The PC may seem dead, but in fact it is just evolving.
The PC is Dead? We all have tablets now, or phones, and no one needs an actual box that sits on a desk that you attach things to? No one needs a 1995-era PC?
I think it would be fair to say a vast majority of people didn’t need a PC to begin with:
- web browsing, including
- web shopping
- music
- games
To this short list, add in “social” for whatever that means for you: skype, reddit, facebook, flickr, instagram, twitter, telnet to ‘dial in’ to your fav BBS.
You need a big fancy box with the fastest processor and graphics processing workhorses and big honkin’ monitors (monitors, multiple, natch) and the associated desk, chair, et al.?
The answer was always No. But for a time, the only way to get to the web, play games, and send drunken IMs to xGFs was on a computer, the old fashioned PC box-on-a-desk type.
Wouldn’t you rather play games lounging on your couch, rather than hunched over in a stiff-backed chair? Of course you would, which is why game systems from Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and later Microsoft all proved to be popular. Game systems are of course computers as well, it’s just no one usually thinks of them that way.
Email? “Sent from my iPhone” — same for facebook, twitter, and all the quick-message-type interactions that take place these days. The best computer is the one in your pocket.
Tablets? Did we need tablets? It’s basically a smart phone with a bigger screen that doesn’t make phone calls — so apparently yes, not only did we need tablets, they started selling like hotcakes. (At least, the iPads did, and later, the Nexus line from Google, and some poor fools are still buying Amazon’s Fire, so there’s that market, too)
Many of us need a computer for a little bit more than casual connectivity and recreation. We write, or code, so we need a keyboard. We manipulate numbers, or pictures, or both. We create. So there is a cohort that needs the old-school-PC-form-factor.
…Yes, of course, there’s an app for that: you can do anything and everything from a tablet apparently. But who wrote the app? and what does her rig at home look like?
I’m not going to argue that the “PC” as it was defined in 1990 will somehow make a resurgence and come back to prominence. It’ll likely disappear — or PCs will be built into your living room TV set at some point and you’ll use a wireless keyboard and mouse (or, ha!, a virtual keyboard on a tablet) to access your home PC.
You won’t have a dedicated appliance: the computing you need will be available from whatever screens you already own.
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The Computer in Your Pocket
“The mobile phone is today’s PC, but not necessarily in the way you think. Fifteen years ago, the PC was the central hub in one’s interactions with the wider world. This was largely because of the state of miniaturization; our electronics simply weren’t small or efficient enough to make mobile phones and laptops nearly as powerful as desktops.”
The Right Tool For The Job : Devin Coldewey, 25 March 2013, TechCrunch
also, can I share with you one of my recent obsessions? Man, but I luv the Idea Channel:
Are Cell Phones Replacing Reality? : Mike Rugnetta [et al.], 5 December 2012, PBS Idea Channel on YouTube
Mike makes many points better than I can, so even though the topic of the video is a bit tangential to the points I’m trying to make, I had to include it. However one basic starting premise is the same: Your mobile phone is the computer you keep in your pocket. Your phone is not only your primary screen (even over a TV screen) — increasingly, it is also your primary computer.
In addition to the ‘traditional’ mobile space (can we call a 5-year-old smart phone market traditional?) there is also the current proliferation of tablets and the tendency for everything new these days to sport a touch screen and a wireless connection. Tablets are adding keyboards, and laptops are going ‘detachable’ with their screens. It’s a mess.
“As the Transformer’s name suggests, it also transforms into another device: Pull up on the PC screen to separate it from its stand and it becomes a tablet you can move around the house. It has a handle and a kickstand for propping up on flat surfaces. Like the desktop version, the tablet runs two systems: Windows 8 Remote and Jelly Bean 4.1. Though this concept sounds smart, it’s laughable in practice. The screen measures a whopping 18.4 inches diagonally and weighs an arm-straining 5.3 pounds.”
A PC and Tablet “Brick” for the Price of One : Katherine Boehret, 19 March 2013, All Things D
“It’s official. A study released by Google yesterday shows that mobile devices, and smart phones in particular, are now the dominant means of Internet connectivity in five key global markets. Google conducted the study of smart phone versus feature phone ownership rates throughout last year, pulling data from the USA, the UK, France, Germany, and Japan. It found that, while smart phones were were quickly pushing out older feature phones… together, a full 10-percent more people own these connected mobile devices than PC’s or laptops (78-percent vs 68-percent).”
You’re Now More Likely to Find a Computer in Your Pocket Than on Your Lap : Andrew Tarantola, 26 January 2012, Gizmodo
[blockquote]
“The iPhone remains the flagship of Apple’s entire product line. It exhibits not merely the highest degree of fit and finish of any smartphone, but the highest degree of fit and finish for anything Apple has ever made. When first you hold it — where by you I mean ‘you, who, like me, is intimately familiar with the feel and heft of an iPhone 4 or 4S’ — you will be struck by how light it feels, yet in a premium, not chintzy way. Within a week, it will feel normal, and your old iPhone 4/4S will feel like a brick. …
“Using the iPhone 5 on LTE is nearly indistinguishable from using it on Wi-Fi. Web pages load in a snap, Siri parses input and responds promptly. It’s as big a difference from 3G (and whatever bullshit AT&T calls “4G”) as 3G was from EDGE. …
“So, as of this week, we have computing performance in our pants pockets that nine years ago required a professional desktop workstation. …
“Think about this: eight or nine years from now, we should have phones that are computationally equivalent to today’s Mac Pro. (Maybe even sooner, given the sorry state of the Mac Pro at the moment.)” [/blockquote]
The iPhone 5 : John Gruber, 18 September 2012, Daring Fireball [blog], daringfireball.net
Are we talking about the death of the Personal Computer, or the declining popularity of one particular user interface, the keyboard-and-mouse? Because it sure looks like we’re making and buying a whole lot of computers these days.
…
Oh, and what happened to the ‘must-have’ gadget of 2009? The dedicated e-reader?
“Not coincidentally, the rapid decline in e-reader sales comes only two years after Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) introduced the iPad. Even at considerably higher price points, the capabilities of tablets like the iPad offer consumers much more than merely cool, electronic paper turning, making the additional cost well worth it. The dramatic rise in tablet sales is as quick as the decline of the e-reader: IHS forecasts 120 million tablets will be sold this year, rising to 340 million by 2016.”
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Death of the E-Reader : Tim Brugger, 13 December 2012, Motley Fool
“Multi-use tablet sales are dominating single-use ebook readers. IHS estimates that ebook sales will decrease 36% this year from 23.2 million to 14.9 million and continue to fall to 7.1 million in 2016.”
Tablet’s Dominating Ebook Readers : Chuck Jones, 14 December 2012, Forbes
The Computer on the Wall
aside: Has anyone heard more about the “Steam Box” or other dedicated hardware from Valve recently? Was January the last time we saw any rumors or announcements?
I think it’s interesting that we’ve had two big product announcements in this space (PS4 and XBox One) but no word yet from Valve. Of course, you can already play Steam PC games on your living room TV, but without a plug-and-play box Valve is kind of restricting themselves to just the nerdcore demographic. (On second thought, maybe the entirety of their client base, so I guess no loss?)
Both the PS4 and new XBox are, in their guts, desktop gaming PCs — this was perhaps always true of the dedicated game consoles but seems especially so in the new generation. And both Sony and Microsoft are leveraging the large user base already to bring “computer” functions to the TV.
Even your Blu-ray player is a small computer — and again, perhaps this was always true, though that old VCR has a lot of mechanical pieces in it too — and with the latest generation of video playback we’re seeing quite a bit of computer-functionality brought to the forefront. I don’t know if it is possible anymore to buy a player that doesn’t connect to the internet for Netflix and YouTube playback, and a growing list of devices only do streaming video, up to and including the new $35 Chrome stick from Google.
With the prevalence of Bluetooth and Wifi enabled peripherals, just how far away are we from a Blu-ray player that accepts wireless input from an actual keyboard? (I think anyone who has attempted to type in a search using the arrow buttons on a remote feels my pain on this one.) And will we be able to use the keyboard before or after we’re all managing our queues with the smart phone anyway? Will a future device even have a remote control, or will we just use our mini-tablet or smart phone to begin with?
Given the size of the Roku, AppleTV, and Chromecast — and in parallel, considering the size of the Mini-ATX or even the engineering of the Raspberry Pi — how long before both the streaming box and a small PC are incorporated into a thin flush-mount LCD TV? Both the Chrome stick and the ‘better’ version of the Raspberry Pi retail for $35 each — when a decent TV costs $700 what’s another $70?
And, of course, the All-in-One Desktop PCs already look like this.
I think it’s just a matter of ‘installing’ a bigger monitor, and sitting on the couch. Why is there a hedgerow between PC and TV manufacturers? And wouldn’t a company like Samsung or Sony (which do both anyway) already have one of these in the market?
Maybe we just need a new word for the new computing device, like ‘smart phone’ or ‘tablet’.
ScreenPC. There you go. You’re welcome. This is a generic term, by the way, as I just introduced it as such and anyone who attempts to copyright or trademark it will have to come up with a fairly good reason why they’re entitled to it, given that people have been using the term generically to discuss wall-mounted or free standing television replacement PCs since 14 August 2013.
[heh.]
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The ScreenPC is a handy seque to my next point:
Is the PC Defined by the Form Factor, or the User Interface?
…or does either matter? If it’s my personal computer, the computing device I use daily, why isn’t it also my “PC”?
Here’s another question for you: Is my “personal computer” the hardware, or the combination of software-and-data that I define as mine?
“Now, a clever piece of software lets you carry your own personal PC which you can carry inside your pocket – and once you have finished using it, no-one will ever know. Technically, what you are carrying is not a whole computer – instead it is a simple USB memory stick. But within it is a full operating system (like Windows), and when you plug it into a PC, that computer will restart into your own personal set-up, called Tails. When you have finished, shut down the computer, put the USB stick back in your pocket, and the PC will never know it has been used.”
Not just for spies: The PC on a memory stick that doesn’t leave a trace of your browsing history or documents : Daily Mail Online : Eddie Wren : 12 June 2012
It has been said that the difference between the “old” PCs and the “new” devices is in how people use the hardware: Lean Forward (into a desk) vs Lean Back (on a couch)
[blockquote]
“When people started using the iPad, it was speculated that the iPad seemed to be a ‘lean back’ medium, like print, as opposed to the ‘lean forward’ medium of the web on a personal computer.
“The distinction between a ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ medium apparently began with interactive television. The terms have commonly been used by hand-wavers such as marketing people, media theorists, and futurists. The distinction has very little real scientific basis. There isn’t any clear idea what these terms really mean.
“Still, there’s something going on here. Jakob Nielsen, in studies of reading via print versus the web, found major differences between the two. To the question of ‘How readers read on the web,’ Nielsen answers: ‘They don’t.’” [/blockquote]
Engagement Styles: Beyond ‘Lean Forward’ and ‘Lean Back’ : Craig Will, johnnyholland.org, 15 March 2012
[blockquote]
“The idea behind lean-forward mediums is that people are engaged when they use the Web. They are in scanning mode, actively looking for content – and their attention span is much shorter. People use the Internet with purpose. Articles should be shorter and get to the point sooner, videos should be snippets or separated into clips of only a few minutes long.
“Lean-back mediums on the other hand are the times we sit down and veg out watching TV, read a book or flip through a magazine. Our attention span is much longer because these are passive mediums and we are in a consumption mode. This is why most long-form doesn’t work on the Web.”[/blockquote]
Lean-forward vs. lean-back media : Jeremy Rue : 4 May 2010
“One of the old debates about the emergence of the personal computer as a media device centred on the lean-back (think television) versus lean-forward (think PC) distinction. The meme was that computers would never replace television because of that difference in engagement. In some ways the tablet (think iPad) has shattered that as it has very clearly become the couch computer.”
Lean Back versus Lean Forward : Sherman Young, The Book is Dead [shermanfyoung.wordpress.com], 15 December 2011
[blockquote]
“While cellphones have become ubiquitous as mobile devices, it’s been a much longer road to popularity for tablet computers – portable electronic devices that try to fill a void between tiny screen cellphones and more cumbersome laptops.
“Roger Fidler was one of the original proponents of these portable “electronic tablets” when he ran the Knight Ridder Information Design Lab in the early 1990s. See this story and this 1994 video showing Fidler’s vision (Fidler is now at the Reynolds Journalism Institute as Program Director for Digital Publishing).
“Many companies subsequently produced various forms of tablet computers as reading devices, such as the SoftBook and the Rocket eBook in the late 1990s and Sony’s e-book readers in the mid to late 2000s. But most of the devices failed to gain much traction with consumers.
“Other companies in the 1990s also worked on developing “electronic paper” or “e-ink” technology that would be used in wafer-thin flexible displays that theoretically could be rolled up and put in a briefcase, backpack or purse. But years passed with no consumer product hitting store shelves.
“Then with Amazon’s release of the popular Kindle e-book reader in late 2007, buzz about portable tablet computers heated up again. By 2010 and 2011 a number of sophisticated tablet computers were being produced, usually with color displays and/or wireless Internet connections for downloading up-to-date news and information.” [/blockquote]
the transition to digital journalism : Kinght Digital Media Center, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism : Paul Grabowicz, 4 December 2012
The link above is:
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/digital-transform/tablets/
…just in case you missed it. There are a number of great resources linked at the bottom of the KDMC post, and they keep updating them. Just today, in testing the link (I usually do, before posting) I noticed the page had been updated just yesterday.
And of course, because I can as it is on YouTube, here’s that 1994 video linked above:
(It’s another tangential discussion, given my article above, but once again worth watching. The archived viewpoint of 1994 is fascinating)
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Is it the interface that makes a PC?
A brand name? Marketing, market penetration, install bases and number of users?
The operating system?
The form factor?
Use cases, software, and intended design?
…or is a PC defined by how we actually use any and all of these devices?
The PC isn’t dead — in the late 1970s the “Personal Computer” came upon a virgin landscape and started to proliferate. Like any organism, it first exploited the easily-grasped resources (markets, in this case) but with increasing numbers also comes increased competition. To survive and prosper, computers had to differentiate and exploit new markets. Not just the computer but the whole ecosystem evolves, and revolutionary new forms (laptops, tablets) might dint the progress of older models, but don’t necessarily kill off their predecessors.
Computers are adapting. As we select the best type for each need, we’re guiding their evolution, but the whole ecosystem isn’t a zero-sum game. The whole digital world is still growing. A computer will fill every conceivable, supportable niche — and even some that aren’t sustainable so long as there is a dedicated and invested small fan base.
