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You may never buy another laptop.
Ten years ago, laptop sales overtook desktop PC sales to become the dominant hardware platform for computing. Now smartphones are about to do to laptops what laptops did to desktops.
[...] The first fatal trend is that young people are already choosing smartphones over laptops, even without docking and clamshell smartphones. ComScore reports that the use of laptops and desktops among younger people is on the decline. Some 20 percent of millennials use their smartphone as their only computing device, according to a recent report, and this percentage grows each year. Raw demographics alone favor the end of laptops.
The second fatal trend is that the industry is champing at the bit to move everything off Intel and onto ARM. (Intel and Intel-compatible chips have powered desktop and laptop platforms for decades; the smartphones and smartphone apps run on ARM chips.) Once laptops, especially laptops from Apple, run ARM chips, they'll run iOS and Android instead of OS X and Windows. And at that point, they'll essentially be identical to docking solutions, but more expensive.
The third and final fatal trend can be found in your wallet. Smartphones are becoming amazing. The Galaxy S8 is amazing. And this year's iPhone is expected to be mind-blowing as well. The new phones have cameras that rival DSLRs. They have performance that rivals desktop PCs. They run increasingly amazing apps, including professional-quality apps. Unlike laptops, smartphones are exciting.
And they're expensive.
Consumers are now ready to pay $700, $800 — even $1,000 and upwards for a phone. (Already a top-of-the-line iPhone 7 with AppleCare costs $1,100. The iPhone 8 is expected to be more expensive.)
Consumers will pay this amount because smartphones are worth it. This is especially true if they don't have to shell out $1,500 or more for a laptop as well.
Laptops are too boring and expensive. The industry is churning out new designs that enable smartphones as laptop replacements. Young people are favoring smartphones. The industry wants to use smartphone OSes. And consumers are spending more on smartphones, which will make us spend less on laptops.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:14PM (50 children)
As long as it has a full size keyboard, 8Gb RAM and 500Gb disk, I'll be getting that shiny iPhone ASAP.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:18PM (33 children)
I'm with you, but I think we may be outnumbered...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:24PM (29 children)
I also think we're outnumbered.
I teach high school English, and it's becoming more common to hear students complain about writing essays because "it takes forever to type on my iPad. Can I do a video presentation instead?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:31PM (26 children)
Tell 'em if they can afford an iPad vs a $200 laptop, they can afford a Bluetooth keyboard to make it usable for school work.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday April 05 2017, @10:37PM (6 children)
Tell 'em if they can afford an iPad vs a $200 laptop, they can afford a Bluetooth keyboard to make it usable for school work.
Or, better yet, a $2 pen.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:25AM (5 children)
Much worse. Handwriting is much slower than typing. Test for yourself to confirm, it's obvious.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:32AM (1 child)
Much worse. Handwriting is much slower than typing. Test for yourself to confirm, it's obvious.
Yes, it is. And with many students it has a high pedagogical* value.
*I use that word a lot; it does mean what I think it does.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:42AM
You keep using that word ... oh ok.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:34AM (2 children)
It is faster only if you can touch type.
But many of the same group that find a phone to be "enough of a computer" to do without a real computer are in the one or two finger hunt and peck generation.
For them, typing is not faster.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:16AM (1 child)
Two-finger hunt and peck typing is many times faster than handwriting unless you are completely, hopelessly uncoordinated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:34AM
Seems to me that you've been using "hunt and peck" so long that you don't actually hunt anymore.
I remember when I was hunt and pecking, the hunting easily took 5-10 seconds for some letters.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday April 05 2017, @10:49PM (18 children)
Not to mention a screen of adequate size.
My main workstation as dual screens, fairly large. And I frequently fill up the real estate with multiple open text editors.
The problem with this whole article is it assumes everyone has nothing better to do than trade cat pictures and tweets.
Says more about the authors than the real world.
Sure the desktop computer might disappear into the high-end laptop. For a lot of real work you can get buy with that.
Or the desktop might become a small brick bolted onto the back of the monitor.
But I've tried the Surface-Pro tablets and they are just too small to type on for long periods, and even the largest
screen version is not enough screen space.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Touché) by NewNic on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:13PM (4 children)
Didn't you get the memo from the designers of Unity, Gnome3, Windows 8, etc.? You are only supposed to have one window in the foreground, and that single window should occupy all of the available screen space.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:36AM (1 child)
And the Unity, Gnome3, and Winblows8 designers can die a fiery death and rot in fiery hell for all eternity for that design as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2017, @03:19PM
I beg to differ sir,
They deserve a far worse fate.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:19AM
Unity? Oh, you mean that crap that Ubuntu is dropping?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:19AM
In my experience, the problem is less the 'only one window in the foreground thing' but more the 'context switching is too hard' thing. I usually tend to maximize my browser window for web surfing and video watching and that works fine only because I have a directly accessible task bar and a tab bar containing a lot of browser tabs allowing easy context switching from one application or page to another. Both of which are also accessible by quick shortcuts.
Tiling windows is much better in theory but has its own issues. Occasionally I try to put a web browser and a terminal window or text editor side by side for learning and coding which sorta works, but I frequently run into stupid stuff where the website page gets squished too much and starts to require horizontal scrollbars, which are a pain.
Mobile makes task switching hard because it involves dragging from the top of the screen (but not too high, because then you get the the android stuff instead of the chrome browser stuff) and then scrolling through a carousel list of page thumbnails (instead of a simple list of page titles that would actually all fit on the screen at once) before you find the page you need. And app switching requires another button which is awkwardly placed on the bottom right of the screen far away from my fingers usual resting place. This is my experience with Android and makes every context switch are chore. The situation may be more userfriendly on iOS, but I highly doubt it. The lack of a large array of physical buttons just makes for a large limitation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:13PM (9 children)
This comment being typed on a 4K 40" monitor, full of windows of code, scrolling compile outputs, waveforms, PDF references, control widgets...
Let's turn it on its head: are kids properly preparing for their future jobs, if their input and output fit in a 5.5 inch screen (minus a third for the keyboard)?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:06AM (3 children)
The article mentions the DeX Station, a dock for a high-end Samsung smart-phone which "outputs at a 4K resolution." I'm sure there's no shortage of PDF viewers, text editors, or compilers for the phone.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:22AM (2 children)
So, the argument would be that laptops are dead because I can connect my phone to an external HDD, an external keyboard, an external mouse, an external giant display, external speakers, and an external wireless charger, and then expect a low-power ARM fanless part to perform on par with something with DIMMs?
I see a flaw in the plan...
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:46AM
> [...] external wireless charger [...] fanless [...]
[...] Samsung says your handset "will charge via USB-C and stay cool with a built-in fan [...]
-- https://www.neowin.net/news/dex-desktop-dock-for-samsung-galaxy-s8-costs-14999-includes-cooling-fan-multiple-ports [neowin.net]
It has an Ethernet port too, of unspecified speed. I trust that this satisfies your concerns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:38AM
Not to mention that lugging all those peripherals around sounds just like when we used to lug a desktop computer around because laptops were too expensive.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:51AM (1 child)
Sounds awesome. Here's another issue: as you get older the lenses in your eyes harden up and you can't focus well. My eyesight has always been bad, but recently, trying to use my phone has become a massive chore while I peak under my glasses at just the right distance to bring the screen into focus. In ten years, I'll need a freakin' movie screen size monitor AND I'll be bumping up the font size.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @03:21PM
You want progressive lenses. I was doing the "lift glasses to read phone" thing until I got 'em. When I did, it was like I got a whole new phone with a nice sharp display. I can see other stuff better too, of course, but the phone was the star of the show.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:22AM (2 children)
They are probably preparing to be your boss!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 06 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)
Already got one. Daddy owns the place.
It's a miracle his phone is still in one piece given how often he checks it while engineers are talking to him.
Great coder, horrible boss.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday April 07 2017, @04:19AM
It was a disaster in my career to have the company I worked for bought out by investors, who brought their own bosses in as well as hired their friends that had torpedoed the companies they used to work for.
These guys were men of the suit, men of the phone, men of the handshake and signature, but definitely not a man of the tool. Their skill was in getting someone else to do the technical stuff... these guys were money-handlers , kinda like gold-diggers at a night-club. They knew how to pitch the sale. They did not know how to build the thing they just sold.
These guys were great at socializing and having a good time. However I seriously doubt many of them could add water to a radiator. But the investors thought they were quite valuable and paid them accordingly.
They did not have to worry about minutiae. They had lots of money to pay someone else to handle it. Everyone else had to prepare things for these guys. These guys were mostly like food critics, not chefs.
I know from my own experience, I fell victim to the same feelings of the cappuchin monkey in that grape and cucumber experiment. Having those people brought in and me being placed subordinate to them really took the wind out of my sails.
I had to realize... I was one of the men of the tool. I made things. I had a value. I was subordinate to a man who decided whether or not I would be allowed to produce anything, and had the leadership skills to threaten me with loss of my job. On top of him was yet another man with the organizational skills to place each of us in the order of importance to the company.
The investors paid each what they thought they were worth.
The company may not have been left with many people who made things, but they did get a lot of nice expensive dinners and handshakes out of the last government contract they won.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:40AM
> Not to mention a screen of adequate size.
There's an adapter for that, if 1080p is enough for you.
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD826AM/A/lightning-digital-av-adapter [apple.com]
> [...] dual screens [...]
Oh. That adapter is for one monitor, showing the same image as on the phone's built-in screen.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:59AM (1 child)
Sure the desktop computer might disappear into the high-end laptop. For a lot of real work you can get buy with that.
Or the desktop might become a small brick bolted onto the back of the monitor.
I think the opposite is more likely, at least for now. High-end desktops aren't going anywhere just yet, but tablets already gobbled up the netbook niche and laptops are next on the menu. I mostly abandoned my laptop for portable use when I got a 12" tablet with a keyboard case, but still come back to the desktop whenever I want to actually get something done.
The article makes the ludicrous claim that tablets and phones "have performance that rivals desktop PCs" but that's either a lie or completely delusional. Tablet and smartphone memory is still stuck in the 3-4gb ghetto that it's been in for years — even the upcoming Galaxy S8 that the article claims is "amazing" only has four gigs — and the CPUs may have similar core counts but their performance is miles apart.
The only way to make a claim like that is if you only look at Apple's stagnating non-iOS lineup and ignore everything else that exists, which might actually be what he's doing. With Apple's focus on making its hardware impossible to upgrade, the appeal disappears because it's turning its hardware into just another SoC in a bigger form factor. Meanwhile, I recently upgraded my system to Ryzen 7 and 32 gigs of RAM; I got a huge boost in performance for less than the price of one of those flagship smartphones, and when I did it I didn't have to throw out my existing components that still worked.
My main workstation as dual screens, fairly large. And I frequently fill up the real estate with multiple open text editors.
That's another benefit to desktops, since you can easily use a beefier GPU and power more displays without trouble. I've used four, even five in the past, mixing together a bunch of spare displays I had, though now I'm using three to reduce some desk clutter. With laptops you're lucky if you can use two displays, and even then you're stuck with the laptop's panel as the shitty third, and you have to use whatever rubbish mobile GPU the laptop has to power them all.
There's the possibility of laptops filling the desktop niche by using external GPUs and docking stations, but then all you've done is recreate the desktop, but with fewer upgradeable parts.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:33PM
sure the performance rivals a laptop.
if all you do is facebook google and share pictures.
Advertising for the relevant era's computer requirements for that has only changed to include the newest low end models, and now those low end models are high end phones that cost more than the low end models.
This is a prediction for the IT illiterate, not for you or me.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:37PM
Tell them that in the real world you don't get to turn in video presentations to your boss, unless that is what was specifically asked for. Or unless you are becoming a member of the Owning Classes or their Toms, and then you pick up a cushy executive job after fucking off at an Ivy league school for a few years and then proceed to do no real work at all. Real work is for the interns and plebs, that again, can't turn in a fucking video presentation in nearly every single case.
Ohhh, that, and to get a fucking bluetooth keyboard and shut the fuck up. If that's what is passing for students these days this country is super fucked.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:25PM
We are way outnumbered. Smart phones are designed specifically for niggers and there are an increasing number of niggers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:24PM
No no, see what we're doing? It's called a grass roots movement. I've heard these are very effective when given millions of dollars in funding and outsourced to cheap foreign countries.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:13PM (1 child)
I'm with you, but I think we may be outnumbered...
And I am with you, three! With a fourth, we can be the Three Laptopoteers! I put dibs on "Athos".
"All for one, and one for all, to in the darkness bind them!" Something like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:24AM
It is spelled "Asus"
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:24PM
If they just brought back the Netbook I guess they could do at least some of that - ok perhaps not the full size keyboard unless you are some kind of midget with tiny hands (still it's going to be better then that onscreen crap on the phone).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:30PM (2 children)
Don't forget the 21' screen!
(Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:21AM (1 child)
21 FOOT screen? Seriously?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:23PM
21 FOOT screen? Seriously?
Connect a suitable projector to the device's HDMI out and enjoy your 252 inch diagonal viewable image size.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday April 05 2017, @10:10PM (3 children)
As long as it has a full size keyboard, 8Gb RAM and 500Gb disk, I'll be getting that shiny iPhone ASAP
And a decent sized screen, at least 18". The smartphone I want is going to be huge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:51AM (2 children)
Don't worry, the industry is already headed in that direction. It won't be much longer before your desire is the norm.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:06AM
And they'll somehow have negative thickness.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:31AM
I would go with a smart phone... that has bluetooth capacity for sound, keyboards, mice, etc... wifi ... and can cast a 4K screen at full resolution.
I just turn it on, lay it on the desk, look at my monitor, use my keyboard, mouse, audio, and network as before.
And when I am ready to go, I take my phone with me, leaving the large bulky stuff behind. I have all my stuff on the >10TB flash internal phone memory.
That phone is not here, yet.
But its coming.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday April 05 2017, @10:42PM (1 child)
As long as it has a full size keyboard, 8Gb RAM and 500Gb disk
and runs GNU/Linux without having to jump through hoops
I'll be getting that shiny iPhone ASAP.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:06PM
... or at least an OS that lets *you* decide what you can run. Apple has done immense damage to this ability.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:38PM
Ditto. They should have phrased the statement as a question to make it obvious that Betteridge's Law was in effect. The article is basically some snowflake whining about his Macbook, and Apple in general, and rhapsodising about how great Samsung has said things will be at some point in the future. Sheesh.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:24AM (2 children)
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:08AM (1 child)
I've learned to be precise, and specify GNU/Linux instead of Android/Linux or systemd/Linux.
At least systemd/Linux is still somewhat compatible with GNU/Linux. But just somewhat.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:34PM
At least systemd/Linux is still somewhat compatible with GNU/Linux.
Things like PID 1 and hardware support services are not part of GNU, apart from GNU/Hurd. From sysvinit's project page on Savannah [nongnu.org]: "This project is not part of the GNU Project." So systemd vs. sysvinit makes no appreciable difference as to whether you're running GNU/Linux.
In my opinion, as long as the userspace relies on GNU Core Utilities and two other major components of GNU [pineight.com], such as glibc, Bash, GCC, or Emacs, that's enough to call it a "GNU/" system. For example, Cygwin and MinGW with MSYS are so named because they're "Cygnus GNU/Windows" and "Minimalist GNU/Windows", providing Coreutils, Bash, and GCC as part of the standard loadout.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:19AM
Sure, but most of that stuff is on The Cloud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:14AM
Screw that. I prefer 8 fast cores, 32gb of ram, silent fans, actually full size keyboard with proper noncrammed cursors and numpad, three monitors and something that can throw pixels at those with reasonable speed.
Laptops that come close to that are called luggables and they are basically used as desktops so why not get a real desktop instead? If you need to do stuff at multiple places you still have 2/3 left of laptop price to buy another 2 desktops.