Is 2013 the end of the PC?

The paragraph Enterprise accelerates PC's decline says that it's Windows 8 that will see a decline (for some people PC means Windows) and that cannot be a bad thing ( http://www.fsf.org/windows8 ).

I hope not, as I'm one of those weird people who like a real keyboard
and the option of running his operating system and apps of choice.

On 12/11/2012 05:07 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Saw this on the news today in their predictions:
> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100265077
>
> They see traditional PCs and laptops dying off in favor of smartphones
> and tablets. I, for one, really don't want to see this happening as
> smartphones and tablets are very limited in what they do and have
> extremely closed ecosystems. At least with a PC, I can put any OS I want
> on it, use developer tools, and rely on the ole mouse and keyboard.

The PC is not dying. They've been saying this for years. Thin clients, tablet PCs, netbooks, have been all the rage at one time or another. It's like cloud computing. It is a fad at best. While it does work for some people the majority it'll never work for.

While some services easily lend themselves to to the web (mapping for instance) others don't. Many applications need raw power, significant bandwidth, etc. They run best on the client side where these things exist.

While there is a significant percentage of the population whom it is possible to move to a more web-centric setup (maybe 90% of the less technical GNU/Linux users) the rest still need raw power that the CPU/hard disk/etc provides.

Have you ever tried to move a significant number of pictures to the web for instance? It takes a long time. A simple task like that is part of the problem in moving to such a setup. Unless they start rolling out 1000mbps symmetric Internet connections to peoples homes I just don't see it happening.

Not to mention there are other reasons the PCs not going to die. Even desktops aren't going to die out. The wealthy populations are getting older too for instance and that is going to impact sales of tablet style devices/phones.

What has happened is the market has matured. At some point you hit saturation though and there are no more people left to sell to. The people in the third world aren't able to afford computers. What they are buying are cell phones. Americans, Europeans, Canadians, Australians, etc are all going to continue to purchase computers just as they have. Cell phones, tablets, etc work in conjunction with desktops and laptop computers. Unlike with laptops your not going to see tablets/netbooks overtake laptops/desktops any time soon.

75% of the population is over the age of 20 in the US (and I think more for Europe). While I'm unsure how many are over the age of 30 peoples abilities begin to decline around this age and this makes up a significant portion of the population. As the “baby boomers” retire your going to see more people with desktops and laptops. Not less. This population set already has a hard enough time with desktop computers let along laptops. And now your suggesting the PC is dead because of a fad?

At best 25% of the computers sold this year were tablets. That is probably the highest it'll ever be.

There was a news story recently praising Dell for putting Ubuntu on their ultrabooks, but they don't seem to be fully committed. Due to their partnership with Microsoft, Windows 8 systems are put front and center while the Ubuntu ones are hidden.

Do you know what scares me? When desktop operating systems like Windows 8 or the latest OSX will only allow you to install software through their app stores much like smartphones and tablets. The average user may not care, but a developer will then be forced to a GNU/Linux system because it will be the only way they have control in what they install and how it works!

I found a few articles where they name alternatives to Dell and list System76 and Zareason. Rarely ThinkPenguin. Especially ones by Matt Hartley on Datamation due to his ties with Linux Action Show and System76 being a sponsor. Their last episode was dedicated to praising how great System76 is.

Let's free the entire stack and build our own!

Actually, I foresee a future where most of our computing tasks are done by a tiny device we build... perhaps in a watch or necklace. Then they would interface with mobile devices, tablets, desktops, wall-televisions, tables, cars, airplane seats, toilets, and perhaps robots.

I suppose that would assume a visionary future technology beyond what we possess now, such as photon-based computers or something.

We just need to make sure we control all levels of the software we use.

I guess I'm not being too helpful in this thread, huh? I just thought a long-range positive vision would be an interesting juxtaposition for predictions of gloom.