The End of Windows 7 'Marks the End of the PC Era Too' (zdnet.com) 166
ZDNet's UK editor-in-chief Steve Ranger argues the end of Windows 7 "marks the end of the PC era, too."
When Windows 7 launched, the iPhone and its app store were around but were still novelties, while the iPad hadn't arrived yet. If you wanted to get work -- or pretty much anything -- done on a computer, you needed a PC. Just over a decade later, the picture is much more complicated.
PC sales have been in decline for the last seven years; a slide which only ended with a small increase last year, largely because businesses needed to buy new PCs to run Windows 10, after bowing to the inevitable and upgrading. In many scenarios and use cases the PC has been superseded by the smartphone, the tablet or digital assistants embodied in various other devices. And it's not just the PC -- Windows is no longer the defining product for Microsoft that it once was.
That's not to say the PC is dead, of course: I'm typing on one now, and it will remain the primary device I use to do my job for the foreseeable future. Many office and knowledge workers will feel the same. But there are now plenty of other options: I could be using a tablet or dictating to my phone... And outside of work I barely touch a PC at all.
And even the definition of the PCs is getting blurry. PC makers have come up with a late burst of creativity that has delivered all manner of weird and occasionally wonderful new shapes and sizes. Microsoft's Surface is a PC that looks a lot like a tablet; Lenovo's X1 Fold is a folding screen that can be a tablet, or a mini laptop or a desktop. Folding and detachable PCs are now mainstream.
PC sales have been in decline for the last seven years; a slide which only ended with a small increase last year, largely because businesses needed to buy new PCs to run Windows 10, after bowing to the inevitable and upgrading. In many scenarios and use cases the PC has been superseded by the smartphone, the tablet or digital assistants embodied in various other devices. And it's not just the PC -- Windows is no longer the defining product for Microsoft that it once was.
That's not to say the PC is dead, of course: I'm typing on one now, and it will remain the primary device I use to do my job for the foreseeable future. Many office and knowledge workers will feel the same. But there are now plenty of other options: I could be using a tablet or dictating to my phone... And outside of work I barely touch a PC at all.
And even the definition of the PCs is getting blurry. PC makers have come up with a late burst of creativity that has delivered all manner of weird and occasionally wonderful new shapes and sizes. Microsoft's Surface is a PC that looks a lot like a tablet; Lenovo's X1 Fold is a folding screen that can be a tablet, or a mini laptop or a desktop. Folding and detachable PCs are now mainstream.
Um, no (Score:5, Insightful)
"I could be using a tablet or dictating to my phone."
Um, no. What kind of "work" are you performing doing either of those two things? Nothing meaningful.
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I use a tablet to navigate via GPS and visual map overlays while out in the desert (because some trails Google isn't going to show, so you need to be able to visually see them on the map) and to scan for minerals.
Those have led to several nice money-making discoveries.
Try using your imagination more often.
Should we root for the rattlesnake... (Score:2, Funny)
I vote yes.
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...to bite the pretentious little jackass with the tablet in the desert?!?!?
It's okay, a fortune teller told him he would die in a dessert [quotes.net] ...
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Death by chocolate of course.
https://www.delish.com/cooking... [delish.com]
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Yeah, that doesn't sound like an edge case at all.
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Try using your imagination more often.
Probably an Engineer [slashdot.org] :-)
Re:Um, no (Score:4, Interesting)
Thing is dear boy that whilst you are using an appliance to do a task you are not in fact doing anything creative that you would need a PC for. So both sides of this argument are correct. You don't need a PC to interact with an application that does sometning creative with your input like give you directions on a map but you do need a PC mostly to create the software that the application uses. The market for PC's therefore will increase up to a certain point and then stagnate whilst the phone and tablet continue to grow for all the consumers of digital services. This means that statements like the PC is dead are uninformed and silly.
Re: Um, no (Score:3, Insightful)
A motorcycle is a truck... Just add 2 wheels, a bed, and a cab.
Damn, this will save truckers a lot of money.
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I use a tablet to navigate via GPS and visual map overlays while out in the desert (because some trails Google isn't going to show, so you need to be able to visually see them on the map) and to scan for minerals.
Those have led to several nice money-making discoveries.
Try using your imagination more often.
Wow, I really need to update my technology. I've been roaming around the desert looking for minerals using a computer that looks like this [syfy.com]!
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Just my take. I think all these "modern" users just have no clue how to work efficiently and effectively with a computer.
Re:Um, no (Score:4, Interesting)
I think all these "modern" users just have no clue how to work efficiently and effectively with a computer.
Surely that depends on what they're trying to do?
It's always been the case that for many people a PC was only something between a UI to a database and a different shape of communications device. For those jobs, not only are modern mobile devices adequate replacements, the usability is often much better too.
For home users, another major purpose used to be gaming, but in recent years consoles and mobile apps have taken a huge chunk of that market as well.
Of course those same small touchscreen devices suck for a lot of creative work, where being able to one-thumb type a one-paragraph email or tap a couple of controls on some shop floor app just don't cut it. But a lot of people have little if any need for that kind of work, so a general purpose PC of the kind many of us who read Slashdot might value.
In an ideal world, we could all be programmers if we wanted to be, and all the work that's going into proprietary protocols and walled gardens and so on would have been used to make our everyday appliances easy to automate.
If I wanted to write a quick program to record/download my favourite TV show when it comes out, ping me a message to my phone that it's ready, and include a button with the phone message that I could push when I'd got my drink and snacks that did all the home automation stuff to make my living room ready for watching, that would be nice.
If I wanted to scan my favourite online stores for products meeting a certain description and show me a quick summary on whatever device I'm using at the time, with a button I could push to choose one to buy that would automatically send the order and delivery details, make the payment and notify me when the vendor acknowledged the sale, great.
Sadly, we don't live in that kind of world, and a lot of the makers of the products and software we everyday are more concerned with locking everything down, locking users in, and spying on everyone to extract even more money from their locked-in data sets. That being the case, the ideal world where we can all automate things in our lives with basic programming skills remains confined to an ivory tower, and dumbed down, locked up devices are what we get instead.
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Tell that to a salesperson, lawyer or doctor (Score:3)
"I could be using a tablet or dictating to my phone."
Um, no. What kind of "work" are you performing doing either of those two things? Nothing meaningful.
I can think of many "meaningful" work that can be done on a tablet or phone - some that involve the health of a person.
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So you classify tablets and phones as "input devices" for providing data to a real Computer system.
I think you just proved the original point. In such scenarios the tablet or phone is the equivalent of an old-fashioned card punch machine which collects data to be fed to a real computer.
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No.
For most people, today's phones and tablets are computing devices in which they interact with, execute programs, access data and communicate electronically with others.
Literally what people used to use their PCs for.
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By your definition in what use cases is your laptop or desktop NOT a mere input device? You have heard of server-client applications, no?
Perhaps if you're coding software but even then you'll probably have a git repository in the background...
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You don't use git.
Wonder how I know. ;)
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Well, for instance doctors notes, while taken using dictation, are still transcribed by a person using a PC afterwards. So that's really not relevant.
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Not my doctor and most people I talk to (here in Ontario) are the same although whereas my doctor uses an iPad, other people's doctors use a desktop.
Notes are taken on an iPad and go directly into EHealth Ontario (the medical records system here), which he also uses for reference information, email and more.
Apparently doing this on a phone, while possible and done in an emergency, is not considered "professional".
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Obviously you have never used a tablet or voice dictation system.
Re:Um, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Mobile devices are for consumption, not production. All non-trivially complex work happens on PC.
Have you seen a smart phone lately? (Re:Um, no) (Score:2)
Mobile devices are for consumption, not production. All non-trivially complex work happens on PC.
I don't know if that applies so much any more. I've seen advertisements for smartphone docks that can add a display, keyboard, perhaps a mouse, Ethernet, storage, and most anything else people might think of for a desktop computer or laptop dock. Just for grins I tried various USB peripherals on my iPhone "camera" adapter with my iPhone 7 and many of them worked as expected except the keyboard. Apple calls it an adapter for cameras to load photos for saving, viewing, and printing but it's really just a g
Re:Have you seen a smart phone lately? (Re:Um, no) (Score:4, Interesting)
"I've seen advertisements for smartphone docks that can add a display, keyboard, perhaps a mouse, Ethernet, storage, and most anything else people might think of for a desktop computer or laptop dock."
So basically converting the mobile device to a PC. I fail to see how that changes the initial statement that most meaningful work is still carried out using a PC.
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So basically converting the mobile device to a PC. I fail to see how that changes the initial statement that most meaningful work is still carried out using a PC.
The difference is this desktop computer replacement is not shackled to a desk. With things like Apple Airplay or Google Cast there's a wireless connection to computer monitors. With Bluetooth keyboards and mice there's no wires there either. With Qi charging there's no wire for power required, just a pad to place the device. Someone can take their "desktop" with them by picking up a device not much bigger than a deck of playing cards and putting it in their pocket.
I've seen people complain about the lag
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Mobile devices are for consumption, not production. All non-trivially complex work happens on PC.
I don't know if that applies so much any more. I've seen advertisements for smartphone docks that can add a display, keyboard, perhaps a mouse, Ethernet, storage, and most anything else people might think of for a desktop computer or laptop dock.
That is a PC that happens to have a very small system unit.
Re:Um, no (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a 'journalist'. He writes opinion pieces of 300 words, and then thinks he has contributed something to mankind. Yeah, I can totally see how that would work with a dictaphone-type system, but it's not how the rest of humanity earns their bread...
Re:Um, no (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, this site. I realise everyone here knows more than everyone else (and each other, of course), but why in hell do you feel the need to snidely negate something as fundamental as an observance that over the lifespan of this OS the computing world has seen fundamental change? *Obviously* it has. Clearly desktop is in decline, the numbers show it, and those that *needed* one in order to use a computing device now have numerous other options. Yes, desktop will continue for professionals in various fields, and for game aficionados for the foreseeable future, but the economics of it are radically changing.
It's OK, you can let one day pass without reminding the world that it lacks your insight.
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It's OK, you can let one day pass without reminding the world that it lacks your insight.
That describes this site, the computing community in general, and the world of social media to a "T". Eloquent and precise.
I'm totally stealing it.
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Desktop PC's last for years. (Score:5, Insightful)
Largely because the PC you already have works well.
I've arranged my PC in a way I like. Moving to a new computer would require many hours of work.
Also, there is no new opportunity. Windows 10 is not a good choice. Some of the many, many negative articles about Windows 10:
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."
Latest Windows 10 Update Problems and How to Fix Them [maketecheasier.com].
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Windows 7 was fine. Microsoft needed to make more money.
The PC isn't dying, it's just that tools are getting more diverse and usable.
In the olden days, processor advancements could be seen just by looking at how much faster they ran the same software. The tiny updates to Intel/AMD processors are now mostly invisible. More cores can sometimes manifest as yeah-faster. But PCs last longer, as well as their drives and peripherals.
All this said, the public's memory of the Windows 8 fiasco is rapidly fading. Micr
Re:Desktop PC's last for years. (Score:5, Insightful)
Largely because the PC you already have works well.
That is a factor. Having lived through the PC age from the beginning, I can tell you I upgrade my PC much less often nowadays than I used to. There was a time where 6 months meant your equipment was fairly obsolete. The clock speeds were easily doubling during that time period. There was no comparison between what a 16 bit 80286 and a 32 bit 80386 could do. People were almost forced to upgrade if they wanted to continue using the latest software.
Now, I just upgraded my PC to an i9 -9900k, from an i7. I've had that i7 for 6 or 7 years. I used to upgrade my PC at least every 2 years. The change in performance from i7 to i9 is noticeable, but nowhere near as impressive as from a 386 to a 486... and most of it is due to the upgraded graphics card. Sure, the change brings with it other benefits - my new system runs cooler, I have less fan noise, etc. But a compelling reason to upgrade? Not really. I did it because I wanted to.
Besides, most people never needed a PC. You don't need a PC to browse the web, answer emails, watch multimedia or play simple games. Before we were all connected and had email, other than calling by phone we needed to print our letters and fax them or mail them by snail mail. Lots of people required computers and printers, if only to do this. It was a better typewriter. Now, everyone just sends an email. Or at a push, there are word processors that work on phones, and you can print something from your phone. It makes sense that the PC is in decline. However there will always be a market for it. Only the market is moving into a niche, instead of being all of humanity.
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Interesting - why the Intel i9-9900k and not AMD Ryzen?
Such as the Ryzen 7 3700x, which is half the price, yet beats Intel in pretty much everything?
Or even the Ryzen 7 3900x, which just thrashes Intel [youtube.com], yet still costs less?
On top of that, the numerous security issues with Intel processors, even in the 8th and 9th gen chips.
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--If you still intend to use Win7 as a desktop, you are well advised to bare-metal back it up with Veeam or Aomei (or Acronis which is quite good but it's not free) and restore it in a VM running on an LTS-based Linux host. If you're the tech guy in your family, consider doing this for various family members. I recommend Aomei and Veeam because they have restore-anywhere builtin.
--This way you can have snapshots (and more, especially if you put the VM files on ZFS). You can even have the VM do host-only
folding/detachabled tablets are not mainstream (Score:5, Insightful)
They might appear mainstream in a hip office. But elsewhere in the real world they are not mainstream - they're expensive for what you get, don't do the job as well and end up almost totally useless in record short time (specswise) - or in case of windows rt and such end up as ABANDONED PLATFORMS - which is totally going to make any actually paying user avoid same kind of a deal in the future. this is hurting microsofts new surface ideas(doesn't help that microsoft has changed like 3 times in 10 years what "surface" means).
so microsoft surface? not mainstream, not likely to be mainstream. others aren't as well. unless you count a laptop as a folding tablet they have not taken over into the mainstream. ipads are doing pretty big, but thats also niche in the actual real world(and suck bigtime for attaching a keyboard still anyways). anything with arm and x86 emulation too... you think how many people that is going to burn? people aren't going to touch that schaisse with a 10 foot pole after being burnt once with it. "but it runs windowss1!!" yeah thats the sales line but reality doesn't meet the expectations then and it's burn city in slug hell.
but anyhow, thats a separate subject to the actual subject: which is better, dictating your things or doing your typing on a keyboard designed for typing. the keyboard wins - now what is actually quite dead and buried(figuratively) is secretary typist jobs..
Granted, journalists nowadays just need a web browser and ctrl-c ctrl-v buttons - you can do that just fine on even a phone. but thats just because they're not actually doing any journaling and don't need to organize the data they gather because they aren't doing their jobs....
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I've never seen a phone with a ctrl key.
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What? how do you use an ssh client and VI?
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Phones these days don't have hardware keyboards, they have software keyboards.
Upgrade your keyboard!
This guy is an Idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
"In just a couple of days Windows 7 finally goes out of support, which means no more bug fixes or updates for the millions who are still using the operating system, which first launched back in 2009."
While this may be true, it means that Windows 7 has finally reached the stage of stability in that how it works today, it will work tomorrow and each day thereafter, for all days subsequent to the day on which Microsoft ends "making money from" it.
"It has been much loved by PC users and admins in the last decade"
Absolutely not. It was a further step in the decline of the Windows UI which has continued to race downhill at ever increasing velocity since the introduction of Windows 2000.
"As he notes, that means somewhere near 200 million PCs could soon be running out-of-date software, and any new security holes are unlikely to get fixed (unless you are willing to pay for extended support)."
Since Microsoft will have stopped "making money from" Windows 7 by no longer fiddling with it, there will be no new security holes in need of fixing/patching. There may be *old* security problems and bugs, but there will not -- bar letting Microsoft fiddle with the code -- be any new ones. There may be "new discoveries" of old bugs, but these are not "new security problems" anymore than suddenly discovering that water is wet is a "new" wetness.
"In many scenarios and use cases the PC has been superseded by the smartphone, the tablet or digital assistants embodied in various other devices."
This has nothing whatsoever to do with PC's -- as in Personal Computers. What it means is that people who do not need personal computers no longer use personal computers and therefor do not buy them anymore. A smartphone, tablet, or digital assistant is not a PC and does not do what a PC does.
In other words, just because screwdrivers were not yet invented and everyone used a hammer to drive in screws does not reflect on the utility of the hammer when used for the purpose for which it is intended which is hammering. Just because many people who used to use "hammers" to screw in their screws now use this newfangled thing called a "screwdriver" to screw in their screws is totally irrelevant to the hammers or those who need hammers for purposes other than driving in screws.
Re:This guy is an Idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
There may be "new discoveries" of old bugs, but these are not "new security problems"
Yes, they are new security problems. They are not problems until they are discovered and start being exploited, they are just bugs.
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No, they are not new security problems. They are old security problems that always existed -- the fact that you did not anticipate that they existed is *your* problem. Competent persons will assume that Windows 7 is a bug ridden hunk of shit (well, that everything is a bug-ridden hunk of shit) and take that into account. Here is a little thought experiment for you:
Two different persons build a new house and want to put "one way glass" for the entire bedroom wall. They both buy the glass from the same gla
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What it means is that people who do not need personal computers no longer use personal computers and therefor do not buy them anymore. A smartphone, tablet, or digital assistant is not a PC and does not do what a PC does.
This transition caused two practical problems:
1. Once tablets running smartphone operating systems gained popularity, compact laptop personal computers became harder to find [slashdot.org].
2. Once people started buying devices that are not personal computers, people who suddenly came to need a personal computer for the first time, such as to compete high school computer science homework, were faced with sticker shock.
What makes netbooks not PCs? (Score:2)
That is because those "compact laptop personal computers" are not Personal Computers. People who want fondleslabs buy fondleslabs.
The compact laptops of 2008 through 2012, such as the ASUS Eee PC, the Acer Aspire One, and the Dell Inspiron mini, were capable of running a Windows or X11/Linux environment. They had an x86 or x86-64 CPU, an HDD or SSD, a 1024x600-pixel display with 8.9" or 10.1" diagonal measure, a traditional six-row keyboard (albeit slightly cramped), and either a touchpad in the middle of the palm rest or a pointing stick between G, H, and B. What makes them not personal computers?
Ah, you mean like the laptop I bought a couple of years ago that cost $12,000.00?
I'm talking about high school student
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"Fondleslab" (from "fondle" and "slab") is a somewhat derogatory term for exclusively touch-operated computing devices, such as an iPad or Galaxy Tab, that appears in The Register. In some cases, the category can be distinguished from "detachable" (a tablet computer designed to connect to a physically attached keyboard and touchpad) or "convertible" (a laptop computer with a permanently attached keyboard and touchpad that swivels to hide them).
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I was referring to the discontinuation of 10.1 inch laptops in favor of 11.6 inch laptops. If this continues, how long will it be until 14 inches is the smallest new laptop you can find that isn't locked down to run either a smartphone operating system (such as iPadOS or Android) or a web browser as its shell (such as Chrome OS)?
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You'd be daft to say that Win2k had a better UI than 7 (it didn't).
PC just changed (Score:2)
I'd argue that what happened is personal computing took over telephony and went more mobile.
Your smartphone, your tablet, are still "personal computers". They're optimized for consumption rather than input thanks to the form factor, but they're nonetheless full featured computers running full operating systems etc.
PCs just split into Desktops, Laptops, Tablets and Smartphones. Microsoft holds dominance in two of those four segments - the two stagnant ones - but overall the personal computer market continues
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I would argue that most of them are not PCs because they are sole-source products generally sold in an unmoddable state with walled gardens built right in to the bone, locked bootloaders, etc. PC means Open Architecture and User Control as much as it means "personal computer."
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You can't modify the lower level stuff of a lot of full blow desktop machines either. Platform controllers etc are all locked down, and with UEFI Secure Boot it's one policy decision at MS away from having locked bootloaders on every win+x86 desktop/laptop sold. Laptops are often so heavily integrated and miniaturized these days that there's no user serviceable parts inside - BGA soldered-on processor, ram, eMMC, etc.
You can get ARM versions of Windows running on phones/tablets they were never intended to,
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"You can't modify the lower level stuff of a lot of full blow desktop machines either. Platform controllers etc are all locked down, and with UEFI Secure Boot it's one policy decision at MS away from having locked bootloaders on every win+x86 desktop/laptop sold."
This is all false. Of course you can modify all the "lower level stuff" if you want to and you can replace the firmware for everything to your little hearts content. It is not very difficult at all, once you have physical access. How do you thi
Manufacturers deny requisite knowledge to public (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, Microsoft is not in control of UEFI, UEFI is a Published Standard.
However, Microsoft is in control of what configurations of UEFI are permissible on PCs that ship with Windows and on motherboards that are certified to run Windows. For example, Microsoft forbade manufacturers of tablets that ran Windows RT to let the tablet's owner disable Secure Boot or add custom certificates.
Anyone with the requisite knowledge, skills, and tools can put whatever they want in UEFI.
Many manufacturers have long denied said "requisite knowledge" to the public as a business policy.
UEFI is merely a program stored in EEPROM
The EEPROM in which UEFI is stored need not be writable by the public. Locked-down devices tend to incorporate cryptographic measures to deter the owner of a device from overwriting the UEFI EEPROM.
and it can be replaced with whatever the hell one wishes, as long as it interfaces with the hardware and boot ROM according to the specified interfaces for that hardware.
Hardware interfaces used by UEFI need not be specified to the public. Developers of Linux, X.Org X11, CUPS, and SANE have long had to deal with manufacturers that refuse to disclose useful specifications of hardware interfaces.
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Microsoft forbade manufacturers of tablets that ran Windows RT to let the tablet's owner disable Secure Boot or add custom certificates.
It's a tablet and it's Microsoft's OS. Dictating the terms of the OS has been the norm for the best part of 30 years. You point to this example, how about the more relevant one to us:
Microsoft forbade manufacturers of PCs that were certified Windows 10 to *not* offer the user to disable Secure Boot and add custom certificates.
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It's a tablet
How is form factor relevant, seeing as Microsoft has marketed the Surface brand as "the tablet that runs Office" and "the tablet that can replace your laptop"?
Microsoft forbade manufacturers of PCs that were certified Windows 10 to *not* offer the user to disable Secure Boot and add custom certificates.
Requiring manufacturers to give final control over Secure Boot to the user was Microsoft's policy in the Windows 8 and 8.1 era, as it allowed for exercise of downgrade rights to Windows 7. In the Windows 10 era, this changed. Configurability of Secure Boot and installation of Microsoft's secondary certificate are now up to the manufacturer, beyond ens
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The implementation of UEFI Secure Boot is the subject of several OEM agreements. Microsoft has the contractual power to limit the availability of keys for the secure boot process, and the UEFI implementation on x86 platforms interacts with other components in a way that can be prevent proper boot or full access to the computer's feature set.
Not all firmware is user-replaceable (in a way that ensures the relevant component continues functioning) on a modern x86 computer. There are security sensitive systems
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Most notebooks aren't PCs either.
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In that case, yes, I'm afraid PCs as you consider them died a while ago.
Does the owner of an iPhone control its computing? (Score:2)
Your smartphone, your tablet, are still "personal computers". They're optimized for consumption rather than input thanks to the form factor
One can solve the form factor issue by docking an iPhone or iPad to an external AirPlay display and Bluetooth keyboard. But it's not only the input difference but also the lockdown difference.
but they're nonetheless full featured computers running full operating systems etc.
A device running iOS or iPadOS doesn't so easily meet the criteria that the person who owns the device controls what computing the device does. For example, if you've managed to build and run an iPhone app on a docked iPhone, I'd be surprised and curious about how you did it.
Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is doing any work on their phone or tablet of any consequence. Sorry.
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You are very ignorant of the range of jobs in our modern world then, plenty just use a phone.
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Like a PSO? Fuck off out of here.
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Doing CAD on a phone sounds really fun.
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I imagine some people manage, with dictation or something, but yeah, I'd find it odd to see someone entering cells on a critical work spreadsheet or running a CAD program on a phone, or tablet. Personally I find native input methods for a device that is roughly 3" x 6" difficult, though tablets are a bit better (and of course there are bluetooth keyboards).
I think it's all a matter of degree.
I mean, some people can use their iPhone or iPad with Garage Band and actually come up with an amazing musical record
Microsoft Killed The PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft killed the PC by trying to turn Windows into a tablet operating system. The real damage was not done by Windows 8, but by UWP. Microsoft created an impossible situation for developers by labelling Win32 applications as legacy applications. Since MFC, .NET, Windows Forms and WPF were now legacy technologies, they were no longer an option for new applications. However, the UWP replacement for these APIs was worthless for writing desktop applications, so nobody used it. Users didn't want to use UWP apps and developers didn't want to write them. Since all the decent technologies were now legacy, and the new API was worthless, developers simply didn't know what to use to write Windows applications. With no viable Windows APIs, companies were left with no choice but to write web apps for their internal applications. Microsoft are trying to reverse this situation [thurrott.com], but it's now too late, and their solution sounds like an ungodly shitshow.
In the build up to the 2012 launch of Windows 8, Microsoft turned their back on traditional desktop PC applications, destroyed the PC application development ecosystem, and left developers with no choice but to look to non-Microsoft technologies for new applications. Microsoft should have focused on the strengths of the PC rather than trying to turn it into a tablet so they could be like the cool kids at Apple.
Microsoft have made such a mess of Windows application development, it's difficult to see how they can fix it. They're stuck with this schizophrenic operating system with UWP apps and Win32 applications that feel like two entirely separate platforms. Furthermore, they sill seem intent on killing Win32 with their rumoured Windows X that drops all support for Win32. They've effectively made all Windows application development unviable, and seriously damaged the PC application ecosystem in the process.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"The real damage was not done by Windows 8, but by UWP. Microsoft created an impossible situation for developers by labelling Win32 applications as legacy applications. Since MFC, .NET, Windows Forms and WPF were now legacy technologies, they were no longer an option for new applications. However, the UWP replacement for these APIs was worthless for writing desktop applications, so nobody used it. Users didn't want to use UWP apps and developers didn't want to write them. Since all the decent technologies w
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Re:Microsoft Killed The PC (Score:4, Insightful)
PCs work great with Linux on them. Even old PCs.
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Microsoft killed the PC by trying to turn Windows into a tablet operating system.
Huh? - Posted from my Windows 10 PC with a standard Win32 program which doesn't look anything like a tablet.
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How many times does this make? (Score:3)
How many times has someone declared that the PC is dead? Is everyone using tablets at work? The consumer PC sales might be in decline but PCs are still being used everywhere.
I can't wait to read about how the PC is dead in 30 years that's been announced by people using a PC.
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Is everyone using tablets at work?
Depends on the work. My wife is a country manager at a global firm. When I think to what she uses her corporate laptop for it's to: a) Send and answer emails b) Create and edit power-point presentations c) remotely connect to and access corporate resources, databases and tools and in the case of the latter, run them remotely, d) conference calling, e) using Outlook as a calendar, reminder and meeting scheduling tool. That's pretty much it. To be honest I think the only thing keeping her and people like h
More like internet enabled companies to steal... (Score:5, Interesting)
... software en masse because the public is dumb.
The reason PC sales have declined is because there's been no compelling performance improvements to the same extent that existed between 1992 and 2006. The speed of cpu's roughly doubled every 2 years, that hasn't been true since 2006. From 2006 onward we'd be getting 5-10% every two years if we were lucky. Because heat, leakage and multicore means gains are limited.
PC's will get a spurt once some new technology enabled an increase in singlethreaded performance again but that will most likely require new materials that allow increases in clock frequency. Which are decades if not a century away.
The reality is with companies moving software to servers in their offices because the public is stupid there's even less of a reason to upgrade pc's if you're just going to get extorted for money with software as a (service) scam.
Re:More like internet enabled companies to steal.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Something to think about, isn't it? ALL of the stupendous gains in CPU speed were eaten by software companies, who gave us the same shitty slow software despite the hardware gains. They just took it as a license to be even sloppier and cheaper. Cheaper for them, not for us - we still got to pay full price.
Damn I wish I had mod points this week. Sums it all up perfectly!
deja vu, again (Score:2)
They've said that so many times before.
Same with video games.
Good, leave. (Score:2)
Normies never touched a PC outside of work to begin with. Out of my nest, casuals.
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This isn't out yet, and I've seen no hype for it anywhere. You're obviously advertising this product. And you'll need to; it's Razer, so the price tag is going to make the claim that "DIY PCs will be obsolete" into a really bad joke.
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This story sponsored by the tablet industry (Score:2)
work machine (Score:4, Interesting)
I could be using a tablet or dictating to my phone...
Not if your work includes any actual work.
I have a 27" screen at home and one of those curved widescreen things at work and most of the time, that is just about enough screen real estate. My 16" notebook is for travel and on-site work that can't wait. I'm thinking of adding one of those battery-powered USB displays to it.
If all you need your device for is reading e-mails and writing short notes in Word - you're ok, but you're probably a carpenter anyways. For anyone doing serious work with a computer, tablets and phones aren't serious contenders.
The thing that really changed is that computers went everywhere. Embedded devices are now full computers, not specially-designed circuits. Your tablet is a computer, it's just running a special OS. We will see more convergence. We already do - tablets that can be hooked up to external screens and keyboards. In another decade, there'll be no meaningful distinction between notebook and tablet anymore.
But the workplace PC will stay, for one simple reason: Companies don't want to give every employee a notebook to take home. There's management overhead and loss risk. I cannot imagine that any company ever will go "well, we have 2000 call-center agents, let's move them all to tablets"
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But the workplace PC will stay, for one simple reason: Companies don't want to give every employee a notebook to take home. There's management overhead and loss risk. I cannot imagine that any company ever will go "well, we have 2000 call-center agents, let's move them all to tablets"
Tell me something, what separates an all-in-one computer like an iMac from a tablet? Not a whole lot.
I can take most any tablet computer shipping today, put it on a stand, plug in one of those USB-C "micro-docks", plug in power, keyboard, mouse, and Ethernet and it would be nearly indistinguishable from something like an iMac. This of course depends on the OS and it's support for some peripherals but the hardware is nearly identical. The only real difference is the size of screen we expect, with a tablet
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Tell me something, what separates an all-in-one computer like an iMac from a tablet? Not a whole lot.
I write this on an iMac, so that's an easy one: It has a proper screen.
If you're doing any serious work whatsoever - be it writing a book in InDesign, working with a non-trivial Excel sheet, writing software or database stuff, any statistical or numerical work - good luck with your tablet. I'll be done in half the time, and that's if I take extra-long breaks.
I can take most any tablet computer shipping today, put it on a stand, plug in one of those USB-C "micro-docks", plug in power, keyboard, mouse, and Ethernet and it would be nearly indistinguishable from something like an iMac.
At which point you're basically telling me that you've basically assembled an iMac from parts, except that you've got cables hanging around anywhere, l
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Companies don't want to give every employee a notebook to take home. There's management overhead and loss risk. I cannot imagine that any company ever will go "well, we have 2000 call-center agents, let's move them all to tablets"
Where I work the goal is to get everyone to one machine and they be mobile, including people working on the service desk side. We still have a few PCs around, but at least 97% of all our machines are laptops in some form. We also have people who work from home using our equipmen
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the service desk side
Is that the IT service desk, is that the customer-facing callcenter? You know, where half the people don't have a complete education and switch jobs every 6 months?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Do you buy a PC? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't. I buy a mainboard, a CPU, a graphics card, ram, a power supply, a case...
But I rarely buy them all at the same time. I have had the same case for about a decade now. Same with the monitors (which might get replaced somewhere in the foreseeable future). I rarely swap mainboard and graphics card at the same time, and haven't for a long time. How long? Well, pretty much since the advent of PCI-E. And this is also what I'd think is the main reason for the "decline" in PC sales. There is no reason to throw out your whole PC and buy a new one because connectors are still compatible and have been downwards compatible with their predecessors for a while now. You'd buy a new mainboard (and CPU, possibly ram, too) with the new version of connectors but you can still use your old cards for a while. A year later, when your graphics card either croaks or can't run the latest games anymore, you upgrade that.
The only people who buy "whole" PCs anymore are people who don't know too much about their computers and don't want to be bothered with it. And yes, they don't buy them too often anymore because for them, the "good enough" level has been reached ages ago. They throw out their PC and buy a new one when the old one blows up, not any second earlier. They didn't replace it with a cellphone, though. If anything, they might have replaced it with an iThing. But they have no reason to upgrade any earlier than absolutely necessary anymore.
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Well for a start laptops outnumber desktops 2:1. Then you have all the business desktops where fiddling with them is downtime for the user and billable time for IT so they won't upgrade components. When you take away the "use it until it breaks" and hand-me-downs and second hand sales I'm guessing no more than 10% of PCs ever get upgraded. It's mostly us gamers that swap graphics cards, that's the one component that's moving at different pace than the rest. I think the one retrofit that's worth it was HDD
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Since you can upgrade 1 part at a time (generally, obviously some socket layouts dictate more than one component may need to change), over time, you essentially a self-financing your gaming rig. 20-40 on RAM here. A new mobo for less than 100 there. Contrast that to a new console launch which WILL require 300-400 bucks at onc
Where's my hot/cold drink holder? (Score:2)
Nope, just more portable (Score:2)
All that's happened is that electronics have become so small that it's now possible to shrink PCs down so that they can fit comfortably in your shoulder bag. It's still a computer with a screen, keyboard, webcam, & mouse(pad) or touch screen attached, that folds up to protect the delicate parts.
So all that's happened is that PCs have become more portable.
I guess this might mark the end of insightful, fact-based critical thinking in journalism at ZDNet though.
The Rise of the Linux Desktop? (Score:2)
What is a "PC"? (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
Variety of reasons (Score:3)
There are still plenty of substantial markets for PCs and laptops, though. The other end of the equation, then, is that people are waiting longer to upgrade. Their current device fills their needs adequately (or maybe just upgrading a single part will get them there) and they know the longer they wait, the better their options will be. That's why I'm still running my "gaming machine" that I built in 2010 out of budget parts. Once I got my RAM and drive space/drive speed to adequate speeds, most of the bottleneck would be the GPU, which I could just upgrade. It's only now, ten years later, that even the dinky little 2nd gen i3 is starting to become a noticeable bottleneck (in certain games or with certain configs in those games), and that's with a pretty reasonable modern midrange GPU (1060). If I've been able to squeeze that much out of my decade-old piece of crap with just incremental upgrades, then most business users who are just using their laptop for Office (or now maybe G Suite) will probably be fine for at least that long with only minor exceptions.
So between fewer people using PCs/laptops and these devices requiring less frequent upgrades, yeah, of course PC sales are in the bin. But the fact that the major PC and laptop manufacturers are still doing just fine indicates that the market is healthy enough to survive. We've had people saying the PC is dead for the past ten years but Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. are still putting out products and people are still buying them, if a bit more slowly.
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Exactly.
Even in the "post PC" era, PCs are still around. Steve Jobs said it best - PCs are trucks. They're very versatile and perfect when you need to carry a lot of stuff. But that doesn't mean they're perfect - small cars, electric cars, etc. have their place as well, especially in densely populated areas with narrow roads where trucks may have problems maneuvering.
The PC is the truck. It does everything. Tablets and phones are cars. Everything you do on a smartphone and a tablet can be done on a PC. But