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I wouldn't say tablets have replaced the desktop for those under 15. Hell both of my own kids (7 and 5) use their desktops more than anything else, and we have 6 tablets laying about. Sure they love the tablets too and use them a lot as well, but just like adults, they mostly use them for media consumption.
I just don't agree with this concept of the death of the desktop/laptop yet. One day yeah, but it still has quite a bit of life left.
This was an ultra fast google but this:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/comput...es-statistics/
shows sales of PCs going up from 2010 to 2011. Again, I think you have a decade at least of seeing tons of desktops/laptops.
That's close to 100mil a year being pumped out in the US alone. They will be around for quite some time.
I have been running it since it was released which granted has not been very long but I am seriously thinking that if I have the time tomorrow that I might switch back. I don't mind the tile interface instead of the Start menu but the search is just terrible. You have to click between Apps/Files/Settings instead of seeing the top hits for each at the same time. Also, it doesn't include folders in the search results for files like it did before. When doing a file search, you can't right click to get the menu to open with some other program other than the default. I got in the habit of using search so much that killing that feature has seriously hurt my productivity while none of the other features are of any great benefit to compensate for it.
I have a desktop PC because I built my own from scratch - not that I even NEEDED to do this. I just wanted to because I enjoy the process of going to Newegg.com and picking out my parts and then building a PC from scratch. That being said, for the same money, I can just as easily get a new laptop.
Most corporate environments have gone to the laptop+dock model. I could see in the near future a tablet device (or even a smartphone) that docks and does everything a corporate user needs it to do - especially if all they need are email, Office apps, and internet access.
However, the days of the big chunky desktop PC we have known since the IBM PC is quickly passing away. And why shouldn't it? Most servers don't even take up that much real estate these days!
Of course it had all been done before (and frequently much better) however it doesn't count until Apple do it. Rather a lot of 'inspiration' comes from Sony devices, it's no surprise the leaked design documents showed Apple were originally focused on Sony's phone design given how much they've 'borrowed' off Sony for other machines. The MacBook Air is almost identical to Sony's older x505 including the now popular Chiclet design keyboard, Sony have also offered ultra high resolution displays for a couple of generations in the Z series which were slated for being a pointlessly high resolution. Then Apple come along and offer ultra high resolution 'retina' displays and suddenly everyone is praising Apple for being the first company to finally bring ultra high resolution displays to laptops and criticises that other companies have not.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
To call it marketing hype is entirely accurate, anyone who believes otherwise has a complete misunderstanding of consumer technology. Credit where credit's due, Apple are superb at marketing particularly in convincing people their technology is so much easier to use, more advanced and better than everything else. Frequently someone shows me a fancy new feature on their Apple device to which I point out we have had better versions of that for years. This 'first to do it right' is such a rubbish excuse I can't believe anyone on a tech forum could parrot such nonsense.
John
Sony is a great example of doing it first and doing it wrong. Sony has had high resolution displays for years, but they've never sold because the experience was so poor. Before "Retina", high resolution has meant tiny font, and hasn't really been usable for the mainstream consumer. And while the word "Retina" was probably created in an advertising brief, the actual concept and execution was a first. No one had ever tried to double the resolution and then force software companies to redo all their assets. The idea sounds insane when you think about it, and it's only because they were riding so high that it was even possible.
The X505 is another great example of a product that looked great as a concept, but couldn't actually be manufactured at scale. And TBH, Sony has kind of always done that. They have great industrial designers, but no one on the manufacturing side to actually execute. They've created products time and time again with small runs and insane prices. Everything from TVs to MP3 players. The X505 was one such product. It wasn't that no one wanted it, it was that no one could afford the $4k price tag, and even if you could you'd have a hard time getting your hands on one. It was always out of stock. A top of the line MacBook Air is $2k, and you can get one at any one of their 250 stores across the US, 100 stores around the globe, or delivered to your door next business day. You might call that marketing, I call that innovation in manufacturing. At the end of the day that is the most impressive thing about Apple, and the piece that everyone else is having trouble replicating. Amazon is probably the closest. If you want a Kindle, you can get one – at a great price. It's a rock solid piece of hardware, great customer experience and for $4.00 it will be there tomorrow morning.
Part of what the industry has learned from Apple, and "how to do it right" is that you can't compete on hardware tech specs, and you need to control both hardware and software in order to create the kind of customer experience that the average consumer now demands. You might call that marketing. I would agree only to the extent that advertising now plays a massive role in setting consumer expectations for a particular brand, but at the end of the day the consumer is still driving the demand. By and large, people are now buying into ecosystems, not buying products. Apple did this with the iPod, iPhone and Mac. Microsoft has done it with the Xbox, and is doing it now with the Surface. Google is doing it with the Nexus line of phones and tablets. Amazon is doing it with the Kindle.
I find my son, 14, spends almost all his time on his gaming PC and rarely touches his iPad. My daughter, 9, plays on her iPad constantly, but she spends a fair amount of time playing Flash games on the PC. I don't think the desktop PC is dead, but as fast/ubiquitous as PCs are, shopping for a new one isn't as common place as it used to be. I don't think that means PCs are being discarded in favor of new tech, but rather there are less compelling reasons to upgrade them. People use what they have.
My cousins that are pretty young have iphones and ipads but are always on their desktops playing videogames like WoW. I think people over rate how much kids like tablets. They like playing with them on trips, but they are just like you and me, the big experiences are only had on PCs or TV devices.
I do agree with ima in the fact that the future will look much different once we whittle away the power requirements and they get powerful enough to completely replace the desktop (not workstations obviously.)
PC gaming is a pretty big outlier, and the entire market is distorted by WoW. And WoW will run on a Surface Pro Tablet just fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timman_24
I'm actually curious to see if the Surface Pro ends up being the new "IBM PC", or if it's just priced too high. It has enough power to address 90%+ of consumer needs in a tablet form factor. Outside of price, why would you get a desktop over a Surface Pro?
I guess time will tell. I wouldn't bet the farm on the Sufrace just yet, but I really don't know how Dell, HP and other consumer brands are going to stay relevant pushing desktops in Best Buy. The profit margins on those $400 crapboxes barely keep the lights on in the consumer division of those companies.
Even the enterprise market is looking ugly. Dell has come in and undercut HP and Lenovo pretty deeply. You can tell they are all hurting right now.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
Dell is wheeling and dealing left and right and with all of the new acquisitions, I think they are on the right track. Can't say the same for HP. Dell is hurting for sure (as they all are), but they seem to me as having the best shot of coming out of this. I don't think it's the death of the desktop as much as it is the death of the horizontal markets.
One pretty damning thing about Dell is how terrible all of their new laptop concepts have been. HP has been doing much better on that front. Despite the laptop equivalent of crapboxes running the low end and Apple running the high end, I think there's a spot for premium Windows laptops somewhere in the middle.
I installed Win 8 on my MBP through bootcamp a few days ago. I messed around with the Dev Preview about a year ago (damn was it really that long ago?) and came away apathetic to the OS. I was able to snag a copy free as an alum and gave the release copy a whirl. I've been using it for about 3 solid days and do not really have any complaints. I'm actually kind of surprised how little I used the old start menu. A lot of people are up in arms about there not being a start menu, but having been without one I don't really miss it all that much.
I usually make a few task bar launch icons and use those, so I hardly ever interacted with the metro UI after browsing through it initially. I could probably get away with never opening it altogether. As for the OS, I like the sharp corners and the neon-like colors. It seems magenta is in this year or something, I've been seeing it everywhere. Boot times are snappy and everything seems to work quicker than before.
I applaud MS for being able to include all the touch screen features without disrupting the desktop experience too much. I'd say they are quite a bit ahead of Apple in merging the two eco-systems. What's great is Win 8 pulls down my Windows Live and Xbox Live account information and surfaces that information in handy spots. Overall, it seems well integrated. I think people's dislike for the Metro UI system will quickly wane once they become more engrained in what online functionality the OS offers.
Seems like a step in the right direction and you really can't beat the price that they are blowing Win 8 out with. My only gripe is that I wish I could opt out of Metro and those apps as there doesn't seem to be a lot offered there that I would want and it just takes up space.
I can see it being useable for my ASUS tablet but not as my primary desktop OS. They are making it worse and worse to navigate. For my desktop, I'll stick with my Win 7 as primary, Ubuntu as secondary and Win 8 as a tertiary boot - but just to tinker with. Once I am able to convert my Asus tablet, then I'll probably install it onto that.
If Microsoft thought that the desktop was going to stick around, they probably would have had two different UIs. Touch and mouse/pointer input are just too different. Windows 8 essentially has a fallback for mouse input, but it really doesn't seem like it's designed for it. I suspect they didn't bother because they see no long term return, when 90% of consumer interactions will happen without a mouse 3-5 years from now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timman_24
It's designed for touch. And when you dock a tablet with a display the tablet becomes a giant trackpad.
I moved to a notebook full time in…2007 I think. I carried a mouse with me until the beginning of this year. I thought I need it. Turned out I just needed to learn how to be without it. Somewhere around January/February I stopped carrying the mouse. I lug a small Wacom around from time to time, but the mouse sits idle on the desk now. The mouse is quickly becoming obsolete. The trackpad, as we know it today, isn't quite up to the task of replacing it. But as trackpads and the tablet merge into a single pointing device, Windows 8 will be well positioned to handle the transition.
IMO, Windows 8 is now far ahead of OS X in terms of touch support. OS X is impossible to use with touch input outside of a virtual trackpad.
In 2013 consumers will face a unique choice. You can purchase an $800 iPad, which (as much as I like it) is an $800 toy, and a desktop/notebook, or a Windows 8/Surface Pro device that does it all for around $1,000. Even at $1,500 it will compete head-to-head with the $1,500 MacBook Air, and the choice is clear, because the Surface is a FAR superior device…and this is coming from someone who is typing this on a fancy MacBook Air. It's lighter, higher resolution, more portable and removes the desire to carry both a MacBook Air and iPad.
I wouldn't put it past Apple to have a direct competitor in a year or so. Apple has long been the type to wait until the tech is fully ready before launching a device. The Surface is on the edge of not being a good experience due to lack of power.
I do not agree with your point of Window 8 not having good mouse support. Perhaps I am ready your post wrong, but I've set up my Win 8 build to never go into the Metro UI and I do not feel limited at all. I was surprised by how little I actually used the Start menu. I absolutely agree that the Metro UI is completely designed around touch and is a poor experience with a mouse. Win 8 as a whole is just as capable as Win 7 with a mouse and keyboard.
What I am interested in seeing is how this race to a full fledged tablet PC bodes for the professional developer, content creator, scientist, and gamer. All those people need specialized computers with peripherals, console access, and powerful hardware. Apple's closed design philosophy with iOS will not work and a tablet can not physically connect to all the devices content creators, scientists, and gamers need. I guess a dock could do it and fast network access for dedicated compute servers, whether they be on the net or local. Maybe I'm already an old timer, but I do not see how a tablet will run next generation games at 4K resolutions. I would think the forefront of compute tech will not be able to fit into a tablet design, at least in the short term.
It will be interesting to see where this goes in the next 10 years.
I've been using laptops almost exclusively since 2005. I stopped using mice in late 2007, a few days after I got my first MacBook Pro.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
Touch support in OSX is basically non-existent, presumably because Apple doesn't make any touchscreen Macs. I don't see it coming anytime soon either.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
I think iOS is going to improve somewhat in this regard. That being said, it seems like Apple is planning to stick with the "PCs are trucks" thing in the near future.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timman_24
I just pray that the Surface Pro has the power to run major applications well. If it does, it will be a game changer.
About 4 hours of battery life. This is going to be a hard sell to anyone except those in need of legacy software.
I'm switching today at work to Win8. New system coming in (32GB RAM and i7-3770k, watercooled, with an SSD :D) and since I need to stay current on things regardless of how I feel about them I am going with Win8 as the host OS on this new system. Wish me luck.
It's a 42 Wh battery, it should run about 10 hours with normal use. Video probably will drain it in 4 hours, like the iPad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven P Jobs
What a POS. Already ran into a major bug where it can't properly make the partitions if a USB or SD card is in the system. So in 2012, I can't install my shiny new OS from USB. I have to go and burn a disk. Wow.
a wat?Quote:
Originally Posted by vertices
If you put Win8 on a USB drive to use as install media, it can't properly install.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdX6OVs2i8U
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...-6cb231e435f4/ Check his response, "remove all other disks"
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourcei...=1908&bih=1092
I need to let let it create the partitions automatically so that it makes the 100mb bootloader so I can use BitLocker. It is too stupid to do it with a USB drive in, which happens to contain the install media.
So the options are:
1. Install from USB, make your own primary partition, which will allow install but no BitLocker.
2. Don't install from USB, use DVD instead and let it create partitions, have BitLocker.
3. Figure out how to manually make the BitLocker partition, I haven't even looked into this yet.
Either way, if you want a basic install that will work with BitLocker, and you want to install from USB, Go Fish. Pretty sad if you ask me.