IBM: PCs are "Going The Way of Typewriters"

[shin0bi272]

So because the guy who designed the pc back in the 60's or 70's is using a tablet *cough*IPAD*cough* and doesnt need his pc at all or very little we are all going to feel like him later? I dont hardly think so. The only reason I would use a tablet or netbook would be to remote into my home desktop! LOL! You cant get the processing power, graphics power or hard drive capacity (unless at some point all spinning disk hard drives are banned) in a portable device as you can with a desktop. While screen size can be dealt with keyboards and mice are a separate issue... not everyone has tiny fingers for touch screens you know.

Also isnt ibm the one that was bought out by a chinese company and just developed a new type of memory thats 100x faster than flash?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/embargo-ibm-develops-instantaneous-memory-100x-faster-than-fl/

 

[soundping]

They'll get my PC when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

 

[Guest]

Tablets are awesome devices. But I just can't see writing a term paper or a novel on one, or doing really awesome graphics/multimedia, or creating 'native' tablet apps or operating systems, or.....

 

[badaxe2]

Dean admitted that, like IBM, he too has moved beyond the PC and is currently using an unspecified tablet as his primary computer.


lol, does he really think everyone wants to be staring at a tiny screen all day, with a user interface that sucks more than using analog sticks for an FPS game?

Lets get real here.

 

[jecastej]

[citation][nom]lauxenburg[/nom]The servers are going to have to get even better to keep up with the demand of the whole cloud bullshit thing + everything being on the web + streaming shit.Yeah big hardware isn't going anywhere fast. There will always be development in that category.[/citation]

I agree, but the whole point for power users reading this today is all these desktop technology will get more expensive as it will represent a smaller share of the market, just as Pro graphic cards, Xeons, and dual socket motherboards are today.

It has nothing to do with what a minority like us prefer or use but on the massive market going in another direction. Less sales on the same market segment means higher prices, and I am not a market professional. You will have your tower for heavy work but it may cost you way more in 10 years than it does today. And don't expect to find a lot of PC parts in very popular stores.

The higher price will restrict workstations to specialized professional and regular PC aficionados will have to make real adjustments to spend a lot of money on their expensive hobbies. For big titles in gaming the reduced desktop market may not justify to produce the games at all.

 

[demonhorde665]

i am so sick and tired of eharing these "big shots" open ther motuh and speak total BS. it seems to me "they" must want the desktop to die , since they are the one's making all these outlandish and retarded predictions. maybe tablets and phones wil take over for the main stream. even that isa BIG f-n maybe, most likely desktops will still se use for many many many years to come. i hoenstly don't see a death of desktops any time soon how these folks can , jsut astounds me.

tablets phones .,note books, not even a full blown 10 lb laptop can compare to the shear amount of processing power on a desk top computer even if desktop compeltely disappears on teh consummer front there is NOTHING that beats it as a work horse/work station and there is nothing short of a nuclear apocolypse that will kill desktop's being the main stay for the work force.

 

[cngledad]

Only IBM PCs went the way of typewriters. - Fixed.

 

[demonhorde665]

[citation][nom]jecastej[/nom] For big titles in gaming the reduced desktop market may not justify to produce the games at all.[/citation]


good effort on making a valid point , but saddly your lack of understanding the game industry and general buisness , has made your point toally fail (at least with me)

for starters , the PC has a history of being a "proving ground" for new developer companies , the coding is a standard format so the team doesn't need to learn new tricks and they can focus on producing a beter game , so many young dev tems work on pc titles , in the furture this trend wil NOT change

Secondly, even if all "pro" companies avoid the pc in the future, it's a major jump out of logic to assume no one else will make games on pc , take a class in logic and you'll get what i'm talking about
you can't arrive at the conclusion that "there won't be any pc games" just because " no big comainies will produce games on pc". ther are ameture developers ,a s well as indy devs that wil liekly continue makign content for PC well past the point when big companies leave teh paltform behind. also don't forget companies lik ID who have sworn if the pc game market ever goes under they'll still release new version of doom on pc , (even doing so free of charge if the situation is that dire). your logic in this matter is teh equivlant of saying "oh this guy is dead .. gee he must have been murdered" , being dead doesn't necassirly eman the guy ws murdered , not having big game titles doesn't mean the pc wont have any game titles. Honestly though lately the big game titles ahven't been all that LOL so who's to say them ditching pc is a bad thing ?

lastly you forget the fact , if there is a market for it then some one will have a product for that market , nothing curently going on now or in the future suggest that ALL pc gamer's will stop gaming on pc , as long as some folks are doing it , some one will make games for it period. look at linux , it has tiny market share is only used by super geeks , and yet even it manages to get a game or two coded for it from time to time.

 

[someoneelse]

if predictions like this were right:

radio finnished off newspapers
television finnished off radio
internet finnished off television
video finnished off cinema
steaming films finnished of dvds


and yet they are all still going.
It's almost like the market just gets more diversified. apart from typewriters which were totally owned by a highly versitle machine .. what was that highly versitile machine called again.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

^ Well, I don't know... for me, computers finished off all of the above: radio, TV, cinema, newspapers and DVDs. That's another reason to like PC - it's omnipotent. Whatever you want, it can do - within technology limits, of course. No other device is that versatile and powerful.

 

[requiemsallure]

I don't want to read 4 pages of comments at this time, so I don't know if it has already been said, but. This guy isn't that bright, yea he works at IBM but, seriously? there is only one way that a PC will stop being a PC. and that is if we go back to the terminal era, and when we go to the store we buy a terminal not a Computer.

Requirements for a PC:
1. Is it a computing Device?
2. Is it yours?

List of things that are PC's:
PC (tower/mid/mini/htpc)
Mac (though you will never hear me say it again)
Tablet
Phone
... and the list goes on and on.

unless a corporation owns the computer and you just have a dummy terminal that streams video sound and whatnot else, the PC era will go on.

so either he is just dead wrong, or he needs to specify more.

 

[Geef]

I think Tom's Hardware just forgot who the MAIN readers of this site are.

Although once technology gets good enough where I can get a Mobile unit like Sumomo from the Anime Chobits, I'll give my PC up.

 

[Guest]

Ever try typing into a Tablet ,,,,I love my I-pad and I-phone for looking up sports scores and a quick email ....but every try and type a long document on a i-pad or use a app like go to my PC...it sucks ...
I am not giving up my PC just yet ......

 

[kronos_cornelius]

I am on Microsoft's side on this. We will be on a PC+ era. The reason is:

*What constitutes the description of a PC will continue to exists in some form for at least 10 years. But just like "life" and other ambiguous terms, the definition has great effect on the scope of the device/phenomenon.

*The legacy software we have accumulated so far ranges in the billions of dollars. recoding all that just to "move to the cloud" and use thing clients sound impractical.
PC's, just like shovels, can be the right tool to use for the right task. You don't say "ho! the shovel was invented 2000 years ago therefore I am going to invent a new tool to make a hole"

The PC+ expression is more accurate because the new systems that will be hyped in the near future are systems that are bigger than the PC, but may contain PC's within it.

 

[legacy7955]

DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE A "TREND" OF THE MARKETING PEOPLE TELLING THE CUSTOMER WHAT THEY WANT TO BUY?

The only reason is that they want people to buy the gadgets like ipad, tablet, ect because the greedy bastids want even more profit!

I don't own any of the above mentioned "gadgets" PC and I'll never bother with anything that doesn't have a keyboard or a mouse.

I also had to laugh when the people sited in the article claimed that they don't use a PC at all. LIARS!

 

[legacy7955]

therabiddeer posted,

"The only way the PC market will die is if the manufacturers kill it"

Exactly, it won't be the customer that does the PC in.

 

[happyballz]

...Says a company that have almost nothing to do with personal computers now except for servers. Propoganda for cloud computing and nothing more! They know that since they make no PCs they have to shift, pressure and convince market to go elsewhere. Sorry IBM I personally like to do my own computations and run my own enviornment and not be dependent on some hack in a server room.

 

[del35]

This dude looks like he is high enough to just get by reading email and sending short replies. So he can get away with just using a tablet. There is no way that a tablet can replace a desktop or netbook or a desktop. I have all 3s and they all serve different functions depending on portability and the intensity of the work involved.

If I am just checking email or reading news or reading in the gym while on the treadmill, the tablet will do.

If I am sitting on the couch typing something like this, the netbook will do, also if I am hanging out in some cafe replying to informally.

If I am working on something that requires much typing, lots of reading and sitting away from home, then the laptop will do.

If I engaged in a very intense project and have lots of programs running and need lots of screen space, then the desktop will do.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

I will be a using a typewriter...I mean, PC the rest of my life. END OF STORY.