LukasRos' Blog

Future of Desktop PCs

This week, John Herlihy from Google made a statement that was cited by Mashable and stirred some controversy in the comments. Mashable made it though the Friday Poll. The statement in question was:

“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”

This has inspired me to write my own thoughts on the subject. Here we go:

• Absolute statements obviously stir controversy, and that’s intentional. He did, however, not mean to say that Desktop PCs will cease to exist - they will just disappear from the mainstream. Vinyl record players and traditional film photography are very well alive - but not for the mainstream.
• The Web Browser has become the most important application in our computers and we do more and more activities online, in the cloud. In this scenario, the underlying operating system becomes less relevant. Google wants to reduce this operating system to its minimum with Chrome OS. Step-wise, more and more applications which previously required a local installation are now ready for the browser.
• About half a year back, I had commented on Kevin Kelly’s TED Talk about the next 5000 days of the web. I believe we will see significant shifts in this period of time, but still believe in what I said in this comment: The infrastructure will change. Today the traditional PC and browser may be the tool to access this emerging cloud and applications will be framed as HTML pages, but that is not the end of evolution. We’ll continue to innovate.
• I don’t think everything can be done on smartphones, sometimes you just want a bigger screen. I cannot imagine Desktop PCs disappear from offices, but I think they will no longer be seen in homes of non-geeks. A combination of Internet-powered TV - set-top box or gaming console - and smartphone (or maybe an iPad) is sufficient for normal home users. Why should they deal with a full-fledged PC’s problems like operating system ituning, anti-virus installation etc. when all they use their PC for is to fire up a browser and check mails and Facebook, and write a word document twice a year?
• PCs are about freedom, the freedom to install and configure anything the user wants. Consumer electronics, and that may includes devices like phones as well, are limited. The challenge is to reach to an application economy that gives consumers freedom of choice in a safe and sane manner without restricting them or censoring - if you have ever read about Apple’s Appstore, you know what I am talking about …

What is your opinion about the future of computing?