On Friday, 14 September 2018 at 09:23:24 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
On Thursday, 13 September 2018 at 22:56:31 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Thursday, 13 September 2018 at 22:41:08 UTC, Nick
Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
On 09/10/2018 11:13 PM, tide wrote:
On Monday, 10 September 2018 at 13:43:46 UTC, Joakim wrote:
That's why PC sales keep dropping while mobile sales are
now 6-7X that per year:
This shouldn't be misunderstood as such, which I think you
as misunderstanding it. The reason mobile sales are so high
is because of planned obsolescence and the walled garden
that these devices are built around. I've gone through maybe
3-4 phones in the time that I've had my Desktop, and I use
my desktop every single day. I don't need to buy a new one
cause it runs perfectly fine, there aren't operating system
updates that purposely cause the CPU to run slower to "save
battery life" when a new device and OS come out. That's not
to say it isn't insignificant but the sales numbers are
exacerbated.
Right. Basically, "sales stats" should never be misconstrued
as "usage stats".
The usage stats are similarly overwhelming, two-thirds of
digital time is spent on mobile, more for the young:
Yeah but 90% of the time people spend on mobile is just dicking
about. Sending IMs, facebook, point and click games. And thats
a huge part of the usage stats, people can now spend more time
online wasting time in more situations than ever before.
And people don't use PCs for such things? ;) I know a lot of
people who did, which explains the 28% drop in PC sales since
they peaked in 2011, the year after the iPad came out. Many of
those people who used to buy PCs have switched to tablets and
other mobile devices.
PCs are generally seen a tool to accomplish tasks, for word
processing or a high end gaming thing, audio / video editing,
mobile is more entertainment. Not many people are doing what
you are by using your mobile as a desktop.
I'm not saying that makes mobile worthless, what I'm saying is
that your hypothesis is like saying TV has taken over from
typewriters.
More like when computers first started replacing typewriters, I'm
sure many laughed at that possibility back then too. :)
You've probably heard of the possibly apocryphal story of how
Blackberry and Nokia engineers disassembled the first iPhone and
dismissed it because it only got a day of battery life, while
their devices lasted much longer. They thought the mainstream
market would care about such battery life as much as their early
adopters, but they were wrong.
But here's a better story for this occasion, Ken Olsen, the head
of DEC who built the minicomputers on which Walter got his start,
is supposed to have disassembled the first IBM PC and this was
his reaction:
"Ken Olsen bought one of the first IBM PCs and disassembled it on
a table in Olsen’s office.
'He was amazed at the crappy power supply,' Avram said, 'that it
was so puny. Olsen thought that if IBM used such poor
engineering then Digital didn’t have anything to worry about.'
Clearly Olsen was wrong."
https://www.cringely.com/2011/02/09/ken-olsen-and-post-industrial-computing/
You're making the same mistake as him. It _doesn't matter_ what
people first use the new tool for, what matters is what it _can_
be used for, particularly over time. That time is now, as top and
mid-range smartphone chips now rival mid-to low-end PC CPUs,
which is the majority of the market. The x86/x64 PC's days are
numbered, just as it once killed off the minicomputer decades ago.
