<story><title>Coding Horror - Welcome to the Post PC Era</title><url>http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/welcome-to-the-post-pc-era.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>julian37</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It&apos;s not a versus, it&apos;s a peaceful cohabitation, only some evangelist and/or journalists want to push us to believe there&apos;s a war but that&apos;s really not true.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t call it a war, but Atwood (who, by the way, is neither an evangelist nor a journalist with an agenda) makes the point that tablets are about to take over large shares of the PC market.  And my point was that this way, people (non-hackers) get even further removed from the &quot;close to the metal&quot; experience that I and others in my generation used to have.&lt;p&gt;With all respect, I think you and dozens of other posters in this thread are missing the point by &quot;defending&quot; the notebook and saying it won&apos;t get fully replaced.  Of course it won&apos;t, but that&apos;s not an interesting question.  The interesting question, in my mind, is: how can we avoid the TV-ization of computing?  How can we make sure future generations don&apos;t equate a computer with a consumption device rather than a productive device?  How can we make sure they can find out that this &quot;magical device&quot; isn&apos;t actually driven by fairy dust?  Whether or not some share of the population uses notebooks, when the default for the millions and billions of non-hackers out there is to use a tablet, doesn&apos;t matter very much at that point.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately there are initiatives like the Raspberry Pi.  It&apos;s telling that one of the main initiators of that project, David Braben, is also an old-school guy who grew up with computers in the 80s.  Or so I&apos;m guessing -- at any rate, he wrote some of my favorite 80s games, Elite and later Frontier.  But I fear that if you plot the Raspberry&apos;s sales curve into Atwood&apos;s graph it won&apos;t look anything like the iPad.</text></item><item><author>victork2</author><text>I think the whole question Tablet vs Computer is pretty dumb in the first place. It&apos;s not a versus, it&apos;s a peaceful cohabitation, only some evangelist and/or journalists want to push us to believe there&apos;s a war but that&apos;s really not true.&lt;p&gt;Tablet and PC simply correspond to two totally different use of media. A tablet is consumption centered whereas the PC is able to produce complex goods and services than then can be consumed by a tablet. Will the tablet push away PC usage to very low level in some areas? Probably! Will it replace a PC for every usage ? Are you kidding me: Development, 3D Effect, Advanced Audio Processing, Advanced Photo processing. That&apos;s just as stupid as saying that photoshop is dead because Instagram can do sepia...&lt;p&gt;PS: I will absolutely never buy a tablet, I fight every day to stay on the creator side of society, with a tablet I would just give up!</text></item><item><author>julian37</author><text>I think Atwood is right, PCs are on their way out simply because with tablets there is so much less that can go wrong.  He mentions tech support in the article: THAT is why they will win, regardless of whether or not they will fully replace PCs, or whether or not they are better suited to writing emails.  Millions of people who can&apos;t be bothered with anti-virus updates and the like will just find it a much more pleasant experience: &quot;it just works&quot; indeed.&lt;p&gt;(I&apos;m a Mac user and I find myself spending a lot less time on tech support type issues than back in the day when I was using Linux and Windows, still it&apos;s hard to deny that iPads are currently the epitome of simplicity, compared to their power.)&lt;p&gt;And that&apos;s what I&apos;m worried about: &quot;No user serviceable parts inside&quot;.  I&apos;m concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow&apos;s kids&apos; experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20.&lt;p&gt;Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly.  You turn it on, it&apos;s on.  You put in a diskette -- well, it didn&apos;t load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, and once the game started, it was started.  Things were simple and worked, for the most part, quite well.  No tech support needed.  But the BASIC shell was there right at your fingertips -- hell, the manual came with example BASIC programs.&lt;p&gt;Quibbling over the merits of BASIC aside, it was a simple experience but it was also tremendously open.&lt;p&gt;Things got much more complicated since then; network connectivity in particular introduced previously unknown threats to users, so of course this is a simplified comparison.  Still, I wonder, is giving up the freedom to tinker with the system really the price tomorrow&apos;s consumers will have to pay in order to buy simplicity?&lt;p&gt;And if you&apos;re thinking about replying with links to IDEs running on the iPad: no, something that runs in the cloud and has no direct access whatsoever to the internals of the machine does not qualify as a modern-day replacement for this experience, no matter how sophisticated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>victork2</author><text>Don&apos;t worry, you&apos;re full of respect ;).&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s maybe a philosophical question but who &lt;i&gt;doesn&apos;t&lt;/i&gt; have an agenda? I mean when you buy a device, don&apos;t you want to convince the other that you haven&apos;t bought a stupid toy or a useless object? Everybody has an agenda, even someone just buy an iPad he has incentives to convince that his device is great, the only ones who don&apos;t have an agenda are the ones who genuinely don&apos;t care.&lt;p&gt;I have an agenda, I am trying to push people to see computers as something else that a tool to consume media/ slack around. But from the current design of tablets, especially Apple&apos;s iOs Devices it&apos;s getting really hard to see something else than a &quot;pure-consumption&quot; product.&lt;p&gt;To continue on the philosophical level, I think humans deep down aspire to do very little while receiving a lot of pleasure. The most productive of us have managed to channel this desire towards building systems that, when they will be working, will provide us with a lot of rewards with little additional work (the startup!). In a way the self-driven programmers have achieved a Post-Slacker era in their mind and god knows how hard it is to keep that up. The iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch/Android Phones are enabler of the slacktivist part in everyone of us, and that&apos;s one of the big reasons of their success.&lt;p&gt;Sure Raspberry Pi is great but, again, it&apos;s in the realm of post-slacktivism and thus it will probably NEVER be popular. It doesn&apos;t mean it won&apos;t be successful.&lt;p&gt;I hope this comment will find interested minds!</text></comment>
<story><title>Coding Horror - Welcome to the Post PC Era</title><url>http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/welcome-to-the-post-pc-era.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>julian37</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It&apos;s not a versus, it&apos;s a peaceful cohabitation, only some evangelist and/or journalists want to push us to believe there&apos;s a war but that&apos;s really not true.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t call it a war, but Atwood (who, by the way, is neither an evangelist nor a journalist with an agenda) makes the point that tablets are about to take over large shares of the PC market.  And my point was that this way, people (non-hackers) get even further removed from the &quot;close to the metal&quot; experience that I and others in my generation used to have.&lt;p&gt;With all respect, I think you and dozens of other posters in this thread are missing the point by &quot;defending&quot; the notebook and saying it won&apos;t get fully replaced.  Of course it won&apos;t, but that&apos;s not an interesting question.  The interesting question, in my mind, is: how can we avoid the TV-ization of computing?  How can we make sure future generations don&apos;t equate a computer with a consumption device rather than a productive device?  How can we make sure they can find out that this &quot;magical device&quot; isn&apos;t actually driven by fairy dust?  Whether or not some share of the population uses notebooks, when the default for the millions and billions of non-hackers out there is to use a tablet, doesn&apos;t matter very much at that point.&lt;p&gt;Fortunately there are initiatives like the Raspberry Pi.  It&apos;s telling that one of the main initiators of that project, David Braben, is also an old-school guy who grew up with computers in the 80s.  Or so I&apos;m guessing -- at any rate, he wrote some of my favorite 80s games, Elite and later Frontier.  But I fear that if you plot the Raspberry&apos;s sales curve into Atwood&apos;s graph it won&apos;t look anything like the iPad.</text></item><item><author>victork2</author><text>I think the whole question Tablet vs Computer is pretty dumb in the first place. It&apos;s not a versus, it&apos;s a peaceful cohabitation, only some evangelist and/or journalists want to push us to believe there&apos;s a war but that&apos;s really not true.&lt;p&gt;Tablet and PC simply correspond to two totally different use of media. A tablet is consumption centered whereas the PC is able to produce complex goods and services than then can be consumed by a tablet. Will the tablet push away PC usage to very low level in some areas? Probably! Will it replace a PC for every usage ? Are you kidding me: Development, 3D Effect, Advanced Audio Processing, Advanced Photo processing. That&apos;s just as stupid as saying that photoshop is dead because Instagram can do sepia...&lt;p&gt;PS: I will absolutely never buy a tablet, I fight every day to stay on the creator side of society, with a tablet I would just give up!</text></item><item><author>julian37</author><text>I think Atwood is right, PCs are on their way out simply because with tablets there is so much less that can go wrong.  He mentions tech support in the article: THAT is why they will win, regardless of whether or not they will fully replace PCs, or whether or not they are better suited to writing emails.  Millions of people who can&apos;t be bothered with anti-virus updates and the like will just find it a much more pleasant experience: &quot;it just works&quot; indeed.&lt;p&gt;(I&apos;m a Mac user and I find myself spending a lot less time on tech support type issues than back in the day when I was using Linux and Windows, still it&apos;s hard to deny that iPads are currently the epitome of simplicity, compared to their power.)&lt;p&gt;And that&apos;s what I&apos;m worried about: &quot;No user serviceable parts inside&quot;.  I&apos;m concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow&apos;s kids&apos; experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20.&lt;p&gt;Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly.  You turn it on, it&apos;s on.  You put in a diskette -- well, it didn&apos;t load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, and once the game started, it was started.  Things were simple and worked, for the most part, quite well.  No tech support needed.  But the BASIC shell was there right at your fingertips -- hell, the manual came with example BASIC programs.&lt;p&gt;Quibbling over the merits of BASIC aside, it was a simple experience but it was also tremendously open.&lt;p&gt;Things got much more complicated since then; network connectivity in particular introduced previously unknown threats to users, so of course this is a simplified comparison.  Still, I wonder, is giving up the freedom to tinker with the system really the price tomorrow&apos;s consumers will have to pay in order to buy simplicity?&lt;p&gt;And if you&apos;re thinking about replying with links to IDEs running on the iPad: no, something that runs in the cloud and has no direct access whatsoever to the internals of the machine does not qualify as a modern-day replacement for this experience, no matter how sophisticated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nikatwork</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I wouldn&apos;t call it a war, but Atwood ... makes the point that tablets are about to take over large shares of the PC market.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;No he doesn&apos;t. He says that everyone now owns a PC, so innovation is moving to post-pc devices.&lt;p&gt;I think the term &quot;post-pc&quot; causes many geeks to project a vast ethical struggle onto the tablet market. Chillax, game consoles didn&apos;t kill off programming, this is no different.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer the term &quot;portable device&quot; but I guess that&apos;s not as link-baity.</text></comment>