The Greatest Battle of the Personal Computing Revolution Lies Ahead 291
Certainly one way to define the Personal Computer stems from the era of the IBM PC: a gray box with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard (or a laptop). But the idea of the Personal Computer dates back quite a while — back to Alan Kay's Dynabook, the Lisp Machine, etc.
The Apple Knowledge Navigator provided a vision of personal computing far more dynamic than that dull gray box. Although still a pale comparison, tablet and phone platforms are beginning to look awfully similar.
The essence of those pre-PC Personal Computers was that of the user controlling the device. You control the data, you control the software; the Personal Computer is a uniquely personal artifact that the user adapts to his own working style. One consequence of this is that creating is as easy (perhaps easier) as consuming content. Another nice side effect is that your data remains private by virtue of local storage.
In many ways, then, a tablet or phone comes significantly closer to a personal computer than that dull gray box under your desk. For example, on Android, the screen ceases to be a place to throw icons and becomes a rich canvas of widgets. Additionally, my phone fits into my pocket and is always there. Ubiquitous cellular coverage gives me access to my data from most anywhere. The touchscreen and interface conventions make direct manipulation shine in a way you just can't get from a screen two feet away on a desk.
And, those are just superficial improvements over the desktop. Albeit tied to proprietary services, Google's voice search and Siri are inching closer to the dream of personal Intelligent Agents reminding us all that our mothers called us earlier today and want us to pick up the birthday cake for the surprise party With a few taps I can search basically all of my data, not to mention the collective knowledge of mankind.
But the software running on these devices has a dark side. Want to access your music collection the go? You have to get it from Google Play. Want to have lightweight instant messaging? You have to use GTalk. Or take ebook readers (certainly personal devices): that book you just downloaded to your Kindle is DRMed and stuck there! That intelligent agent? Apple records everything you bark at her and can take her away at a moment's notice.
Furthermore, the software on these devices is geared almost exclusively toward content consumption. You can listen to music all day long, but don't try multi-track recording. That ebook reader is great for reading, but you can't scratch notes in the margins of any of your books or sit down with one and scrawl out your latest manuscript. Clearly, some of this is from the youth of these new systems, but it is distressing to see them geared first toward consumption (the Newton, for example, was geared from the start as a device for creation).
The "cloud" as implemented by Amazon, Google, Apple, et al. is a distinct threat to the personal computer. Loss of control over our own data is perhaps the worst part of the cloud. We're easily seduced by genuinely useful features like access to our contacts and music from any device without having to manually sync anything. It's certainly more convenient to purchase a digital movie on Amazon Prime than to hunt down a DVD, and Netflix is definitely nicer for most people than cable television. But when you buy a movie on Amazon, you don't really own it.
Underlying many of these cloud services (especially media-related ones) is Digital Restrictions Management. Whether it be the files themselves or the protocol used to transmit data, DRM is used to control what you can do with your data, restricting even what programs you can use to interact with seemingly neutral files. Worse, networked DRM services can and have led to lost data when it is no longer profitable for the company to run the verification servers.
The only copying that DRM discourages effectively is the sneakernet. And, given that the sneakernet has existed since recordable media has existed, it doesn't seem like the sneakernet is really much of a threat to creative business. I might lend a friend a CD (or even let her copy a few files), but just as I don't unwrap that CD and torrent it through The Pirate Bay, I'm not going to download a movie from Amazon and do the same. There's really no incentive to do so, for most people — most people pirate because that's what you have to do to get the media you want, not because you have a compulsive desire to share things with your closest 10,000 friends.
In order to prevent what is effectively sharing between actual friends, pushers of DRM-infected data want us to completely cede control of our own data!
And they have made people accept it: Steam, Netflix, and Amazon Prime are wildly popular. All of those services are great ideas, but all of them treat you as if you were a criminal.
Worse yet, the spread of Software-as-a-Service is returning us to the bad old days: that powerful PC in your pocket is quickly becoming no more than a glorified terminal. The open peer-to-peer network is being subverted from an enabler of collaboration never before seen into yet another scheme to tether users to proprietary, centralized services. And, as SaaS expands, privacy recedes. No longer is it implicit that your documents are yours alone; now you write and store things using Google Docs and have no expectation of privacy (legally), despite expecting privacy. Amazon knows what you read; Netflix knows what you watch; Google knows what you visit.
Control over the programs you run, and more importantly can write, is key to a personal computer being personal. And it seems absurd that that right might be taken away, but behold: the iPhone and soon Mac Store are these mythical walled gardens. You have to subvert your device to gain real control! And the natural path for Apple is to restrict Macs similarly to iOS devices.
And so we are all-too-near an Orwellian nightmare where vendors dictate what we can do with and how we can use our own data.
But what about the hardware itself? It could be argued that a device isn't really personal for some set of people if they can't change all of the software. Here too we see some promise, and some pitfalls.
The shift to tablet and phone hardware has meant a shift from x86 machines running PC BIOS to thousands of ARM boards, each with its own peculiar way of being programmed. Things you take for granted on x86, like being able to even boot, require custom code. And let's not even begin talking about all of the DSPs and co-processors. Vendors aren't always forthcoming with documentation for their boards, and, even worse, those that do port Linux to their hardware often blatantly violate the GPL and do not distribute kernel sources. This restricts the utility of perfectly fine hardware: often to the detriment of the user and to the benefit of the manufacturer.
Anyone who finds they can't upgrade to the latest version of Android because their vendor won't support it, and the community cannot support it because of non-free drivers, knows what losing control over their hardware is like (RIP HTC Dream).
It might seem like a minor setback ("I guess I have to buy a new phone"), but the lack of specifications or support marginalizes alternative operating systems. There's Meego, Tizen, Open webOS, Firefox OS, SHR, etc., but experimenting with them on your device is a non-starter. Imagine if the x86 were so closed (something we may not have to only imagine much longer): it is doubtful that GNU/Linux or the multitude "alternative" OSes would exist (Atheos, Haiku, L4Linux, even the Hurd). Ever more closed hardware is putting us into a position where two or three companies will dictate everything about the computing experience going forward, with no room for freethinking tinkerers to revolutionize how we interact with our devices.
We are staring at a bleak future, and living in a bleak present in some ways. But there is hope for the battle to be won by the Personal Computer instead of the Terminal.
The Internet is not yet merely glorified cable television. Hypertext, email, instant messaging, trivial file transfer, etc. have revolutionized how mankind communicates (understatement of the decade). Once upon a time the dream was that everyone would be a first-class netizen: your IP was publicly routeable and with a bit of know-how you had a server. Instead, thanks to grossly asymmetric pipes and heavy NATing, it is rare for any individual to run their own servers. Instead we turn to Google, Amazon, et al and cede control over our data.
But now broadband connections are spreading fast (I've gone from 100Kbit/s to 2Mbit/s upstream in three years just with basic service), IPv6 is really here, and software is being written to challenge the centralized "cloud" model being pushed on us from above.
We've had a few victories already: SMTP is still in use, XMPP is the dominant chat protocol (and IRC refuses to die), RSS/Atom aggregation decentralizes news, and the core network protocols are developed in the open.
But Google still controls Android, and myriad services control your data. Part of this is because they have easy client and server interfaces; sure you could run gallery2 and Wordpress on your own server, but I can just snap a photo on my phone and it's up on Facebook 40 seconds later (well, if their app worked, it would be).
Luckily, there are people working on making easy to use "cloud" services. In particular, ownCloud. ownCloud provides a framework for hosting and syncing data between your devices and sharing data with others. The important part is not so much the central server, but the clients they are writing. Eventually, it should be possible to e.g. replace the Google contact/mail/calendar sync and Google Drive, while adding these features to the desktop. Integration in KDE is already underway.
Imagine, instead of being tied to Google you could move the central server to the hosting provider of your wish (or pack up your data and move it to greener pastures if you're not running your own). And, perhaps more subtle (but the real liberation): Your data would be freely movable between all operating systems (interesting that you have to go through hoops to sync your GMail contacts with anything else, and Abandon All Hope Ye who wants to share between an Apple device and anything else). Additionally, the server is designed to respect your privacy (you can e.g. only store encrypted data server-side).
On the hardware side, projects like Firefox OS are very important: having a "mobile" Free Software OS developed in the open might be essential when the dominant open platforms are developed monolithically by corporations with no interest in protecting user control of data.
And then for developing the next generation of devices, folks like Rhombus Tech are pushing for the development of interchangeable CPU boards for embedded devices, and the FSF is expanding their focus to include open hardware.
There are two serious threats that would undermine any resistance: IPv4 exhaustion and draconian content policing. The former issue is technical and likely to solve itself: in the long run multi-level NAT would be too costly, switching hardware will be replaced as it is obsoleted, etc. The latter is political and represents the most serious threat of all. If we cannot communicate freely and the pipes are owned by the very organizations whose business interests will be harmed... we've already seen how brazen the current IP regime can be, and it will take vigilance on the part of many to prevent them from having their way.
Where will we be in ten years? If Google, Amazon, Apple, and Old Media get their way, in a new dark age of computing. Certainly, you'll have a fancy tablet and access to infinite entertainment. But you will own nothing. Sharing data will be controlled by a chosen few entities, the programs you can run or write will be limited in the name of security, and privacy will be dead.
History shows that personal computing survived despite Apple and Microsoft in the 80s and 90s. So, I'm hopeful that other forces will win: the forces of Free Culture and Free Software. If they succeed (or are at least not crushed), the future is much brighter: most content will be available DRM-free, users will control their computing environments, and the egalitarian promise of the Internet will be realized (in no small part thanks to IPv6).
The PC is dying claims are made every few years. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The PC is dying claims are made every few years (Score:5, Interesting)
The Palm Pilot and Apple Newton never achieved the success the iPad has or the iPhone.
The problem with comparing the Past Systems was the fact they while they look similar, that new feature of multi-touch is the real game player.
Before we needed to use a stylus or one finger to just push a button on the screen. Doing things such as zooming in was very clumsy. The simple feature of the pinch zoom is a massive game changers. During Newton and Palm Pilot Hayday. PC's were in a get a really big display phase. 17" - 19" - 21" get as big of a CRT that can fit on your desk. Why? because you had so much information, you wanted to view but smaller screens didn't have the resolution or were too small to see it. For the most part on the screen we only focus on a couple square inches on it at any moment. But using the mouse to scroll and zooming was choppy, made it so you need to use a desktop if you want to get real work done. With multi-touch you can see scroll and zoom much faster and naturally then before.
The next problem during the Palm Era. Was we didn't have too many good enough CPU's to do the job. During the Pentium 2 Era. your Palm Pilot had the power of an 8088 (10 year gap). Today We are closer to a 5 year gap, and our need for personal processing power has diminished. We can play a movie in High Definition on our phone and it will run smoothly. Programs are responsive and quick. While not as fast as the desktop, we are by no means suffering.
The third problem was network infrastructure. The old devices you needed to sync with a PC. Today they are self updating and work by themselves without the need for the PC. And they have wireless internet that means it is actually handy if you want to look up something.
The fourth problem was culture. Technology gadgets were not cool back in the late 90's. You would have been a major nerd or geek in the negative term if you were caught using one. Cell phones getting smaller and cheaper means more popular people were getting the technology thus allowing more high tech to be more common across the "normals".
We had a bunch of horseless carriages designed before the Model-T too.
It just needed the right situation to get them to kick off.
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Wait a second.....where do you work?
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To synergise the energy of the elastic cloud computing environment synergistically with the development platform interface specification to meet the required compliancy of Cobit while maintaining share profit managability. His strong manly hands probed every crevice of her silken femininity, their undulating bodies writhing in sensual rhythm, as he thrust his purple-headed warrior into her quivering mound of love pudding.
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I think that the number of PCs necessary for "real work" is a lot smaller than the current market. This is a major reason why pads, pods, and phones are eating into PC sales. Some tasks definitely require PCs, but you don't need one to cruise the web, look up phone numbers, and a host of other small things for which business and consumers bought PCs. And as the follow below me indicates, some real work can be done on these small devices.
Re:The PC is dying claims are made every few years (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a major reason why pads, pods, and phones are eating into PC sales.
Maybe, or maybe it's because PC sales have been over-inflated since sometime in the 90's. Just my opinion, but I think we should step back and take another look at this - TBH I'm not entirely sure that what we're seeing is such a bad thing - and that it's completely natural.
Most people aren't tinkerers, inventors, hackers, or scientists. Most people aren't curious about their world, investigative of the way things work, interested in science, or even all that intelligent. Most people don't have a scientific mind or any desire whatsoever to use technology for any more than canned entertainment (which, by the way, is also what they use most of everything else in their lives for). Not because they're inherently a sub-species - but because they just don't care. All respect to the author of the original article above, but I think he's missing something important - PC's are losing ground to tablets, etc in the market because most people don't have any use for PC's - and they never really did. PC's were always FAR more complicated than they were able to appreciate or take advantage of - and they don't have any use for them because they can perform their stupid, meaningless, and irrelevant tasks quite adequately on a phone/tablet/whatever. They also don't give two farts who legally owns the movie they just paid $9.99 for, as long as they get to watch it right now, and have never heard of DRM (and wouldn't understand it if you explained it to them). Jobs was a genius - he understood that, and by simplifying the PC down to a glorified toy, he knew that the entire world would throw their money at him - and they did.
And I say, more power to them. I don't care. Let them do their thing, and let Apple and Google and Amazon make bank off of them. Big deal. Me? I'll always have a PC of some kind, and a hundred other hacked and frankenstein'd gadgets - because my nature isn't to just consume, it's to create and arrange things to make them better. It doesn't really matter to me if Apple quits making Macbooks, or Microsoft quits writing operating systems that work on regular computers - at worst, it's a minor inconvenience, because I and many others like me will step in to fill the void - just as we created the beginnings of all this stuff to begin with, way back in the 80's and before. This move toward DRM and non-ownership of public entertainment is meaningless. Jobs and Gates and the rest took what was originally created and commercialized it; made it accessible to the masses - and the masses, because they don't know better or don't care, will eventually be controlled by draconian corporations or governments, or both. Those of us who care enough to invent, create, and make the world a better place, will not.
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In fairness, it doesn't require a computer to be "curious about the world," "investi
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But the reason Palm wasn't the end of the PC era is the same as the reason The Tablet (you seem to like apple) wont be either. They are toys.
The Palm wasn't interfaced to a powerful network of apps and data. Today's tablet is an interface to a much more powerful set of tools.
A tablet will never be enough for me, but it will suffice for most people. I like using tablets to interface to my own systems.
I think you are wrong.
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But tablets and other toys will make the PC go back to it's early days price tags because most people only want the toys, especially now thay have to work all day on this shitty PC at their work.
Not kill, but inability to buy due to price make the same outcome.
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Remember when the Palm Pilot and Apple Newton heralded the "end of the PC era"?
I do. It was a stupid statement then, and it's just as stupid to suggest that tablets will be "the end of the PC" now. To be sure, tablets are going to replace PC's in a lot of places, but anyone whose computing tasks involve any serious amount of input knows that a table is very poor substitute for a keyboard. The same can be said for those tasks that need multiple displays, etc. Those users will absolutely not be replacing their PC's with tablets.
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I don't know... I was reading somewhere when I got my Nexus 7 about setting up my own personal cloud storage with my own server and stuff like that. Perhaps it's doubtful other people would be inclined to do something like that, but perhaps they would in light of current personal data concerns.
Lemme just make a point (Score:5, Insightful)
When I got (built) my first real PC, it wasn't about "content." It was about doing things. I had BASIC (tiny), an assembler, an editor, and a way to store stuff. I wrote all manner of software. Simple stuff at first, then more crazed as I caught on to how things actually worked. As the years went by, I built or bought more powerful machines, and my library of stuff grew. Content became relevant as I could *create* it; I painted pictures, made music, wrote articles, books, wrote and received uncounted numbers of emails (and I still have them all. I was able to dig up a letter I wrote to my stepmother on my 6800 machine in 1975 last week, startled her a bit. :) I designed PC boards, all manner of hardware, even wrote PCB layout and schematic capture software. Games... not so much, although I did write a few, especially as the 80's arcade frenzy came and went and I was employed in that area. Computers were niche devices for people with special interests, really. When I started out hand-coding 8008 instructions, it's not like I was a member of a huge crowd.
Today, the start isn't the wowie-zowie of having "a real computer", it's just Other People's Content. You get a closed box like an iPad, it doesn't come with "hey write your own stuff", although you can add apps like that for cheap. You can add an editor (leaving out the PITA of that on screen kbd for real writing), a perfectly serviceable spreadsheet. On the desktop, developing stuff is still 100% possible, but again, that's not usually why people go after a machine; they want twitter, they want IM, they want to download music... for them, it is an appliance, and neither the environment that enthused me about computers (suddenly, you could have one, whereas before, you could not) or the vast unknown of "what can I do with this" really serves as the entryway or inspiration for most people.
True enough, the general purpose machine on my desk can address either type of person; me, or an inveterate content consumer. But the current market is the latter -- not me. In fact, I might not buy another machine -- I'm pretty happy with what's on my desk. 8 cores, 3 ghz, terabytes of storage, 6 monitors, USB widgets everywhere, LAN, WAN, WIFI, bluetooth, SD radio, MIDI, Logic Pro, all manner of dev languages... I feel pretty good about this puppy, frankly. If that's to be the pinnacle of personal computing... yeah, I'm good with that. Thing is crazy powerful, from my perspective.
I'm just not sure that the needs of us dinosaurs represent the needs of the marketplace today. That's really what I wanted to say, I'm just maybe way too windy about it.
So if the PC "dies", maybe that's ok. It'l die slow, and probably a niche market will arise again. The pendulum swings all the time, for just about everything. We'll be ok.
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The percentage of the world's population that can and do what you (and I) did in the 1970's is massively greater.
No, I disagree. There are still very few who can do what we did back then - no more than existed then. The idea that there are more now is an illusion - crutches exist that allow them to think they can really create something meaningful, but they can't - and they don't. I think the parent poster got it right - maybe the PC will due, but that's ok, and it will give way to a niche market, just as it was in the beginning. I personally don't have a problem with that; in fact it's kind of exciting to me. I mis
Walled gardens... (Score:5, Informative)
Great for alzheimer's patients, criminals, and little kids. Not great for free adults.
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It's great for power hungry CEOs as well...
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It's great for power hungry CEOs as well...
Jail cells are not walled gardens. The resemblance is superficial at best.
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The problem is that virus writers are coming out with 100,000 plus variants each day. The IT industry is coming to a point where a white-list of permitted applications vs. a black-list of malware is going to be the only way to download safe software. Then the malware battle will shift over to application plugins just like web-browsers.
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The problem is that virus writers are coming out with 100,000 plus variants each day.
The solution is to create less exploitable OSes and to make resetting a system to its factory state less painful. Walled gardens are a cheap way to achieve the first, do nothing to help with the second, and carry the cost of making hacking and innovation (i.e. disruptive technologies -- like the PC itself) more difficult.
Re:Walled gardens... (Score:4, Interesting)
Also good for people who value their time (not having to worry so much about fraud and malware, research, etc.) more than their ability to do things with a device that they would never bother doing anyway.
It's perfectly fine for tinkerers on Slashdot to have the opposite preference and express it verbally and in the market with their purchases, but to presume that their preference - which is shared by an extremely small minority of people - is ideal for everyone else is a bit silly. I fully support people who want to tinker - I used to be that way myself. But as I've gotten older my interests have shifted and I simply don't want to spend my very limited time on vetting everything that goes into my mobile device, and the limitations imposed by the "walled garden" don't really affect my interests. It's a simple trade-off.
Re:Walled gardens... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also good for people who value their time (not having to worry so much about fraud and malware, research, etc.) more than their ability to do things with a device that they would never bother doing anyway.
Only if those people are content with things staying the way they are i.e. if they do not want the next technological revolution to occur. Disruptive technologies do not happen in walled gardens; that is the point of walled gardens, to protect their curators from the fate that buggy-whip makers faced.
The World Wide Web could not have happened in a walled garden; if everything was locked behind walled gardens in the late 80s, we would have never had a web, we would still be using online services and the
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Great for alzheimer's patients, criminals, and little kids. Not great for free adults.
So long as the alzheimer's patients, criminals, and little kids are in the majority then the free adults aren't going to get what they want.
RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
Do you really expect us to read all of that?
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LOL heaven forbid an article be more than a snippet and someone express a full thought rather than a catch fraise
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locked down devices don't do what people who actually use them (as opposed to just play with them) need them to.
Locked down devices do exactly as much as the people who sell them want them to do, everything from a G-rated kids tablet to to fully automated and unvetted signing with only a banhammer lurking. I think you meant to say "The current locked down devices don't do what I want" because what that means isn't fixed and most people get a lot of "real work" done on business computers even more locked down than the Apple, no jumping on the app store and installing random software there. In fact you're the equivalen
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The ignorant make up the majority of the population, so device makers cater to them. Letting them remain ignorant is the fastest way to ensure the propagation of DRM and walled gardens and the demise of unrestricted devices. Only when consumers are informed can they make intelligence choices that lead to devices which are better for consumers rather than devices which are simply more profitable for the manufacturers.
TL;DR That's the worst possible thing you could do.
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Your basic punter doesn't have a problem with walled gardens. And after they've been traumatized by years of MS malware, they'll thankfully give up a bit of freedom for the freedom of knowing their little device won't come down with cyber venereal disease. This will make most punters happy. It won't make you happy but then you are only 1 of about 5% of the population that needs the non-walled garden.
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Letting them remain ignorant is the fastest way to ensure the propagation of DRM and walled gardens and the demise of unrestricted devices.
Case in point, that Apple line commercial that I can't stand.
Anyone who cares about it already knows the entire iOS/Android debate. But it is pretty amusing to me how they went about the pitch in that commercial. There is tons of ammunition if you want to argue about why an Android phone is better (and I am talking in terms of advertising. I don't personally give a shit), but when you only have a few minutes to get the lowest common denominator's attention....you have to stick with cool/uncool-pretty/not p
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computers are like cars (Score:3)
long ago cars were sort of open and then things went to a vertical system where the manufacturer designs and manufactures the car with self made parts or custom made parts.
computers are going the same way.
most of us have better things to do than some of the nonsense in this article. $7.99 for netflix is a nice deal for what you get.
Re:computers are like cars (Score:5, Insightful)
This. At least for the general public. The whole idea of a "computer" is simply a result of how primitive they are. That the software that controls them requires the user to understand concepts such as operating system and application, networking and device drivers. People don't really ever want to know they are "running a word processor" or "launching a web browser". They want to accomplish specific things, like writing a note (or video chatting) with a friend, looking something up or watching a movie.
The technical crowd loves to complain about Apple's walled garden, but this is exactly the genius of Apple. They get that. They get that they have to evolve the thing called a computer into a thing that people don't ever have to fiddle with. That simply exists to provide useful services for their life. The other computer manufacturers understand that to a smaller degree and then wonder why their tablets aren't as successful.
The personal computer, as technical people know it, is going away. It's growing up into what the vast majority of people really want. And thank God. I'm glad I don't have to stand in front of my car turning a crank to get it running.
But all is not lost for technical people. There will always be ways to have your own device. The free software and maker movements will ensure that. In some ways things are better today than ever. In the 1980s (some consider the heyday of the open personal computer) we had the 8-bit IBM PC. Today we have a gamut of programmable devices ranging from Arduinos to $35 linux computers to set top boxes to multi-core, multi-cpu computers more powerful that super computers of the last century. All totally accessible.
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The technical crowd loves to complain about Apple's walled garden, but this is exactly the genius of Apple.
Apple is only able to create a walled garden thanks to layers that have been built before by the tinkerers and technical folk. So I think that while Apple's strategy may work well in the short term, it will likely be their downfall long term.
When you create the walled garden you allow developers to focus on apps, but exclude them from the areas that may have a large impact. Apple needs to do it themselves for the newest innovations. That fancy new, revolutionary FS or networking will need to be ported. Or t
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Developing on a Mac is not developing in a walled garden as you seem to think. Apple knows fully well what it takes to develop apps for their garden, they aren't so stupid as to cut developers out.
Innovation is going to die (Score:2)
Is that really what you want to see happen with
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Touchy Feely makes that much difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
The touchscreen and interface conventions make direct manipulation shine in a way you just can't get from a screen two feet away on a desk.
Maybe for some people...personally I prefer a couple of big monitors in front of me.
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Some laptops have touchpads built in. My old laptop has an area of space in front of the keyboard dedicated to the touch pad and press buttons which is the same size as a smartphone. It would be very easy to modify a laptop so that the docking/charging port for a smartphone would be in this area.
That's why I have a 32GB SD Card (Score:2)
I have a 32 GB SD Card in my phone. The reason? Because in Oregon, Cellular isn't ubiquitous. And because I can keep my entire 2GB music collection, plus several books, plus a bunch of other aps that don't need the net, on it.
Re:That's why I have a 32GB SD Card (Score:4, Funny)
2GB music collection? LOL.
It's not a 'collection' unless it's at least 1TB.
69 hours (Score:2)
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Unless you want to listen to it.
Touchscreen smuchscreen (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes there is, and here's how:
1. Make sure no company makes new keyboards and mice.
2. Render the old keyboards and mice unusable by making your new computing devices have no place to hook up your old keyboards and mice.
Are you right that this plan is taking away consumer choice? Hell yes. But that doesn't mean it won't happen.
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Then your job will go away. You can say it wont if you want, but that wont change the fact. Look at the buggy whip manufactures of 100 years ago.
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Touchscreens certainly have their place (phones/tablets etc.) but they are no match for a keyboard+mouse in many situations - just ask the gamers.
The laptop & USB touchpads with multi-touch are pretty nice to use; two finger scrolling instead using the edges of the pad, three
I agree we've barely scratched PCs (Score:4, Interesting)
My two biggest mispredictions were:
(1) In the mid 70s I wounder why anyone would buy a store-made computer. They were so fun to solder together yourself.
(2) The sudden rise of the world wide web in 1993. Everyone knew cycberspace would eventually happen, but probably another decade or so. That was a huge victory for open source: thanks Tim!
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My worst prediction. I figured built in indexing (Gopher) was too valuable to give up and HTTP would thus remain a niche protocol mainly for graphics heavy content.
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> HTTP would thus remain a niche protocol mainly for graphics heavy content.
You were right. However, graphics heavy content is the format strongly preferred by humans.
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Not over a modem it wasn't.
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No Gopher protocol was open. UMinn's Gopher server did require a paid license. On the other hand in 1993 most people who ran HTTP used Netscape's server. The real change IMHO was the move to advertising. Though I'll admit by late '94 you had the LAMP stack and then HTTP was open in a way Gopher never was.
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You are right about the drop in knowledge. People born in the mid 1965-1985 are know much more about computers than people on either side of that group, even controlled for age. Shockingly, computer literacy is dropping.
As an aside I'm sure you heard about Steve Job's Trucks vs Cars analogy for OSX from iOS... i.e. in the beginning all cars were trucks...
As far as content, like porn. I think that horse is out of the barn. Porn availability is now completely normalized.
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You haven't seen my beige tower. My tiger once got completely nuts and completely scratched it.
Good article. (Score:3)
Excellent read. Thanks.
I use a PC to create (Score:4, Insightful)
The PC will get more expensive as the sales volume goes down from hundreds of millions to hundreds of thousands of 'real' computers per year. but then, those of us who use PCs for real work have been riding the coattails of the gamers for a decade now.
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So do I, but it's a Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PC w/ a Wacom digitizer and pressure-sensitive stylus. I draw, sketch, create plans for woodworking projects, design typefaces, do some light programming and typesetting using (La)TeX and keep several decades worth of notes on it. The slate form-factor is well-suited to design work, and it's nice to be able to do this pretty much anywhere (Fujitsu has a history of offering daylight-viewable transflective displays, which my ST-4121 has). It also makes a very nice
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Who owns your data? (Score:2)
This is the most significant concern raised by the article, and I think it's legitimate. That's why I continue to buy backup drives and keep my data local (except for the backup at my friend's house.)
At a minimum, we need warranted Service Level Agreements with cloud providers, that include guarantees with penalties when access to their services (cloud based apps or data) fails. "Sorry about that, we won't let it happen again" ain't good enough.
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One size used to fit all (Score:2)
Up until recently, there was one style of computer, the classic desktop box
It had many diverse uses
Some used it as an embedded controller
Some used it for CAD design, video editing, music production, science, etc
Some used it to read email and surf the web
Since there was only one style, lots were sold, so they became very cheap
Now, we see the market segmenting
Many people can have their needs met by a smartphone or a tablet, but not all
Some, like CAD designers, video editors, music producers, s
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Is it a terrible thing?
I mean, the problem is the "general public" cared about cost and we ended up in a race to the bottom, where margins are thin and we're seeing the results in low-res screens, integrated graphics, and basically a lot of sameness as everyone builds to a price.
Let prices rise a bit - clear out the low end crap. If you wanted a dec
Shut the fuck up already. The PC isnt dead. (Score:5, Insightful)
The PC will never die. These attention seeking whores are fucking technology morons. They use their computers for facebook, jerking off and youtube. Computers are more than a jerk off machine and a twitter device.
Yes, for the average idiot who was destined to sweep up shit for a living, they probably dont need a real deal pc workstation... because they'll never create or do anything.
PCs are for people who USE pcs. PCS are for people who work, create, manage, code, program, animate, draw, paint, record, do research, study... PCs are for real users. The general public doesnt need roof ladder, but everyone has a fucking ladder still.
You mean there's an app for that? (Score:2)
Reality (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Not one of these locked down devices is hard for a "free thinker" to put a new OS on. No one is making nor planning on making devices that are actually secure against a knowledgeable owner that wants them to do something different. They are looking to add some security that is impossible without hardware support. No one is actually advocating the position your essay is opposing.
2) When PCs started they used to come with the OS (and arguably sometimes more than one OS) on ROM. People still booted different OSes on them.
3) There is wealth of content creation tools for all these platforms that already exist, so concerns about consumption / creation are overblown.
4) DRM is obviously popular with content creators to avoid sharing, and larger entities to allow for distribution and control. It comes in and out of fashion and has for long time. There is no long term trend in either direction. For example in the last 5 years virtually all music is sold DRM free while previously music companies had required DRM.
5) On the consumer tablet / phone devices there already exist a wealth of services to setup alternative "clouds" including both Android and iOS. They are cheap and easy to configure. Instead of whining about them not existing for consumer just set one up.
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They are all significantly harder than a current PC, and end up only partially functional when you do.
Nonsense. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, etc. all spend lots of time and money designing and implementing security schemes that make doing this more and more difficult. The EFF scored a c
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They are all significantly harder than a current PC, and end up only partially functional when you do.
Maybe. But current PCs are pretty darn easy. They weren't that easy when Linux was thriving as an alternative to Windows. I'd say it is likely easier to install iPhone Linux today than RedHat in '97. As for partial functionality that's not the fault of the device manufacturers. The Linux kernel was tuned mainly for Microsoft / Intel / Western Digital (i.e. x86 PCs). It has expanded to other platform
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Sorry hit submit too soon on last post:
Online video is getting less DRM oriented as shockwave / flash have gotten more open. Books are new and downloadable video is new. We'll see in 10 years how this pans out.
Nonsense. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, etc. all spend lots of time and
No DRM-free movies (Score:2)
Not one of these locked down devices is hard for a "free thinker" to put a new OS on.
Yet some countries prosecute, or allow copyright owners grounds to sue, "free thinkers" under anti-circumvention laws.
No one is making nor planning on making devices that are actually secure against a knowledgeable owner that wants them to do something different.
Sony v. Hotz anyone? What about the downfall of Lik Sang?
There is wealth of content creation tools for all these platforms that already exist
What programming environment for iOS is comparable to AIDE for Android?
It comes in and out of fashion and has for long time. There is no long term trend in either direction. For example in the last 5 years virtually all music is sold DRM free while previously music companies had required DRM.
Good for music. But when have DRM-free feature films been in fashion at any time since Macrovision was introduced?
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I think you mean programming on Android. The question was about content creation for not on. No question Apple considers iDevices secondary devices. They do have some programming languages where they think it appropriate like gambit scheme, ND1 (3 interpreters), a variety of Lua interpreters...
Internet short video has
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[Lik Sang] were hit for violating import and export restrictions.
Who lobbied for these restrictions, and who pressed charges?
Sony lost the case
I thought it was settled out of court, with Hotz agreeing to shift his hacking work away from Sony products. Was there in fact a judgment in favor of Hotz?
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iPhone Linux, iDroid, iMoblin. Good has several they were working on targeted to verticals.
I don't know nothing about PS3 but just googling for 2 seconds brings up PS3MFW which allows you to run Sony's own Other OS. PS3Magic appears to allow the installation of arbitrary OSes.
How do Netflix & Steam treat you like a crimin (Score:2)
Netflix is basically a movie rental service with no due dates, and you can watch the stuff you want at any time as many times as you want. I'm not under any illusion that I own any of the content they have available.
I have Steam, and I usually only buy games that are on deep discount whenever they have
the right tool for the job (Score:2)
That's all pc's , labtops, tablets, smartphones are.
They all serve a different purpose, and so one will never replace the other, it will just complement it.
Who owns the data? (Score:2)
Some very good points made there, and I completely agree that the main concern for the future is ownership of data, not what your PC looks like.
I have been rather luddite in my avoidance of cloud services. In fact the only exception is Steam, which is perfectly fine and convenient for now, but I can foresee potential issues in the future. In particular when my 3 yr old son gets a bit older and wants to play games from my collection at the same time as I want to. I think the solution would be a bit torrent,
TLDR (Score:5, Insightful)
The Cloud is expensive.... (Score:2)
The theory behind the cloud is that your data is available on multiple devices wherever you go. This is only a reality if you stay within your own connectivity area. Anyone who travels quickly understands that access to the cloud either becomes prohibitively expensive (data roaming) or limited. Streaming music on a beach in Mexico, and for example, if requires paying huge data roaming fees or requires the purchase of a local SIM card and an unlocked device. In my opinion the cloud will not become useful un
It's about the pipes. (Score:2)
The editorial hits the main points, but perhaps understates the importance of US ISPs being controlled by non-competitive private companies. This is a disaster. Aside from Verizon Fios (which - surprise! - has stalled), Americans haven't put new pipe in the ground in ten years. Google shouldn't be making headlines with a modest proposed fiber-to-house project in Kansas.
In the 1990s, backbone providers had to sell bandwidth to all last-mile-ISPs at the same rate. There were literally tens of thousands of ISP
gobbledegoo (Score:2)
But they are only half true: an artifact of the PC is dying, but the essence of the PC revolution is closer to realization than ever before, while also being closer to loss than ever before.
I... wat?
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But they are only half true: an artifact of the PC is dying, but the essence of the PC revolution is closer to realization than ever before, while also being closer to loss than ever before.
I... wat?
A mountaineer climbing K2 for the first time is closer to reaching the summit than ever before, but he is also closer to falling off and failing.
Just sayin...
DRMed e-books (Score:2)
TTBOMK, all of the DRM schemes in common use for e-books have been broken. Of course, you have to get the files onto a normal sort of PC in order to decrypt them.
Avoid free services for about $5-10/month (Score:2)
It costs under $5 per month to avoid the "free" services. I have a low-end $9/month HostGator account for my minor web sites. This allows multiple domains. If I want to publish a picture, it goes in a directory there. Another domain has Wordpress loaded for a blog.
Mail comes into my own domains, is filtered, and dumps to an IMAP server at sonic.net, which I can access from all my devices. Sonic DSL has no ads, no filtering, no caching, no "deep packet inspection", no data caps, and no nonsense.
The only
openCloud... (Score:2)
What happens when Google has your memories (Score:2)
PC death == MS + Secure Boot; (Score:4, Insightful)
On yesterday's PCs, I could just write raw machine code in Hex, save it to the 1st sector of a drive, boot the disk and be in full control of my own hardware with my own code. Many new-ish PCs now use EFI. To boot from EFI I have to write my machine code within a FAT (32) container, which means implementing MS's proprietary and patent encumbered File Allocation Table format... Tomorrow's PCs will use UEFI to boot, which requires a cryptographically signed EFI boot process. That means signing my own bootloader and installing my own keys, or paying for a key for each bootable from MS (some UEFI systems allow booting w/o signature via special boot mode, some do not) -- On ARM platforms shipping Win RT, MS has said the option to boot unsigned code or install user specified keys must be removed.
So, you can see how it's slowly gotten a bit harder to play with my own new hardware thanks to the increasingly high hoops I've got to jump through. If Microsoft has their way you won't be able to boot any OS that doesn't fork over the cash to them. In fact, even the Linux Foundation is planning to pay MS for the right to sign a bootloader [linuxfoundation.org] so you can still boot your own software on UEFI hardware. I think that's horrible. I understand they want to make it easy for users to run free software but IMO, paying MS one red cent to give us back the freedom to use our own software with our own hardware is just vile and disgusting. Instead, I'll buy from vendors that respect my freedom. The subject line say MS + Secure Boot == PC Death, but really Apple, and many other vendors who don't let us unlock our devices to run arbitrary code are equally as evil in my book.
Recently a longing for the good ol' days of unfettered computing led me to creating Hexabootable [vortexcortex.com]. It's a 512 byte boot sector that contains a Hex editor. With it you can edit raw memory then execute the memory you just edited. Using only this minimal tool you can extend the program's features (eg: disk I/O), write any other program, even create a whole new Operating System -- Indeed that's exactly what I'm doing. [slashdot.org]
None of my hardware or software hacking hobbies will be possible if the OEMs get their way and lock us out of our own hardware. It's all under the guise of Security, but that's not really the reason. Think about it: OS code is huge and bug ridden; If there's even one kernel level arbitrary code execution vulnerability then the whole effort is useless. If the OS makers could write secure (read: bug free) OS's they would be just as secure with and without secure boot! If they can't write secure OSs then secure boot is pointless! Truly, I can use known exploit vectors against every modern OS, secure boot or not, to run my own unsigned machine code, and so can malware writers... So it's not a boot for normal end user security, it's just digital shackles. The real reason Secure Boot Chains exists is to keep you from tampering with your own computer.
Now, what I do find hopeful is the cool work in the embedded systems fields. There are several projects that strive to be as transparent to the user as possible, and get their code up and running controlling everything. Unfortunately you don't always get to run plain machine code on all of the hobbyist devices. Open hardware initiatives give me a warm fuzzy feeling -- That's what will save the "PC" (Personal Computer) in my opinion. Protip: If you can't personalize the machine code and/or hardware, then it's really an Impersonal Computer -- An impostor of the worst kind...
Here's a fun aside: Since I write software in machine code, I could release it under the GPL and provide no other "source code" but the binaries :-P
Conversely, if you know Machine Code, every (non encrypted) binary executable is Open Source!
Tablets are not upgradeable (Score:2)
Which in PC parlance means they have to be thrown away every 12-18 months. Why is that? Bloat. Plain and simple. When your Andoid tablet or iPad accesses a typically horrible bloatpage with 3 different animated popups, a banner or two, 5 layers of Javascript and the rest, it grinds to a halt. And when the hardware engineers make a tablet that's twice as fast, the marketing douchebags tell the software developers "We need 7 more popups, a dozen more animations, twice as many switches and buttons for that 'us
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and im not buying a smart phone, tablet or iStupid anything , and guess what i buy this pc so i can do work that makes me money rather then spend it like the idiots that sell tablets and such are doing.
And then go post on slashdot.
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does it run linux?
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It is gonna suck when you accidentally violate the ToS.
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