Google: Desktop PCs to be "irrelevant" in 3 years

[Catty1]

I just love these "experts"! Like most of us will be able to afford all the new crap? What if my vision isn't good, or my fingers arthritic? A Smartphone will be frustrating, not a boon.

Anyway....

http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/blogs/the_working_guy/rss/article/4379


Google: Desktop PCs to be "irrelevant" in 3 years
By Christopher Null

If you're reading this on a computer, you're about to be lost in the past, at least according to a Google Europe executive, John Herlihy, who has proclaimed the PC era just about over.

By 2013, says Herlihy, the desktop PC will be irrelevant, and the smart phone will be the platform of choice for most Internet use.

Silicon Republic says Herlihy's audience, a "Digital Landscapes" conference at University College Dublin, was "baffled" by the statement, although many a pundit has made this prediction in recent months. Other Google executives have also posited that the company's primary focus going forward will be on mobile technologies.

It's unclear how much Google will focus on phones versus other mobile devices such as laptops and nascent tablet devices like the Apple iPad, but it's clear that in the long term, all PC-based devices are at risk of being made irrelevant by more pocket-friendly machinery.

But is three years being too aggressive? The pace of innovation is blistering in the smart phone space (remember that just three years ago there was no iPhone and no Android OS), but will the advances in the next three years be enough to make computers as we know them obsolete? It's obvious that there will still be a market for the desktop (or at least the laptop) come 2013 - the need for larger screens for corporate work will alone ensure that - but how big will that market be, and is it ultimately as doomed as the Silicon Valley bigshots would have us believe?

[blue]

This Newsweek guy didnt think the internet would last.

Link. (http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554/page/1)


The Internet? Bah!
Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana

By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK


From the magazine issue dated Feb 27, 1995

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.


Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connectios, try again later."

Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn't—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

[Roxyluvsme13]

There's nooo way I would give up my laptop for a smartphone. I love my iPod touch to pieces, but it's much more convenient and a heckuvalot easier to type with a KEYBOARD and not a stupid touch screen or phone keypad.

I think they're wrong :p.

[Catty1]

blue, what I meant is that not everyone can comfortably use a SmartPhone. There may be legitimate physical/health limitations.

And financial ones as well.

That's all. :)

[Grace]

Might be irrelevant for him - but not for me. I want a nice big screen, not one of those tiny ones.

[Puckstop31]

Thinking like that will lead Google down the path of Apple. A niche market for generally well-to-do idealouges. Don't get me wrong... I like Mac's. But they have very little use in the business world. You CAN use them in a business, its just a higher cost.

All the while Microsoft will keep raking in the bucks because they are better business people... And now that MS has a genuinely GREAT product line....

[blue]

THe whole smart phone thing can pass me by. I dont need the intardweb on my phone. I dont text either. I am diggin the netbook Ive been borrowing.

[Grace]

THe whole smart phone thing can pass me by. I dont need the intardweb on my phone. I dont text either. I am diggin the netbook Ive been borrowing.

I'm with you, blue. We have texting blocked - our son sent us one when we got the new phones and it cost us 15¢. He could just as easily left a voice message. I don't need pictures either. All I want from a cell phone is the ability to make a call in an emergency.

[Karen]

You cannot believe everything you read on the Internet - especially about the Internet. Opinion and speculation are just that. If we believed everything we saw in print or on the Internet, the world would have exploded years ago, or we'd all have flying cars by now, or faster-than-light travel would be commonplace by now, or the whole Internet would have crashed when the year rolled over to 2,000. No sense getting all worked up about it, in my opinion.

[wombat2u2004]

I'll just sit here with my ol dawg, and watch what happens.

[Lady's Human]

No PC will ever need more than 640K of RAM.

[kokopup]

I do not see the Iphone or Ipads replacing the desktop. I do see the Iphone with all of it's apps becoming a universal remote for preforming all of the task that devices like remotes and laptop computers do now. I see the form of the desktop changing and being integrated into your TV or other TV box that allows you to do all normal computer functions in addition to being an entertainment hub for you whole house. I have my Home Theater computer ,running Windows 7, serving as my desk top and my entertainment server. I can sit in my easy chair and surf the web, listen to music streamed from Napster, watch a HD movie streamed from many sources, or any task normally done by my desktop. I can view these functions on my 100" screen or a smaller monitor that I have in my foot ottoman. All of our future internet will revolve around our TV entertainment server.

[king2005]

Thats a load of bull!! You can't play World of Warcrack on a stupid phone & why would I give up my 50" HD LCD screen for a 2" screen touch screen?

I can see it now! all WoW players have a mouse & keyboard plugged into their phones while playing WoW on a 2" screen. Only getting about 1min of play time until the battery runs out. OH BOY!!

idiots lol

[smokey the elder]

Howintheheck can you even work on those tiny keyboards? This sentence would have taken about 5 minutes to type on my BlackBerry; here it took only one.

[happylabs]

I don't forsee me giving up my laptop either. My vision is not that great and getting worse as the years go on. I use a Tracphone for emergencies only. Although I think it would be fun to have a Blackberry or something similar, I cannot justify the price and monthly bills.

[pomtzu]

Phones replacing the desktop??? I don't see that happening any time soon - if ever! At least not in my lifetime!

And in 1995 they said the internet wouldn't last???? :p

[RICHARD]

or we'd all have flying cars by now, or faster-than-light travel would be commonplace by now

We do have flying cars that travel faster than light.

Toyotas with stuck accelerators?:eek::confused:




I'll just sit here with my ol dawg, and watch what happens.

LOL,

The "old dawg" used to grab my newspaper and shred it like a cat on toilet paper.:rolleyes:;)

[CountryWolf07]

Pssh.. technology. ;) We will see what happens, that's all we can do. And I don't think I could EVER trade in my laptop or computer for a smart phone? NOW how would I be able to work on my photography and illustration/design projects? Hm..