Is the PC dead?

Is the PC dead?

It has served us for decades, but the end is now approaching for desktop computers. Sleek 

mobile devices could replace the old fossils.

It seems as if Thomas J Watson was right after all: Watson, Chairman of the Board of IBM till 1956, had made this legendary quote: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." This forecast has been ridiculed for a long time, but as far as the personal computer is concerned, it will soon be a reality. There is growing evidence that the PC era is coming to an end. With small, powerful machines, new freedoms that users want, and new services that make computing omnipresent like oxygen, the digital world is transforming into something in which communication, data is readily accessible anywhere, anytime. Beginning of the end:
desktop computers are losing importance The classic PC that sits on a desk with a noisy fan is now too bulky for this new world—it’s too stationary and inflexible. The computer revolution might well be over; the concept itself has become outdated. It is now time for multifunctional mobile machines in the form of smartphones and ultra-slim media tablets that fit into the pockets of our jackets. They use computing power which is called on demand at any time and is always available like tap water. They form a new type of network that will possibly make the possession of today’s computers completely redundant. Considering that approximately 84 million PCs were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2011, the view that the PC generation is over would seem far-fetched to some. But things change very quickly in the digital world. When IBM and the small company Microsoft signed a contract for developing an operating system for the planned IBM PC in November 1980, Bill Gates' secretary Miriam Lubow saw her young boss walking into the office in a three-piece suit one morning. Gates was usually dressed very casually; he occasionally had pizza crumbs on his t-shirt and his glasses were constantly blurred. Shortly after this, three men arrived in jeans and sneakers with thick briefcases. They said that they had come from IBM. The engineers had tried to adapt to the style of Gates—and Gates had done exactly the same. When they met in his office, they all began to laugh. But the smiles were soon wiped off the faces of the people at IBM. Given the sheer size of the company, what nobody could have imagined, happened. At the beginning of the nineties, IBM, which had practically pocketed the abbreviation PC as a brand name for its computer in the initial years, lost the market leadership to its competitor. Since the beginning of the new millennium, market research firms which closely follow the worldwide PC market, such as Gartner and IDC, have been seeing increasingly weak demand. The sales figures are declining; only notebooks and netbooks
have been doing well. People today need devices that are mobile, handy, and flexible thanks to a variety of available apps which can connect them to the Internet, allow them to have fun, and of course work at any time and any place. The trend is obvious, even if demand for low-cost conventional machines has been revived due to the financial crisis, the PC is dying.



Revolution: From heavy colossus to 
interconnected multimedia PC ...


The term “Personal Computer” was first used in October 1968 in the magazine Science, in an advertisement for a programmable calculator by Hewlett Packard, the HP 9100A. The device,
weighing 20 kg and costing US$ 4,900, had hardly anything in common with what was later referred to as the personal computer. It was soon clear that the PC revolution had nothing to do
with hardware. When the Apple computers came to the market, business people first thought
they were toys, but VisiCalc, the mother of all spreadsheet programs appeared in 1979 and changed the business world. Operating systems—first DOS, then Windows—in combination with a software suite for the office made Bill Gates the richest man in the world. The appeal of PCs was in the fact that everyone could now have a machine which could be transformed into an amazing number of devices with the help of software. At the beginning of the 90s, when the Internet found its way to the masses, the formerly islanded PCs got interconnected: and the PC, with a browser, was now something that led the people into a new world. iVolution: cell phones turn into computers At the same time, mobile telephony became suitable for mass consumption.
In the early and mid 90s, there were only a few hundred thousand cell phone users even in developed countries, but by the year 2000, millions more were coming on board. Now in the second decade of the 21st century and the rise of social media, it has turned out that we are no longer living in the information era but in a new communication era. These coexisting technological threads are best when bundled into one device: the smartphone. The flow of digital media is now in the process of turning into a part of our environment. We no longer want to remain in front of a desktop PC, we want to be completely digital. With stationary, heavy computers, this is not possible. Only post-PC technology will do. With the iPod (2001), iPhone (2007) and iPad (2010), Apple, the former pioneer of the personal computer, stepped out of its niche and became a trendsetter for digital entertainment and mobile Internet use. Apple showed
that operating a smartphone could be a pleasure, an important distinction from Microsoft, which was listlessly tinkering around with Windows Mobile. Steve Ballmer tried to fix the mess by simply defining tablets also as PCs. Apple, however, called these “post-PC devices”. Even until a few years ago, the PC was solid as a rock. But attacks had begun even in the eighties: viruses spread via floppy disks, long before the first Internet worms and malicious programs that spy on PCs or take control of them. Many consider the PC to be a digital counterpart of themselves, but the border between it and the network, ie the outside world, began to disappear— for better or for worse. Even while new viruses attempted to penetrate every defense, users were drawn to the Internet because of their curiosity. Scott McNealy, head of Sun Microsystems, once perkily declared that the classic PC was dead - "The network is the computer", he said. It was still too early in the nineties, but it’s actually happening today: the migration from the PC to the cloud, cloud computing, has begun. The PC loses its P. Large data centers comprising of thousands and thousands of interconnected, impersonal and easily substitutable computing resources,
are now increasingly available to the online community for use based on requirements.


 The future: miniaturization continues, 
  the interface falls behind


 If one looks into the future, something amazing appears to be emerging: hardware is disappearing, and only the functions remain. The always-and-everywhere network will ensure that you can always be online, and write, read, call, watch TV, listen to music, search, blog, all without having to carry around bulky equipment. With the miniaturization of components, a 20 kg PC can be reduced to such an extent that the technology moves inconspicuously in the background. Perhaps it will be integrated into the streetlights one day, and will be a part of a public infrastructure like today's increasingly common Wi-Fi hotspots. Instead of having to carry a notebook or a tablet around, one would then have the option to use instances of virtual screens, keyboards and other future ideas. There are already systems that project screen contents on any surface—clothes, palms, a park bench—and also cameras that detect where you are pointing and what gestures you are making. You use your hand instead of a mouse and just a small tinge of reflected light is enough to recognize
that something has to be done. The next step after post-PC technology is a completely new and intense feeling of ever-present, transparent communication. With a simple flick of the hand, whatever you need will be right there. What will remain then is only the recreation of an interface; the user interface of the device, which is the point at which doing anything a computer used to do, without a computer, will feel like a bit like magic.