
Outshone by Smaller Screens, PCs Aim to Be Seen as Cool Again - apeconmyth
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/technology/outshone-by-smaller-screens-pcs-aim-to-be-seen-as-cool-again.html
======
stegosaurus
I just wish all devices were more like PC's.

My desktop computer is a glorious, glorious device. I have millions of
different bits of software for it, many operating systems, open source,
proprietary, etcetera. It's all there. It really feels like my machine. If I
don't want Windows, I blow it away and install Linux, BSD, Plan 9, code my own
bootloader, whatever.

My laptop is a bit less so (can't find the perfect form factor for me, can't
upgrade it, etc) but it's very similar. It's mine. I have spice, vnc, rdp,
ssh, sftp, ftp, irc, <insert a million other things here regardless of whether
I actually ever use them> as commandline tools that just work and aren't
filled with adverts or in app purchases or 'please add this to your google
account'.

Phones and tablets? Complete write off. My smartphone is basically a toaster.
Android and iOS make what could be a general purpose computer into a Fisher
Price experience. It's really sad to me.

I'd love a modern version of the Psion Series 5. The Pyra ([https://pyra-
handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/](https://pyra-
handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/)) looks like a decent candidate. All I need is
a Linux distribution with an API or commandline 'sms' and 'call' tool.

The mainstream is basically focused on creating a slightly more interactive
version of a portable television, which I find deeply saddening.

~~~
quanticle
>Phones and tablets? Complete write off. My smartphone is basically a toaster.

You say that like it's a bad thing. For the vast majority of people, they wish
their computers behaved more like toasters, rather than finicky, customizable,
yet extremely powerful pieces of computing machinery that they are.

~~~
stegosaurus
Well, I'm me, and it's a bad thing for me.

I don't want the world to change so that these devices don't exist. I'm just
sad that there aren't options. It feels like a huge waste of potential.
Creation benefits us all.

In a world without something like the IBM-compatible PC we'd likely never have
gotten to the point of creating smartphones because the tools simply wouldn't
exist.

------
thescribe
I feel like the features proposed to make PC's 'cool' are all things that a
power user isn't interested in or actively avoids.

My educated guess is that this won't win over the masses who love tablets and
it will further alienate the PC core audience.

~~~
shirro
Spot on.

They went chasing television viewers with 16:9 glossy screens and all the
productivity types held onto their old machines and wept for the future.

I don't want a paper thin Netflix viewer. I have a tablet and a huge tv for
that. And I sure don't want to do work on a tablet PC.

I want to see some context on the code I am editing or view a PDF full page.
Sure you can go side by side on a huge 16:9 screen but on a compact laptop my
vision can't do it even at retina levels.

I get sick of squinting at everything through a mail slot.

Lets get back to productive screens and keyboards and sensible designs that
aren't going to sacrifice battery life or functionality to be the thinnest and
shiniest.

Dell and HP are going to be the last places to look for innovation. I suspect
90% of what they do these days amounts to slapping a badge on a generic
Chinese machine.

Most of the innovation seems to be from Microsoft, Apple and Google. The
future of PCs will likely come from Surface, Pixel and whatever Apple does
next.

~~~
TTPrograms
Maybe AR optimized for productivity would be a useful innovation in the space.
Higher resolutions (with possibly lower fields of view if necessary) and
maintained visibility of keyboard/mouse should be possible with slight
modifications to the VR / AR coming out now (like Microsoft's offering) - then
you've got "infinite" virtual monitor space.

------
kalleboo
The article seems to be saying that PC makers are looking for some way to woo
back tablet/mobile users to using PCs instead.

But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they?

Rather what they're looking for is to sell some reason for people to upgrade
their 5 year old PC that still works fine. And all they can think of is
"thinner" and crazy gimmicks.

~~~
santaclaus
> But tablet sales are flat too, aren't they?

At least for Apple, since 2012 that seems to be roughly the case. iPad sales
are about on par with Mac sales, maybe a bit higher, but both iPad and Mac
sales are dwarfed by iPhone sales [1].

[1] [http://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-
rev...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-
apple/)

~~~
djrogers
Just for clarification, that's revenue, not unit sales. iPads outsell macs by
a little more than 2:1 today based on box count.

------
w1ntermute
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
voltagex_
When I was young, my Dad paid $4000AUD for a 486-DX clone. I can see the day
coming where I'll have to pay that again to get a decent desktop.

Have you seen the low-end laptop market? 1366x768 and terrible build quality
everywhere.

Everyone else might love their tablets and phones, but you can pry my desktop
from my cold, dead hands.

~~~
bitJericho
Second hand server and workstation equipment is extremely cheap, high quality
and powerful. Take a look at z600 and z800 workstations. I'm eyeballing
getting a pair of 4.4 ghz dual core CPUs for fast single threaded compile
times. They don't require any particular special heatsinks and reach nearly
5ghz with turbo boost. And that's under 600-700 dollars total for those chips.
It's a great time for desktop users.

~~~
voltagex_
Heh, at least I'd save on my heating bill in winter. Where I live I pay about
30c/kWh. I wrote about that the other day -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11378704)

I'm not sure I share your enthusiasm for fast single threaded compile times.
Some basic testing on AWS showed benefits jumping from c4.xlarge all the way
to 4xlarge (but not 8xlarge) and using appropriate -j parameters. I'm not sure
you're IO bound at that point either because compiling into a RAM disk didn't
seem to make much difference.

~~~
bitJericho
I pay 8! My work that i do is definitely CPU bound but ymmv. These CPUs don't
consume any nor energy than is normal for the architecture and die size, which
is to say its not the best today's tech has to offer but its no P4.

------
buro9
Things a PC should be better than a laptop at:

1\. Graphics power

2\. CPU power

3\. RAM

4\. Size (smaller)

5\. Any/all of the above

(Storage wasn't included in that list as who hasn't already externalised all
storage?)

I'm seriously considering not buying another laptop and instead purchasing an
Intel NUC.

I've got to that point where owning a laptop has led me to have a NAS, a
decent DAC and stereo, a big panel for viewing films... aside from web
browsing it feels like the things I do on my laptop are not in the laptop's
sweet spot (gaming, graphics, video editing, encoding, compiling, spinning up
VMs and dockers, etc).

Then I look at my full-size keyboard, my external display that is better than
the laptop display and I wonder why I have a laptop. A machine that is
compromised in every way to make it portable when I barely take it anywhere
(and always will have a work laptop I do work trips with, and a smartphone for
recreation trips).

I'd rather a tiny, but powerful, silent PC.

I view my primary PC (the laptop presently) as disposable... because I've
externalised storage, display, audio... I feel I just want a small powerful
generalised computing machine. Nothing more.

PS: If anyone can recommend something not far from the NUC in size, but with
higher CPU + RAM capabilities, and potentially that looks aesthetically
pleasing then I'm all ears.

PPS: Not the Mac Mini, it's ugly, has a large footprint, tops out at 16GB
(costs a lot to get there) and all of the ports seem very outdated. More
towards a Mac Pro in CPU and RAM, but with a lower price tag and can run Linux
(or whatever) without sulking. The NUC for me would be a cheap stop-gap until
something like this emerges.

~~~
ktamura
I have a friend who does exactly this. He has two NUCs, one at work and one at
home. When I asked him about working away from his desks, he said, "I
shouldn't be doing that =p"

------
flohofwoe
Windows laptop makers should really concentrate on fixing the simple things
first, since currently they are actively trying to drive people away from
their products. My last HP Spectre x360 with Windows 8.1 (and now Windows 10)
was an absolute disappointment:

\- it couldn't connect to my Fritzbox WLAN router (very mainstream here in
Germany) unless I installed an old Intel driver from 2014, the last time this
happened to me was 10 years ago when trying to install Linux on a laptop

\- the touchpad is barely usable since it uses some crappy 3rd party driver
(Synaptics), sometimes the touchpad simply stops recognizing gestures, and the
Synaptics control panel has a "Reset" button which must be pressed in this
case

\- the keyboard tends to ignore the second keystroke if the same key is
pressed quickly in succession

\- HighDPI displays on Windows machines are useless since at least half of the
tools (even Microsoft's own VC runtime installers) are upscaled and the
upscaling quality is really terrible

\- plus it had the usual amount of crapware preinstalled (including completely
useless custom driver update and customer support tools)

My current Asus Zenbook is slightly better, but still has a crappy 3rd party
touchpad driver.

With this situation, it is no wonder that people are moving away from laptops
and Windows.

------
Houshalter
Speculating from a single anecdote, I have a nontechnical friend that switched
to using a smartphone instead of a PC.

Part of it is that the smartphone can do everything they need from a computer.
Browsing the internet, messaging and email, etc. But that answer alone isn't
very satisfying, because even when doing nontechnical stuff on a smartphone,
like browsing reddit or watching youtube, I find it very inconvenient compared
to a desktop.

I think the real reason is, when she needed to use her computer for something,
it took 15 minutes to start up. That's super inconvenient. People talk about
how small 15 second delays can discourage behavior and cause frustration. 15
minutes is just ridiculous, and really discourages using the thing unless you
really need to.

I installed a pure copy of windows 7 on an old computer recently. Nothing
installed on it at all, no connection to the internet, nothing put on it by
the manufacturer. And the specs weren't that good. Yet it took 30 seconds to
boot up. I was amazed, I didn't think that was possible for a modern PC. Even
my phone takes longer to boot up.

~~~
drakenot
I generally agree. For most things I find trying to do complicated tasks on my
phone just an exercise in pain.

However, I find browsing reddit on my phone a more pleasant experience than on
a desktop computer. Swipe gesture to collapse comment threads and the improved
UI that some of the reddit apps have make it easier to consume comment threads
than when I'm on a PC.

------
WalterBright
Hah, I need a huge 4K screen and a full size keyboard to do programming. I
only use a laptop when I travel, and even then I bring along a full size
bluetooth keyboard. (I had to look through endless lists of Bluetooth
keyboards before I finally found one, and only one, that was full size.)

And I want an even bigger screen! I'd like one the size of my desk, with
retina pixel density.

------
taneq
Saying phones are stealing market share from PCs is like saying that shoes are
stealing market share from cars because people spend more time wearing shoes
than driving cars. They're different devices with different purposes. Phones
are OK for media consumption but terrible for anything creative (other than
maybe photography.)

~~~
alkonaut
I think the thing is that 90% of computer/internet users are media consumers
and very few are media creators, apart from as you say - photos.

Writing the occasional email is clunky on a phone but the experience of using
a phone still beats worrying about your backup, the location of your photo
files, the OS license or Antivirus on the PC.

"People in general" simply don't write large documents, programs, create music
etc. They email a friend, browse instagram and take photos. The smartphone
form factor happens to be the perfect match for this usage pattern. So much so
that if there was a fraction of the use cases they can't do on their phones -
people much rather just skip doing those activities entirely and stay on the
smartphone.

------
505
The pen-portrait of the nested computers was fine. I looked around a bit for a
photo or a movie, but to no avail. I guess that's not the kind of news that
the NYT likes to report. But I'm not a paying subscriber, so I guess I can't
complain.

------
Animats
Note that by "PC", the article means "Windows laptop". Desktop machines are
not even mentioned.

