<i>Why no angry nerds?</i><p>Because nerds are still using their PCs to create mobile and web-based software. The PC may (just may) be dead for the hordes of average consumers out there, but it'll never be dead for those people creating things -- that is, until you can adequately create a mobile or web application on an iPad/iPhone.<p>Does anyone truly believe that scores of software developers writing financial software for banks are going to trade in their PC to type on an iOS device? Don't bet money on that (at least for the short-term).
I saw in the supermarket the other day a group of parents buying for their young child a so-called "mini-laptop" that costs $100 and probably only knows to do addition, multiplications and some basic word-games on a cheap LCD screen. And I realized that for them, and for a large portion of the end-users, lack of education in IT makes it very difficult for them to see the difference between the said laptop and a regular PC device.<p>Apple realized first what this lack of knowledge can do: the ability to lock-in a product so that it runs only your AppStore's apps is not only good for the high-end of the market that is willing to sacrifice freedom in the name of usability and beautiful design, but rather more importantly it's good for the ignorant masses that don't even realize this fact when they buy the product just because it's fashionable to do so.
I'm optimistic for several reasons:<p>1) Less need for IT support for family and friends;<p>2) I'm well-served with the computers I assemble and purchase, and even if mainstream operating systems continue their slide towards not serving my needs well (from my vantage point looking at OS X Lion and Windows 8), I am confident that there will be solutions out there, possibly increasingly exemplified by Linux, that facilitate web development and mundane user empowerment;<p>3) The web has become the democratic platform for publishing interactive content to the masses, which no vendor would dare attempt to exert control over.<p>Now, the real question is who's going to capitalize on this amusingly-phrased headline and come out with the Angry Nerds mobile game, where you launch a variety of nerds at iPads hidden in the temporary safety of their elaborate Apple Stores? Let's see, there's the fat, bearded nerd, the pale, skinny, tall one, the kid with glasses, the token girl nerd with freckles and glasses, and the $1.99 in-game purchase Darth Vader helmet nerd.<p>[Edit]<p>Looks like I wasn't the first one to think along these lines:<p><a href="http://www.atlassian.com/en/angrynerds" rel="nofollow">http://www.atlassian.com/en/angrynerds</a><p>[/Edit]
> <i>The iPhone restricts outside code, but developers could still, in many cases, manage to offer functionality through a website accessible through the Safari browser. Few developers do, and there’s work to be done to ferret out what separates the rule from the exception.</i><p>I don't want to be paranoid, but I feel like what Apple has done is brilliantly nefarious. They've given developers an offer they can't refuse: for 30% we'll sell your software frictionlessly. Sure you are giving up control, but how much does requiring a payment form and non-standard, non-obvious, potentially painful installation process cost an indie developer. 30% is always far less than the losses of a traditional website sales funnel, potentially by 2 orders of magnitude. The App Store simply <i>sells more software</i>.<p>Of course it has corrosive effects on the developer community in that prices are driven down (maybe not as much as volume increases, but still) and control is forked over the Apple. But what can developers do? It's a game theory problem. If everyone refuses to play Apple's game then maybe developers and innovation win, but if one breaks the line they stand to make a fortune.<p>I'm really not looking forward to the day when Macs go App Store only. If that happens it will probably mean I have to switch to Linux. It saddens me that the future of computing may be completely locked down, but it's hard to argue against it if for no other reason than it offers the most promise for actually making users safe as malware proliferates and becomes more sophisticated. Part of me thinks the free software and Internet as we know them today can not last, and if it wasn't the App Store it would be some other powerful interest eroding our digital freedom in the name of profit or control. This line of thought makes me think that maybe RMS is not such an extremist after all, but merely an equal counterbalance to the forces of power and greed shaping out future.
People have been saying the PC is dead just about as long as I've been Personal Computing.<p>The role of the PC may be changing, but that is far from meaning that it's dead.
There are definitely angry nerds out there but they are in a position of arguing against a better user experience for the vast majority of people who don't want to have malware, a broken OS, their personal data stolen, etc. They should be trying to find less restrictive solutions that provide the same benefits. Otherwise the companies that are moving forward with making a better end user experience are going to win in the long run.
I'm not as quick to discount the point as the others here,<p>Look at it this way, assume in the not so distant future you can do it all on the tablet as opposed to the desktop and no longer nead desktops, having them die a slow, slow death: Counter-Strike, WoW, Development (Github text editing, Cloud9 IDE,... etc), word processing, browsing, you get the idea.<p>But instead, the applications are vetted and controlled by the tablet OS maker. Now instead of law makers trying to get every search engine to block something, or tear-down registars all over the world, they just go to tablet OS maker 1 and 2 and have them take down access to website/app. No more website/app for anyone as desktops are dead and the tablet is so locked to shit you can't change a thing (secure boot anyone?)<p>Now, I'm not sure death is as current as suggested, but I see the trend the blog post is referring too.
People don't use PCs as general purpose platforms anymore, anyway. I can code anywhere that there's a unix environment - or a connection to AWS. And people can use my software anywhere there's a browser.
The ability to build and run .exe files hasn't really been a major enabler of geekery since, I dunno, Napster, I guess wa s the last time.
The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the PC, or perhaps that which we call a rose by any other name will smell just as sweet. I don't see how a tablet is any different from a PC except for form factor, especially when they catch up with PCs in terms of general utility.
Last time the PC was dead, it was because of the gaming consoles. All the games are there, web browsers too.. why would anyone want a PC? That was half a decade ago and PCs are still here.
instead of 1 single core single cpu PC shared with my wife, we now have (counting only ours, not company issued laptop and 2 Mac desktops) 3 PCs (1 desktop type and 2 are server dual quad cores opterons (and 1 old dual dual core)), 2 laptops and 1 netbook, and 3 iOS devices. And i'm looking to get soon new SB 2[5|6|7]00K (or may be even indulge with 3930 - it is Christmas time :) + mobo + pile of DDR3 to upgrade the desktop. I'm a happy nerd as RAM/CPU/HDD and big LCDs are so cheap these days.<p>Edit: just today a new store opening nearby got several cargo pallets of new Dell's PC based hardware (POS and pure PC).<p>In the next few years 5+ billions of people will get their first computing device (and the rest 2 bilions - their first 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... computing device). The vast majority of this growth will not be a PC. That's clear. Yet this growth in mobile devices will "synergize" an unprecedented growth in PC/server hardware dwarfing whatever we've seen so far.
A lot of people here are quick to discount the title "The PC is dead", but I think the actual meat of what he was getting at merits consideration - walled gardens are a lot more popular today than they used to be. No doubt, there are certain innovations that we may never see because of this. For example, what if there's a Mac developer out there who has ideas for a better browser than Safari. You're never going to see it, because Apple won't let you. Today, he has the option of bringing it to PC, but that might be too big of a barrier for him to jump if he's one of those guys who won't buy one.<p>Also, its not too hard to imagine a day when Microsoft follows Apple and makes their own marketplace. Probably won't be anytime soon, but it would be naive to say it could never ever happen. The main thing stopping them is probably the fact that they're still the big dog and can't get away with doing what Apple does. People judge them differently. In a few more years though, I could see them pointing at what Apple does and saying, "There's precedent here. Let's go for it." Some people would jump ship and move onto Linux, and say "I still have freedom" but what about your mom and dad who will keep buying the Walmart special every Black Friday? As an indie developer these things are limiting what you can do.<p>I think the solution here is to take a look at what people like about these marketplaces - a convenient way to find apps, and duplicate it - without the bad stuff. Make a marketplace and don't limit what goes on it. Also, make less profit for yourself than what your competitor (Google and/or Apple) makes. The toughest thing is traction. Getting it in front of eyes as something to use instead of the other one. Get past that, and you're set. Am I missing anything? Has this been done and I just don't know about it?
The scary part is when parents who just need a consumption device only buy a tablet. How many of you would've been able to program at a young age if your parents didn't buy the family PC.
It will probably make me look pathetic (angry nerd maybe), but I don't have a tablet and I don't use much my smartphone, if not for calling people.<p>I found these devices to be very uncomfortable for my tipical usage. The only good addon I've got in my smartphone was the GPS navigation.<p>I could never browse the internet on a smartphone and I could never look at a tablet more than 30mins while also being comfortable in using it.<p>And if I had to plug in into a tablet a standard keyboard and a nicer monitor to make it "usable", I would rather buy some mini PC.
I remember when a friend of mine got his first i-pad. We're both developers and he said he could do some basic editing with one of the included apps. First thing I thought was, "Oh yeah, I'm going to write code on a 7" screen as opposed to my 23" monitor."<p>The PC isn't dead and it won't be for a long time. Although there are a lot of lines being blurred between devices (tablets vs. smartphones vs. laptops), there's still a TON of people working at large corporations who you'll have to pry their PC's out of their cold, dead hands.
> Why no angry nerds?
Mostly because very few people really believe the PC is actually dead.<p>Mobile is the big wave, yet I don't know anyone who says "I have a phone, I sure don't need a desktop/laptop."<p>The closest possible thing is a tablet. Yet, the most common refrain about any tablet to do that I've heard is "well, it doesn't do this" or "it doesn't do that". On the flip side, I've yet to hear anyone state that they wished they didn't own a PC, since their tablet does everything they need.
I was just looking at building a new computer, I was contemplating a dual-cpu setup for using vm's, hoping it would be easy to run copies of various OS's on one box and use all the different streaming technologies for tv output.<p>Looks like about $2k or more.<p>While it would be great to be able to coordinate all the streaming media using my phone as a remote, my phone doesn't do most of the 'computing' tasks I like, and reading HN on a 4" screen is handy, but not optimal.<p>I think his point is exactly that if I want everything to work, I need an Apple and a Windows machine running (nevermind whether it's legal to run Apple in a VM, I'm under the impression they don't want you to, but if I purchase a copy of OSX, it's not clear I wouldn't have the right), and maybe a Chrome machine, because they DON'T WORK TOGETHER BY ARBITRARY RESTRICTIONS.<p>I think there is another guy that likes to rant about this walled garden approach. Personally, I've been trying to use iTunes on a windows box to play to an apple tv recently and it is sucking. Music plays fine from an iPhone. So now, my wife is all ready to pay the Apple Tax for a new computer. To just get music to play. They fact that apple makes a cool device is fine, the fact they don't want to play nice with any of my other equipment makes me loathe to buy a new one, but apparently I'm not with the mainstream on this one. But count me as one of the angry nerds.
Why does Sophos block this site? This is the first time in 3 years that I have seen this warning:<p>High Risk Website Blocked<p><pre><code> Location: futureoftheinternet.org/the-pc-is-dead-why-no-angry-nerds
Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/ObfJS-CB has been found on this website.</code></pre>
For any writers who want to talk about how the PC is dead: Try guesstimating the number of people who will use a PC on a given day, then look at how many people read your blog/newspaper/magazine in a given YEAR. (Hint: Not even HuffPo will win this one.)
Not sure what it means for a particular technology to "die". A lot of "dead" technologies are "alive" and kicking in the Enterprise world. Perhaps "undead" is the word you're looking for...
Wow, I've been blinded. I have never equated what Apple is doing with the app-store/"taxing" and the MS IE anti-trust case.<p>The empowerment of the censor. Scary words.
Alarmist fluff.<p><i>And every app sold for the iPhone would have 30 percent of its price (and later, that of its “in-app purchases”) go to Apple. Famously proprietary Microsoft never dared to extract a tax on every piece of software written by others for Windows—perhaps because, in the absence of consistent Internet access in the 1990s through which to manage purchases and licenses, there’d be no realistic way to make it happen.</i><p>Microsoft never provided a complete distribution channel for software, either.<p>Complying with Apple requirements and limitations is annoying. However, the consumer gets reasonably vetted software, and the developer gets a single method of distribution.<p>What's the complaint, again?