To be fair, this is the same group that can't spell or communicate in coherent sentences, so they might not be the best example. ;)
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They are young. 7 or 8 and just using their first "computer". That computer is a tablet now. That's what they are learning on.
They are going to turn 15 and want their own computer. They aren't going to want a grandpa desktop.
The change is going to come fast. Even faster than the iPad/iPhone took off in the first place. I think Microsoft actually realizes this, and it's one of the reasons that doing Windows 8 now makes so much sense. When the switch comes, they won't be playing catchup they way they are in the phone space.
Found this article this morning. Seems somehow I missed it, despite having ServeTheHome in my daily news feed.
Make a UEFI bootable USB drive for Windows 8
I agree mostly, but there are many areas where marketing hype IS the key factor. The ability to market a product, to make it desirable to consumers, is a big part of success.
The iPhone was a better phone than the iPaq, no question about it. Microsoft did a poor job with Windows CE. The iPad was a natural progression from the iPhone, but in many if not most ways, inferior to tablets that came before it. But it's fairly cheap and has mass appeal.
I don't think Tablets will replace the desktop, but I do think they will and are replacing notebook computers. Microsoft might have a winner here if they can make the tablet a natural extension of the desktop, providing true mobility to the workspace.
The iPad was faster and easier to use than any other tablet that came before it. It also had the best screen and form factor of any device that came before it. It was the first tablet with an OS designed for touch input. Every OS before iOS was designed for a mouse and keyboard or pen.
Tablets have already replaced the desktop for two groups of people: <15 and 60+
Hell, the desktop has been on it's way out for years. Sales of desktops have declined every quarter for like what, 5+ years now? Microsoft isn't trying to make the tablet an extension of the desktop. It's replacing the desktop entirely. That's what Windows 8 is all about. The desktop experience is an afterthought, which is why it's pretty terrible.
Is anyone really even making desktops anymore? Feels like they basically in some kind of extended EOL space. We'll keep making them for corporate America with existing infrastructure, but even that is changing. The "desktop" is going to become a speciality device in the future for things like rendering and heavy computation.
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.
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.
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.