The PC is Dead

[SameSelf]

i'll simply say the PC is so dead that i'm down to 5 of them. The tablet is collecting dust in a corner, which reminds me I should probably recharge it so I can click some "Like" buttons on Facebook.

Personal use cases add very little to the discussion and more often are reminiscent of the D-K effect.

[sum_guy]

Personal use cases don't add to the discussion, that's very interesting, I didn't realize you spoke for an entire industry. Has Intel, AMD or any other major manufacturer asked for your opinion, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no. D-K

[leghorn]

I will attribute some weight to these pronouncements when tablets/phones can:

[,,,]

Witness: at home 8 years ago, I had (in our household) 1 desktop PC and 2 laptop PCs and 4 non-smart phones and 1 CRT TV. Now, I have 2 desktop PCs, 2 mini PCs, 1 server PC, 1 htpc, 2 laptops, 3 tablets, 4 smart phones, and 2 Smart LED 3DTVs. And a partridge in a pear tree. And a hard boiled egg!

Scott

Make that two hard boiled eggs

[Cornucopia]

Somebody at least got the joke!

Scott

[pandy]

The problem is in power source - there is no way (yet) to provide power with acceptable reliability over time to portable devices...
Maybe fuel cells in future...

[SameSelf]

If I was truly interested in what sort of PC anyone had, I could just click on their forum profile. But one potential question is, with the release of the i5 6600 and i7 6700, who here is going to upgrade from SB or IB? I would be interested in the reasons. I am going to go out on a limb and say very few will though. Having to wait 5 or more generations to justify an upgrade is not good for the desktop market.

[aedipuss]

why would anyone listen to the spew from cook/apple? 3 years ago he criticized the surface for for having a kickstand, keyboard and a dock and called it compromised and confusing. look what they "invented" now an ipad pro with a kickstand and keyboard. what a bunch of clowns.

[_Al_]

As of now, fixed station, everyone buys cheaper version, so if desktop is cheaper, because it is not cramped, destined specifically, has more limitation, besides mobility.

Then there is: How small it can get. With today's technology and establishment you need certain size for power source and cooling. I'm afraid we cannot jump ahead 20-30 years and guess, because it can change radically, or not, or turn into other direction , there is a lots of reasons, just look in the past.

Some past examples,
One hundred years ago there was a guy named Frank Shuman showing working solar power plant in Egypt. Everything was nice and dandy but war and establishing Oil industry destroyed any possible following development. So 20 years after things looked rapidly different.

In movies, in the past , sci-fi movies they completely ignored camera monitoring systems devices from for example party landing unit because there was nothing like that in the present. They communicated and described things by audio what was happening. Simply there were no small digital devices available (camera on chest or helmet), only big once, analog ones, so old movies did not use that technology or there was no vision for that, the only thing they could grasp is big monitor somewhere and a camera somewhere, but they could not jump into mobility and size of those things. Digital technology was not there.

It depends also on establishment. There is no problem to have two SIMM card slots in the phone for example, you have different SIMM card for different state you stay at the moment using local features for mobile phone payments, not physically needing to change that SIMM card (if there is a right phone and not locked like in USA with plan purchase). What if you have one phone and then using it USA (summer) and Mexico (winter), I'm not Mexican, just it popped on my mind. Perfectly doable but business establishment would not allow it. It is crippled because of profit look-ahead or for whatever reason. I told that to my wife because seeing it in Europe, and she answered why would you need that, that is a nonsense. Just different mind set and establishment. I do not need that so why would that exist. So what profit look-ahead would be in 30 years? Would there be a monopoly? Resources would still be here plentiful? I see an equation between small, cramped device and product that is disposable. Resources widely available? For 10 billion of people? New technology?

As a matter of the fact it could be the exact opposite in 30 years actually, processing units will be much, much bigger because new quantum processing technology (or whatever) and corresponding boxes need to be bigger as well because of cooling demands.

[SameSelf]

meh, it should be blandly obvious to most that reality is much more imaginative than sf movies, of all things. For example, as the recent drone attack on ISIS demonstrates, the constant notion put forth that future alien spaceships would be piloted by the aliens versus a sentient AI is just, well, indicative of how limited the vision of directors is. So, using them as some sort of benchmark on our ability to guess the future is "pretty silly" (to borrow an earlier poster's language).

Also, I assume you mean SIM, as in Subscriber Identity Module, card, not SIMM, or Single Inline Memory Module. But then you are not alone. Many suffer from PCMCIA, People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.

[_Al_]

definition of silly seems to be to predict what is going to be in 30 years, ... it almost exclusively takes weird turns ... it could really go into visions that are considered not likely today ... it diversifies at least, so that powerful desktop still would be around but not many people would be able to get it for whatever reason, security is one of them for example, just looking what is happening and at what speed around us... one can still have plenty of disposable , limited power, limited interface design gadget only allowed ... I know you might still say, that is silly, but as I said there are always those weird turns ahead ...

yes I ment SIM card, not sure why I had it memorized with double M

[SameSelf]

definition of silly seems to be to predict what is going to be in 30 years, ... it almost exclusively takes weird turns ... it could really go into visions that are considered not likely today ... it diversifies at least, so that powerful desktop still would be around but not many people would be able to get it for whatever reason, security is one of them for example, just looking what is happening and at what speed around us... one can still have plenty of disposable , limited power, limited interface design gadget only allowed ... I know you might still say, that is silly, but as I said there are always those weird turns ahead ...

yes I ment SIM card, not sure why I had it memorized with double M

Did you not catch my subtle assertion that airplanes will be piloted by semi-sentient AI's in 30 years? It is easy to call that silly because who knows what will happen in 30 years, but that is just passive aggressive forum posting.

[_Al_]

Is there anything at all allowed to discuss in this thread under your excellent moderate approach of being a moderator of this thread, except that no desktop would be around in 30 years?

[SameSelf]

So let's discuss. Let's talk about how Skylake is a very underwhelming, incremental update to Sandybridge. Or, perhaps you feel different? Let's talk about how many desktops you, or anyone you know, plan to buy in the next ten years. Or, here's a provocative question, when do you anticipate buying your last desktop? I will readily say, if I build a Skylake-E, I plan on it being my last.

[_Al_]

Yes I feel it differently, Skylake or Sandybridge has not much to do with this.

It is about price, ergonomics and what fashion dictates and mostly other stuff that you dismiss as a passive aggressive forum posting.

Oh, I see, subject change, no more desktop is dead perhaps, ...., ,, I do not have an interest in this at all, to be true, just buying whatever is cheap and powerful enough, comfortable, fashion is not an issue here though.

[El Heggunte]

Did you not catch my subtle assertion that airplanes will be piloted by semi-sentient AI's in 30 years?

Except that "(semi-)sentient A.I.s" is an oxymoron

'Artificial Intelligence' is a misnomer, to begin with. By the way,
'computer SCIENCE' and 'software ENGINEERING' are misnomers as well.

[Gurd99]

The future is truly going to be hideous, small compact powerful units with so many restrictions/red tape with huge amount of DRM & Big brother with so little privacy & excessive fees. There is a feedback loop the masses & the corporations, society just screwing it self over. Quality is being weeded out, who cares if it doesn't last more than 3years? as long as its compact and works within its warranty.

[hello_hello]

The demand that's apparently swinging from desktops to mobile devices.... is it some strange form of demand I'm not familiar with that causes sales to decrease?

Worldwide Tablet Market Continues to Decline; Vendor Landscape is Evolving, According to IDC
iPad Market Share Falls Below 25% as Tablet Market Continues to Decline
Why are people buying fewer tablets?

And Tim Cook is asking why we'd buy a PC rather than a tablet and declaring the PC dead?

So let's discuss. Let's talk about how Skylake is a very underwhelming, incremental update to Sandybridge. Or, perhaps you feel different? Let's talk about how many desktops you, or anyone you know, plan to buy in the next ten years. Or, here's a provocative question, when do you anticipate buying your last desktop? I will readily say, if I build a Skylake-E, I plan on it being my last.

It sounds just like it's always been. To this day I can remember looking forward to upgrading my Pentium 3 to a Pentium 4 and the chance to replace the old RAM with RAM faster and new, and the disappointment I felt when I realised the new PC didn't seem any different to the old one, which hadn't really seemed all that much faster than the one before.

[SameSelf]

If you have perused the numerous tech sites that have benchmarked Skylake, you will have perhaps noticed that much of the response from the techie/enthusiast community has been meh. It is not surprising since the consensus is that few applications/software are cpu bound these days. IOW, Sandybridge is plenty for most people. For example, if you are building a pimped out, gaming machine, save your money on cpu and invest in gpus. The only place really left where Skylake performance shines is when under loads that push the cpu. x264 encoding is one of those loads since its developers have spent so much time scaling the algorithms to make use of multi-cores. I am assuming x265 will also push the cpu hard, once fully developed. So, if you are one of the rare individuals who is truly cpu bound (hello, my fellow encoders) then one has to evaluate if even the desktop versions of Skylake are truly for you.

Taking just take one review site at face value for x264 encodes (cpu bound), here are the incremental gains across numerous Intel generations:

Core i7-2600K: 100%
Core i7-3770K: 114%
Core i7-4790K: 134%
Core i7-6700K: 109%*
(*Sorry, a comparable Broadwell doesn't exist. Also, these gains become embarrassingly small when benchmarking across non-cpu loading apps, so be advised what these numbers truly mean. Don't go quoting to your friends that Skylake is 9% faster than Haswell. It is not.)

Using these numbers above, the increase from Sandybridge to Skylake is 167%, that is 1.67x across four generations or 13.7% per gen. Now, let's look at how Haswell-E scales relative to SB:

Core i7-5960X: 253%

Yes, you read correctly, 2.53x faster than SB. Ain't that the bees knees?

I know $1,000 for a cpu seems like madness, but let's consider the following scenario. If I spend $1,000 on Haswell-E, how many generations, e.g. Kaby Lake, Cannonlake, etc., before the future 6700K catches up? Using the numbers above: roughly three gens. Now, several thoughts regarding this: 1) how far out is three gens? six years? eight years? ten? who knows? 2) incremental gains are showing signs of slowing which means three gens might become four or more 3) if you upgrade every other generation, you probably end up spending more than $1,000 on new cpus, mobos, and ram anyway, and lastly 4) justifying an upgrade from your Haswell-E to the prevailing desktop king would probably require at least two or more generations beyond the minimum of three.

Now, I am not advocating to rush out and build a Haswell-E box. In fact, I am personally waiting on Skylake-E which will sport more than 8 physical cores. But, if you are chomping on the bit to build a Skylake box, I would advise you to at least give the Extreme version some thought. It is the closest thing to future proofing yourself for three or more generations that I can think of.

[hello_hello]

Putting aside the fact you completely ignored the links showing tablet sales are slowing, I don't see how any of that shows the PC is dying. If anything, I've already agreed. There's not necessarily a massive increase in performance from one CPU generation to the next, but that's nothing new. It's exactly why I'm taking so long to replace my old Q9450 PC. It doesn't mean I want to replace it with a tablet or a laptop though. I know many people who own a portable device in addition to a PC, but the only person I know who owns a tablet and not a PC is my 80 year old mother who just wanted a portable MP3 player with a large screen.

When it comes to portable devices we've been told this device or that device can replace the PC for as long as I can remember, but are they really any different to PCs when it comes to performance increases from one generation to the next? Personally I still look at them as being somewhat of a novelty, but if as you say, most people are no longer CPU bound, how is the rate of performance increase for desktop CPUs even relevant?

The next PC you build, the Skylake-E you plan on being your last PC, is that because several years later you see yourself replacing it with a tablet, or simply because it'll still be fulfilling your requirements in several years? The next TV I buy could very well be my last. Well no.... I'm not that old yet... but I'd expect my next TV to last at least 10 years and I'm fairly sure that's not an indication the TV is dead.

[SameSelf]

First, the fact that you only know one person who owns a tablet and not a PC, says more about you than the market in general.

But since you are eager to bring your personal use case into this, I will bite, if only to make a point. The fact that you have yet to replace your 2008 era PC is a prime reason the desktop market is dying. Manufacturers need you replace your PC more often than that. I mean, what is it going to take for you to buy a new PC at this point? Who is going to kick the bucket the first? You or your PC? And even if it does die first, are you 100% certain that you will buy another? Why not replace it with a laptop if that is the best thing on the market when you finally do? It is very possible when that time comes, you will look around at what is offered in the desktop market and realize that it will be more of a compromise than not. The market is showing signs of heading in that direction. That is all I am saying.

Finally, my reasons for building a Skylake-E box are mine and mine only. I didn't offer up the above as evidence for or against the argument. Merely as an olive leaf to anyone considering a Skylake desktop build. Considering that you might be in that camp, you're welcome.

[hello_hello]

First, the fact that you only know one person who owns a tablet and not a PC, says more about you than the market in general.

I can't wait to learn what it says about me. Hopefully by next post you'll have come up with something to explain what that might be.

But since you are eager to bring your personal use case into this, I will bite, if only to make a point.

Have many times have you bought your own "my next PC will be my last" personal use case into it?
You've ignored links showing tablet sales are slowing while most opinion offered by others has been dismissed in the name of "personal use scenario" yet all you're offering is personal opinion yourself.... and some propaganda from Apple.

The fact that you have yet to replace your 2008 era PC is a prime reason the desktop market is dying. Manufacturers need you replace your PC more often than that..

There's statistics on that? How are PC manufacturers in a different position to TV, or washing machine, or air conditioner manufacturers etc? Assuming it's not possible to upgrade and replace the components in a PC, which obviously you can. I've got a 20 year old refrigerator in the garage but the manufacturer hasn't gone out of business as a result.

Is there a PC manufacturer producing every component of their PCs themselves? Where's the evidence the market for PC components is dead? You seem to be referring to PC manufacturers as though they buy a bunch of raw materials and output a completed PC with monitor, when in reality they mostly assemble PCs from components manufactured by others. There's certainly no evidence the PC is dead to be found when visiting my local PC shop. Last time I was there I had to wait over half an hour to be served. Even if every PC "manufacturer" left the business today, there's still an almost daunting array of cases and power supplies and motherboards and video cards etc to choose from to build your own, which I assume you've done before and plan on doing again and PC manufacturers haven't disappeared because of it.

I mean, what is it going to take for you to buy a new PC at this point? Who is going to kick the bucket the first? You or your PC? And even if it does die first, are you 100% certain that you will buy another? Why not replace it with a laptop if that is the best thing on the market when you finally do? It is very possible when that time comes, you will look around at what is offered in the desktop market and realize that it will be more of a compromise than not. The market is showing signs of heading in that direction. That is all I am saying.

Are you dismissing my earlier opinion as "personal use scenario" while at the same time asking me to predict my future personal use scenario to support your argument? And while completely ignoring my question regarding your own future personal use scenario and why your next PC build will be your last? Is the market heading in that direction for everyone else, but not you?
"Showing signs of heading in that direction" isn't all you were saying. That's almost a backpeddle given your thread title declared the PC dead and you predicted Skylake could be the last desktop refresh for a long time.
Sure, I know a couple of people who own laptops and not PCs but that's been an option for a long time. I used PCs owned by friends I lived with for a while when I was younger but the first PC I owned myself was a laptop and that was over 20 years ago. I'm not sure what's really changed. There's a larger array of portable devices to choose from but it could just as easily be argued that's more opportunity to buy one to supplement a PC rather than one to replace it.

Regardless of what manufacturers may prefer, I wonder how long it'll take before people start losing interest in spending hundreds of dollars on devices they want us to see as disposable and upgrading them year after year..... or maybe that's already happening, given the demand for tablets is slowing.

[SameSelf]

You are not the first in this thread to make me and my personal tastes part of the argument. Bottomline, I am mature enough to separate my personal actions from a wider argument. If I told you I preferred B&W versus color tv, do you really think I would use that as some evidence of the ascendancy of B&W over color tv? For the same reason, I could care less what you are anyone else's personal use case is. If I was looking for advice that would be a different story. But I am not searching for advice here. We are debating something that Tim Cook said. Bringing mine or your personal use case/tastes into the argument does nothing to advance the argument. Rather it just tends to derail the discussion. That is all I was saying about how it says more about you than the market in general. If you can't accept that than we shall just have to agree to disagree. However, I am more than happy to discuss my plans for my next build. But that is a different discussion and has no relevance here and is hardly backpedaling. As I said before, it was an olive leaf.

Now, I bit on your "personal use scenario" only because it aligns with one aspect of the market that is contributing to the decline. IOW, many people have PCs with no plans to upgrade. Look at the percentage of WinXP users there still are if you don't believe me. Microsoft, Intel, IT managers, and more are wringing their hands over what is it going to take to move these people off of XP onto a more modern OS. So, I am only mildly interested if only it helps to answer the question: what's it going to take? I have offered up my thoughts: that people see no need.

Finally, my thoughts aren't constrained to thinking about desktops versus just tablets. I have tried to say this before. I see this as desktops versus everything else even workstations.

[Cornucopia]

The adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is never more true in this context.

However, all parts have a limited lifespan, things WILL break. And, since the industry continues to move forward with new architectures, replacement parts will become rarer and rarer (e.g.: IDE HDDs, Firewire, certain RAM/CPU combinations). This (~forced obsolescence) is what drives a lot of consumers to upgrade. But the consumers won't put up with BS "replace it every 15 months" marketing mentality either. Then it's considered just a fad and wasteful. Consumers want value, and once they feel they have it, they want to milk it, unless there's something with much more value.

IMO, the industry just got too greedy to sustain itself at continually upwardly-spiraling levels that it used to expect, and it is now experiencing a realization that the market is maturing and they need to smarten up and have better long-term strategies.

Tim Cook? - He's just pandering to the shareholders to vaunt Apple's current vision. A bit of sour grapes going on there.

Will the PC (desktop/workstation) ever AGAIN become the top banana in the mix? No.
Will the PC (desktop/workstation) become extinct? No, not for a very long time (my lifetime at least).
Will the PC (desktop/workstation) still be a viable, profitable & R&D-worthy sector? Yes, for a while, but less and less so.

Scott

[usually_quiet]

Personally, I don't know how anyone who read the article about Cook and Apple's new products can draw the conclusion that in Cook's mind, laptops are not PCs. Cook actually says that both can be replaced with a tablet in most cases.

“I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?”, asks Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, who has just flown into Britain for the launch of the iPad Pro. Cook, whose spotless tailored suit and red poppy belies the fact that he spent the night in a plane, is clearly in ebullient mood. Wall Street and the City are obsessed with the iPhone, the company’s dominant product, but Apple appears quietly confident that its new tablet and TV device are going to help power the company’s continuing growth.

“Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones,”

[hello_hello]

You are not the first in this thread to make me and my personal tastes part of the argument. Bottomline, I am mature enough to separate my personal actions from a wider argument.

So I assume your personal actions must contradict your argument.

If I told you I preferred B&W versus color tv, do you really think I would use that as some evidence of the ascendancy of B&W over color tv? For the same reason, I could care less what you are anyone else's personal use case is. If I was looking for advice that would be a different story. But I am not searching for advice here. We are debating something that Tim Cook said. Bringing mine or your personal use case/tastes into the argument does nothing to advance the argument. Rather it just tends to derail the discussion.

You've offered nothing but personal opinion to support your own argument and every time I've mentioned tablet sales are slowing you've ignored it. What does it matter if your opinion is based on your own personal use scenario or something that came to you in a dream? It's all still just personal opinion unless you have facts and figures to back it up. Other posters may be offering personal use to support their opinion, but so far all you seem to be offering to support yours is crystal ball gazing.

However, I am more than happy to discuss my plans for my next build. But that is a different discussion and has no relevance here and is hardly backpedaling. As I said before, it was an olive leaf.

And now you're putting words in my mouth. Your next PC build has nothing to do with my reference to back-peddling, it was because you started out declaring the PC dead, yet a few posts ago you'd watered it down to "the market showing signs of heading in that direction". Not even "heading in that direction" but only "showing signs".

Now, I bit on your "personal use scenario" only because it aligns with one aspect of the market that is contributing to the decline. IOW, many people have PCs with no plans to upgrade. Look at the percentage of WinXP users there still are if you don't believe me. Microsoft, Intel, IT managers, and more are wringing their hands over what is it going to take to move these people off of XP onto a more modern OS. So, I am only mildly interested if only it helps to answer the question: what's it going to take? I have offered up my thoughts: that people see no need.

"Microsoft, Intel, IT managers, and more are wringing their hands over what is it going to take to move these people off of XP".
On what do you base that claim? Tarot cards? Are unsubstantiated generalisations acceptable as the basis of an argument as long as they don't involve personal experience?

Finally, my thoughts aren't constrained to thinking about desktops versus just tablets. I have tried to say this before. I see this as desktops versus everything else even workstations.

Your thoughts don't extend to discussing any part of the topic that doesn't suit you though. How many times have you ignored the question as to why regular upgrading is necessary for the survival of PC manufacturers in a way it's not for manufacturers of other appliances? PCs being a combination of components that can be upgraded over the lifespan of a desktop is a point you didn't even acknowledge. I'm not sure if you've addressed any argument I've offered on the actual topic yet, and your last post was entirely dedicated to explaining why you can "offer up your thoughts" while nobody else can. How is it you're in a position to see the entire market and know exactly where it's heading, while the rest of us are limited to personal experience, observation, and the opinions we form as a result, which according to you don't count?

[SameSelf]

So I assume your personal actions must contradict your argument.

Only in your mind.

[hello_hello]

So I assume your personal actions must contradict your argument.

Only in your mind.

I doubt that or you'd answer the question.
There's no point in debating the topic as you either ignore anything that doesn't support your view or find an excuse to dismiss opinion different from your own.

[glenpinn]

I have just skipped thru this thread, and don't want to get involved too much, as it is not something that interests me that much, but just to add my 2 cents worth, i have not fixed a desktop pc for a few years, and every single person i know, including family, all has a Laptop or Macbook of some kind, hence why i decided to move from building and fixing desktops a few years ago to learning how to do Laptops, and now it is exclusively laptops.

Problem is laptops are pricks of things to repair, especially for those who never did one, so laptop repairers are in demand, but, in this day and age, people buy a budget laptop, which are built like crap, and once they break you toss them in the bin, move on to the next one.

Having said this, my Editing pc is a Dell 2330 AIO desktop (poor mans iMac) and i just sold my 17" Clevo/Metabox quad core laptop (was my mobile editing machine) and my daughter still has her 2009 iMac (using OSX and Windows 7) an iPad 2, an iPhone 5, and a 15" Dell laptop.

I cannot see the demise of the desktop pc for certain scenarios, but for everyday personal home computing use, a 15" laptop is ample, and almost everyone has one of some kind, be it windows based or OSX based.

I figure that a laptop can be classified a desktop pc, given most people do use a laptop on top of a desk, the only difference really is the size of the screen, what's inside it, and the weight.

[Constant Gardener]

I figure that a laptop can be classified a desktop pc, given most people do use a laptop on top of a desk, the only difference really is the size of the screen, what's inside it, and the weight.

"How many legs does a calf have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Abraham Lincoln.

[redwudz]

I only use my laptop on...my lap. I have several desktops PCs. No Macs anymore.

My latest cheap laptop is a Asus X551M with W10, no touchscreen. It has no optical drive, no removable panels to access RAM or HDD for upgrades.
You have to split the case apart to get to them.

It's barely a laptop or a PC.