
“PCs are going to be like trucks” - sethbannon
http://cdixon.org/2013/02/26/pcs-are-going-to-be-like-trucks/
======
hkmurakami
_When I am going to write that 35-page analyst report, I am going to want my
Bluetooth keyboard. That’s 1 percent of the time._

There is _no_ way I am writing a 35 page analyst report filled with graphs,
tables, citations, fancy trademarks, etc.etc. on an 10 inch screen that has
serious issues with copy pasting and switching between applications/windows
with near-instant responsiveness. Tablets and phones are still primarily
consumption devices. If I need to produce something extensive, I still cannot
imagine letting go of a pc/mac/linux general purpose computing machine.

~~~
recuter
The screen size comes down to a tradeoff between portability and productivity.
You can get away with a surprising amount on a 10 inch screen - in fact, it
covers just about everything you would want to do "on the go".

The next step here would be when you come to a desk that has your keyboard,
mouse, and big screen and the tablet interacts with them simply by being in
their vicinity. That hasn't happened yet but I bet it will and the whole
debate about Tablets and PC's will be reduced to meaningless semantics.

~~~
csense
> your keyboard, mouse, and big screen...the tablet interacts with them simply
> by being in their vicinity

Bluetooth and Intel's wireless display standard [1] are here already.

Support for these technologies in common devices is another
matter...especially considering that wired devices are cheaper, don't suffer
from RF congestion, and don't need their own power supply (at least in the
case of keyboard and mouse).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Wireless_Display_(WiDi)>

------
bitwize
Except Jobs's claim is fatuous. The first automobiles were curiosities -- toys
for the rich. They didn't even work particularly well compared to the horse-
drawn carriage.

The thing that made cars take off was the Model T -- a simple, affordable,
customizable model that the masses could buy and adapt to their needs. The
iPhone ain't a Model T. More like a Duesenberg -- for all the advantage and
disadvantage that implies.

~~~
hncommenter13
Whatever the correct analogy is in terms of smartphones and PCs, it's worth
pointing out that the first mass-produced car (the Model T) actually preceded
the first mass-produced tractor (the Fordson Model F tractor), not the other
way around.

Why? I don't know for sure, but I would imagine it was because the market for
cars was and is an awful lot bigger than the market for tractors, and tractors
come with special requirements for durability and versatility (towing,
plowing, etc.) that were harder to satisfy at the time.

EDIT: Oops, the link. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordson_tractor>

------
dysoco
You know what's the problem with Tablets and Phones? They are designed to
__consume __, not produce.

Decades ago we learned how to use a PC with a Commodore or an Amstrad or
whatever, and you had to write your own programs, and you used the command
line: and you __produced __content.

Nowadays were are growing childs who just consume, they consume from Facebook,
from Youtube, from Twitter: Yet they don't produce any content.

~~~
hkmurakami
What might be more alarming than the devices becoming consumption devices, is
that society may be heading to a consumption society. Producing is orders of
magnitude more mentally challenging than consuming (I can read many books a
week with ease but writing even a couple good blog posts is still a
challenge), and whether society is driving the device change or the device
change is driving the society change, I worry about the long term effects this
environment will have on our future minds.

~~~
epistasis
> society may be heading to a consumption society.

We are replacing one-way devices like TVs, books, and newspapers with devices
that are inherently two-way like phones, tablets, and PCs. This is
emphatically _not_ heading towards a "consumption society." Kids are writing
more than they ever have in the past, and though people bemoan the use of
text-speak as though it's inferior, it's only people who don't understand
language and that language is continually changing.

Our society is changing greatly, but it's towards more creation, more
recording of creation, and more sharing with each other. Younger generations
are going to create more of this culture, and us older and less flexible folks
may not understand it, but there's no reason to think that kids are going to
be all zoning out, particularly any more than they were in the TV generation.
People who would never, _never_ , have spent time writing in the past are now
writing on their Facebook walls, not particularly well, but they're doing it.
I'm incredibly excited for the future.

~~~
katbyte
Where before only the best/selected would be publish and available to the
world, now anyone can be "published" on the web and heard/seen... I don't know
how i feel about that at the moment but i am none the less excited as well. It
is interesting times we live in.

------
eksith
It's not the screen size or the memory or storage or touch complexities or the
battery life or... some other thing. You know the greatest thing that no
mobile device or xPad or other shiny new Apple-thing to market hasn't given
me?

My system is my own: What I want on it, I get to put on it and no one, but me,
deletes or changes what's there. Until I actually get to _own_ my non-pc... or
whatever it is that I paid for, I don't see them going away any time soon.

Until I can comfortably install my preferred flavor of nix/bsd or do my work
painlessly, PCs are still going to be my first choice.

~~~
klipt
<http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone>

~~~
eksith
Canonical will have to bend to carrier lockdowns to truly become available
with a plan or it will just be a curiosity for those willing to fork over full
price for an unlocked version.

~~~
klipt
Well, you did say that you want to own your device!

The locked down version may sometimes be cheaper, but I bought a Galaxy Nexus
upfront so I could use the $30/month T-Mobile prepaid data plan. Compared to a
$70 plan, I paid off the phone in 10 months and everything after that is
savings.

(The Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 phones, incidentally, will be the first able to
run Ubuntu.)

------
natmaster
And yet, the 'agrarians' (developers of anything digital) will only increase
in number. Whereas after consolidation of farms, there are barely any farmers
left.

~~~
csense
Interesting idea.

1\. Economies of scale. When manufacturing physical goods, they often happen.
Digital goods are produced by individual artisans or relatively small groups,
and large teams can actually be counterproductive (As cited in the legendary
"The Mythical Man-month".)

2\. Demand structure. There's a limit to the amount of food each person can
eat. But the demand for digital goods is unlimited, especially given that some
digital goods enable the creation of entirely new classes of digital goods,
and other digital goods don't require human attention span to consume (think
of how much you _don't_ think about all the engineering work that went into
your OS.)

------
vincefutr23
The top two best selling automobiles of 2012 were trucks..

[http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2013/01/top-10-best-
selli...](http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2013/01/top-10-best-selling-cars-
of-2012.html)

~~~
sophacles
There are an incredible number of people who own trucks, and use them like
cars. Even an significant number of people who have "work trucks" and "good
trucks". The former for trucky things and the later for car things.

------
hakaaaaak
I wished the author would have mentioned that the term PC will no longer be
relevant, because they won't be personal; mobile devices are personal; the
tablet _may_ be personal; the smartwatch will be personal. The central
computer in your home should be called an HC or home computer, assuming there
only needs to be one of them, and maybe it will be involved with home
automation. It is unlikely it will be there to do truck-like tasks; that will
be handled by services external to the home, like an "EC2 for the masses".
Thinking of neighborhoods sharing PCs? Come on. Sometime in the 1980s was the
last time I went to a neighbor's house to use a PC.

------
aviswanathan
It seems inevitable, but I have difficulty imagining a world (at least one in
the next 10 years) where full scale projects are created on smaller devices.
The complexity and sophistication of a computer is a developer's joy. I don't
see that kind of openness with the tablet/smartphone market. Undoubtedly both
are fantastic tools for content/app consumption and perhaps even content
creation, but it's hard to imagine people building full scale applications
solely from tablets and smartphones.

~~~
sirmarksalot
Depends on what you mean by "full scale."

See the Penny Arcade post on the Microsoft Surface Pro. Gabe was able to go
through the entire process of drawing and uploading a comic strip as or more
easily than he would have done on his PC. This isn't the same as implementing
an e-commerce site, but it's one professional workflow that you would've
normally assumed would require a PC.

More workflows will be added for different fields and professions, and
eventually the uses for a full-blown desktop PC will become rare. Sure, we may
never develop full-blown webapps on our tablets, but we're probably only a few
years away from the majority of our non-dev tasks being practical without a
desktop PC.

Edit: Removed a repeated example

~~~
recoiledsnake
But the Surface Pro is still more of a PC than a tablet. The Surface RT would
be more like the iPad.

The Surface Pro has a Core i5 Intel chip, half the battery life, a couple of
fans, is heavier, thicker and gets hot. It has a powered USB 3.0 and can drive
a 2560x1440p monitor and has a Micro-SD slot, a full Wacom digitizer and a
pressure sensitive pen. Not to mention a full user navigable filesystem Even
the latest iPad has none of these features (or disadvantages).

It is more like a convertible truck/car hybrid though and Microsoft still
calls it a PC.

~~~
WayneDB
Absolutely agree that the Pro is more of a full PC. I have not experienced it
getting very hot yet and I did not know that it even had a fan inside of it
until I read your post because I never heard it. I have not run any games on
it yet though. Mostly I've been browsing, listening to music, exploring the OS
and drawing with Sketchbook and Fresh Paint.

The major downsides that I have experienced are 1) the terrible trackpad
scrolling (no momentum and it's not sensitive enough - like all non-Apple
trackpads), 2) Chrome doesn't work very well yet with touch, 3) the pen holder
is unusable when charging and 4) there is no Fn lock, so I can't hit F1, F2,
etc without pressing Fn.

No big show stoppers and I'm hoping all of these can be fixed with new drivers
and software in the future.

------
WalterBright
While I have several tablets, pods, ereaders, etc., I create content only on
my desktop. The reason is pretty simple - a full size keyboard, and the
biggest display I could find for a reasonable cost.

I can touch type only on a full sized, standard keyboard.

Having a big display is a big productivity booster. I can have reference
material in one window, and two other full sized windows on source code. It's
a big deal. A little laptop display - no thanks.

I'd get a display twice as big if one were available. Heck, I'd like one the
full size of my desk top, and actually have it _be_ my desk top.

------
r0s
The PC revolution was great because it exposed PCs to a lot of people who
really didn't need all that power and versatility; the PC was the only option.

This is a long term market correction, and society is worse off for it, but
that's not the issue.

The real unacknowledged variable is the limited power of current Non-PC
computing devices. What happens when my tablet can run a full-fledged OS? I
think the answer is starting to emerge and it's simple and predictable. It
will.

The first "portable" computers were pretty limited, and laptops are full
fledged PC's (I think most would agree).

------
wmf
Yet Apple is making OS X worse for getting work done: reversing scrolling (I
know you can configure it), dumbing down Spaces, breaking the zoom button,
hiding the Library folder, etc.

~~~
mds
Ironically I'm typing this on a ThinkPad running Linux that I've configured to
use "reverse" scrolling after getting used to it on my MacBook.

Agreed with the general sentiment though.

------
Shorel
Honestly I don't care if 70% of everyone else buys a tablet, as long as I can
buy myself a PC.

------
Executor
I don't care about tablets or desktop pc's. I care about general-purpose pc's
vs closed systems. Let's hope people choose a path where they get control of
their computers rather than the closed app store model.

------
sekhat
My only query with things like this.

Sure PC sales are diving, but is the number of PC's actually owned going down?

You know, less PC's being sold, doesn't mean people are getting rid of the
PC's they have.

------
api
... and unfortunately all these new tablet type devices and phones are jailed.

Microsoft tried to do this long ago via "trusted computing" and similar and
the entire industry balked. But shift the form factor a little... iOS and (to
a somewhat lesser degree) Android are far worse than anything MS ever tried to
pull off.

~~~
barbs
Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by 'jailed'?

~~~
csense
"Jailed" in mobile device terms means that you're unable to install software
that hasn't been approved by the manufacturer.

This applies particularly to Apple devices but also to many Android variants.

From the device manufacturer's standpoint, there are a lot of good reasons to
do this:

* Enforce certain standards on applications for marketing reasons

* The official app store gets revenue for every purchase that every user makes

* They can control whether the user is able to upgrade the operating system, in particular they can force the user to eventually buy a new device to get OS upgrades

This sucks for developers. There are ideological reasons against this,
particularly among open-source fans, but some of the practical reasons to hate
this practice:

* You have to spend a lot of money for SDK's to write apps (particularly an obstacle for young developers, think of how expensive a three-digit cost [1] [2] felt when you were a middle- or high-school student)

* You have to spend even more money to post your app in the store

* You can't write certain kinds of apps

* There's no way to know for sure whether your app will be approved until you've actually developed it (and incurred all the time and monetary costs thereof)

* If you don't like the official store's policies, there's no alternative

* There's no way to change or experiment with the lower layers of the device (such as a custom operating system)

[1] If you use a currency other than the US dollar, please convert this number
appropriately.

[2] I still remember how frustrated and angry I was, at the age of eleven,
upon finding out that Microsoft MASM, the assembler used by one of my favorite
programming textbooks, cost $180.

------
tybris
I don't think either the PC or tablets in their current forms will be the
productivity tool of the future. The floor's open to new contenders that can
help people deal with data and complexity.

------
joe_the_user
_"This year, about five times as many smartphones will be shipped versus PCs,
and tablets will surpass PCs for the first time."_

Woah, holy unreferenced claim, bat man!

The only thing my Googling gives for tablets surpassing PCs is

[http://bgr.com/2012/11/26/tablet-sales-2013-notebook-pc-
sale...](http://bgr.com/2012/11/26/tablet-sales-2013-notebook-pc-sales/)

That's a PROJECTION that tablets will surpass laptops in 2016(!).

\--- Maybe Google is just wonky and is missing all those articles reporting
that this is happening now or maybe, just this discussion happening entirely
"inside the echo chamber" ---

Edit: He could also mean: "tablets will surpass PCs for the first time..." (at
some unknown time in the future).

