develop into something that it's
currently not: an immersive computing experience that's part of your
household. That might even include starting to team off with builders to make
the PC part of the normal decorative process of designing houses. There's no
reason some kind of swappable PC with a wall display couldn't be part of
household room designs.

The form factor is dead because the industry has lost the ability to execute
on a vision. Instead they're just trying to see how long they can milk the
cash cow. Looks like we're now beginning to see an answer to that question.

