Will the Desktop PC Live Forever? 625
concealment points out a rebuttal from PCWorld of the increasingly common claims that we live in a post-PC world.
"It's an intriguing proposition, but don't count on mobile devices killing off your desktop PC any time soon. While mobile gear is certainly convenient when you're trying to conduct business on the go, it's nowhere near as convenient as a desktop when you're trying to complete serious work in an office environment. Sure, your phone, tablet or even laptop might conveniently fit in your pocket or backpack, but all these devices are fraught with compromises, whether it's computing power, screen size, or, well, a really expensive price tag."
Re:Are these guys kidding? (Score:2, Informative)
Because everyone knows that 27-inch screens and 3.5" hard disk drives are laptop parts ...
Re:Are these guys kidding? (Score:4, Informative)
Definitely 3.5", unless ifixit employs small children [ifixit.com].
Off by more than an order of magnitude (Score:5, Informative)
People who care about creating their own programs: 0.01%. (and that's being generous.)
In 2004, the U.S. population was 293 million (source [google.com]). By your estimate of 100 programmers per million, you'd expect there to be 29,000 programmers. But in that year, there were 760,840 people employed as software engineers in the United States, who made up about one out of every three engineers in the nation (source [wikipedia.org]). That's not even counting people who aren't programmers per se but whose job includes some programming, computer science and software engineering students, and hobbyist programmers. So I'd guess your estimate is off by two orders of magnitude.
People who care about not getting malware: 99.99%.
There are ways to limit the damage that malware can cause without forcing everybody who buys a computer to rely exclusively on a single application repository curated by the operating system publisher and subject to said publisher's ulterior motives. For example, a platform could use the Ubuntu/Android model of having multiple competing repositories. Or it could use the OLPC/Android model of limiting the capabilities [wikipedia.org] given to an application while still allowing self-signed software to run.
Re:In a post-lemming world (Score:4, Informative)
Malware volume is directly proportional to a systems market share; grow big enough to be noticed by the criminals, and they'll start focusing on breaking your stuff.
The facts don't support your theory. When iOS was the market leader, and Android the minority, it was still Android which was getting virtually all the malware.
Naivete is cute.
You think you're cute?