Sun President Says PCs Are Relics 441
christchurch map writes "Jonathan Schwartz, president of server and software maker Sun Microsystems, said that the personal computer is increasingly becoming a relic. Instead, what has become important are Web services on the Internet and the majority of the world will first experience the Internet through their mobile phones." From the article: "Schwartz points to the increasing wealth and power of companies, like eBay, Google, Yahoo and Amazon.com, that profit from free services available over the network. Among his audience, many more people said they'd rather have access to Internet services than their desktop computing applications. And Microsoft--the company with the biggest financial stake in the PC software business--has struggled to cope with the arrival of Web services."
I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is always one of compute versus bandwidth.
The advantages of centralising compute is obvious - most PC's are idle for 99% of the time - so if we put the compute resources somewhere we can all share them then we can have 100x performance when we need it.
However, the PC can only be replaced with some kind of Web appliance and a honking great central server is only possible when there is sufficient bandwidth and low enough latency for ALL applications. If there is even one necessary application which needs more bandwidth than a typical network connection can provide - then you're screwed and you need a full blown computer at every location.
If you are talking about an office setup where people are doing word processing, spreadsheets and other predominantly text-based work - then maybe Mr Schwartz is right - but think about this - a Web-appliance capable of rendering nice interfaces isn't going to be a whole lot cheaper than a regular PC.
For a home setup, things are even worse.
When we play games - we need (at a minimum) 76Hz video at 1600x1200 full colour resolution...plus a couple of 44kHz audio channels...sustained - no dropouts and minimal latency.
That's 76 x 1600x1200 x 24 bits/second of graphics...3.5Gbits/sec. Realtime compression tricks might cut that in half - but even a dedicated 1GHz link to eachuser is insufficient.
A T1 line to every user (1.544Mbits/sec) wouldn't come close. Right now, you'd need a high quality synchronous optical network into every home.
It's possible - but compared to the cost of buying a $200 PC with a $100 graphics card, it's a non-starter.
a whole 1.544? (Score:2)
http://www22.verizon.com/FiosForHome/channels/Fio
Re:a whole 1.544? (Score:5, Informative)
"1. What is Verizon FiOS Internet Service?
Verizon FiOS Internet Service is a broadband service designed
to provide Internet access with maximum connection speeds of up
to 30 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream"
If your game ran on a computer on the other end of that link, the
best full colour 76Hz resolution would be about 128x128 pixels without compression - or maybe 300x200 with compression.
Not terribly impressive for playing Doom3 eh? You could probably play Tetris over that quality of link...if you could stand the latency.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:2)
Most people just want to send messages to their friends. Think SMS.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:2, Insightful)
In the past, the bottlenecks were storage and networks, but that's changing. We can no longer count on next year's CPU give us a free speed boost to our applications; now we have to significantly alter our apps to take advantage of incremental CPU improvements like dual cores and hyperthreading.
The way we design applications will be radically different in a world where computation is expensive but storage and network is f
Re:I don't think so. (Score:3, Informative)
Since Moore's law is about transistors, increasing cache sizes and going multicores still cause the transistor count per die to increase, though performance often scales much less than linearly and more drastically so with patchwork implementations like Pentium D.
There are simple physical reasons why cache sizes are doubling with every process upgrade even though they provide only 0-10% performance gai
Re:I don't think so. (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean my CPU will fight to the death?
Re:I don't think so. (Score:2)
Re:I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that I *do* play at those rates and resolutions and any effort to replace *my* PC because it's "obsolete" had better do no worse.
So it's certainly possible to replace *SOME* PC's with network appliances - my mother only uses hers for email and web browsing - but that's not what the nice man from Sun is saying. He's saying that PC's are obsolete...and they aren't.
Consoles (Score:5, Insightful)
but that's not what the nice man from Sun is saying. He's saying that PC's are obsolete
Re:Consoles (Score:5, Insightful)
Games consoles are growing the ability to access the Internet, play movies and do a bunch of things that PC's currently do.
If you're arguing that the PC is going to be replaced by game consoles - then that's a different argument entirely. In the end, games consoles (or set-top boxes) *are* PC's...but with closed architectures and no standards. That *could* happen - but it's not what the guy from Sun is telling us.
By the time game consoles overtook PC's in the home, they'd have all the features of PC's. You'd have to be able to photoshop your digital camera snaps, do word processing, send email and browse the web on these devices. That's evidently what the console manufacturers are thinking about - but there's a big snag.
Game consoles are sold at a loss - other than the Nintendo Game-Cube - they all cost more to manufacture than they are sold for. This means that they HAVE to sell games in order to cover their costs. If people bought these machines as PC replacements and only used them to access the net, their prices would have to double.
Now a conventional PC starts to look good again.
No. You prove it. (Score:3, Informative)
Straight out of the 10Q "Xbox consoles have negative gross margins." An additional thing you forgot is that MS slashed the price of the XBox. It is more than likely that any efficiencies they made in manufacturing the consoles could not make up for nearly halving the pr
middle ground (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess you could run into the problem of more than one terminal doing really intensive stuff at the same time, but maybe since I'm only buying one box, I can spend a little extra and put some nice hardware inside to mitigate that problem. As it is, only one of the five machines that I have now is anywhere near state-of-the-art, so it wouldn't be that much of a difference anyways.
Re:middle ground (Score:2)
ducks
Re:middle ground (Score:3, Interesting)
What I think we need is a thin digital monitor cable with a range of up to a couple hundred feet. (Presumably fiber.) The point being, no client-side compression which induces sluggishness and require a fat client (which is why today's "thin" clients cost as much as PCs anyways).
Re:I don't think so. (Score:2)
What you're talking about sounds like broadcasting a unique HDTV feed to each individual user. No way is a thin client not going to have some API's, s
76Hz video at 1600x1200 (Score:2)
And don't forget that mobile devices aren't going to be completely, they will at least be able to use a compressed video stream and at best be able to run 50%+ of the application locally.
So, basically you figures bare no resemblance to the real world in any way what so ever.
I also doubt you $200 PC will cut it.
low-maintenance and Low-bandwidth remote control (Score:5, Insightful)
Low-bandwidth screen-remote-control applications like GoToMyPC and NX make this job much easier.
Unless you are watching TV or playing video games, a "black box" that connects to a server over dialup is just fine.
If you want to play games, or watch low-res TV, get broadband. If you want to watch high-res TV, get high-speed broadband.
About the only thing you need "local power" beyond what a "sealed black box" does is print and read or write local media.
10 years from now, 90-99% of Americans will have some way to get on the free Internet and subscription-based storage and applications at home. For many of them, it will be a "black box" to the network much like telephones were in my parent's generation. Others will be more like PCs of today, with local storage and local management. Many will have both types of "terminals" scattered around their abodes.
Re:low-maintenance and Low-bandwidth remote contro (Score:5, Interesting)
There are quite a few problems with the remote-PC option. For one, latency is a killer which we can only overcome by client-side predictions, so most UI will be intollerably unresponsive without enough power to run things locally.
For another, just because the computer is physically remote doesn't mean the user doesn't have to administer it. It's still their 'GoToMy' PC. They can still screw it up, unless you're not going to let them install applications, at which point it becomes a bit useless as a computer. If users want autoupdating, why not just write software that autoupdates?
Third, we all know that network black boxes in this country come as tied to specific services. And we know that technology dongles like this fail.
Fourth, while some network apps have taken off, like webmail, others have failed miserably. Browser-based text editors come to mind. Some things you just want local.
And Fifth, with computers so cheap, why network? Where is the huge performance or convienience increase that would convince everyone to switch?
Latency basically kills the possibility of playing games over a black box even with high-speed broadband. You would need to do the kind of expensive client-side predictions currently in use to keep the game playable, at which point you would by definition have a client capable of playing the game.
But ultimately I think the basic problem is that people want to own their things. They don't usually want to lease their telephones, or rent their software by the year. When I buy a computer, I want that feeling of "well, i've got that computer problem solved." I want my private data on a local disk. I want to be able to kick something. I just don't see the compelling argument that would alter computing from the current independent model to a client-server model.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, that sarcastic comment aside, I agree that latency will always be annoying for the vision of the network computer. The speed of light will always kick you in the ass. (And it will kick you in the ass as fast as possible.)
Re:I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just bandwidth; Sun's president is dead wrong on so many levels.
Until mobile phones come with a screen capable of what modern LCDs and CRTs are capable of, people will not just blindly (pun intended) give up their PC monitor in favor of a tiny little screen.
Mobile phones don't have the ability to do anything but view a few web pages. They simply can't (and won't for quite some time) hold a candle to a PC's computing and memory resources.
The Internet isn't the end-all when it comes to computing. People want to be able to install and run any number of small programs and applications. They want complete control over their computing environment, and they don't want that environment to depend completely on external services which are completely out of their control. If the Internet connection into my apartament goes down (as is the case all too often unfortunately), I can still play TriPeaks. If Google's datacenter blows up, I can still type and print out a letter.
That brings up peripheals. There's a ton of small appliances that people use in conjunction with their PC. Printers, scanners, CD/DVD burners, sound cards, external storage, etc. These all need a place to connect to and enough processing power to work together and interact with whatever mainframe you might use over the Internet.
I could show some other examples, but it really boils down to this: The Internet and personal computing are NOT mutually exclusive. In order to use the Internet you need a portal to it via a connected device. Phones can do this, but they don't provide the means to work on with Internet apps easily or for extended periods of time. A PC provides ease and comfort while using the Internet in addition to a platform for performing other tasks where as Web solution isn't ideal. You won't find artists switching to GPhotoShop, a civil engineer switching to GAutoCAD, or a film producer switching to G3DStudioMax.
Personal computers are here to stay. Their form and HIDs may change to suit new technologies, but they won't disappear. Take my word for it.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm don't see why this pdonouncement rates a story — it's been the Sun party line for as long as I can remember. In fact, it's the reason Jonathan Schartz works for Sun. He used to be the CEO of a NextStep development company called LightHouse Design. Sun took them over and turned them into the Java Application Group, which was supposed to create
Re:I don't think so. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I don't think so. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh crap. (Score:5, Funny)
I guess I grossly overpaid on my dual core AMD64 3800+ relic which I built just today.
Well, yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh crap. (Score:2)
You probably did. In a year you can probably buy that same chip for less than half of what you paid for it today. Imagine if cars were like that. $40k BMW today or wait until it's last year's model (still brand new not previously titled) and it'd be only $20k. Only a rich moron would buy the brand new model.
Severs (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't they say this already? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not so sure yet.
Re:Didn't they say this already? (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot has changed in that time. A couple of years ago, we built an ASP-based service. At the time, we were really worried about high-speed bandwidth adoption. To our surprise, this has not been a problem at all. We seldom ever get calls from people with dial-up service.
The biggest problem that we face is one of perception. People believe that if they buy the software and install it on their PC that somehow they'll have a better experience.
and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and... (Score:2)
Screen size (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Screen size (Score:5, Funny)
good
enough
4 me
You can have my pc... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention...
If the PC is a relic, where are documents going to be created? Not on a pda or cell phone.
If the PC is a relic, where are games going to be played? Sure you've got the xbox #, ps#, nintendo systems but certain games lend themselves better to pcs.
General computers, i.e. systems that can do everything, are not going anywhere for a long time.
There are so many holes in his arguments (Score:3, Insightful)
He talks about mobile phones. Neat, everyone loves them, but seems to neglect to mention that mobile data costs are insanely high, that they suck at such things are output and input of data, that the few that are slightly capable cost as much as a fat PC. That so far
Sorry, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, no. (Score:2)
Jeez, where do guys like this come from?
We can repopulate en-vitro, so sex is obsolete, right?
Re:Sorry, no. (Score:2)
In fact, we can simulate everything on a computer, so why bother doing anything?
Re:Sorry, no. (Score:2)
Same goes for any other app. A fast local processor for intensive programs and some decent cache space and 90% of the computing world would be better off.
-Charles
Independent games? (Score:2)
Console gaming.
I'm an independent video game developer. If the market for PC gaming were to evaporate, then how would I be able to distribute my games given that all major game consoles have closed bootloaders?
great Sun tries to push the network computer again (Score:5, Insightful)
To tell the truth, the day of the network computer may finally be near. Now at last we have net based email applications which are more or less as good as the PC based ones. And some net based games are decent as well although they are not even close in presentation to PC based games. But for games cleverness and network features may compensate for bad presentation.
But we still need a net based text editor (aka Word) in order to make any network computer feasable.
Then again, even if the network computer becomes popular, will Sun be able to reap the benefits? In order for the concept to work it has to be cheap and sun is not good at building anything cheap. And anything Sun can do, Linux and BSD can do for cheaper.
Re:great Sun tries to push the network computer ag (Score:2)
FCKeditor is getting there. It's obviously not got anything near the features of a PC-based program, but it will do for simple processing.
Re:great Sun tries to push the network computer ag (Score:2)
But even if that did happen - I don't see Sun making super-cheap end-user web appliances - and any kind of big centralised server is just as likely to be made by Dell or IBM as it is Sun. Those other companies are flexible enough to survive and prosper over any hypothetical cross-over period.
The one kind of company that WOULD prosper if the PC were somehow to become obsolete would be network providers. The need for insanely broadband networks would leap if this ever happene
Re:Citilink buses do not operate on Sundays (Score:2)
The nearest public transport is 20 miles from where I live...and 20 miles from where I work too.
Re: (Score:2)
Ignorant publicity grabbing statement? (Score:2, Informative)
Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
The web browser as an operating system.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep rocking like its 1995! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is even less true now than it was ten years ago.
A better question will be who will buy Sun.. I'm guessing Dell.
web services... (Score:2)
taking the software out of the hands of users...
one the one hand it helps the new users, prevents lots of common headaches/problems and helps in backing up.
but for all that positive effects it provides, what it asks in return is that you give up virtually all your control over your data/software/interaction.
that also means no more tinkering with the source and adjusting settings that they won't allow.
the other problem with this mentality is that it wants to become
Please (Score:2, Insightful)
Reading web pages on a tiny phone screen about as appropriate and satisfying as using gravel as lubricant. And let's not even get into all the other things a computer can be used for that a phone's small screen and lack of a keyboard preclude: word processing, spreadsheeting, desktop publishing, database management and graphics, sound and video editing, to name just a few.
Sorry, but just because Sun doesn't have a mea
How many times have I heard this before? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is that their are reasons why the PC will not become "obsolete" in the near future - games, the rise of the SoHo network with the various servers that the computers must operate (file server, print server, etcetera), processing power needed for the graphics/movies manipulation ad infinity.
When I do get more bandwidth, I don't want to waste it passing this type of data around - especially for net-servers that likely wouldn't have much more power/person ratio as my home PC.
Sort of... (Score:5, Insightful)
When people say they're sick of the their PC, what they actually mean (from talking to a few of them), is that they're sick of having to worry about the balky innards. They just want to turn it on, write their letters, check out CNN, and play Hearts against the Novosibirsk Hearts League. However, if you ask them if they'd trade the speed, immediacy, and appearance of control that having their own PC versus a running a web-service on a dedicated, limited, device offers, they'll immediately say, "No". They also, as a rule, don't want eight devices each of which only does one job. So, we're back with PCs.
One suspects that what Zander is really offering is everyone having a SunRay on their desk, with massive Sun systems in the background pushing everything through the network pipe. I, as the de-facto sysadmin for the family, think this is a great idea, but I as my geekish self, don't. Personally, I think the first company/organization that comes up with a machine that includes the modern connectivity with the single-user OS experience of circa 1996 Mac/Windows is going to have a hit. It's finding someone to work out the iPod experience for the PC; connected, yet truly yours. Clean, unobtrusive, and dedicated to its function. Maybe everything that makes a PC yours kept on an iPod-Nanoish device, which is docked to a PC, and allows it to run. Without your card, it doesn't run, and with your card, it only runs your programs, and only stores your data, so other users can't infect you. Every tub on its own bottom computing.
On the other hand, maybe we'll finally get fibre to the curb, high-speed, redundant links to the network, so you'll always be on, and there's enough bandwidth so that remote content appears like local content. Then Zander, Gates, et al., will be proved right, but until then, I think the general-purpose PC is here to stay.
Re:Sort of... (Score:3, Informative)
Um....Zander has been at Motorola for some years now. Jonathan Scwartz is the current President.
As for Sunray, I suspect that the day of a Sunray or something similar IN the home may not be terribly far away....if we can ever get a Sunray server that actually does all the things a winders PC does today. I know lots of people tout the Gimp, but I can't live without Photoshop. I haven't seen any open source equivalent to Quicken that I like as much, and can
PC pricing says he's wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
That time of the year again? (Score:2)
Imminent death of the PC predicted! News at 11!
Yawn.
Can you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you type out long reports on a mobile phone quickly? No?
Can you lodge a tax return on a mobile phone? No?
There's more to a PC then just browsing the internet fool.
How about this relic (Score:2)
"Sun's claims of the PC's eminent extinction themselves now relics."
Not gonna happen... (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying that the PC is dead in favor of a cell phone is patently absurd however. Cell phones offer such a highly limited user experience because of the screen size and input limitations. Yes, you can do some powerful things with a cell phone and you can receive real time updates on relatively thin slices of very specific information (stocks, weather, sports scores, traffic) and you can have limited "txt bsd comms via SMS." You will never really be able to learn a huge amount about new subjects via your cell phone, you will never be able to create and publish significant content on a cell phone, you will never have a rich and immersive media experience on a cell phone.
Finally, there is the carrier politics. This probably effects the US more then the rest of the world, but the cell providers have been the biggest impediment to cell phone technology. They have dragged their feet on rolling out new, high speed networks. They have indicated a desire for megalomaniacal control of all the content that goes onto each phone. They lock users into their crappy services with contracts and vastly overpriced hardware (a Palm costs $200, but slap a cell phone module onto the back of the Palm and it is now a $600 device, how does that work?).
I don't think so... (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you use your PC for? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you simply use your PC to "do e-mail and the internet" then yes, I agree that the PC is rather ill-suited to the task. There's a vast amount of wasted capacity if you're only running an internet browser on your PC.
However, the PC is also a platform for a variety of other things:
For the sake of redundancy, I'll mention that the PC-less world relies much more heavily on bandwidth than the market currently provides at reasonable cost. PCs are primarily a storage device, and until you get another system with adequate cache to store all of the things that you want to keep after you download, you'll probably be stuck using a PC.
If you're an avid gamer, then you're definately putting a much larger portion of your PC to work than the "average" user described in the article. It does seem that consoles are becoming much more powerful in terms of delivering games than PCs are, but they are much less flexible at this point and don't support user-modded games, maps, addons, etc.
If you're a media fan, then the PC offers you speed, reliability, and flexibility that the internet world does not. Granted, you can get your music online, but I'm sure we all sleep much better at night when we know our favorite music is on our PC and not going anywhere, rather than being subjected to the whim of our ISP or whatever site we stream from.
The internet is a growing market for just about everything. Unfortunately, it also means that greedy people are starting to catch on, and there will be more and more pricetags for online services in the years to come. It doesn't cost me anything (aside from the electric bill of course) to play a song that's on my hard disk, but the internet is not so friendly (and I expect that it will become less-so as time goes by).
Streaming videos just don't rival the quality of a DVD at this stage. If you were able to compress a stream and still maintain quality at a reasonable rate, you'd still need a processor on the end-user side to decode the stream. There's also the issue of bandwidth and transportability of media. I can take a DVD with me to the room downstairs or even out of state on a plane and it never loses quality because the signal gets bad or my connection changes.
While the news, e-mail, forums, information, etc. may becoming increasingly internet-specific in terms of its execution, there's still a great deal of use for a PC. I'm certainly not going to give up my hard drives any time soon (xbox 360 can go to hell).
So what's the motivation for all of the internet stuffs, from an industry perspective? What you do online, they can see. What you do on your PC, they can't. Unless installing spyware becomes the new fad soon, that's not going to change. It makes much more sense from a business perspective to have all of your applications in the same place you have your data-collection--online.
Until the internet gets a Ctrl-S, I don't think I'll be giving up my PC. I can't count the times I've lost a lengthy post to the evil internet. And I like being able to keep my media out of the clutches of some greedy CEO as well.
don't forget FULL-SIZED PORN!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Well, he would know, wouldn't he? (Score:2)
This is at odds with other trends.. (Score:2)
This would be reasonable if everyone used desktop computers, which were always connected to a network with good bandwidth. But, the reality is that laptop computers have overtaken desktops, and the trend is increasing. When you have portable computers, you will not be able to assume ubiquitous bandwidth at a reasonable level. So, there will still be a need for the PC, OS, local apps, etc.
I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Web applications- I'm not sure to what extent this term means, but I'm assuming that if he mentions eBay, Yahoo, Google, and Amazon, he means access to email, news, and shopping. Email is useful, and so is news and shopping...in America. I'm getting this feeling that his genius plan of bringing these services to Sub-Saharan Africa isn't going to work. Promoting of oss is great and all, but he's forgotten one teensy-weensy problem. These programs run on pc's.
it's just a mildly shocking comment to get press. (Score:2, Insightful)
1) software development
2) music production
3) gaming
I wonder... (Score:2)
Everything is a relic! (Score:4, Interesting)
Convergence is not coming, its here. Its only going to get "worse."
Wireless broadband everywhere is just around the corner. Why store data on a PC or a LAN at all? Constant repair/upgrade/update/crash concerns. When 2Mbps wireless is truly a commodity, change will be imminent.
What data do YOU store? How about the average household? MP3? Movies on DVD? Thesis? Magazines in a bin for the past 3 years? Family photo albums? No, they won't disappear, not immediately.
Once that 2Mbps wireless is that commodity, data warehouses will be, too. No more backup concerns, no hardware-go-booms, no constant PC replacements. Just rent the space as you need it. Need more power? Its there.
Software rental (client-server thin networks) will be the next step. It will happen. No patching, no $250/year license for Ofiice 2006, no virus concerns, just pay-as-you-go. IT consultants beware.
The new TVs are just 1024x768 plasmas or LCDs. A $50 set-top box transcieves to Internet2. Your PDA will have the same access to your data as your home dumb terminal and office dumb terminal. All your contacts, movies, songs, personal and business data.
Why even buy music or movies? Pay-per-play!
Privacy? Few care. DRM? They're working on it for this future, not for piracy today.
Re:Everything is a relic! (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal banking info
My vacation pics
My resignation letter
My will
All these, and more, I do not necessarily want on some other guys server. My banking info? Here, and at the bank. Not with some 3rd party. My vacation pics? All of them? Well...some, I want to keep local. My will? Here, and at the lawyers office. Again, not a copy on some other guys hard drive. Some guy I have zero control over.
A LOT of things could be used and kept online. But an awful lot of other things I want to keep very, very local.
Re:Everything is a relic! (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a couple of compelling reasons. One is privacy. While it is possible that my personal data will be compromised through a security hole on my Internet-connected PC, it is much more likely that it will be compromised if I leave it on a network server out there where any would-be spammer or identity thief can bribe underpaid sysadmins to give them a copy. Certainly, no company is going to want its trade secrets and financials exposed in that way.
The other major reason is cost. No one is going to host several hundred gigs of data for me for free. And while I realize that most folks don't have that much data -- ignoring for the moment gigantic collections of pirated movies and MP3s -- even small amounts of data storage will come at a cost, whether that's a subscription fee that adds up to much more than the cost of a hard drive over its lifetime, or just having ads shoved in one's face whenever you want to use it.
There's one other important reason to host your own data: when network data storage is commoditized, the service providers will be operating on razor-thin margins and therefore prone to bankruptcies and mergers. What happens to your data when your hosting service goes belly up? What happens to your data and your privacy terms when your hosting service is acquired by a larger company with less scruples?
Why even buy music or movies? Pay-per-play!
Because my daddy doesn't pay for my rock and roll lifestyle anymore.
Sound of despiration (Score:2)
For play, sure... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No Ultra 20? (Score:2)
PC users say that "Sun's a Relic" (Score:2)
Jonathan "Bagdad Bob" is at it again (Score:2)
I'm a Sun sysadmin and like their hardware, but Jonathan and Scott both tend to have wacky ideas. Some of their ideas are visionary, but most are just plain stupid. Given the ration of bad to good, I've learned to just ignore them.
BTW, whatever happened to "Bagdad Bob" (the real one) ? Is it true that he got a job at SCO as their information minister?
relic my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
the future trend is going to be for every home to have one or two really big pc's (something we in the Industry refer to as "servers") that network everything from your tivo/pvr to your cell and cordless phones to ultralight tablets and laptops, and make the data stored on those servers ubiquitously available.
Re:relic my ass (Score:3, Interesting)
Stepping back in time, in college I used Linux almost ex
Hardly The Answer (Score:4, Interesting)
The human-computer-I/O needs to be made network capable. I'll get back to you on it.
Myren
Way out to lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
It started when suddenly you could choose a computer from a bevy of different manufacturers that could run the same software and even accept the same upgrades and accessories. The universe of possibilites was huge!
It was the feeling you got when you looked at a $5 shareware rack and saw someone buying the program you wrote!
It was the feeling that busines people got when they saw that software like dBase and 1-2-3 eliminated repetitive clerical work that kept small business small and big business huge.
It was the feeling that small publishers got when their LaserWriter spit out the first copy of their 2,400 subscriber newsletter... and it looked as good as what any newspaper could print.
It was the feeling that kids would get when they typed RUN after building a simple game in GW-Basic (and grew into Turbo-C, Turbo-Pascal and the amazing array of choices in development tools).
It was the feeling that somehow the world was smaller when you heard the chirp-chirp-buzz of your 2400BPS modem connect with a bbs.
It was being able to upgrade and modify and customize your machine, like you Dad did his car - to perform how you wanted it to and to do the things you wanted it to.
Now people like Schwartz say the PC is dead because big corporations want to "harness the power" of your cell phone, game console and PC and rent it back to you... Whatever. Useless. Clueless. People want freedom. Not walls, restrictions and tollbooths.
It's a matter of time until someone makes the PC of convergent cell phones - one where the user has control, the software stack is simple, elegant and compatible, and there's no toll booths for developers. Users control it. Just like I do my PC.
And incidentally, Open Source software feels to me a lot like a continuation of the PC revolution - with one difference - this time we know that it's about freedom. Last time it was simply fun.
Re:Way out to lunch (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're leaving out, and what is ultimately threatening to these corporate players, is that the PC is a very versatile and powerful tool that a lot of people know inside and out. Every product released for the PC can (and will) be hacked, modded and pirated. Because hacks, cracks and mods will inevitably be available for the price of a download the user is ultimately in control. In th
What he means... (Score:5, Interesting)
...is that if you want to make money, it is useless to target the PC. The PC is dead as a target when it comes to commercial application development.
He isn't trying to replace your PC, he's trying to explain why companies just aren't developing PC software anymore.
All the revenue-generating applications these days are on the Internet. (Games are one of the big exceptions, but even PC games these days have to use the Internet in some way to be commercially viable.)
Paul Graham has been saying the same thing [paulgraham.com] for some time. And I think they’re right!
Re:What he means... (Score:3, Insightful)
All the revenue-generating applications these days are on the Internet. (Games are one of the big exceptions, but even PC games these days have to use the Internet in some way to be commercially viable.)
Ahem. According to the Forbes piece on Ballmer currently on the newstand, Office and Windows contribute %140 of Microsoft's profits, including covering over the multi-billion dollar losses fro
I think they are wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The Internet is neat and all, and there's a lot of shit that it makes better and things it enables, but there's still plenty of market for stuff on your home computer. Some of th
Re:What he means... (Score:3, Interesting)
Cars are dead, trains are the future (Score:3, Insightful)
Sun has been touting the "the network is the computer" mantra for the last 10 years--hurrying from failure to failure (anyone remember the SunOne?). I've had the dubious pleasure to attend three or four SunERCs over the last decade and this was the keynote speech each and every bleeding time. Beginning in 1999 or 2000, you could hear exasperated groans throughout the audience.
Some technical reasons
-Wireless broadband simply isn't there yet. And it might never be if you are outside of major cities and away from interstates. Hell, I can't get my cell to connect half of the time when I am on vacation. (Vail, southern New Mexico, large parts of Arizona, even here in Illinois, you can loose cell coverage by taking any exit on I-57 and driving 3 miles). And don't get me started on roaming charges.
-People want to own stuff. Otherwise, we'd all take trains and busses. The same argument applies there:more efficient, more reliable, you don't have to check your oil, rotate your tires, or take them to the shop.
-Joe Sixpack will never store their porn on a Sun server.
He's right that a lot of people in developing or emerging countries will first see the Internet on their cell phone. China, for example, has 300 million or so cell phones and far fewer internet connections. But the user experience on a cell is an unmitigated pain in the ass. The other thing that will keep wireless and online use from making the PC obsolete is the greed of wireless providers--if your cable is $50 a month, imagine what cable+wireless+free software is going to be. Since the cost of computer hardware is now marginal (new Dell==6 months of Internet connection), why wouldn't someone buy a PC, no matter what s/he can do on his/her cell?
I really liked Sun for a long time, but they DO desperately need a change in management. If not, I'll welcome our new Dell/Sun rack server overlords.
same old same old (Score:4, Insightful)
The desktop PC, running windows, linux or MacOSX will continue to be useful. Having power like that directly in the hands of end users can't be replaced.
What will happen is that new applications paradigms that only make sense because of the Web will emerge. We have already seen some of that.
Old Claim? (Score:3, Insightful)
Java is hardly "thin" these days, though. It is practically an operating system now. They just want to replace MS's bloated mess with their own bloated mess.
Pornography kills the Net computer (Score:3, Interesting)
This is one reason why .Mac sucks: Why would I want to store my personal stuff with them? And if I were to store it there, I wouldn't want a measly gigabyte for that price.
Maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I seriously doubt the PC is going the way of the dinosaur. There is a value in having some kind of box (even in a lapop, which is as small as I think a normal PC will normally get - any smaller brings in different issues). You'll never be able to play the latest and greatest game on a cellphone or webTV and (while I don't understand it) there will always be people who want PC style games over consoles.
Plus, the feeling of a computer, even a laptop, docked in one area is far different from that of a cellphone or a TV in a common room.
Future will never be all one way or the other (Score:3, Insightful)
Anti-Sun hostility is clouding the issue. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is a company that has been working with the community since times immemorial (do you still use all those sunsites out there I imagine, where many Linux distributions were originally hosted), that released several pieces of useful software for the community to improve and hack, that gave us the only viable alternative to MS Office, and when people like Dvorak (?Sp) and even UNIX magazines were preparing for the total dominance of Windows NT in the server room, Sun dodgedely stuck to its guns and saw, correctly, that UNIX (and here allow me to include Linux, may SCO be damned) had architectural advantages that made it the natural tool for a networked world (when BIll Gates did not even know the Internet had to be reckoned with and you had to install 3rd party products on Winodws to provide a TCP/IP stack).
They also gave us Java. I don't know you guys, but I have programmed many nice little applications with Java and have not paid a penny to anybody.
You add up all that and would think that Sun deserves a bit of respect on this site. They have gone as far as a company like theirs can go and then some.
I am not saying that Swchartz is brilliant, or that he is correct (he has some interesting points to make which of course hang from an agenda, but heck, tell me a company that does not have an agenda for bunnies sakes?).
The point I want to make is that a fellow techie company that has been good sport with the IT community in general deserves a bit more respect and understanding in a time when they don't look like the knight in a shinny armour they once were.
You can say whatever you want from Sun, but if they go down or are bought, their failure would be a honourable one, they tried to be innovate (the derided network computer, Java, software emulation like WABI, etc) and have been more open than most (there were clones of Sparc machines out there, pause for thought for the Apple fan boys I hope).
For gonnies sakes, go and download Solaris ant try it, it is free for you to keep and do pretty much whatever you want with it, it blows Linux (my desktop at the moment, so no snide remarks there please) out of the window in most respects (dtrace, zones, clean disk management). And you can check a lot of the source code as well.
Guys, that deserves respect, when somebody that has earned my respect speaks I may politely point out the problems with his argument or may keep polite silence, but will never insult him or deride him.
MS will change the PC to be an UN PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Personal Virtual machines (Score:3, Interesting)
You get the best of both worlds; ability to install your own apps and no need to physically maintain a machine.
The system administration could be drastically simplified for the common case, and security issues could be patched by an automated updater, similar to Debian apt-get.
The problem is that ISP's don't want this model; they want to lock people into keeping their data in proprietary systems.
For consumers, perhaps; for developers, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly for 1), the PC may be becoming a relic
But are you going to get a writer (2) or a developer (3) punching out paragraphs or debugging code on a cell phone? Or an XBox (insert humourous diatribe on using $yourFavouriteEditor using the XBox gaming control here)? Or a Blackberry?
It just doesn't make semse.
ps: Schwartz's reference to Craiglist is nice -- note that this is a site that uses a very basic low tech approach and is very popular, and extremely effective. Nothing fancy -- it just works.
Re:He's sorta right. (Score:2)
But what do you do when some knuckle-dragging mouth-breather on a backhoe cuts the cable that serves your interweb? No webbee, no workee.
Re:Replace our PC's with Mobil Phones? (Score:2)
Re:Replace our PC's with Mobil Phones? (Score:2)
And don't want one (Score:2)