The conventional wisdom is that the personal computer is moribund.
That “wisdom” is utterly wrong as PC sales are stabilizing and will likely even rise when Microsoft releases Windows 9 in 2015.
Any “dying” product category out there wishes it could sustain unit sales of ~300 million per year.
The much-predicted death of the PC has been an ongoing bogeyman for nearly two decades now, well before tablets became a thing. People have such short memories. (And tablets were a thing before they were a thing. That tablet is running Windows XP!)
Tablets have been the excuse – I don’t think they are the actual reason (more on that in a different post) – for the interface apocalypses of late such as Gnome 3, Unity, and Australis that are extremely user-hostile and are really more about UI/IX designers continuing to receive a paycheck than anything else.
What the world will look like in a decade is that a smaller number of home users will have PCs, businesses will continue using PCs at the same or greater rate, and people will still be predicting the death of the PC.
There’s just no replacement – nor will there be soon – for a big-ass monitor, a mouse or other pointing device with pixel-level control, and no worries about having enough memory or power.
I first started seeing prediction of the imminent death of the PC in 1994. I am sure I will still be seeing these prognostications and pronouncements in 2024, and they’ll still be wrong.
As long as smartphones and tablets are inferior versions of desktops, people will buy & use personal computers. I just spent part of a morning looking at a completely digitized version of a 17th century manuscript. Forget using a smartphone or a tablet–the former wouldn’t be able to handle the data requirements, and the latter’s surface would have just been too small.
Agreed. There is no replacement for screen real estate. Perhaps one day smartphones will have some laser-based projection system that can throw a large screen on a surface, but even that will have limitations if it’s even technically feasible.
Perhaps 20-40% of people can get by with just a table or a smartphone, but real work can’t be done on them and that doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future, or even in the medium term (10-15 years).
Likewise, these mobility evangelists can have my IBM Model M keyboard when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Lori, I also like mechanical switch keyboards as well. There has recently been a renaissance of them on the market, were you aware?
I have this one. It’s got a really nice feel and is a bit loud, but not as loud as the Model M.
And there are probably dozens on the market now, whereas 10 years ago at least in the US there were none. It’s great. 🙂
“Tenkeyless” would definitely not work for me.
I don’t expect ever to have to replace my Model M (which, according to the sticker on the bottom was manufactured on 05/04/95, in AMERICA), but on my wish list is Das Keyboard, the one with unlabeled key caps.