The end of the PC era?

[diogen]

An interesting and thought provoking essay
The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash - Charlie's Diary

Despite the title, it is more about death threads to the PC industry and how to survive, i.e. what Apple does to survive...

Apple are trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem — one that rivals the 26-year-old Macintosh environment — to maturity in five years flat. That's the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed to the same irrelevance as the rest of the PC industry — interchangable suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligable profit.

In short, cloud will kill the PC era!

The comments below the essay as well as on Slashdot are often just as interesting...
Slashdot Apple Story | The End of the PC Era and Apple's Plan To Survive

Diogen.

 

[harshness]

Until such time as the alternatives support an efficient user interface for doing computerly things, the computer isn't going anywhere. Whether that interface is voice or some sort of new two-handed keyboard remains to be seen.

It isn't all about content delivery. Somebody has to create the content.

 

[ronjohn]

I could believe that Apple would stop selling computers. However not because no-one will use computers any more, but because they make a lot more money on ipods and itunes. They make most of their money on consumer electronics items and the computer business is already almost irrelevent to their business.

I think harshness nailed it. You can consume content on the iphone and ipad, but it is very hard to create content. People will still want to do more on their computers than play games, web surf, and check email.

The reason that Jobs is opposed to Flash is that Adobe is competition. Jobs wants apple to control content on the web, not Adobe.

 

[Stargazer]

Wouldn't this require a bit of bandwidth in areas that do not currently have such bandwidth in order for this to happen?

 

[diogen]

I think the author escapes the main pitfalls of doomsday scenarios: he answers the questions of Why this didn't happen 10 years ago? and Why it can't wait for another 10 years?

But the Y2K bug comes to mind, armageddon that never happened...

I believe if you extend the cloud computer services definition to include locally run (faculty, department even your home premises), the described scenario is very realistic. Don't know about time frame.

Anybody running VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure)? Either VMWare or Microsoft?
The labour component aside, with fast infrastructure (storage/network), video card and proper configuration one can load your very own desktop image over the network and have the complete feeling it running locally. Today!

Therefore, I think technologically we will be ready in 5 years to play the essay scenario. At least I plan to use this at home. Talking about global scale - half a dozen global cloud providers covering the globe - as always, the devil will be in the details...

Diogen.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Yeah, that's what I want to do - have my entire computing life embroiled in Apple's cloud.

Seriously, I am not buying this vision fo the future, based on Atom or Arm processors? Okie-dokie.

I think as long as there are businesses with offices, there will be a demand for desktop computers; I use the cloud daily (dropbox.com); I have a portable internet device (Droid) which is also a phone; I have laptops; I have desktops. When I am doing a writing or research project, I could not imagine writing from a tablet. It is the desktop, with its 24" monitor, quad-core processor, ergonomic keyboard, that I turn too. When I need to crunch numbers, I want to be able to use SPSS and know it will run efficiently; while my laptop (dual-core) is ok, the desktop is still the primary machine I use - it can not be beat.

Is it true that desktops are cheaper today? YES, absolutely. Same with laptops. But the sub-$500 machines are ok, but the netbooks are a total piece of crap for anything but email and web browsing. Yes, machines will get more powerful, and for less. And I have no doubt that tablets will evolve, and be more important; but don't count out the PC yet.

 

[mike123abc]

I think most people would be perfectly happy just sufing the web, checking email, editing photos, etc.

I know the crowd here does more things with their computers, but they are in a shrinking minority of computer users. The big builders of custom systems tend to want speed for games, not creating new content or writing computer programs.

Most office workers would be fine in the cloud. Spreadsheets, word processing, and power point would work just fine.

If most people move to the cloud it could really change the economics of PCs. As the pool of PCs shrinks, more and more development would shift and the PC would grow less and less useful.

 

[mike123abc]

Another thought on this is that someone like me is essentially tech support for every friend and relative I have. Pretty much everyone in my family would give up their PC, and probably most my friends would too. Perhaps when the next game consoles come out that are good enough that you no longer really need a PC for gaming.

Everyone that I know would be relieved to get rid of the problems associated with their PCs. All the constant upgrading, and things mysteriously breaking. Operator error happens a lot, but they cannot figure it out and I have to go fix it. Essentially what does the PC give the average user besides a constant amount of work to keep it running?

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Remember, there is a distinction between the home user and the business user. Two fundamentally different needs. Think about it this way, while we talk about how the iphone is the king of the smartphone market, the reality is that Research in Motion (Blackberry) still controls 42% of the market, compared to the iphone's 24%. There is a reason for that -- the business market.

The business world's needs will always be different from the home consumer, and as a result, I would argue that you should not count out the desktop computer quite yet. The cloud will play a role; an important role; but I seriously doubt the economy will be run on under-powered netbooks.

 

[mike123abc]

Remember, there is a distinction between the home user and the business user. Two fundamentally different needs. Think about it this way, while we talk about how the iphone is the king of the smartphone market, the reality is that Research in Motion (Blackberry) still controls 42% of the market, compared to the iphone's 24%. There is a reason for that -- the business market.

The business world's needs will always be different from the home consumer, and as a result, I would argue that you should not count out the desktop computer quite yet. The cloud will play a role; an important role; but I seriously doubt the economy will be run on under-powered netbooks.

At my business we have moved to a server, everyone uses remote desktop connection to go there. I see the iPad now has remote desktop connection on it too. The desktop PCs are really not used too much for themselves, most are connected to the server during the business day. Surfing the internet is the main use of the desktops when not using remote desktop.

We backup our server on the cloud (Amazon's S3 service). The main software we use on it (accounting) is already starting to push using their servers.

People do most stuff on the server (word processing, spreadsheets, etc) because it is backed up and maintained, switching our entire business to the cloud could be done right now. Perhaps we will move one day. It is inertia more than anything that is keeping us with our own server.

 

[avg1joe]

All the constant upgrading,

From what I have seen most updates are security updates. It has been said elsewhere in this forum that if apple ever has a majority in the OS market then people will focus on writing viruses for it. In my opinion apple has gotten away with inferior computer hardware specs because they can concentrate their horsepower on computing instead of security. If you have to do both at the same time then their operating systems may not measure up. Their success could be their downfall.

The idea of my data living elsewhere gives me the creeps. A recent email experience illustrates the problem. I used a verizon email address. Those emails contained a decent amount of important information. Verizon stopped providing service to my area and sold their interest to fairpoint. There was to be a seamless transition. The two companies bungled the transition and for about a week after that my data appeared to be gone forever. Imagine if that was not just my email but all of my company's data. I do own my own business and this transition did ruin a couple of time sensitive opportunities. As long as your data is secure I like the idea of backing up to the cloud but it shouldn't live only there.

I'm disappointed in the trend technology research has taken. A lot of effort has gone into making technology small and mobile instead of better. I can now carry a computer with 1999 specs in my pocket. Woop de doo! It is still a computer with 1999 specs.

There is a growing trend to people watching shows and movies via the internet. The quality of this content is improving and requires periodic hardware updates to run well.

The major advantage that desktops have always had is that they are more easily upgradable. Pop in a new cpu, memory, video card, etc and you have extended the life of your pc. Eliminating desktops would force consumers to spend more to stay up to date.

 

[lparsons21]

I don't agree with your premise regarding Apple. The primary reason the Apple computers work as well as they do is because they control both the HW and SW, the entire widget. That gives them a freedom to do whatever they decide to do that Windows and Linux just don't have. That's good and bad of course, depending on whether they are going in the direction that fits you. For me, they do. For you, maybe not. And as to malware, one of these days someone will actually produce a piece that can be propagated outside of proof of concepts or set up situations. Until then I'm not worried.

I agree with you on the 'cloud'. If I were running a business, I think I'd be very hesitant to put my eggs in someone else's basket, so to speak. And if it is questionable, then the things you have to do to keep yourself protected are the same things you'd do if you weren't using the cloud to begin with.

And I'd say that the trend in technology is making the small and mobile stuff better. And is it realistic to expect the small and mobile stuff to be on par with a desktop?

As to the upgrading of current desktops. Yes, they do have an advantage in that you can do it, but yet most never do. Opting instead for a new desktop.

 

[long_time_DNC]

In my company, desktop is imperative. Way too much horsepower needed that the cloud can't supply, and I wouldn't want to put all that customer data out in the cloud anyway. If the connection to the internet went down for a few hours, what good is "the cloud" to me if all customer data is out there, unavailable?

No, it'll be awhile yet before the PC is obsolete. I take time on the weekends to do maintenance/up-keep on our PCs and take a day every 4-5 months to assess which machines need upgrading or replacement. I wouldn't trust customer data to the cloud, at least not on an operational basis. For back-ups, maybe, but not for daily work...

 

[diogen]

I don't think "cloud" is synonymous to "no desktop", if it is than I also think it is wrong.

Remember pre-PC days?
The best you could have is a dumb green text monitor attached to the mainframe. If not this, you did punchcards.
I believe we made a full circle and came back to this setup, i.e. in the cloud paradigm your desktop is practically "brainless".

But there is one huge difference: it is not one size fits all anymore but every user has his own desktop image (maybe even more than one) that runs on the server and displays locally. Fast network and good video card is all that's required.
Same as RDP (Mike uses in his office) and Citrix long before that.

We have arrived at a point where server power is in abundance and having it run 20 instances of desktops is easy. More recent dedup technologies are very helpful in making it enterprise-level...

Only not trusting your data to outsiders can make you skeptical. But then you can run your own cloud...

Diogen.

 

[Zellio2008]

People may be perfectly happy with simply doing email, but pcs are REQUIRED for school, REQUIRED for work, and required to do more then be a hillbilly in a trailer park.

Think for one second: Without a pc that has an ip address, you can't search things like google maps, you can't (safetly) do online banking, you cannot buy things either (unless you realyl feel like having your identity stolen by having all of your information on a cloud), etc.

This idea is basically like going back to the 70's. If email/twiter/facebook is all pcs were good for, then we should just go back to mail, metting people at bars, etc.

This idea doesn't account for all the multitudes of purposes that pcs are used for. Go apply for college and try to explain to them that your pc is on the cloud.

In short, stop reading blogs from the cult of mac.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

People may be perfectly happy with simply doing email, but pcs are REQUIRED for school, REQUIRED for work, and required to do more then be a hillbilly in a trailer park.

In short, stop reading blogs from the cult of mac.

:up

And if I hear the word "Apple ecosystem" one more time, I'm going to barf.

 

[Zellio2008]

The funniest part of all is that the apple cult suggests that we lose all power of our lives, go back to living in the 80's, while someone with all the pcs controls us.

Kinda like this:

 

[diogen]

I'm not a Mac zealot.

I'm saying no desktop is not dumb terminal. It shouldn't be.

From the first post, you load the rich desktop image from the server including every piece of software you normally run on the desktop.
This is doable today on the department level. And I don't see any obstacles it making it doable on a higher level.

Diogen.

 

[mike123abc]

People may be perfectly happy with simply doing email, but pcs are REQUIRED for school, REQUIRED for work, and required to do more then be a hillbilly in a trailer park.

Think for one second: Without a pc that has an ip address, you can't search things like google maps, you can't (safetly) do online banking, you cannot buy things either (unless you realyl feel like having your identity stolen by having all of your information on a cloud), etc.

This idea is basically like going back to the 70's. If email/twiter/facebook is all pcs were good for, then we should just go back to mail, metting people at bars, etc.

This idea doesn't account for all the multitudes of purposes that pcs are used for. Go apply for college and try to explain to them that your pc is on the cloud.

In short, stop reading blogs from the cult of mac.

This has nothing to do with macs. All could easily be applied to any device.

You are using the cloud all the time. All the activities you mentioned are internet activitie:

1. Google maps - you are using Googles storage and servers you just are a display device. You do not have satellite maps downloaded to your device for this, it is all in the google cloud.

2. Banking - the bank's database is not downloaded to your pc, you are again just the display device

3. Online shopping - again just the display.

In fact not one activity you mentioned uses your PC for more than a display.

The thing that makes the iPad world (but it could be android or other world) is that the apps are prescreened and hopefully work as promised. The model is small (hopefully cheap) add ons to your device. They basically work.

It will be quite a while before everything you can do on a PC can be done on one of these devices. But, this is the turning point. Right now it is at the 80/20 rule point. 80% of PC users could probably use one of these devices and never miss their PC. This is why these products are coming to market now, it is finally at the point that they are useable.

As far as the cult of Apple point, Steve Jobs appears to have once again seen the correct time to enter a market. It is not like any of the technology is new or revolutionary like the Apple hype would have you believe, it is just the time where internet connections, hardware technology, and component prices are at the right stage for the market to be successful.

 

[lparsons21]

When it comes to the cloud you could as easily call it the cult of Google since they've made no bones about where they want to take us.

Mike, I think you are right about Apple. The iPad is basically a bigger iPod Touch and the size is what makes it more useful. But I wouldn't call it revolutionary at all, evolutionary at best. We'll see later this year how the small, ultra-portable market will shake out as others bring their versions of touchpads out. The problem for them is how to control apps so that you get a great touch experience, doing the hardware just isn't hard at all.