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Mobile, ecosystems and the death of PCs


steven36

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One of the ways that tech progresses is in generational changes in scale. We had mainframes, then minicomputers, then workstations and PCs, and now mobile, and each generation brings a step change in scale. That scale means that it becomes the new ecosystem and the new centre for innovation. iOS and Android smartphones alone are now outselling PCs 5:1, not even counting tablets, and that will rise to closer to 10:1 in the next few years. So, this is the new scale ecosystem.

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Each previous generation first gained scale and capability by creating a whole new market, and then, some time later, reached the point that it could take share from the previous generation. PCs were sold just as PCs for a decade or more before they could kill workstations and take over data centres. Does mobile do the same? Does mobile kill PCs, and if so how? Or will you always need a PC to do 'real work'?

Well, the future has always looked like a toy that can't be used for real work. In 1960, real work looked like this - a typewriter, telephone and electromechanical adding machine.

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Everyone in this image was a cell in a spreadsheet - the building was an Excel file and once a week someone on the top floor pressed F9 and the whole building recalculated. That was what real work needed. A decade later, of course, the company had bought a mainframe and the adding machines were on the scrap heap. Then, in our own time, every week, thousands of VPs in hundreds of companies pull data out of internal systems into Excel, make charts, paste them into Powerpoint, write bullets and email the PPT to a dozen stakeholders. But actually, their job isn't to make Powerpoint - that's just a tool. Their job is to do something, not make slides, and that PPT should really be a live SaaS dashboard.

So, 'real work' changes with new tools - first the tools fit the work, and then the work changes to fit the tools (see this piece I wrote in the summer for a much longer discussion of this point).

Meanwhile, the 'toys' get better. In 2000, if you'd been making a list of tasks that were unlikely to move to the web, CAD and video editing would probably have been at the top of the list. Yet our investment Onshape is now delivering CAD in a browser - and doing cloud data management and version tracking, making it not just as good as Windows but better. The founders of Onshape have been around for long enough to be told not just that you couldn't do CAD on the web, but also that you couldn't do it on Windows and, earlier, that that you couldn't do it on a PC, which was also useless for 'real work'. And in much the same way, frame.io is doing cloud video collaboration in the browser. The things you can only do on a PC, with a native PC application, keep shrinking. Indeed, I've argued elsewhere that it's time to invert our mental model and think of the PC, not the smartphone, as the limited device.

So, each new computing platform will never be used for real work, but the platform gets better and the work changes to fit the new platform. In tech, 'never' seems to be 5-10 years (so does 'soon').

But when we say that the tools change, and hence that mobile will change, what do we mean? What does 'mobile' mean? After all, 'PC' - 'personal computer' - encompasses a whole range of devices. Setting aside things like ATMs and machine tools, how many of the 1.5bn or so PCs on earth are actually personal, and not shared amongst a family or owned by a corporation? (Perhaps a few hundred million.) In the same way, 'mobile' is a problematic term.

First, 'mobile' does not really mean mobile. As we all know, most use of 'mobile' devices on the internet is actually over wifi. Most people use a smartphone when there's a laptop in arms' reach. And relatively little use of 'mobile' devices is when you're walking down the street or waiting for a coffee.

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If mobile is not where you are, or the network connection, what is it?

There's another obvious way to define this - 'mobile' means no full-size physical keyboard, a small screen and an OS that doesn't do multitasking... well, except for the 'mobile' devices with keyboards, large screens or (now) multitasking. Steve Jobs told his team an iPad was just an iPhone with a big screen. Hence the problem: what exactly is the difference between an iPad Pro and a Surface Pro? Are they both 'PCs'? We know somehow that they are different, but what is the difference that's important? How are either of them different to a Macbook? To a Lumia running Windows 10 that's plugged into a keyboard and screen? Is that Lumia different to a Mac Mini plugged into a keyboard and screen? Why? You can't use the screen size or the keyboard to define 'mobile' as distinct from a 'PC'.

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It certainly isn't the performance - at least, not for much longer. An iPhone 6S beats the Macbook on some benchmarks, an iPad Air beats Surfaces from prior years and it seems pretty likely that the iPad Pro will be close enough to a Surface for there not to be much point arguing about it. The lines on the Moore's Law chart are converging for anything with a battery. The same applies to the visible differences in the software. Saying that a PC is distinguished by multitasking and multiple windows is pretty short-sighted. It's just software. It changes.

Meanwhile, most of the form factor differences seem to me to have little to do with the essence of the device. They're a matter of superglue. If I superglue a keyboard onto an iPad and install Office, have I made a laptop? How many of those 1.5bn PCs are running applications that I cannot run on this iPad - and, to my earlier point, how many people will always need to run those specific applications? If I hack Android onto a Surface, and install Office, what exactly have I lost, or gained? Is the difference between a 'smartphone' and 'tablet' any more meaningful than the difference between a PC with a large or small monitor?

On this basis, instead of thinking of 'tablets and smartphones' as one category and 'PCs as another, we should think of larger screen and smaller screen devices. That is, you will have something you carry with you (a 'phone') and may or may not also have something with a larger screen that stays mostly at home or in your office. In the past you might have chosen between a laptop or desktop - today you choose between a laptop, desktop or tablet, depending on what you want to do with it. That is, perhaps we should think of tablets as being as much 'PCs' as desktops and laptops are.

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If you think that all these devices are moving to sit on a single spectrum with no hard barriers between them, just what screen size you pick and whether you clip on a keyboard or not (which aren't really differences at all), this can take you to Windows 10. If 'computer' is mutable across many form factors with the same fundamental capabilities - if 'mobile' and 'PC' have converged - then a single OS that can run on any of them can seem like a good idea: take the accumulated base of the old ecosystem and spread it onto the new form factor, adjusting the UI a bit to take advantage of touch.

Well, perhaps.

This is the IBM XT/370, from 1983. It was an IBM PC, and so it ran MicroSoft DOS, but it also, via an extra add-in card, ran S/370 mainframe instructions (from 1970). It sold well, apparently, and was a perfectly good idea with excited customers. But it wasn't the future.

SXntDYA.jpg

The comparison isn't perfect - a Lumia runs the same code as a Windows 10 'PC', in theory, rather than supporting two completely different sets. But the parallel with a Lumia or Surface running Windows 10 is in the ecosystem. You can put the old ecosystem on the new form factor. You'll probably sell some of them. But is that the future, or is it a new Chevy Camaro or Mustang - a product that your existing fanbase loves but that ignores the Teslas and self-driving cars on the way?

Taking our historical analogues a little further back, this is the Republic Rainbow.

4g5hgdq.png

Developed right at the end of WW2, it remains the fastest piston-powered aircraft of its size ever built. It took piston propulsion as far as it could go, and that was better than the jets available at the time, but jets were the future, and pistons were not able to deliver anything more.

Each generation of technology goes through an S-curve of development - slow improvement of an impractical product, then explosively fast improvement once fundamental barriers are solved, and then slowing iteration and refinement as you solve every last issue and the curve flattens out. PCs are on that flattening part of the curve, just as the Rainbow was. They get perfect because you're debugging the big things you invented in the past, and now your innovation is in the extra little things (such as the Rainbow using exhaust for extra thrust), and there are no big new innovation to debug. But meanwhile, the new ecosystem is catching up, and the curve of development and innovation for that generation will flatten out way out of reach. The new curve is crossing the old one. This is why they look simliar - this is why a Surface Pro and an iPad Pro look similar. They both exist right at the point that those development curves cross. The iPad might still be a little below, but its curve is heading up.

That is, the point that you can start to do old ecosystem things on what look like new ecosystem devices is also the point that the new ecosystem can do those things too - but the new ecosystem has 10x the scale, and the new ecosystem is just starting down the innovation track where the old one is at its end.

But what is that ecosystem, if it's not a keyboard or a big screen or multitasking? What is 'mobile'? I think there are four components:

  1. First, iOS and Android are a step change in ease of use over Windows and MacOS. Microsoft has arguably matched this on phones, but on 'PCs' all the complexity to support the old way of doing things has to stay - including things like supporting interchangeable hardware. If you like tinkering with your computer this step change is bad (just as the move from command lines to GUIs was), but it enables far more people to use these things.
  2. Second, iOS, ChromeOS and (debatably) Android have a fundamentally better security model. This comes with reduced openness, but now that the threat is not a floppy with a virus-infected copy of Leisure Suit Larry but 500 people in a foreign country hacking your Financial Controller's assistant's child's preschool to send spear-phishing emails, that's a much more valuable tradeoff.
  3. Third, the ARM ecosystem has a fundamental power-consumption advantage over x86 and a fundamental advantage in the scale of the industry investment around it
  4. And fourth, the broader scale advantage - the ARM/iOS/Android ecosystem is moving towards selling 10x more devices each year than the Wintel ecosystem. That's a similar disparity to that between PowerPC/Mac and Wintel 20 years ago. So this is where all the innovation is - in semiconductors, in components and in software. No-one is going to found a new company to make Win32 applications (though enterprise Windows apps will be worked on for a long time, just as mainframe apps were).

So, a simple answer to a complex question - when we say 'mobile' we don't mean mobile just as when we said 'PCs' we didn't mean personal. This isn't about the screen size or keyboard or location or use. Rather, the ecosystem of ARM, iOS and Android, with 10x the scale of Wintel, will become the new centre of gravity throughout computing. It will take over things like IoT and wearables in one direction and, in due course, the data centre in the other, and it will push onto the desktop.

The smartphone is the new sun.

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Windows 10 will make a difference in the stats because of the continuum feature and phones like Lumia 950XL which is actually a mini PC

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That's a bizzarre point of view.

Well... it's there a way to develop applications/websites/etc on a mobile device? The computational power needed to compile applications/build webs/design projects is more than enough to drain a battery in seconds in a mobile device in the case the core (processor) can do the work. And in the case it can do it, the time spent working in a mobile device is ridicously higher than in a desktop/mac/laptop/macbook/we... and so the time spent in compilig those applications.

The numbers are higher because the mobile devices are dispossable and they can't last the half lifespan of a PC.

When working on a web-based application, the backend is clusters of PC's doing the work, not a cluster of Lumias/iPhones/Androids. And for more people using those web-based applications, more and more powerful PC's are needed.

All of this is about selling things. If you break your smartphone/tablet/iPad/iPhone/we you'll buy another the same day. And there are a lot of mobile devices that with only a look, they break into pieces.

PC's are not dead and are not going to die because they're the core of all this new technologies... and new improvements/technologies for PC's are on the way.

For me, all that article is nonsense merchandising.

Try to play withcher 3 in the best mobile device... lol

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Second, iOS, ChromeOS and (debatably) Android have a fundamentally better security model. This comes with reduced openness, but now that the threat is not a floppy with a virus-infected copy of Leisure Suit Larry but 500 people in a foreign country hacking your Financial Controller's assistant's child's preschool to send spear-phishing emails, that's a much more valuable tradeoff.

Lol! Load piles of crap, did he even watch the news about how many infected phones each month, Windows OS (xp, 7, 8, 10) didn't reach those numbers of exploition and vulnerabilities, windows has only one positive side is that is more or I can say a bit positive in term of security whether is third party or low level layars, or even inner administrative configurations.

Moreover, if computers are at the end of a cliff, you should write this article on your phone and edit it on your f***ing phone, and post it using your phone, also do your work on that phone, and those statistics he put on his artical are laughable, I have two things to group you in, you're a f****ing jerk, dumb or empty headed, or you're a marketer who try to pitch the next big thing, like social media is a tool that makes your client only talk about your brand, but if you get back to our real time world no one cares about your brand, only facebook want your ass to spend money on its useless platform, that clever marketers put it in their lower list of priorities, I wonder what will be the next snake oil those fu***ers try to sell us, Mobile bubble is close to be burst, cause the market is saturated, and technology too.

Promote your s**t using logical content like how PC's help frelancers like you get a job, PC's are not as much sold because of one matter, they are enough that 64bit processor has a 17 Million TB as a max of ram (theoretical estimated calculation), do you know how much a rack has of max ram? 6 TB of ram each f***ing rack, how about computers or PC's 192GB of ram that's the max now limited by hardware, not the processor, how about standard and high end, okay standard now is 6 GB ram, and high end can go up to 64GB but standard high end is 32 GB ram, how the hell people will buy a new computer if 6GB of ram and an "I" series processor is powerful enough for every software available and every task imaginable?

That lead us to only one thing, the market has to bring more powerful technologies in term of software, something that consume more and has more things to do, then again the market will go up, the PC market isn't dead it has filled the need of the market, now the market has to need new stuff (creating new markets) then the sales will go up again, the only thing that make PC market still alive on term of sales is the people who play games, cause gaming industries are pushing high the limit needed, and the market of computers advertise to only two branch or parties, yep! Gamers, and IT guys (dev, game dev, designers...)

So, I guess that crap mixed with history does fool only the hive mindes that don't understand how the market works and what tech needed when and how.

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By the way he should go back to study marketing, looks like he embarace himself writing about nonsense.

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Second, iOS, ChromeOS and (debatably) Android have a fundamentally better security model. This comes with reduced openness, but now that the threat is not a floppy with a virus-infected copy of Leisure Suit Larry but 500 people in a foreign country hacking your Financial Controller's assistant's child's preschool to send spear-phishing emails, that's a much more valuable tradeoff.

Lol! Load piles of crap, did he even watch the news about how many infected phones each month, Windows OS (xp, 7, 8, 10) didn't reach those numbers of exploition and vulnerabilities, windows has only one positive side is that is more or I can say a bit positive in term of security whether is third party or low level layars, or even inner administrative configurations.

Most news I read about infected phones every mounth most of it came fron people installing cracked apps :P

That lead us to only one thing, the market has to bring more powerful technologies in term of software, something that consume more and has more things to do, then again the market will go up, the PC market isn't dead it has filled the need of the market, now the market has to need new stuff (creating new markets) then the sales will go up again, the only thing that make PC market still alive on term of sales is the people who play games, cause gaming industries are pushing high the limit needed, and the market of computers advertise to only two branch or parties, yep! Gamers, and IT guys (dev, game dev, designers...)

Software for windows is dead whens the last time you seen anyone make anything new that was worth having ? Most software I use for windows other than add-ons witch work on many platforms has been around for years and are just minor updates of the same code . I got bored of windows software in 2011. Developers are making phone apps now because phones outsell PCS 5 to 1 :P

PC's are not dead and are not going to die because they're the core of all this new technologies... and new improvements/technologies for PC's are on the way.

For it to be alive and thriving , mmm (they must be actually selling something witch there not.)

You can say PCs are not dead all you want but that is not going make the 3 billion plus people buy any pc . Playing games on you're old pc you bought with Vista or windows 7 on them and upgraded to windows 10 for free don't count . And really you to have to have a better reason than games as many of us have PS4 and Xbox we don't need PCs to play games .

Heck I've not been on windows in like a week even . Its boring . Right now I'm testing NetRunner Linux ;)

I don't use phones as my main O/S but I'm not blind to the fact that most tech has been replaced and most likely pcs will be too one day . The only inventions that are around forever are ones we have to have . Not something to play games on .. When I 1st started playing games it was something you put money in to play . I was one the 1st real gamers Im a generation xer I seen many things come and go in my lifetime. Then the Atari came out were you play them at home . We never needed PCs to play games on at all its just one of things it can do.

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PC's are not dead and are not going to die because they're the core of all this new technologies... and new improvements/technologies for PC's are on the way.

For it to be alive and thriving , mmm (they must be actually selling something witch there not.)

You can say PCs are not dead all you want but that is not going make the 3 billion plus people buy any pc . Playing games on you're old pc you bought with Vista or windows 7 on them and upgraded to windows 10 for free don't count . And really you to have to have a better reason than games as many of us have PS4 and Xbox we don't need PCs to play games .

Heck I've not been on windows in like a week even . Its boring . Right now I'm testing NetRunner Linux ;)

I don't use phones as my main O/S but I'm not blind to the fact that most tech has been replaced and most likely pcs will be too one day . The only inventions that are around forever are ones we have to have . Not something to play games on .. When I 1st started playing games it was something you put money in to play . I was one the 1st real gamers Im a generation xer I seen many things come and go in my lifetime. Then the Atari came out were you play them at home . We never needed PCs to play games on at all its just one of things it can do.

I'm a freelancer software developer/web designer/etcetera and I need a PC and I use a smartophone when needed (to arrange a weekend/night/etcetera with a girl... errr... to help my clients via teamviewer). It's not that all mobile device users should buy a PC or two. It's not only gaming for what you need a PC, it's for work. I can store in my PC 4 TB of data or more... can I do the same thing in a mobile device? I can run a SQL server instance in my PC for my clients to store some critical data... can I do the same thing in a mobile device? Maybe, but it's not the smartest/safest thing to do. That article is biased in a very very bizarre way.

By the way he should go back to study marketing, looks like he embarace himself writing about nonsense.

I totally agree with you.

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PC's are not dead and are not going to die because they're the core of all this new technologies... and new improvements/technologies for PC's are on the way.

For it to be alive and thriving , mmm (they must be actually selling something witch there not.)

You can say PCs are not dead all you want but that is not going make the 3 billion plus people buy any pc . Playing games on you're old pc you bought with Vista or windows 7 on them and upgraded to windows 10 for free don't count . And really you to have to have a better reason than games as many of us have PS4 and Xbox we don't need PCs to play games .

Heck I've not been on windows in like a week even . Its boring . Right now I'm testing NetRunner Linux ;)

I don't use phones as my main O/S but I'm not blind to the fact that most tech has been replaced and most likely pcs will be too one day . The only inventions that are around forever are ones we have to have . Not something to play games on .. When I 1st started playing games it was something you put money in to play . I was one the 1st real gamers Im a generation xer I seen many things come and go in my lifetime. Then the Atari came out were you play them at home . We never needed PCs to play games on at all its just one of things it can do.

I'm a freelancer software developer/web designer/etcetera and I need a PC and I use a smartophone when needed (to arrange a weekend/night/etcetera with a girl... errr... to help my clients via teamviewer). It's not that all mobile device users should buy a PC or two. It's not only gaming for what you need a PC, it's for work. I can store in my PC 4 TB of data or more... can I do the same thing in a mobile device? I can run a SQL server instance in my PC for my clients to store some critical data... can I do the same thing in a mobile device? Maybe, but it's not the smartest/safest thing to do. That article is biased in a very very bizarre way.

By the way he should go back to study marketing, looks like he embarace himself writing about nonsense.

I totally agree with you.

this. so much THIS.

you can blabber all you want about how cellphones and tablets make PC obsolete, but the truth is, the people making the software for them, and for game consoles as well use...guess what? a COMPUTER! not everything is watching youtube and browsing facebook all day. SOME people still work these days (surprisingly). but let's not go to the extremes with servers and workstations...something simple and more end-user friendly: can you edit and re-encode a medium sized video file in a cellphone?...tablet? ...console? nope. oh and before you go all "ooh yeah i know an app that..." stop right there. did you know that the server that app uploads your video to is...a PC? of course you did. :/

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Computers will take many forms, but there will always be a place for the all-purpose machine we've come to depend on. Bill Gates

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you can blabber all you want about how cellphones and tablets make PC obsolete, but the truth is, the people making the software for them, and for game consoles as well use...guess what? a COMPUTER! not everything is watching youtube and browsing facebook all day. SOME people still work these days (surprisingly). but let's not go to the extremes with servers and workstations...something simple and more end-user friendly: can you edit and re-encode a medium sized video file in a cellphone?...tablet? ...console? nope. oh and before you go all "ooh yeah i know an app that..." stop right there. did you know that the server that app uploads your video to is...a PC? of course you did. :/

I'm sure some companies will still use enterprise computers as some companies still use the old IBM OS/2. But still this is not enough to make vendors stop downsizing to make very little units for home use. but the very same people who have these enterprise computers use there phones more than pc were they have to be stuck behind there desk.

Computers will take many forms, but there will always be a place for the all-purpose machine we've come to depend on. Bill Gates

Bill Gates never made a pc in his life he only made software to use on them and the 1st pc they ever was he wrote the software for it and was not even usable.

Steve Jobs who really made pc units and the 1st usable pcs the apple 2 said in this line of technology that his products would not be used in 10 or 20 years . Even if there still is pcs in 10 years the one you’re using now wont be even be worth having.

PC Shipments Expected to Shrink Through 2016 as Currency Devaluations and Inventory Constraints Worsens Outlook, According to IDC

26 Aug 2015

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., August 26, 2015 – Worldwide PC shipments are expected to fall by -8.7% in 2015 and not stabilize until 2017, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. The latest forecast has growth declining through 2016 – which will make five years of declining shipments. Growth should resume in 2017, led by the commercial market, while consumer volume continues a small decline through the end of the forecast in 2019.

Although IDC had expected the second quarter of 2015 to be a transition period as vendors prepare for Windows 10 systems in the second half of the year, final results nonetheless shrank even more than expected due to a stubbornly large inventory of notebooks from prior quarters and severe constraints posed by the decline of major currencies relative to the US Dollar.

In addition to economic issues, free upgrades of Windows 10, a relative dearth of newer models in the short term, and channels that are reluctant to take stock also makes the prospect of growth unlikely through 2016. Perhaps as a further sign of a broader pullback, mobile devices can no longer be the sole culprit for PCs demise. Except for smartphones, which are still growing, the combined volume of PCs, tablets, and smartphones is expected to grow only in the single digits from 2015 through 2019 as saturation and "good enough computing" sentiments spread even into tablets, which are expected to see further volume decline in 2015.

Looking beyond the near term, IDC remains optimistic a modest recovery should come in 2017, when the prospect of the next refresh cycle and the cessation of a free Windows 10 upgrade should provide opportunities in notebooks and commercial segments. In emerging regions, where consumer budgets have been divided across a myriad of devices, PC purchases are also expected to regain some interest.

"Although the shortcomings of the PC business are obvious, a silver lining is that the industry has continued to refine the more mobile aspects of personal computers – contributing to higher growth in Convertible & Ultraslim Notebooks," said Jay Chou, Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide PC Tracker. "The de-emphasis of touch on Windows 10 also paves the way for a more familiar experience and continuing unit growth on large-screen systems, particularly All-in-One PCs."

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25866615

There predicting for pcs to pick up selling in 2017 we will see and the most pcs sold for years are just tablets that could easily be replaced with phones .

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LOL!

Jobs never made a PC either, he wasn't even an engineer. He only marketed it, was the company's marketing face to sell units, that's all.

Steve Wozniak created Apple and was both, engineer and programmer.

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LOL!

Jobs never made a PC either, he wasn't even an engineer. He only marketed it, was the company's marketing face to sell units, that's all.

Steve Wozniak created Apple and was both, engineer and programmer.

That's were you’re wrong Steve Wozniak came up with ideas but both of them built units and if it were not for Jobs there been no apple ... Wozniak was building stuff as a hobby and Jobs convinced him to sell digital blue boxes. Apple got its start ripping off the phone company. Jobs worked for Atari before he started Apple even.

http://www.boomsbeat.com/articles/13/20131231/50-facts-that-you-didnt-know-about-steve-jobs.htm
Jobs messed with electronics since he was a kid his dad taught him he was offered intern-ship at HP at 12 years old lol . And he didn’t even finish collage .

Jobs and his sister was building PCs before Wozniak joined Apple even

http://fundersandfounders.com/how-steve-jobs-started/
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You directly repeated what i wrote, Jobs never built Apple II, Wozniak did. Jobs only had the idea to sell and market them.

But whatever let's you sleep at night with certain quotes tinkered together as your own sentenced wording. :lol:

"Steve Jobs played no role at all in any of my designs of the Apple I and Apple II computers and printer interfaces and serial interfaces and floppy disks and stuff that I made to enhance the computers," Wozniak told Sarina Khemchandani, the 14-year-old founder of Reach a Student.

"The Apple II computer, by the way, was the only successful product Apple had for its first 10 years, and it was all done for my reasons for myself, before Steve Jobs even knew it existed," Wozniak said.

So how could Jobs "make" Apple II units when he didn't even fucking knew it existed? Go figure.

And last but not least, the Bill Gates quote never implied that he fucking built PC's all day long, it's the frikken message that is important.

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you can blabber all you want about how cellphones and tablets make PC obsolete, but the truth is, the people making the software for them, and for game consoles as well use...guess what? a COMPUTER! not everything is watching youtube and browsing facebook all day. SOME people still work these days (surprisingly). but let's not go to the extremes with servers and workstations...something simple and more end-user friendly: can you edit and re-encode a medium sized video file in a cellphone?...tablet? ...console? nope. oh and before you go all "ooh yeah i know an app that..." stop right there. did you know that the server that app uploads your video to is...a PC? of course you did. :/

I'm sure some companies will still use enterprise computers as some companies still use the old IBM OS/2. But still this is not enough to make vendors stop downsizing to make very little units for home use. but the very same people who have these enterprise computers use there phones more than pc were they have to be stuck behind there desk.

you seem to be under the (false) impression that "desktop" equals "old" when in fact a desktop computer blow any mobile out of the water by orders of magnitude!. the closest so far would be the laptops, but still there's a looong way for laptops to reach that level of power. ever heard the saying "gaming laptop is an oxymoron"?

oh, so you've got the latest and greatest iphone-tablet?

that's cute

F9ftwKD.png

i suggest you check this out

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you seem to be under the (false) impression that "desktop" equals "old" when in fact a desktop computer blow any mobile out of the water by orders of magnitude!. the closest so far would be the laptops, but still there's a looong way for laptops to reach that level of power. ever heard the saying "gaming laptop is an oxymoron"?

oh, so you've got the latest and greatest iphone-tablet?

that's cute

i suggest you check this out

You seem to be under the impression most people who use phones to game are something ?

For years the most PC units sold are are just tablets seems no one really cares about this unless you’re a hardcore pc gamer .

Have you been reading what may be able to do in the next few years?

Chipmaker ARM believes that with its new chips announced last week—a new Cortex-A72 processor and Mali-T880 GPU—we’ll be able to count on our smartphones to do all the tasks we currently need a computer to do. The company is so confident of this, it’s projecting a date when we can go phone-only: 2016.

Here in the U.S., in the next few years, high-end smartphones will be able to handle things like 4K streaming, immersive virtual reality gaming, and seamless multi-tasking (heck, some devices can do most of that now). ARM’s new CPU, for example, provides a 50x increase in performance over chips from five years ago, on 75 percent less energy than chips from three years ago.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/smartphone-only-computer/

When Phones can do this and I can plug it in my TV then they can do what i need them to do . To answer you’re question I don’t have no smart-phone yet. I never wanted one. but once they can do what i want them to do I’m not beyond buying one . :P

What does the future hold for pcs? seems like its growth will keep being stagnated by Windows 10 . Its not just smart phones that has caused it . M$ turned its back on pc vendors by giving away its software for free . They will lucky if it even recovers any in 2017. ;)

The problem with Microsoft is its founded on principles of what’s needed now and not what’s going to be used down the road

Wozniak On Microsoft vs. Apple: “The real differences between where Steve Jobs is portrayed compared to Bill Gates is Steve Jobs having a very futuristic forward vision, almost a bit of the science fiction, ‘Here’s what life could be.’ But Bill Gates had more of an execution ability to build the things that are needed now, to build a company now, make the profits now, in the short-term. I think that was the biggest difference between them.

“I think Steve Jobs actually felt that Bill Gates should be giving up the current and really pushing the world toward the future of a mouse-based, point-and-click type of computer machinery and that Bill Gates was just in it more for the money. I mean the world market for computers grew 10 times and Microsoft got it all.”

Windows software is always been wrote for the here and now . What's going on in the here and now ? Windows 8.1 was a flop and over 50% people still use windows 7 even though Windows 10 is free to most. Microsoft with its new CEO is trying to make money in the long haul with there new O/S by copying Apple , but that’s never worked for M$ only making stuff for short term was successful. Apple has more money than Microsoft and Google combined . Only PC software still wrote for the here and now is Linux .

You directly repeated what i wrote, Jobs never built Apple II, Wozniak did. Jobs only had the idea to sell and market them.

But whatever let's you sleep at night with certain quotes tinkered together as your own sentenced wording. :lol:

"Steve Jobs played no role at all in any of my designs of the Apple I and Apple II computers and printer interfaces and serial interfaces and floppy disks and stuff that I made to enhance the computers," Wozniak told Sarina Khemchandani, the 14-year-old founder of Reach a Student.

"The Apple II computer, by the way, was the only successful product Apple had for its first 10 years, and it was all done for my reasons for myself, before Steve Jobs even knew it existed," Wozniak said.

So how could Jobs "make" Apple II units when he didn't even fucking knew it existed? Go figure.

And last but not least, the Bill Gates quote never implied that he fucking built PC's all day long, it's the frikken message that is important.

Wozniak was a really smart person but didn’t know how to sell anything . Wozniak's idea of Apple 2 is just History now . Jobs worked tell the day before he died for Apple. Wozniak don’t really work for Apple for many years he's just on the payroll . For many years Apple products are built in china some engineer draws up the plans in the US and are built in china . There put together like lego blocks .

WOZNIAK: Because I’m a founder at Apple, I could take almost any role I want, but I’ve tried to avoid the newest, most far-reaching projects because there are other capable people to do them. I try to stick to small projects where I can sit down and handle them myself.

Its just like Bill Gates he don’t no longer work for Microsoft he just owns alot stock in it . Hes not made software in years . The person who invented Linux Linus Torvalds he dont even code anymore hes just in charge of what is approved or rejected . Stuff Now days are not even made by these dudes no more . :lol:

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you seem to be under the (false) impression that "desktop" equals "old" when in fact a desktop computer blow any mobile out of the water by orders of magnitude!. the closest so far would be the laptops, but still there's a looong way for laptops to reach that level of power. ever heard the saying "gaming laptop is an oxymoron"?

oh, so you've got the latest and greatest iphone-tablet?

that's cute

i suggest you check this out

You seem to be under the impression most people who use phones to game are something ?

For years the most PC units sold are are just tablets seems no one really cares about this unless you’re a hardcore pc gamer .

Have you been reading what may be able to do in the next few years?

Chipmaker ARM believes that with its new chips announced last week—a new Cortex-A72 processor and Mali-T880 GPU—we’ll be able to count on our smartphones to do all the tasks we currently need a computer to do. The company is so confident of this, it’s projecting a date when we can go phone-only: 2016.

Here in the U.S., in the next few years, high-end smartphones will be able to handle things like 4K streaming, immersive virtual reality gaming, and seamless multi-tasking (heck, some devices can do most of that now). ARM’s new CPU, for example, provides a 50x increase in performance over chips from five years ago, on 75 percent less energy than chips from three years ago.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/smartphone-only-computer/
When Phones can do this and I can plug it in my TV then they can do what i need them to do . To answer you’re question I don’t have no smart-phone yet. I never wanted one. but once they can do what i want them to do I’m not beyond buying one . :P

What does the future hold for pcs? seems like its growth will keep being stagnated by Windows 10 . Its not just smart phones that has caused it . M$ turned its back on pc vendors by giving away its software for free . They will lucky if it even recovers any in 2017. ;)

The problem with Microsoft is its founded on principles of what’s needed now and not what’s going to be used down the road

heh.. funny you mention the t880. while a big improvement for arm systems it fails spectacularly in that it's something that should have been done almost a decade ago, yet the proverbial suits shelved the project because...hey, sales are still good no need to spend on r&d when all it can be profit. if they would have picked up that tech then maybe today we would have...acceptable gpus on mobiles. but why do i mention this? year after year nvidia (and to a lesser extent amd release more and more powerful gpu. for them stopping means falling behind and losing market share (look at what happened to ati) so obviously the most powerful chips are always on pc. ...oh, laptops and consoles also get some love from the 2 big ones but it is nothing in comparison. an M series chip is severely handicapped compared to their desktop counterpart. and that's for a reason: you just can't shove a full sized titan inside a laptop or... hell, anything but a desktop, and not just any desktop at that. so in short, the time of mali passed long ago, and by the time they catch up to what we have today there will be much more powerful chips and therefore much more hungry software to match.

linux? linux is a victim of the very thing that made it great. that is SO MANY people sticking their finger in the cake that you no longer know if it's a cake a pie or a soup. look at X. it is a mess. no other word to describe it. have you tried coding for it? i have. never again! so i'm not sure what you mean by "here and now"

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you seem to be under the (false) impression that "desktop" equals "old" when in fact a desktop computer blow any mobile out of the water by orders of magnitude!. the closest so far would be the laptops, but still there's a looong way for laptops to reach that level of power. ever heard the saying "gaming laptop is an oxymoron"?

oh, so you've got the latest and greatest iphone-tablet?

that's cute

i suggest you check this out

You seem to be under the impression most people who use phones to game are something ?

For years the most PC units sold are are just tablets seems no one really cares about this unless you’re a hardcore pc gamer .

Have you been reading what may be able to do in the next few years?

Chipmaker ARM believes that with its new chips announced last week—a new Cortex-A72 processor and Mali-T880 GPU—we’ll be able to count on our smartphones to do all the tasks we currently need a computer to do. The company is so confident of this, it’s projecting a date when we can go phone-only: 2016.

Here in the U.S., in the next few years, high-end smartphones will be able to handle things like 4K streaming, immersive virtual reality gaming, and seamless multi-tasking (heck, some devices can do most of that now). ARM’s new CPU, for example, provides a 50x increase in performance over chips from five years ago, on 75 percent less energy than chips from three years ago.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/smartphone-only-computer/
When Phones can do this and I can plug it in my TV then they can do what i need them to do . To answer you’re question I don’t have no smart-phone yet. I never wanted one. but once they can do what i want them to do I’m not beyond buying one . :P

What does the future hold for pcs? seems like its growth will keep being stagnated by Windows 10 . Its not just smart phones that has caused it . M$ turned its back on pc vendors by giving away its software for free . They will lucky if it even recovers any in 2017. ;)

The problem with Microsoft is its founded on principles of what’s needed now and not what’s going to be used down the road

heh.. funny you mention the t880. while a big improvement for arm systems it fails spectacularly in that it's something that should have been done almost a decade ago, yet the proverbial suits shelved the project because...hey, sales are still good no need to spend on r&d when all it can be profit. if they would have picked up that tech then maybe today we would have...acceptable gpus on mobiles. but why do i mention this? year after year nvidia (and to a lesser extent amd release more and more powerful gpu. for them stopping means falling behind and losing market share (look at what happened to ati) so obviously the most powerful chips are always on pc. ...oh, laptops and consoles also get some love from the 2 big ones but it is nothing in comparison. an M series chip is severely handicapped compared to their desktop counterpart. and that's for a reason: you just can't shove a full sized titan inside a laptop or... hell, anything but a desktop, and not just any desktop at that. so in short, the time of mali passed long ago, and by the time they catch up to what we have today there will be much more powerful chips and therefore much more hungry software to match.

linux? linux is a victim of the very thing that made it great. that is SO MANY people sticking their finger in the cake that you no longer know if it's a cake a pie or a soup. look at X. it is a mess. no other word to describe it. have you tried coding for it? i have. never again! so i'm not sure what you mean by "here and now"

That's the whole world right now isn’t it? even people who install windows 10 feel what they have is good enough even thorough most of them use PCs that cant even benefit from DX 12 and now most people with AMD cards will be stuck using legacy drivers unless they do a upgrade or buy a new computer . Linux has enough donations there’s over 804 brands at distrowatch to chose from at that site alone regardless of what the markshare says or the masses thinks . People that don’t like Linux don’t understand it . When I play games I use a PS4 i still buy and rent my games . So Linux suits me fine I really have no need for Windows any-more even though I still have it.

I see were coding for Linux could be very hard some Distros are more friendly than others . I like Linux because it has so many choices but some distros I don’t like I draw the line with distros that want let me chose witch browser I want to install or update it when I want. I'm sorry but I’m not going go out and spend any money on no high priced gamer pc with windows 10 on it because I have a PS4 I can buy me some new games with that Money.

And what I mean about here and now M$ claims you will be using Windows 10 forever (I don’t know if this true are not ) With Linux you don’t know if you’re Distro is going to exist a few years down the road so its best to try different ones Its very here and now.

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you seem to be under the (false) impression that "desktop" equals "old" when in fact a desktop computer blow any mobile out of the water by orders of magnitude!. the closest so far would be the laptops, but still there's a looong way for laptops to reach that level of power. ever heard the saying "gaming laptop is an oxymoron"?

oh, so you've got the latest and greatest iphone-tablet?

that's cute

i suggest you check this out

You seem to be under the impression most people who use phones to game are something ?

For years the most PC units sold are are just tablets seems no one really cares about this unless you’re a hardcore pc gamer .

Have you been reading what may be able to do in the next few years?

Chipmaker ARM believes that with its new chips announced last week—a new Cortex-A72 processor and Mali-T880 GPU—we’ll be able to count on our smartphones to do all the tasks we currently need a computer to do. The company is so confident of this, it’s projecting a date when we can go phone-only: 2016.

Here in the U.S., in the next few years, high-end smartphones will be able to handle things like 4K streaming, immersive virtual reality gaming, and seamless multi-tasking (heck, some devices can do most of that now). ARM’s new CPU, for example, provides a 50x increase in performance over chips from five years ago, on 75 percent less energy than chips from three years ago.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/smartphone-only-computer/
When Phones can do this and I can plug it in my TV then they can do what i need them to do . To answer you’re question I don’t have no smart-phone yet. I never wanted one. but once they can do what i want them to do I’m not beyond buying one . :P

What does the future hold for pcs? seems like its growth will keep being stagnated by Windows 10 . Its not just smart phones that has caused it . M$ turned its back on pc vendors by giving away its software for free . They will lucky if it even recovers any in 2017. ;)

The problem with Microsoft is its founded on principles of what’s needed now and not what’s going to be used down the road

heh.. funny you mention the t880. while a big improvement for arm systems it fails spectacularly in that it's something that should have been done almost a decade ago, yet the proverbial suits shelved the project because...hey, sales are still good no need to spend on r&d when all it can be profit. if they would have picked up that tech then maybe today we would have...acceptable gpus on mobiles. but why do i mention this? year after year nvidia (and to a lesser extent amd release more and more powerful gpu. for them stopping means falling behind and losing market share (look at what happened to ati) so obviously the most powerful chips are always on pc. ...oh, laptops and consoles also get some love from the 2 big ones but it is nothing in comparison. an M series chip is severely handicapped compared to their desktop counterpart. and that's for a reason: you just can't shove a full sized titan inside a laptop or... hell, anything but a desktop, and not just any desktop at that. so in short, the time of mali passed long ago, and by the time they catch up to what we have today there will be much more powerful chips and therefore much more hungry software to match.

linux? linux is a victim of the very thing that made it great. that is SO MANY people sticking their finger in the cake that you no longer know if it's a cake a pie or a soup. look at X. it is a mess. no other word to describe it. have you tried coding for it? i have. never again! so i'm not sure what you mean by "here and now"

That's the whole world right now isn’t it? even people who install windows 10 feel what they have is good enough even thorough most of them use PCs that cant even benefit from DX 12 and now most people with AMD cards will be stuck using legacy drivers unless they do a upgrade or buy a new computer . Linux has enough donations there’s over 804 brands at distrowatch to chose from at that site alone regardless of what the markshare says or the masses thinks . People that don’t like Linux don’t understand it . When I play games I use a PS4 i still buy and rent my games . So Linux suits me fine I really have no need for Windows any-more even though I still have it.

I see were coding for Linux could be very hard some Distros are more friendly than others . I like Linux because it has so many choices but some distros I don’t like I draw the line with distros that want let me chose witch browser I want to install or update it when I want. I'm sorry but I’m not going go out and spend any money on no high priced gamer pc with windows 10 on it because I have a PS4 I can buy me some new games with that Money.

And what I mean about here and now M$ claims you will be using Windows 10 forever (I don’t know if this true are not ) With Linux you don’t know if you’re Distro is going to exist a few years down the road so its best to try different ones Its very here and now.

err...yes, but X is not a distro. X is in every distro with a graphical user interface. and that's the problem it tries to do too much and it's already out of it's intended scope and what's worse, multiple versions floating around, NONE are compatible with each other and nobody cares to come to an agreement regarding a standard. whereas in windows land as long as you link to d3d your software will run on a wide array of hardware/windows versions.

here's a good read on that. long, but still a great read.

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Wow.

Round & round & round we go - again & again & again.

Here's my 2.5 cents (which I've said before & will likely say again...):

This entire PC vs. (whatever) subject is a mess.

Folks have dreamed of tech gear to carry around & hold in their hands since scifi shows started pretending to have them around 1960-something.

When Star Trek became popular the yearnings rose to even greater heights.

(Automatic sliding doors were once the stuff of dreams as well - if you recall !!??)

Now the handheld stuff is here. Great.

It does some stuff too - also great.

For some folks that is enough...Hurrah !!

For many folks it is NOT enough - and they still need & use desktop PCs and/or servers in many forms.

That's cool too.

Has this caused a big drop in PC sales for a while now ??

Absolutely.

Is this permanent ??

Unlikely.

If you really want to make a point in all this - ask what FORM FACTOR has just about died because of the hand-helds.

Is it desktops - notebooks/netbooks - tablets - phones - or something else ??

Hint:

The clamshell form-factor of notebooks/netbooks is in the coffin, all but 100% killed off by the handhelds.

Surprised ?!?

This should surprise nobody as it is a clumsy type of device compared with the smaller ones.

Certain folks are still in need of them & will keep buying them, but those are fewer each day.

Great thread BTW.

Please do continue these unending debates - they are all VERY entertaining !!

PS:
The tech sectors which have REALLY gone dark due to handhelds are seldom ever mentioned=>

Landlines and satellite internet.

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Going back to the initial post (because this is going to be a debate between windows/linux/android/ios/etcetera).

It is a merchandising post. Full of nonsense. Period. Ecosystems are another thing. Period.

In statistics, the percentages are not equivalent with the real numbers, because they're focused in one thing... moblie devices (in this article).

As I said, if you broke your md/sp, you go and buy another one, regardless the price.

If you broke your PC you take a lot of considerations before replacing it. Because there are a zillions of combinations for what a PC be best for you. Am I right? And it doesn't depend on the OS you're going to install on it.

So stop quoting abuot your preferences over OS's.

If it's over a processor type, it's ok. But IMO, there's no way an ARM can overcome in terms of performance an intel or amd processor. They are developed for different enviroments/power comsumption.

As I said, a PC is not for gaming, it's for work. And for work (well, in my case as I use VM's for testing purposes and a server application for my clients to test the applications I develope for them) horse power is needed, and that's an arm can't give.

Period.

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there's no way an ARM can overcome in terms of performance an intel or amd processor.

exactly. that's what i've been meaning to say.

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One thing is for sure Microsoft should had stuck to what they do best is keep using its old code for there costumers that still uses PCs . They will never get on the phone software gravy train . Windows Phone = Fail . They invested more in the Phone Market than they have PCs to only try to get 3% of phone marketshare again .

You can read more about it here

It's time to stop making excuses for Microsoft's mobile efforts

http://www.neowin.net/news/editorial-its-time-to-stop-making-excuses-for-microsofts-mobile-efforts

You may keep using pcs but will it be windows ? For me personalty I’m Sick of Microsoft and I am free of there monopoly they had on me for like 15 years and I never been more happier. :lol:

If you don’t want the PC industry to die , go out and buy new computers and not think someone else is going to do it for you. I do my part and buy new Pcs every so often when have the extra money. i may install something else on them besides Windows on them but i buy them lol . Microsoft is not helping the PC industry out right now, there giving there stuff away free and worried about there new Windows 10 Lumia Phones . ;)

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One thing is for sure Microsoft should had stuck to what they do best is keep using its old code for there costumers that still uses PCs . They will never get on the phone software gravy train . Windows Phone = Fail . They invested more in the Phone Market than they have PCs to only try to get 3% of phone marketshare again .

You can read more about it here

It's time to stop making excuses for Microsoft's mobile efforts

http://www.neowin.net/news/editorial-its-time-to-stop-making-excuses-for-microsofts-mobile-efforts

You may keep using pcs but will it be windows ? For me personalty I’m Sick of Microsoft and I am free of there monopoly they had on me for like 15 years and I never been more happier. :lol:

If you don’t want the PC industry to die , go out and buy new computers and not think someone else is going to do it for you. I do my part and buy new Pcs every so often when have the extra money. i may install something else on them besides Windows on them but i buy them lol . Microsoft is not helping the PC industry out right now, there giving there stuff away free and worried about there new Windows 10 Lumia Phones . ;)

So, summing up, you HATE windows and that's te only reason for the post.

Well, everybody has its tastes, but to start a debate about it is pointless.

Was it worth all these posts to get to that point?

Cheers!

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One thing is for sure Microsoft should had stuck to what they do best is keep using its old code for there costumers that still uses PCs . They will never get on the phone software gravy train . Windows Phone = Fail . They invested more in the Phone Market than they have PCs to only try to get 3% of phone marketshare again .

You can read more about it here

It's time to stop making excuses for Microsoft's mobile efforts

http://www.neowin.net/news/editorial-its-time-to-stop-making-excuses-for-microsofts-mobile-efforts

You may keep using pcs but will it be windows ? For me personalty I’m Sick of Microsoft and I am free of there monopoly they had on me for like 15 years and I never been more happier. :lol:

If you don’t want the PC industry to die , go out and buy new computers and not think someone else is going to do it for you. I do my part and buy new Pcs every so often when have the extra money. i may install something else on them besides Windows on them but i buy them lol . Microsoft is not helping the PC industry out right now, there giving there stuff away free and worried about there new Windows 10 Lumia Phones . ;)

So, summing up, you HATE windows and that's te only reason for the post.

Well, everybody has its tastes, but to start a debate about it is pointless.

Was it worth all these posts to get to that point?

Cheers!

No I don’t hate windows its just software ..I still own a pc with windows but that don’t mean i use it very often . I just don’t like the company that makes windows and the way its headed now days... If they would stop spying on everyone and stop releasing betas as stables i would gladly use it again. And really there’s no debate to it, do you have a crystal ball were you can see into the future? we don’t know if that man in the OP that wrote it is right or wrong .He don’t even know himself tell the future gets here . :lol:

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