IBM Declares the End of the PC Era

The "PC is dead" thing is like the "[some kind of clothing] is back" stories you see every other year. It's filler used by boring hacks and people with a deadline and nothing to say. PR departments are happy to help both groups.

Looks at this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&g...20is%20dead%22

More search tools->Timeline

1988

PC might as well mean Prolonged Collapse.

Considering the fact that most people are economically stressed. These non upgradable items like tablets and pads are a hideously poor value, instead you always need to buy them new. A memory or HDD or SSD upgrade on an PC is fairly easy and CHEAP!

Folks may "want" the cool factor of these toys but in the end can they afford them?

All is see over and over and over again is the marketing machine "telling" the consumer what "they want". Not the other way around.

If you look at the comments around the web that have these so called news articles telling consumers they want the tablet as their next PC. The no to yes factor is at least 9 to1. And these are the generalist news sites not Tom's, or ZD Net.

Just like the All in One PC has really failed even though the marketing push was relentless several years ago. The public did not buy them and still don't. With the All In Ones you always pay more to get LESS and they are much more difficult to upgrade.

What we need is a modern analog to the IBM PC. I don't think we'll always be stuck with tablets and smartphones you can't modify. Once the components get small enough, the guts needed to make it modifiable (like slides and standard connectors) will be possible.

Let's see

Major computing brands saying PC is dead and a major push for the cloud, do I see a correlation?

strollin said:

You guys are reading the "PC Is Dead" stuff too literally. The fact is that the PC is becoming irrelevant as a money making product, not that it will actually disappear anytime soon. Look how much money Apple is making from the iPad/iPhone. PC mfrs are looking at declining profits while Apple is raking it in.

Don't forget that us techies are really just a small part of the overall market so while we say we'll always want/need a PC, everybody else could care less as long as they can access their FB page, email and such.

Part of that is true. I agree about how PC sales (this includes Macs) have slumped over the years, it's become harder for OEM's to rely on computer sales alone to keep themselves afloat.

The iPhone/iPad's success proves that the majority of people have no real need for a standalone computer most of the time and a portable solution like a smartphone/tablet device is more than sufficient for their needs. As you've stated, not everyone's a "techie" and we are a minority to share with the same community as "enthusiasts" and "diehard gamers". Even the "Starbucks" posers mostly check Facebook, email, go shopping online and chat.

Max Peck said:

mikedl said:

Try running AutoCAD 2012 on an iPad. You can't. Try running PhotoShop on an iPad. You can't. All an iPad is good for is playing games, checking email and getting immersed in social networks.

The PC dead? Hardly. Not for a long time to come. Maybe once we all get 100Mbps internet, perhaps. Still, what happens if your connection goes down?

Cloud computing is an esoteric endeavor but it will be a while before it becomes even remotely ubiquitous as PCs.

These marketing people are really one-dimensional (dimentia?) in their thinking. Just because the tablet form-factor exists and addresses a particular market they all-of-a-sudden think that the other market is now dead.

That's a little like saying "watch out, Airbus came out with the A380, now all GA aircraft (Cessna, Beech, Mooney, etc.) are now in mortal danger!" Nonsense.

Tablets are very cool devices. My iPhone4 is a cool device. I love using them. Replace my desktop and laptop machines for software development and high-volume input? Gimme a break. That simply ain't going to happen.

One other thing. Anybody else notice this constant back-and-forth thing between centralized and localized computing? I've seen it cycle back-and-forth at least a couple of times in my 35-year career as a developer. Now they're calling the central computing model the "cloud". Before that it was called the "web". Before that it was called "time sharing". Nothing new here!

-Max

You left out the terminal/mainframe systems they first had when I went to work with each desk having a dumb terminal connected to the mainframe.

They abandoned that for PC's at every workstation all of which were connected to servers.

From that we went to "dumb clients" connected to servers, then it became the LAN with PC's

As you said there's a pattern here.

When I saw this topic, my first thought was, "Not this again!"

I think that there will be a mix of light-weight users who can manage with just a pad--those whose main concern is surfing, social networking, and streaming games and videos anywhere--moderate users; those who require some computing power beyond that available in a pad and who are satisfied by lower end machines and laptops that can run Word, a little Excel maybe, and a few games--and power users who will always require a more powerful platform, the dedicated gamers, the market players, the researchers, the techies, etc.

The light weight users will always be the majority of users, but there will always be a market for PC's.

For me, I will always require a separate keyboard and the ability to run a couple of large monitors and be capable of multitasking. Example, I have my entire music collection--vinyl (at 24/96) and disc ripped to hard disk in flac--800 GB--to which I am now listening (Chicago II) as I surf the net, comment and write blogs in Word.

A Steve Jobs sanitary napkin just won't cut it.