The Myth of the ‘Post-PC Era’: Why tablets and smartphones will never replace...

[mitzevo]

The Myth of the ‘Post-PC Era’: Why tablets and smartphones will never replace the PC  

What are your guys&gals take on Smartphones and tablets replacing PCs? I agree with the linked article above, that PC/Laptops will remain superior for "high-end" jobs such as graphics design, 3d modeling, software development, coding, "proper" gaming, etc. The average PC user (facebookr, chatting/iming, etc.) will not have a need for such "high-end" things and will be happy with smaller devices, more limited devices.  

Ok sure, some devices you can root/jailbreak and you have more control, but still, can't beat a rig/computer with full decent size screen, horse power, nice keyboard for blazing input, mouse for design, gaming, etc.

Are smart phones, outsmarting PCs?

[Renegade]

The major problem is the interface.

[mitzevo]

Don't you mean the lack of interface? 

[mahesh2k]

Watching movies and playing games isnt good with tablets. And by games i mean something like horror game or where you feel the game.

[Paul Keith]

No, there's an interface alright. Pre-Swype the Swype interface was a circle which was both better and much more intuitive but as with most things innovative, it was ugly and even the circular-like swype keyboards today are not well received though they are of inferior and cluttery designs. Still the paradigm have shifted towards a Swype rather than a Touch interface which is both a paradigm shift for the PC and for the smartphone. Other minor examples of this paradigm is how people use pinch zooming to zoom documents or how stores will change the culture of where and how casuals search for software.

Vibration-wise, there's been work on touch interfaces that are speed/friction sensitive. Just a youtube of touch screen shows this: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=touch+screen+innovation&oq=touch+screen+innovation&gs_l=youtube.3..33i21.594.3907.0.4304.23.16.0.1.1.0.421.2889.4j5j2j3j1.15.0...0.0...1ac.1.V6nqTMs6v3E

Then as far as digital art, there's less power but:

For me, the most interesting of his current recommendations is the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 for annotating and editing pdfs - so much easier with long-form writing for the writer to be as close as possible to paper-free. The Galaxy Note 10.1 still remains (I think) the only pure iPad-style tablet with a digitiser under the screen, although Adonit are trying to achieve the same effect with the Jot Touch for the iPad, and I’ve heard that more (less expensive) tablets with digitisers (and probably Windows will be launched in the New Year.

Source: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4627/5

and...

http://youtu.be/Ueyiw6gv04U

Source: http://evernote.com/getting_started/moleskine/#0

The key difference I think between smartphones and all the other previous gadgets are that smartphones have the potential to make slaves out of everyone so that's what's going to drive it compared to the previous techs that were intrusive but were always going to be points of power.

For example, the remote control is not the television but the remote controlled television replaced television because it was a good way to charge extra/keep the "interface innovations" of a TV set improving which justify raising costs/etc. etc.

The tablet market is very much a remote control market slash wireless desktop interface. You rip the desktop interface and the PC falls apart for most users. The ignorance between the two things is not a myth, it's the natural pathway for the personal computer since the dawn of it's birth.

The remote control couldn't kill the television because they had the same method of input. Smartphones can outsmart PCs because they don't have the same input so by killing say wireless mouse, even if Smartphones don't kill the PC, it will kill it by virtue of adding another "operating system"-like filter requirement to PCs that the desktop OS was slowly not requiring so maybe smartphones won't kill the old existence of PCs just like old BBS computers still exist but the next generation and the next generation of people being born would slowly lose interest in PCs which is just as good as replacing it. If the Linux Operating System is just for sys admins then it doesn't matter if it's free and passable as a desktop OS, it's not the PC that people understand. In the future (the far far future), if the PC doesn't have a tablet with it then it's not the PC that people understand. If it's not the PC that people understand, there would be less software made for it or to pirate a new software, you can't use it fully featured without having an un-warez acquired smartphone that you have to jailbreak. In turn, like how even warez account today who often got things for free due to torrent software, many are still sourcing from UseNet. If there's an annotation or a highlight or a OCR or a Smartphone Interface for the new generation of Facebook Image Sharing...those send powerful PCs to the counter. Those turn the PC into a printer or a scanner.

[superboyac]

The way I look at anything like this is similar to some of the thoughts above...does the innovation foster and encourage creativity and personal innovation?  it has nothing to do with the device...whether it's a computer or a tablet or a smartphone.  It's what can you do with it?  The pc is a device that allows a customer to build it from scratch, independant of any company.  Most people don't but the opportunity is there.  Then, you can use whatever OS you choose, whatever software, even design your own software, design your own hardware...this is why the pc changed the world.
The smartphone currently doesn't offer any of this.  The benefit of today's smartphones is that it makes computing easier for people who are NOT trying to innovate or be creative.  Basically, it makes computers easier for people who don't like computers.  It's what the microwave did for people who don't want to cook.  Do the microwave people argue with commercial quality oven/stove/grill manufacturers about which is better?  No, it's a silly argument.  Same with a smartphone.  it's not a computer, it's nothing like it in the true sense.

All these people using smartphones primarily are people who never truly cared about what the possibilities of the pc was.

Now, the actual smartphone idea has a lot of potential, but the stupid ass politicians and corporations have to be willing to help out the masses on this one.  If we can build our own smartphones, then it will become a revolution like the pc 30 years ago.  raspberry pi is the beginning.  and ultimately, the world is soooooo very close to realizing this.  All it would take is the ability for users to buy a cellular chip at fry's the way we buy hard drives and motherboards and stuff.

it's just that damn cellular chip and the ability for anyone to connect to an existing cell network.  Once this happens the world will change.  That's what I'm waiting for.  One day, i'll be able to go down to the store, buy a cell chip, call AT&T and activate it, and use it however I like.

[TaoPhoenix]

It's what the microwave did for people who don't want to cook.  Do the microwave people argue with commercial quality oven/stove/grill manufacturers about which is better?  No, it's a silly argument.  Same with a smartphone.  It's not a computer, it's nothing like it in the true sense.

Fun comparison. I am of the set of folks who desperately hate to cook and that's on good days!     
So I microwave absolutely everything (that is sensible, cold sandwiches are good too.)

On the comp side, I'm absolutely a software guy. I'd rate myself easily an intermediate Windows user. Not a newbie, not an expert, but I can do my share of things. I had a guy build my current comp for me, and as far as I am concerned it's a Black Box. (And it is Black! And Boxy!)

But philosophically as a desktop comp, with a little care on virus prevention, I can download anything I want and run it and save out my output files in any of 7 formats. What I really hate is the merge of the smartphone and tablet form factors with an OS that purposely hides the data within the apps themselves. 
 

I'll sidestep the phone side for now, and talk about more of the tablet side. To me they're just overgrown mini-laptops, and there's no reason with SSD/other storage a laptop couldn't look like that. Apple WAS brilliant, and their business position proves it. However, somewhere moving from "Revenge of the Nerds" to "Oh look I can use a tablet to go onto Facebook", Apple found ways to make for subtle advantages of their own. It's the Lockdown Wars 2.0 .