On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 15:41:41 UTC, tide wrote:
On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 15:11:42 UTC, Joakim wrote:
I say that almost 30% drop in PC sales over the last 7 years
is mostly due to the rise of mobile.
I think a large part of it is that PCs got fast enough for
most people about 7-10 years ago. So it was a combination of
mobile, and people no longer needing to get newer faster
machines. The upgrade cycle moved from "I need a newer faster
computer" to "I'll wait till my current system is worn out".
(For a lot of people anyway)
Sure, that's part of it, but that suggests that once
smartphones reach that performance threshold, they will
replace PCs altogether. I think we've reached that threshold
now.
I feel only looking at sales stats is irrelevant. I know people
that have lost their phone and just bought a new phone. They
get stolen a lot more easily. If your screen breaks you are
better off buying a new phone as the cost of replacing the
screen is going to be almost as much as a new one. Someone I
know had to fight his boss to repair his phone cause he didn't
want a brand new iPhone, he still has an Android device and
they switched to Apple a while back. Note, it still costed more
to buy the new phone than repair his old one.
Computers last much longer, I've had the one I have right now
for 8 years. It runs everything I need it to. Faster than a
smartphone or tablet, or even most newer laptops still. There's
no reason to buy a new one, not that I would buy a prebuilt one
anyways. Which I'm pretty sure are what those sales represent.
Can't really count a CPU sale as a "PC" sale as it might just
be someone upgrading from their old PC.
DIY PC sales are estimated at around 50 million a year, they
don't move the needle compared to mobile sales. And yes,
smartphones get broken easier and need to be upgraded more often,
_just as the PC was once a shoddier product than a DEC
minicomputer_, as Ken Olsen noted.
What _matters_ is that mobile is approaching 10X the sales of
PCs. That pays for a lot of innovation and upgrades that the PC
base simply cannot pay for: they just don't have the numbers.
That is the _same_ way the PC swamped the minicomputer, and
mobile is now doing it to the PC.
On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 15:49:33 UTC, tide wrote:
That is, it is not just the performance that affects the sales
of phones. There's a lot of factors that lead to there being
new phones sales. Know someone that's gone through 3 phones in
comparison to just the one I have. Treadmills eat phones for
breakfast.
You're conflating my two arguments. Performance has nothing to do
with why mobile sells a lot more already, that's all about
battery life, mobility, 4G networks, etc. Performance is why
mobile's about to kill off the PC too, because it's finally
performant enough.
On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 22:03:12 UTC, Gambler wrote:
You're right about APKs. Not sure whether it changed since I
looked into it, or I didn't read the docs correctly in the
first place. The overall dev/distribution process, though,
still looks... uh, involved compared to compiling and running
an executable on PC.
I suspect the 10-15 command-line steps listed there to build a
GUI app on Android itself are _much less_ work than on any other
platform, especially since you don't have to install any big SDK
like VS, Xcode, or Qt where plenty of things can go wrong.
Of course, it can always be made simpler.
In general, I am still convinced of the overall negative effect
of mobile devices on computing. They are designed to be used
mostly for consumption and social sharing. They have a lot of
limitations that currently drag the whole IT ecosystem down.
I think you want to cling to that opinion regardless of the
evidence.
Some excellent high-level criticisms:
https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now
An interesting interview, thanks for the link. Mostly not about
mobile, but he seems to think the iPhone was too limiting and
should have come with a stylus? Neither critique applies to
Android, which is the vast majority of the mobile market, where
Termux and the stylus of the Galaxy Note are available, if you
want them.
http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/
He mostly states the obvious, of course touch is not the future
of HCI interfaces. He mentions speech as a posibility in the
addendum linked at the end, there are people working on it now (I
can't believe it's been two years since this article was written):
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/google-home-review-a-step-forward-for-hotwords-a-step-backward-in-capability/
That excellent overview notes a problem with discoverability of
voice commands in Google Home, so they'll have to come up with a
kind of "manpage" for that. ;)
As for his preferred haptic approach, it's only really suited for
certain kinds of spatial manipulation, which is actually a narrow
minority of how people use computers, and the tech for that just
isn't there yet. I too could make up some fantastical interface,
like direct brain reading, but it's meaningless if the underlying
tech hasn't been invented yet.
Specific Example #1:
Web design had been devastated by touchscreens.
Not sure why that matters if you agree with Kay that HTML is an
abortion? :) I actually think it's great that mobile is killing
off the web, as the Comscore usage stats I linked earlier show.
Instead of figuring out
how to create more powerful interfaces designers spend their
mental
capacity on how to cram information onto tiny screens of unknown
orientation. The vocabulary of reliably available user
interactions has
shrunk to actions people can do with a single thumb. Worst of
all, this
is spreading to desktop apps. I've seen in this in my
day-to-day job.
Broadening your complaint out to non-web GUIs, it is true that
people overuse mobile screens now, rather than using the right
screen for the job, ie mobile is best about 80% of the time, so
you shouldn't use it 90% of the time. The devices and software I
linked in my first post are changing that, by bringing
multi-window GUIs to mobile devices.
Specific Example #2:
People brought up on mobile devices do not know how to type on
a keyboard:
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803290068.html
This is not limited to Japan. Again, I've seen this in real
life.
I don't know people of any generation who didn't have to spend
some of their adolescent or adult years learning how to use a
keyboard, ie it's never been something you're born with or pick
up in grade school.
Honestly, we're in a weird time right now where voice is good
enough for basic tasks, but keyboards are still needed for
programming and other complex tasks. When voice gets good enough
in the coming years, we will simply ditch the keyboards and stop
forcing the kids to learn such outdated tools.
Do you think that someone who can't type on a keyboard will be
able to use _Unix terminal emulation_ to create software?
Termux is a
cool project, but it doesn't target "billions of people". It
targets a
handful of experienced Linux users who want to fiddle with
Android.
I see, so an iPhone is way too simple, but a terminal is way too
complex? Is there any consistency to your complaints?
Nobody said Termux "targets" billions, only that it gave them
access. 99.99% of the people running PCs never bothered to write
a single line of code on them either. Termux gives a _lot_ more
people that same access, it's up to them if they decide to use it.
Of course, it can always be made even simpler and easier, but
this is likely the best you're going to get for free.
And yes, we do need computing power for new things. I agree
with that article on machine learning hype. But that doesn't
change the fact that without all the video cards modern machine
learning architectures would be impractical, whether or not you
consider them particularly useful or good.
I don't see why the hardware matters at all if the software use
it's put to is not useful or good.
Computing power was the enabler.
Yes, that was my initial point of this thread: the computing
power in your hand these days is much more powerful than the PC
ever was, because it's in billions' more hands and the mobile
chips are now just as fast.
On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 23:56:23 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 15:11:42 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 10:25:30 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
Some analysts have predicted that PC sales will plateau at
some point and if that's where we're at now then 30% drop in
shipments is not death of the market.
I see no reason why they would plateau, looks like wishful
thinking to me.
Might be, but so is trying to convince everyone your
predictions are correct so they will focus their work on the
issues important to you.
Not at all, because if my predictions are correct, this language
will disappear along with the PC platform it's built on. And I've
never suggested anybody work on anything "important to [me]," my
original post even stated that D may never do well on mobile.
In other words, this thread isn't about me or my work: it's a
warning about D surviving the coming PC collapse. I've opened an
escape hatch with the Android port, but it's up to D devs to take
it.
I think a large part of it is that PCs got fast enough for
most people about 7-10 years ago. So it was a combination of
mobile, and people no longer needing to get newer faster
machines. The upgrade cycle moved from "I need a newer faster
computer" to "I'll wait till my current system is worn out".
(For a lot of people anyway)
Sure, that's part of it, but that suggests that once
smartphones reach that performance threshold, they will
replace PCs altogether. I think we've reached that threshold
now.
If it was just about performance, but it's not.
Of course, it's not just about performance but once that
threshold is crossed, you can start doing everything else, like
adding the multi-window interfaces that the mobile devices I
linked initially have.
And just because there's been a trend for 5 or 6 years
doesnt mean it will continue so inevitably.
Sure, but these trends almost never reverse. ;)
It doesnt need to reverse for "the PC is dead" to be false.
Plateaus almost never happen, it's not the natural order of
things.
OK the market stabilises.
I don't see how you changing the word you used changes anything
about the underlying phenomenon: that doesn't happen.
Because for about £300 you can get an intel NUC system with
120GB SSD, which is more powerful and more upgradeable than
your £700 mobile device. And some people still want that. And
because most people have more than one TV, some have multiple
phones, phones and tablets, and desktops, and multiple games
consoles. And they still use them all in different situations.
That's more on the high end, where people use many devices. On
the low- to mid-end of the market, where most of the sales
happen, people are happy to buy fewer devices that get the job
done.
Most households have more devices than ever before, and
hardware is only getting cheaper. The idea that people will
have to choose just one device is plainly wrong.
You need to get out in the world a bit more. The majority of
smartphones these days are bought in emerging markets where
_nobody in their home has ever owned a PC or used the internet_.
I've talked to these working stiffs in developing markets, you
clearly haven't.
They're not about to spend $200-400 on a PC when they could
barely afford the one $100-200 smartphone in their home now. But
they might buy a $50-100 laptop shell like the one in the youtube
video I linked in my initial post, attach it to their Android
smartphone, and get some kind of basic work or learning done with
a traditional multi-window interface, which has been built into
all Android devices since 7.0.
I find it strange that you think the PC won't also be rolled
up by mobile like this.
Can you put a 3GB hard drive in your phone?
Why would I ever want to do this when I noted my phone has 128
GBs of space? ;) If you mean 3 _TB_, yes, I simply attach my slim
1 TB external drive and back up whatever I want over USB 3.0.
Or a high end graphics card?
Smartphones come with very powerful graphics cards these days,
plenty powerful enough to drive lots of graphic loads.
Or a soundcard with balanced outputs?
Some phones come with high-end DACs and the like, or you could
always attach something externally if you really needed to.
There are even high-end, movie-level camera systems being built
around smartphones now:
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/8/1/17639752/red-holographic-hydrogen-one-phone-fcc-approval
Yes you can bring up examples of people who made mistakes
predicting the future but that works both ways. You're just
as guilty of seeing a two points and drawing a straight
line though them.
Except none of these examples or my own prediction are based
on simple extrapolation between data points. Rather, we're
analyzing the underlying technical details and capabilities
and coming to different conclusions about whether the status
quo is likely to remain. So I don't think any of us are
"guilty" of your charge.
Of course you are, you're making predictions and assuming the
trends will continue, you assume the technical details are
all important. Im saying they are only part of it, that
people have requirements / preferences outside of how
powerful the device is. Lots of people were predicting ebooks
would kill the real book market a few years back, turns out
people still prefer to have an actual paper book to read,
ebooks peaked a few years ago and real books have been in
growth ever since. That was people seeing a trend and
assuming it would continue just like you are.
No, print is pretty much dead, it's just hard to track because
so many ebooks have gone indie now:
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/traditional-publishers-ebook-sales-drop-indie-authors-amazon-take-off/
What are these magical "requirements/preferences" that you
cannot name, that you believe will keep print alive? That will
be really funny. :)
You obviously didn't research thoroughly enough, the site that
was the source for the geekwire article shows quite clearly
that print books still outsell ebooks almost twice over.
http://authorearnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slide29.jpg
And how does that contradict anything I said? _You_ said that
ebooks have peaked while print keeps growing, whereas the article
I linked and this guy's data show ebooks growing and print
continuing to decline.
I never said ebook sales had passed print yet, only linked to
that article saying that it's hard to measure now but it's likely
print is still declining, and that print is effectively dead, as
it's only going to keep declining into irrelevance.
and yes that's with indie published books included.
Another interesting thing from that report was the average
price of indie ebooks was $2.95
http://authorearnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slide26.jpg
So even selling ebooks for peanuts cant catch them up.
They aren't selling them for "peanuts," they've simply stripped
out a bunch of legacy costs like paper, editors, publishers, and
the like. The reason authors still prefer indie ebooks is they
get more money per book even at that lower price, as the rest of
the supply chain and distribution had squeezed them down to only
5-15% of the much higher print price.
Anyway, ebooks are a dumb format, it's the LaserDisc of
publishing. What killed VHS was the DVD, ie it will be blogs and
other more interactive content that kills off print, not simply
slapping the same outdated, static format online as an "ebook."
On Monday, 17 September 2018 at 06:23:27 UTC, Gambler wrote:
On 9/15/2018 11:25 AM, Joakim wrote:
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. :)
Sure. Xerox production department sabotaged the initial release
of Alto, because they were invested in "smart" typewriters. But
I don't think this is a valid analogy.
It's more valid than yours, considering it was the typewriter
makers who got scared. ;)
Here is mine. PCs are like books, while tablets and phones are
like TV. TV is a more modern medium, but it's highly
centralized and strips the audience of control. A successful TV
program usually reaches more people than a book, but television
has much higher barrier of entry for creators. Moreover, while
it is theoretically possible to learn something by watching TV,
in practice it's oriented towards "news" and entertainment and
_this matters_.
So should we celebrate dwindling books sales and multi-million
ratings of some morning show simply because the show makes a
lot of money? Should we encourage underdeveloped countries
"skip" books and move "directly" to TV?
This is quite a dumb argument, because mobile has a lot more
similar with PCs than it does with TV. There are some superficial
similarities, such as centralized app stores and how many people
watch stupid youtube videos, but tons of people were whiling away
their time surfing the web on a PC long before mobile ever came
along.
You do realize that microcomputers like the Macintosh and the PC
were once the underpowered toys, the "TV" in your silly analogy?
Here's an interesting comment from below the Ken Olsen post I
linked earlier:
"I worked at DEC in an engineering group during the mid-1980s.
Someone brought in an early Macintosh and I recall talking to a
colleague who was fiddling with MacPaint at the time. I asked
what language compilers it had and was told there were none. I
asked about database packages and got a similar answer. At that
point I dismissed it as an expensive toy, not a “serious”
computer. After all, I was working with minis and mainframes that
cost thousands, if not millions of dollars, and that were used by
dozens and even hundreds of people.
In those days DEC was the second largest computer company in the
world, and our sights were set on IBM, still ten times our size.
It was hard to see these little eight- and sixteen-bit machines
as any kind of serious threat. Of course with the
benefit of 20-20 hindsight it’s easy to see their inevitable
domination of the computing industry as they grew cheaper and
more powerful."
Guess who else is making laughable complaints about compilers not
being available on the first iPhone today? You guys are ignorant
of some fairly recent history here, this has all happened before
and history is just repeating itself, with mobile supplanting the
PC this time around.
