I think the phenomenal growth of the desktop, year-over-year, is dead.
I think a lot of adults, teens and kids who keyboard all day are going
to use voice, gestures and touch to surf, watch cat videos, tweet,
facebook (yes, it's been verbized), read ebooks, buy stuff on Amazon,
etc. The era of desktop computers for home is going to dwindle. Gamers
will still want souped-up boxes. A lot of travelling workers can use
tablets. A lot of non-intensive data entry (checking off items on a
list) are going to move from clipboards and printouts and laptops and
specialty handhelds to tablets.
Pads are going to replace a LOT of machines over the next decade. I'm
guessing Apple, Android, W-eight, Win, Place and Show, but it's a
horse race, so you never can tell...
It's not the same as saying "desktops and keyboards are dead". Dead is what
Edison wax cylinder recordings and dial telephones (but not POTS phone
service) are.
Real keyboards that provide tactile feedback and allow touch typing are,
and always will be, irreplaceable for many types of data entry.
Desktops are cheaper, faster, last longer and are easier to maintain than
laptops--and cannot be lost on the bus or dropped into toilets--and will
therefore be essential to the budgets of many organizations.
They will never be "dead". They won't be universal, but they will be much
more common for business productivity purposes than, say, vinyl LPs are for
music reproduction purposes are.
And just as is now occurring with vinyl, which was almost killed off by
CDs, eventually a lot of people who mindlessly rushed to cell phones, pads
and laptops and expected those devices to provide a quality platform for
business purposes will return to the desktop because it is BETTER than
those crappy toys.
Actually, I think it was something like 15 years ago when I first said,
"Computers, being general purpose devices, are irreducibly complex. If your
mind is not also complex, you are unsuited to use a computer, and would be
better off with several separate digital devices to play your music, watch
your TV, determine the time of day, send your email, and surf your internet."
But the diversification of increasingly specialized digital devices will
not kill off the general purpose desktop. And therefore the desktop
computer and tactile keyboard are not now, and never will be, dead. And any
hardware vendor who expects to make a living by serving the business world
(as opposed to the home market) and bets on the desktop and keyboard being
dead is going to lose her shirt.
And no decaf, ever. Might as well drink camomille tea.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
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