
Replacing the PC - stevenkovar
http://dcurt.is/the-death-of-the-tablet
======
ekianjo
> In the future, we’ll all simply use our mobile phones for everything.

Haha. D Curtis and his predictions, always very funny. Japan is where you
should look at. Japan's penetration of the mobile phone is close to 100% since
the late 90s, and Japanese could already do everything they wanted using ONLY
their mobile phone even before the iPhone came out.

Yet the PC did not die. It's still very much alive even in Japan, because your
mobile phone still won't replace every of its uses, and you'd be hard pressed
to find any young person (maybe not teenager, but at least university
students) who does NOT have a laptop.

PCs are not going to die anytime soon, as I said before so many times you are
just going at a more fragmented market down the road, with people using
different kind of devices for different purposes. And OMG, let's stop relying
on what 15 years old kids do to predict the future. My former 15 yo self had
none of the needs and uses as my present self, so of course you'll tend to go
to different devices as you age. There's no silver bullet for every use out
there.

~~~
danielrhodes
Smartphones are not technologically capable of doing all things a desktop can
right now, but they are quickly moving in that direction (in terms of
speed/capacity). When they are and you can dock your phone to a larger
screen/keyboard at work and then take it when you are ready to go and access
the same apps/data on the go, the traditional desktop PC market for the
majority of people will die quickly.

Technologically, consumer electronics in Japan is not as far ahead of western
countries as it once was in the 90s. Going into a Japanese electronics store,
you will find it does not look that much different from a Best Buy in the US.
What does look different? All those "different kind of devices for different
purposes" have folded into smartphones.

~~~
ekianjo
> the traditional desktop PC market for the majority of people will die
> quickly.

Who cares about the traditional market ? The point of the article is that the
PC will die. It's simply not going to be the case, even if the PC stops being
mainstream - there will still be USES for the PC, even if it's for a minority
of people. And it does not look like it, there are still hundreds of millions
of PCs sold every year, and they are not replaced as fast as subsidized phones
and tablets, therefore it "looks like" the PC is dying, except it isn't.

~~~
mreiland
This idea "becomes new" every few years, and yet PC games are predicted to
outsell console games by the end of 2014.

What most people misunderstand is that, given the choice, most people would
choose a PC for a lot of their computing needs.

The issue is lugging that PC around everywhere they go. In other words,
physics doesn't give people that choice, and so other form factors become
extremely popular.

But at no point will PC's be replaced by them. It's been predicted before, and
they were wrong then too.

------
RogerL
Children and young adults don't have tablets _and_ cell phones because they
have limited disposable income.

Kids also don't need appointment books, the ability to read/edit documents
from work, and so on.

They also have smaller hands - a cell phone is already big to them. Their
eyesight is at the best that it will ever be. I would have been able to use a
cell screen to browse the internet at 20; now, not so much.

~~~
jseliger
This isn't an original view, but I suspect that PCs will become specialized
devices for particular groups (professional writers / coders / video editors,
or those who aspire to do professional work; PC gaming enthusiasts; a couple
of others), while most other people doing most other things will migrate to
cell- and tablet-like form factors; maybe they'll have a computer around for
something but does it matter if the computer is five or even ten years old?

The migration factor would seem to be an important part of Dustin's
point—along with the idea that teens and 20-somethings are leading indicators,
as they were for social networks, mp3s, etc.

(I'm typing this on a 27" iMac but would broadly define myself as part of the
"specialist" group.)

Incidentally, cameras appear to be following a similar trajectory to PCs, with
sales falling off in the last two or so years. See e.g.
[http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/when-will-the-panic-
star...](http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/when-will-the-panic-start.html)
or [http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/march-2014-nikon-
news/ha...](http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/march-2014-nikon-news/have-we-
gone-as-far-as-well.html).

~~~
aufreak3
There is, for me, a peculiar connection between cameras and pc computing power
(I used to work for muvee technologies). As computing power grows, I've been
quite frustrated with how he extra tends to get eaten up by a higher qualiy
video format. 320x240 was enough at one point and 300mhz machines could deal
with these well. Then came DV at 720x576@30fps, needing faster machines. We
have HD today at 1920x1080. Each step has so far been 4x bump in resolution.
We're now going to get hit by another 2x bump - 4k video, and then perhaps a
bump to the frame rat to 60fps (or at least 48fps).

Today's "normal pc" compute power is inadequate for 4k video ... Unless you
plug in a decent gpu and your machine includes a decent bandwidth to that gpu.

Given that parents have always wanted to film thir kids at the highest quality
they can afford, where do you thnk this trend might take us industry wise?

Edit: if i cannot type out this post error free, mobiles phons suck as PC
replacements ;)

------
WalterBright
I can't program on less than a 30" or so screen. And I need a full size
keyboard, too.

I can't imagine trying to write complex code on a phone. Heck, I can't even
imagine trying to write an article, or anything much longer than a tweet on
those tiny phone screens.

~~~
verbin217
You could have all that with airplay/chromecast and a bluetooth
keyboard/mouse.

~~~
WalterBright
Since my large monitor & keyboard are nailed to my desk, having a box under it
to drive it is not a burden in any way - and those boxes are cheap.

I would like a PC without fan noise, though.

I bought a Galaxy tablet for reading books, because it is nearly paper-sized,
had an HD display, and is completely silent. It's marvelous for that, and I'm
very pleased with it. But it's still too small to program on, both the display
size and the inadequate storage.

~~~
verbin217
> Since my large monitor & keyboard are nailed to my desk, having a box under
> it to drive it is not a burden in any way - and those boxes are cheap.

That makes sense and I'm in a similar situation right now. However, going
forward, monitors and desktop computers will become increasingly redundant
with the smart tvs and phones that most consumers will already own.

------
encoderer
I wonder why he just didn't _ask_ a young person?

I did. I asked a 15 year old cousin.

"I use my mobile phone exclusively for email and internet."

why?

"I have privacy on my phone and it's the only thing I can use at school _and_
at home."

Huh. Makes sense.

But when these students get older, and aren't as concerned about privacy from
their parents, and aren't restricted from using other devices by school rules,
I suspect they will adopt the device appropriate for the task at hand -- just
like older folks do now.

Maybe tablets as a separate product _are_ going to be more niche but I
personally don't see it. But one thing I'm fairly sure of, as long as people
have to type long things, a real keyboard is indispensable. I'm not sure what
the 2030 Macbook Air will be, but i feel pretty confident that it (or similar)
_will_ be.

------
ghshephard
Here is a reasoned counterpoint to the notion that the iPad has maxed out:
[http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/30/the-ipad-
discontinuity/](http://www.asymco.com/2014/04/30/the-ipad-discontinuity/)

I know so many older people who now live entirely on their tablets - heck, in
Canada, I've got family who do all their email and browsing on _playbooks_ .

Personally, I could never, ever, live without a Laptop (Not a day goes by
where I don't spent at least 15 minutes on Terminal.app) - but, I totally
understand how 90% of the population has different "jobs that need to be done"
than myself - so there will be some tablet/Smart Phone that will take over
those jobs.

The 20-30% of us hackers, knowledge workers, and gamers will keep a vibrant PC
/ Laptop market going for at least another 5-10 years, until Tablets/Smart
Phones get powerful enough to just drive a display technology and get hooked
into a keyboard.

That's the day that I carry my entire processing/storage/memory unit in my
pocket.

------
lmg643
i think pg already captured this idea when he said that once mobile phones
were powerful enough to run an IDE, so you could carry it in your pocket
wherever you go, plug into a monitor and keyboard and work - then the PC would
be dead.

i disagree that middle-class teens are the harbinger of this future out of
enlightenment - more like just managing household expenses and the reality of
living at home. write your homework on the shared family PC, and everyone has
their own phone.

~~~
DougWebb
That high-powered pocket-size device will be nice, but it's existence will
mean that I can have a 20x as powerful desktop-sized device. And I'm going to
want that for software development even though the pocket-sized device can run
an IDE, because my desktop is going to have a much better IDE that does all
kinds of code analysis and live testing for me as I work, and it's going to be
able to compile my code much faster than the pocket device will.

Today's mobile phones are much more powerful than yesterday's PCs, but they
didn't replace yesterday's PCs. We just have much more powerful PCs as well.

~~~
ghshephard
For some very, very, very small percentage of the population, that extra power
can be useful - but I strongly suspect that, outside of gamers, that
percentage is less than 10%.

For most people, PCs and Laptops became powerful enough about 5 years ago. I
am a _serious_ power user, run VMware, Cisco Network Simulators, Multiple
Drawing Applications, Aperture, the entire Office Suite, VPNs, plus the normal
host of twitter, text editor, skype, google earth apps, iTunes - all
_simultaneously_ \- and my 2010 MacBook Air is still sufficient . I'm still
doing all my Desktop PC work (Mostly Outlook and Visio) on my 2004 Dell
Precision 650 (All that I've upgraded is the SSD and Monitor).

The Laptop and PC market is wildly over served today for 90%+ of the
population. A MacBook Air is way more powerful than people need in terms of
Processor, Wireless, and CPU performance for those people.

Yes - of _course_ you will be able to take advantage of more powerful systems,
but if we've already reached the point where _I_ can't, then it won't be too
far off before Phones/Tablets will have more than enough processing power for
most ordinary people.

~~~
mreiland
"gaming" is a billion dollar industry, calling it a "very very small
percentage of the population" may be exaggerating a bit ;)

~~~
ghshephard
Oh, absolutely I get that, that's why I wrote:

"For some very, very, very small percentage of the population, that extra
power can be useful - but I strongly suspect that, outside of gamers, that
percentage is less than 10%. "

I.E. If we eliminate the PC gamers, probably less than 10% of people need the
extra power we are getting from PCs. I realize that PC gamers can _always_ ,
and will _always_ need more power than they will ever, ever get.

------
InclinedPlane
I think these predictions are way off base. One trap that the author falls
into is by measuring time spent using a computing device. The idea being that
this is the most important metric, but it's not. Not all computing activities
are comparable in importance.

There is an underlying value of the time spent computing, and that in turn
affects the need to own different computing devices and so on. Today computing
is ubiquitous for some people, but the value people place on the time they use
a mobile phone to catch up on facebook or reddit may not be the same as the
value they place on the time they use a tablet or a pc to do something more
substantive.

Moreover, tablets are still less mature than other computers and don't have
the same market penetration so naive comparisons don't necessarily spell
universal truths.

I think ultimately the average person will end up using both smartphones,
tablets, and keyboarded computers in the future. With varying degrees of use
depending on their own habits, hobbies, and jobs. I especially don't think
that the tablet is going to go away, it will have its niche and it will be a
big one.

Edit: I think a fundamental problem with DCurtis' reasoning is the idea that
we are at the end of a massive change in computing, rather than at the
beginning of a new revolution in personal computing. I believe that the latter
is true, that the changes which will occur over the next 20 years in computing
will be more profound and more impactful on daily life around the world than
what has occurred over the past 20 or even 30 years. Part of that will involve
the penetration of tablet style (or hybrid tablet/laptop) computers into the
workplace, something that has not yet happened to a significant degree. Part
of that will involve the revolution in education via educational software that
will almost certainly occur within the next 20 years, which will likely be
most commonly used on tablet form-factor computers, not phones.

------
bobbles
This seems to completely ignore that fact that everyone can get a subsidised
smartphone these days, even teenagers.

Mostly tablets need to be purchased outright, which requires a lot more
disposable income.

------
Axsuul
PCs will never die. They are productivity machines and something of that form
will always be needed in order for work to be done. Teens don't need to work,
they play.

But what I __can __see is the PC moving to the phone, such that a monitor and
workstation accessories can be plugged into the mobile device.

~~~
vidarh
I believe this is what most people who argue that the a mobile device will
become peoples primary computer mean.

And you can already do this. Pretty much all Android phones and tablets
supports bluetooth or USB keyboards, and many supports wired or wireless HDMI
out.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Even that is not enough. The raw power advantage of the PC will probably
continue for some time. There is no way to cram the amount of CPU/GPU power
plus RAM/storage capacity that exists in a PC into a slate style device,
whether smartphone or tablet sized. That power may not be useful to a great
majority of the population, but it is useful to some. And it will probably be
decades before that power differential stops being relevant. Though it's hard
to imagine how increases in the power of small form factor, low power devices
won't also translate into even greater increases in the power of larger form
factor, higher power devices.

------
gfodor
I think most people are not reading the article. He is not saying that the
tablet form factor is dead, just that in the long run tablets and phones will
converge. (So we will be calling things that operate like tablets today
phones.)

This will either mean we all start carrying around really large phones, or
that technology gets to the point where you can fit an object the size of a
phone in your pocket and have an experience like a tablet. (Using some
unforseen tech)

IMHO augmented reality converged with VR is the long run future. I have to
imagine we are all going to be wearing comfortable opaque goggles in a few
years that will project whatever we want wherever we want.

------
kjhughes
Smart phones are booming not so much because they're replacing laptops or
desktops but because

(1) Their mobile communication capabilities are essential.

(2) Their nature is to be coupled tightly to an individual rather than be
shareable.

(3) Their replacement cycles are so short.

~~~
DSMan195276
Also worth noting, most phone companies that I've seen push smart-phones
pretty heavily because they want to get you on a data-plan, and really don't
have many dumb-phones around. My family switched our cell-phone plan a few
years ago, and none of us really care for smart-phones so we didn't want a
data-plan and just wanted dumb-phones, and it was surprisingly hard to
actually accomplish this. It's not _extremely_ hard, but the 'default' is
definitely to just give everybody smart-phones.

------
daniel_reetz
Another reason that older people adopt tablets easily: they are a very good
match for older eyes. The natural degradation of human vision with age lends
itself to larger screens and buttons.

~~~
WalterBright
Oddly, even a retina iPod is far more readable to old eyes like mine than the
non-retina one. I found this out when I upgraded.

------
EGreg
_" This is very odd. Why would teens and young adults, who are almost without
exception the earliest adopters of new technological trends, use tablets less
often than older adults, who are least likely to be early adopters? Compared
to most new technologies, the tablet is being adopted backwards!"_

Because iPads are used mostly by professionals eg doctors and people who want
to read stuff or watch a movie on it.

------
ewzimm
Every time I see a prediction like this, it seems like people are forgetting
how much we are diversifying, not unifying, our computers. Almost every home
appliance can be bought with a computer in it.

At the moment, most of these appliances are missing a central controller, one
big home computer to coordinate all your smart devices, smart walls, etc. Once
we move into 8K wall displays in every room, a smartphone will not be able to
drive most of what people do with computers. They will need a big home PC to
handle their homes, but it will probably not have a desktop interface. Maybe
it won't be called a PC, but rather a home server or something like that, but
it will be a big bulky box installed in the home for personal computing.

The mobile phone is currently moving to replace the primary interface to the
many computers we all use, but it also has wearable candidates to replace it
in the near future. However, if you define the PC as a Windows desktop/laptop,
I definitely agree with the premise, but let's not forget about all the
upcoming power-hungry applications for home computing like AR and VR.

------
olalonde
What useful distinction is there between a mobile phone which is hooked up to
a physical keyboard plus a 30 inch monitor and a desktop computer? It seems
inevitable that smartphones will eventually be powerful enough to "act" as the
"computer" in "desktop computer like" setups or as the "computer" in "tablet
like" devices but why call those systems "mobile phones"? Isn't it more useful
to categorise in terms of human-computer interfaces (physical keyboard +
monitor = desktop, physical keyboard attached to screen = laptop, large touch
screen = tablet, small touch screen = mobile, etc.)? Or does dcurtis actually
predict a future where people want to program without physical keyboards and
watch movies on 5 inch screens?

------
maguirre
Personally I still haven't found a tablet that fulfill my needs to "create".
Tablets are good (maybe even great) as consumption devices. However I have
found that the closer a table gets to a laptop (add keyboard and bigger
display) the easier it is for me to create content

------
geuis
Your analysis is possibly flawed, right at the beginning.

30+ is not "old". You don't start hitting your stride until your 28/29 plus.
Lumping together everyone over the age of 30 is wrong.

Another point, people in 30+ have the income that younger people lack. Why are
15-20 year olds using mainly mobile? Because that's what they can afford or
what their parents get them. Desktops, laptops, and tablets are expensive in
comparison.

Why do more "old" people use tablets? Because a lot of us have found a tablet
is useful in many circumstances where a phone or laptop is not. We also have
more spare money, so I can splurge on an iPad every couple years. If I had
kids, they wouldn't be getting the newest thing for sure. There's work we can
do that doesn't require a full laptop.

------
madradavid
Personally i believe the Phone and the Laptop will sort of merge. A lot of us
use our laptops and PC's to Work and Create, Our Phones to Stay in
touch,communicate and Play. It is not fun/easy writing Python Code on your
mobile so why not just plug it into a laptop-like case with a Keyboard and
Screen then Plug it out when you are done. Phones already have the computing
power to do this and we already have a couple of OS'es (Ubuntu OS) that work
well on both Mobile and Desktop. I believe this is where we are headed.

------
protomyth
Well, here at the trailing edge, the cellphones (many feature) are the main
device but lots of love for bigger screens. If given an iPad they use it (a
lot), so I would expect the first iPad sitting at $99 bucks with a cell
contract will kill off the cellphone in a lot of youngsters with a big second
to the phablets. Bonus, once someone figures out a decent dock that we can add
a big screen to and leave around.

Its a price thing right now, not an I want thing.

------
aphexairlines
It doesn't seem to make sense to group 14-year-olds with 22-year-olds here.
One group has to share the family computer, the other doesn't.

------
DigitalSea
The personal computer is not dying. Yes, people aren't buying desktop and
laptop computers as much, but there is a very simple explanation people often
like to brush off to the side when making wild claims like this. The reason is
computing power has reached a point where you don't need to upgrade your
computer every year to run the latest games or suite of word processing
software. My Core i5 PC which I was running for years before only recently
upgrading is still going and can still run everything I throw at it. People
just don't need to upgrade as often as they did during the nineties when
computing power was increasing basically every year as was storage.

As a developer who can't do his day job without a PC, I couldn't picture using
my phone or a tablet to code with or administer servers. Believe me, I've
tried using my phone for many aspects of my job and besides being able to
maybe restart a server, NOTHING beats a good old fashioned terminal and
keyboard. The restrictive nature of applications available for devices like
iPhones and iPad's also means there are certain things I cannot do (like
transferring large database dumps that are tens of gigabytes to a remote
server).

I work for a design-led agency and let me tell you something, you cannot
design on a mobile phone or tablet (well tablet you sort of can, but the
results aren't that pretty or easy to accomplish). I'm sure some will argue
otherwise, but I challenge you to open up a 1gb PSD file on an iPad and see
how well you can work with it (switching between layers/groups, text sizes,
resizing things). Some devices aren't meant to do everything and people like
Dustin have been generalising and proclaiming these new portable touch devices
will replace everything, but the reality is they cannot replace everything.

People use different devices for different purposes. I've never seen anyone
coding on a train using an iPad or their iPhone before. People seem to use
their portable devices for email, gaming, phone calls and social media mostly.
How often do you see someone on public transport on Facebook, Twitter or
Instagram? A hell of a lot more then you would using said devices for other
purposes.

Then there is the issue of battery life. These new phones (especially phablet
phones) are lucky to last a day on a full charge with the stock battery
because of the constant drain of the screen, GPS and Wifi. You can't rely on a
smartphone, not even in 2014 to be reliable. Battery life followed by form
factor are the two biggest hurdles and the bigger you go, the less you can
call the device a phone or tablet. I can get like 5 hours from my laptop,
comparative use on my phone would maybe be half that...

------
brownbat
I use a tablet instead of a phone, the screen and battery are significant
hooks. It is slightly too large, I'm wondering if we won't all just settle on
six inch screens for both soon.

For phones to completely win, we need terminals in offices and libraries that
let you type on a full keyboard and use multiple monitors. Maybe you can just
dock a phablet to power the dumb HCI? That would be my dream.

~~~
dublinben
Do you use your tablet while walking around outside? Many people I see on a
typical urban sidewalk are using their phone. Nobody is using a tablet.

Multiple surveys have shown that tablets are used almost entirely at home.
People still see them as largely entertainment devices.

~~~
brownbat
> Do you use your tablet while walking around outside?

Yes, absolutely.

I get that I'm an outlier, but I used to have a phone, and my experience has
improved on net since I moved up a size category.

I might just be weird, but it's improved in ways that I would imagine would
hold universal appeal: longer battery life, easier HCI (easier to type and
swipe, easier to see nav, more readable text, better video).

The downsides are that it doesn't play nice with some phone plans, and it's
kind of awkward in one hand. Not completely awkward, but probably unreasonable
for a lot of smaller handed people (teens?), killing wider adoption. That's
why I think six inch phablets might hit the sweet spot.

------
dublinben
>I suspect this behavior will continue as these young people grow up

I don't. I spend a lot of my time browsing on a phone. I could probably be
counted in that "cell mostly" demographic. You can't get work done on a phone
though. When I actually need to get things done for school/work/etc. I'm using
a real computer, not a mobile device.

~~~
vidarh
Mobile devices are rapidly becoming "real computers". I have 4 cellphone sized
ARM devices in my house that are capable enough to use as desktops. I have
wireless keyboards for them. Several devices supports streaming the display.

For many Android phones, you can _already_ use them as desktop replacements of
sorts, with HDMI out (including some with "wireless HDMI") and bluetooth
keyboards.

------
beachstartup
here's a startup/business IT anecdote: in our office we have pretty much at
least two of every modern apple device...

mac pro, imac, macbook pro, macbook air, iphone, ipad 1/2/3/air/mini, apple
tv, mac mini, airport xt, airport xp, hell even an ipod or two. jeez, it's
actually kind of embarrassing now that i see it all typed out.

mac pros and macbook pro/airs get by far the most usage (dev and sales staff,
respectively), followed (by a safe margin in terms of clock time) by iphone
(everyone, all day long, for short bursts). everything else is highly
incidental and we could easily get by without. the ipad (of which we have 3 or
4, i believe) sit pretty much unused. our imacs are kind of dead-ends
functionally and the rest... more of a novelty than anything.

i tried to use ipads during meetings and even phone calls but found myself
fumbling. completely unnecessary when a macbook air is just as easy to carry
around and offers a traditional interface.

------
danielnaab
There is certainly a convergence point, but when it's $500+ for an iPad... how
many teenagers can afford that? The utility of the screen size is secondary
when put in those terms. I find it more likely that we're entering a world
where we have multiple devices surrounding us.

------
izzydata
The PC will never die because a phone / tablet or even a laptop will never be
able to do what a desktop can do. Both technologies are constantly getting
more powerful and they will never be equal.

------
apricot13
most children aren't allowed phones in school, let alone tablets. Phones are
easier to hide from teachers than 9" tablets. So it would make sense they
would have phones with them all the time and a smaller amount have tablets
(that have probably been bought for them, I doubt many could afford both) at
home.

Until multitasking on tablets is fixed it will never replace the PC for them.
Young people switch tabs and applications like mad!

------
hawkharris
One reason for the apparent drop in mobile Internet usage as Americans grow
from teenagers to 20-somethings has to do with work. Compared to high school
students, young professionals (and, to a lesser degree, college students) are
much more likely to use laptops. Many of them have to use laptops or desktop
computers for at least 8 hours a day.

So, the statistics may suggest that mobile web usage drops off in the 20s
range, but that may not mean that 20-somethings are any less savy or
interested in it.

~~~
hawkharris
Edit: Just noticed a downvote. If anyone disagrees with this observation, I'm
interested in hearing your feedback. One of the things I appreciate about HN
is that it's one of the few places on the Internet were people with differing
opinions can have truly productive and enlightening debates.

------
jamin
I can't even get enough affordable solid state storage in my PC and you are
telling me a phone is the answer?

------
frozenport
Maybe young people don't need a dumb down interface because they know how to
use a computer?

------
simonebrunozzi
One day the interface will be on our retina. The form factor will no longer be
relevant.

------
PaulHoule
I think cell phones are a fad.

Millenials can't afford to move out from home because they get bamboozled by
framily plans and handset discounts that drain their pocketbooks. At 10 a GB,
you have to be a wall street or Washington fat cat to watch Netflix.

I can't wait until tablets get Blu ray players cause the rent on LTE is too
damn high and all the kids think it is retro cool like 8 track tapes.

~~~
whythehellnot
Don't think phones are so much a fad as they are hopefully a dead end.

I would prefer if telecoms died a horrible death so that we could just use the
infinitely better infrastructure for moving information, AKA the internet.
They only stand to benefit by holding back the internet with bandwidth caps to
promote their crappier SMS tech.

That way instead of this marketing abomination called "Smartphones" (Phone/PC
hybrid failure mishmash) to using agnostic modular mobile PCs (not laptops)
without the GPS tracker and the cellular chipset (both being optional, the
magic of modularity). To have a hub that would connect to the mPC, interfacing
with all USB/HDMI/Audio devices. Not everyone likes current wireless devices.
Adding the ability to install whatever OS you want with an actual friendly &
helpful bootloader.

A man can dream...

