"Game Over", PCs As We Have Known & Used Them Are Dead Or Dying.

dradam said:

BRJR said:

Though, it was nice having personal computers around for the short time we did, change/progress is inevitable, and we are now entering yet another technological era, that will continue to affect photography and everything else, we are involved with. The info at the link below, addresses this very issue:

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/apple-pc-is-dead-1378/

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Here's hoping we can all afford the data charges we're going to be racking up in this new age.

Pay for home internet for your nice, reliable WiFi
Pay for wireless 3G for your iPhone
Pay for 3G on your iPad
Pay Netflix and Hulu to stream tv/movies
Pay Apple to keep your music in the cloud
Pay Dropbox if you want to keep more than 2gigs of documents with them
Pay HBO if you want thier programming
Pay the studios because they dont like Netflix
Pay for cable TV anyway if you watch any sort of sports

Now your whole life is in the cloud and must be constantly accessed. Better hope your 3G isn't spotty where you live. Also, you better be prepared to pay for the data overages you're going to incur now that the providers are adding caps even to home service.

The PC may be dead, but it's death will give rise to a much more expensive future.

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That's precisely where we're headed with 'cloud computing'. I'm going to hang on to my desktop and external backups, thanks. I don't see home storage going away completely.

Tell 'em they're dreamin'

Mark B. said:

That's precisely where we're headed with 'cloud computing'. I'm going to hang on to my desktop and external backups, thanks. I don't see home storage going away completely.

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I don't see it going away... EVER .

It's all about trying to extract more moeny from the consumer. It's also a lot of hot air

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

It's a brave new world, just like it was 30 years ago when the pc first became a viable commodity.

Personally, I'm somewhat dubious about the cloud. Cell bandwidth is expensive, and won't get cheaper any time soon. There are privacy concerns. Major online services such as the Sony game service have been hacked, and will continue to be hacked - ease of use translates into ease of circumvention. Google has turned data mining into big bucks - you think they're putting up cloud servers out of the goodness of their heart? If you use a cloud print service, someone is collecting data on your print usage, complete with an email address - the discount ink/toner sellers would pay dearly for that. And just wait until the spammers crack the cloud printing, your cloud printer will become a fax machine, overflowing with unsolicitied ads, and you paying for the consumables.

On the other hand... app costs have plunged, largely by cutting out the wholesaler. The most I've paid for an iOS game is $8, for Real Racing 2, and worth every cent. That, on a PC, would have been $40. As a developer, I can develop and market an app myself, without negotiations, without a lot of high pressure distributors to deal with. I'm working on a better SMS/text message client for Android right now, partially because I don't like the one they have. Put it on the Android store at $1, I get... 80%. If a couple of million people like my approach... I retire. Now that is the future.

Ease of use is much better on the mobile OS's. Simpler. App installation is a snap, not the painful process it once was. No more device installation, because there are no drivers. This time, Apple has kept itself at the forefront, and isn't charging so much that a Microsoft can get in on cost alone. So competitors will have to approach them on ease of use if they wish to remain competitive - Android has done pretty well in that regard.

So while I'm dubious about all this cloud stuff, especially with disc space as cheap as it is these days, the rest is wonderful. All it takes is one major security breach or one major outage to make people nervous about cloud computing. When that happens, not if, a couple of enterprising developers will create a 'local cloud' that you can set up in your home, to seamlessly transfer you from internet cloud to your own local cloud. Set it up to work much the way iTunes works today - local master copy, all mobile devices pointing at it. Not hard to do, just needs a Linux box with a few large HD's in RAID configuration for backup, and then point your local mobile OS server connections at it instead of the outside world.

Not to worry - the more onerous implications of the cloud can be circumvented. And as the whole process is driven by money, if enough people want local secure storage instead of hackable expensive cloud storage, someone will provide this setup. This whole mobile revolution is being driven by money, and it's your consumer spending that will change its course when things don't quite work out.

I have two desktops, two laptops, a couple iPads and an iPhone. Since acquiring the iPads and iPhone my desktop and laptop use has gone down by over 50%. Not eliminated but clearly reduced.

I used to need the laptops for travel, presentations, connectivity and now the iPad fills that niche admirably. I still use the desktops for image editing, writing and presentation development. The iPad is an excellent research device, great for communication, presentations, is so lightweight with battery life that lasts all day. The iPad has totally replaced my need for the laptops. I won't be replacing them.

How do I handle large volumes of data storage? Easy, I keep it in the cloud. I don't need to carry all my data with me as the internet is ubiquitous everywhere I go.

Will these devices replace the need for a desktop? I doubt it will but clearly, it had reduced the need as evidenced by the sales data.

I am delighted to be able to travel with the couple pound iPad, present my programs, stay connected, stay in sync across all my devices, and leave lugging the laptop behind.

Tablets fit the computational needs of many of us far better than the laptop, not everyone but certainly many.

Extrapolate these trend into the future. It's not difficult to see major growth of a cloud based model where these devices are the predominant user choice.

-
Jim
'There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.'

• • Ansel Adams

jfelbab said:

How do I handle large volumes of data storage? Easy, I keep it in the cloud.

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Like I said above, it would take 7 months 24 hours a day just to upload the data I have now (using a wired connection - 10 times as long using 3G). And then I could access it a whopping 4000 times slower than I do now.

How is that a solution for large data volumes?

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

For a good number of people, all was needed was something to check email with and do some basic office docs. Of course, now it's twitter and facebook. For many years a cheap desktop was the way to do that. Now, newer tech is bringing more convenient ways to do that at reduced costs.

Also, for years it took newer, faster tech to run the latest applications. That trend has dropped off a bit. Example is that a computer that could run Windows Vista should run Windows 7 just fine and Microsoft is saying that Windows 8 will have the same system requirements as Windows 7. So, in theory (if one can get past drivers and such), a system from 2007 could run the next Windows operating system. The reduced need to upgrade hardware would have an impact on new sales.
--
Greg

When I was a babe, I would talk as a babe, think as a babe. Now I am an old man and realize that as a babe, at least I had an excuse.

I just had a meeting with a large group of marketeers. They ALL agreed that anyone who believes "Game Over'. PCs As We Have Known & Used Them Are Dead" is indeed a marketeers dream and insures both their job security, and a hefty annual bonus.

The vulnerable and gullible indeed make it easy for the market of stuff you really do not need, but got to HAVE NOW, to stay alive and well.

The cloud doesn't fit everyone. Doesn't fit me, for sure.

Where mobile is useful for me at home is largely in accessing music, photos, and videos, occasional internet access. My current setup of iphone/apple tv works very well in that regard - master copy on a large HD, access when I need it. If I had to add in an occasionally iffy IP connection, a charge for using the cloud, or even worse, 3G/4G bandwidth charges, it wouldn't be suitable. Nor do I care to have someone collecting data on my usage. Ten years ago, that would probably have been paranoid. Today, it's prudent.

It would be handy to have a guaranteed backup. But, if that comes with monthly payments and data mining... not so sure about that. With local storage running about $100/TB, a $20/month cloud charge would buy a lot of storage and backup.

Keep in mind that both mobile and cloud are fairly new, still feeling their way and looking for the optimal combination.

oldgeek said:

For a good number of people, all was needed was something to check email with and do some basic office docs. Of course, now it's twitter and facebook. For many years a cheap desktop was the way to do that. Now, newer tech is bringing more convenient ways to do that at reduced costs.

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Perhaps for those types of people (and they are probably the majority of PC users), the PC is dead. For those us who make our living using software (Solidworks in my case) that, besides not being available as a cute little "app" for a phone or iPad, requires a fairly heavy duty desktop PC to run efficiently, the PC is far from dead. As fast as you can make a processor/graphics card for a tablet or even laptop, you can make a faster one for a full size desktop computer and I'm going to want the faster one every time over the more convenient tablet/laptop.

joejack951 said:

oldgeek said:

For a good number of people, all was needed was something to check email with and do some basic office docs. Of course, now it's twitter and facebook. For many years a cheap desktop was the way to do that. Now, newer tech is bringing more convenient ways to do that at reduced costs.

Click to expand...

Perhaps for those types of people (and they are probably the majority of PC users), the PC is dead. For those us who make our living using software (Solidworks in my case) that, besides not being available as a cute little "app" for a phone or iPad, requires a fairly heavy duty desktop PC to run efficiently, the PC is far from dead. As fast as you can make a processor/graphics card for a tablet or even laptop, you can make a faster one for a full size desktop computer and I'm going to want the faster one every time over the more convenient tablet/laptop.

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Thank you for making my point clearer than I did. And, as you know, time is money and you need the hardware to do the work as fast as you reasonably can. Do you have an annual maintenance package for Solidworks? I mean, upgrading to each new version? I would imagine that would require frequent upgrades to hardware. As also with new versions of other graphics software such as Photoshop. I use Featurecam at work, but fortunately it doesn't require the hardware upgrades so much.
--
Greg

When I was a babe, I would talk as a babe, think as a babe. Now I am an old man and realize that as a babe, at least I had an excuse.

TrapperJohn said:

It would be handy to have a guaranteed backup. But, if that comes with monthly payments and data mining... not so sure about that.

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Companies like Back Blaze offer this for around $50 a year, and the data is encrypted by your computer before you send it. That might be a good application (backup only) for remote storage.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

It's a "match made in heaven", as referenced at the link below; and, "government services folks", are likely to be among the very first that will embrace this change on a worldwide scale:

http://fcw.com/microsites/2011/mobile-wireless/cloud-privacy-security-mobile-platforms-virtualization.aspx

--
BRJR ....(LOL, some of us are quite satisfied as Hobbyists ..)

GodSpeaks said:

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

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And, starting with iOS5, due for release in the next few weeks, tablets and our other mobile devices will be able to operate independently of a PC entirely.
--
BRJR ....(LOL, some of us are quite satisfied as Hobbyists ..)

BRJR said:

And, starting with iOS5, due for release in the next few weeks, tablets and our other mobile devices will be able to operate independently of a PC entirely.

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Unless, of course, you want to put a movie on your iDevice. You may be able to store a limited number of documents in the iCloud, and you may be able to sync your music through the iTunesiCloud, but video still must come from your pc.

Well, a number of us over in the dpreview Mac Talk Fourm, have already upgraded to and are now using the new beta iTunes version that uses iCloud, and it's "real cool", and I am not having problems with running video using cloud on either my iPad or iPhone. I also like the ease that I now have of using my main iTunes Library that already consists of roughly 500GB of data (and, growing ), on either my iPad, iPhone or both.

--
BRJR ....(LOL, some of us are quite satisfied as Hobbyists ..)

dradam said:

BRJR said:

And, starting with iOS5, due for release in the next few weeks, tablets and our other mobile devices will be able to operate independently of a PC entirely.

Click to expand...

Unless, of course, you want to put a movie on your iDevice. You may be able to store a limited number of documents in the iCloud, and you may be able to sync your music through the iTunesiCloud, but video still must come from your pc.

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What is wrong about your view and that article is what people consider a PC. A PC is a personal computer in whatever form that may take.

For most office businesses, a desktop computer will be king for a long time. With many computer users having 2 big wide screen LCDs.

I know of few people that would want to do a lot of work on a laptop computer because the screen is too low for ergonomic viewing (neck strain), and the keyboard is also non ergonomic. But a laptop/netbook is great for using it outside of your computer room for basic stuff.

Plus laptop screen generally are very poor for photo work because of their reflective screen and they are usually a high contrast screen.

BRJR said:

Well, a number of us over in the dpreview Mac Talk Fourm, have already upgraded to and are now using the new beta iTunes version that uses iCloud, and it's "real cool", ...

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This concept of "real cool" is Apple's entire reason for existence. I'm always amazed by how many gullible people there are out there that are willing to spend so much time and money on nothing but "real cool", rather than "real useful".

The two PCs I just bought cost less than one comparable MacBook Pro of the same size, and my PCs are better in measurable ways (4 memory slots versus 2, can contain 3 hard drivers versus 2, better graphics cards, better external interfaces). The extra cost Apple is getting goes right to their bottom line, and it's for nothing but "real cool". Yeah, it's real cool than they've locked their software to their hardware, needlessly, in order to fleece gullible consumers.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

Hmm, I guess I spoke without knowing. All the sources I've seen say that iTunes does not sync video with the cloud. I know they don't have the same sort of agreement with the studios as the do with the record labels for an "iTunes Video Match" so they must be letting you load all your video to their servers for it to actually exist "PC-free" "in the cloud".

If Apple is going to give me 1TB of free online storage for all my video stuff, I may just consider switching.

BRJR said:

Well, a number of us over in the dpreview Mac Talk Fourm, have already upgraded to and are now using the new beta iTunes version that uses iCloud, and it's "real cool", and I am not having problems with running video using cloud on either my iPad or iPhone. I also like the ease that I now have of using my main iTunes Library that already consists of roughly 500GB of data (and, growing ), on either my iPad, iPhone or both.

dradam said:

BRJR said:

And, starting with iOS5, due for release in the next few weeks, tablets and our other mobile devices will be able to operate independently of a PC entirely.

Click to expand...

Unless, of course, you want to put a movie on your iDevice. You may be able to store a limited number of documents in the iCloud, and you may be able to sync your music through the iTunesiCloud, but video still must come from your pc.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...