PC Shipments Stuck in Neutral Despite AI Buzz (theregister.com) 50
The PC market is not showing many signs of a rebound, despite the hype around AI PCs, with market watchers split over whether unit shipments are up or down slightly. From a report: Those magical AI PC boxes were supposed to fire up buyer enthusiasm and spur the somewhat listless market for desktop and laptop systems into significant growth territory, but that doesn't appear to be happening. According to the latest figures from Gartner, global PC shipments totaled 62.9 million units during Q3 of this year, representing a 1.3 percent decline compared with the same period last year. However, this does follow three consecutive quarters of modest growth.
"Even with a full line-up of Windows-based AI PCs for both Arm and x86 in the third quarter of 2024, AI PCs did not boost the demand for PCs since buyers have yet to see their clear benefits or business value," commented Gartner Director Analyst Mikako Kitagawa. This is perhaps understandable when AI PCs are largely just a marketing concept, and vendors can't agree on exactly what the the definition of an AI PC should be. Even worse, some buyers of Arm-based Copilot+ machines discovered that their performance isn't actually very good with some applications.
"Even with a full line-up of Windows-based AI PCs for both Arm and x86 in the third quarter of 2024, AI PCs did not boost the demand for PCs since buyers have yet to see their clear benefits or business value," commented Gartner Director Analyst Mikako Kitagawa. This is perhaps understandable when AI PCs are largely just a marketing concept, and vendors can't agree on exactly what the the definition of an AI PC should be. Even worse, some buyers of Arm-based Copilot+ machines discovered that their performance isn't actually very good with some applications.
You mean Windows on ARM ? (Score:2)
Windows on ARM has failed before for the same reasons it will fail now - because nothing works on it, not even Office is complete.
And the x86 devices from yesterday can still run AI without it, training AI happens in the datacenter on Intel+nVIDIA.
Re:You mean Windows on ARM ? (Score:5, Interesting)
For most people AI and Copilot are irrelevant as well.
Most of the PCs are for gaming, surfing and business bread and butter cases where most of the processors the last 10 years are quite sufficient.
The remaining are for data analysis and simulations where you'd get a benefit from the bleeding edge machines. Some servers like web servers and virtualization hypervisors also get a benefit from higher CPU performance.
X86 Windows 32bit will never not be needed (Score:1)
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Only gamers care about performance of 32 bit windows software now, because for everyone else they either need to run it on the bare metal for hardware support reasons or the code will run faster in emulation on a modern ARM than it did on any of the original hardware. And of the gamers, it's only those who play old games that it matters to at all, and most of those will run great in emulation on modern machines as well. If they don't, they probably won't run on a modern OS at all since Windows' backwards co
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Except when it doesn't run at all, like Google Drive for example. Microsoft seems to be tone deaf to the fact that there is value in 40 years of EVERYTHING WORKS, no matter the software or peripheral you want to use, it's the de facto standard,
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most of those will run great in emulation on modern machines as well
If it requires 3D hardware acceleration from around the XP era, then nope it won't. VMs are inadequate for that use case. (No real support for a virtual nVidia / ATI GPU that's compatible with the older drivers, and no virtual custom GPU outside of Linux guests.) Wine is also a non-starter due to it's ever increasing memory requirements caused by it's constant chasing of a moving target. Without any consideration given for older software needs. (Example: User32 has bunch of additional code that those 32bit
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It's true
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Copilot and Arm-Windows are silly.
Re: X86 Windows 32bit will never not be needed (Score:1)
Itanium was pretty good for its day. OpenVMS and Linux both ported successfully. 32-bit was tacked on for Microsoft. X86-64 was decried for stretching out the 64bit transition and being a rather energy inefficient way of doing it which ainâ(TM)t wrong. The problem is and always will be Microsoft.
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For most people AI and Copilot are irrelevant as well.
Wrong point of view. Many people are taking advantage of "AI" without ever actually knowing it. It is relevant to them. However what isn't relevant to them is throwing dedicated hardware at the problem. We frankly don't do anything critical which needs it. For the things we do which are less critical, existing GPUs can grunt the problem away fast enough for most users. We are just not in the position to need new dedicated hardware for this yet.
What exactly *is* an "AI PC" (Score:3)
Re: What exactly *is* an "AI PC" (Score:2)
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Re:What exactly *is* an "AI PC" (Score:5, Funny)
It's like having a brother on your computer that watches over your shoulders and helps you with things like providing you with interesting offers from Microsoft's partners and give a real time view of what you are doing on your computer to the government.
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It's like having a brother on your computer that watches over your shoulders and helps you with things like providing you with interesting offers from Microsoft's partners and give a real time view of what you are doing on your computer to the government.
It's the "interesting offers" that are my biggest turnoff. I do not need the OS provider using my platform for their advertising. The only time I use Windows is in a VM for the few apps that I use that are only available via Windows...and even then I'm starting to use Coherence mode (I use Parallels on a Mac) so I don't even see the Windows desktop at all, just the application.
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Re: What exactly *is* an "AI PC" (Score:1)
I thought it's pre-loaded with Turbodong 2000 AI fart videos.
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AI PC mostly means it has an NPU.
I am sure (Score:2)
I am sure just about everyone here told relatives and friends to avoid Windows 11 like a plague. I know I have. But that is hard to avoid paying for it with the Microsoft tax.
So, I know I have suggested Apple and for one person I will be finding a referb Thinkpad and put MX on it for her. I wonder how many people here have done the same.
Granted Apple is not a great deal better that windows with it spyware. But Apple does not have anything like CoPilot plus I heard you can disable Apple's phone-home func
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The millions of businesses that are "vendor locked in" all seem to shrug and pay for the next release without much thought. The main argument is that it's just too much work and expense to change or fix. It's going to really have to hurt before they rip the bandage off.
The trend that I perceive is that your Microsoft, Apple, VMWare, Cisco, Adobe, all the giants, they just shove the horseshit down your throat, take the inevitable c
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Everyone here? That's not a lot of people anymore. We don't have much influence.
Why would you buy brand new obsolete stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you honestly believe that anything "AI" you buy now is going to cut it in a few months? Anyone who's surprised hasn't been around long enough to learn not to sink their money into manic trends.
Re:Why would you buy brand new obsolete stuff? (Score:4, Informative)
What do you mean by "cut it"?
I am not excited by the prospect of an "AI" accelerated CPU because I have a tolerably powerful GPU, and because only the new and thus expensive parts have this label slapped on them. I am only now upgrading from Zen+ to Zen3 and to a system with PCIe 4.0 for reasons of being a cheap bastard. But how many people out there are really excited to spend big money on a PC right now? A very small percentage of people, almost all of whom are computer professionals, have both the inclination and the budget to do so.
As wealth inequity continues to rise, the percentage of the population with disposable income for new equipment falls. Microsoft and Intel are facing the consequences of corporatism. Everyone likes shiny new stuff, but they have to have the income to support it. When I was making dot com boom money I was happy to build multiple new PCs per year. Now, I am only willing to buy a few parts here and there.
The market is strong, but the layoffs are numerous and trickle down isn't a thing. It's not a surprise that there is not a PC buying boom to go with the new fad.
Re: Why would you buy brand new obsolete stuff? (Score:1)
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I think most people are just waiting to see what happens with Windows 10, such is supposed to be EOL next year. If Microsoft doesn't reverse course and consigns millions of PCs to landfill, people will either make the decision to upgrade then or just switch to something like a Chromebook or even just a tablet for their computing needs.
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Yes I can. The reason I can believe this is because despite all the hype about new hardware virtually all consumer AI applications run perfectly fine on 3year old non-dedicated a hardware. If you are playing games, you likely have a powerful enough GPU to run any current AI application from an end user point of view already (not talking about generating new models here, but simply applying existing ones.)
AI on PCs is for the ad guys, not users... (Score:1, Insightful)
The AI on PCs is intended for the people to sling ads and go through your files to figure out the most salient, salable data points. It isn't for the end user.
Why should end users bother upgrading so Big Brother has a sharper and more focused camera lens?
Focus on what makes a PC "good" (Score:2)
3D, Blockchain, AI (Score:5, Informative)
"AI PC" is just the latest buzz-term to try and convince consumers to replace their existing, perfectly serviceable, products.
Despite the marketing hype of "everyone can be a creative," the majority of domestic PC use is browser-based, with a little letter-writing and casual gaming. In the corporate world, it's mostly browser/native in-house apps and Word/Excel/Outlook, often via thin-client. Neither use-case benefits from "AI," certainly not to the extent of spending significant cash.
The next bump in hardware sales will only happen when Win10 goes EoL. Domestic users will discover that MS has arbitrarily locked them out of an OS upgrade, and the choice is either new hardware or Linux.
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They'd clearly like everyone to rush out and buy a shiny new 'Copilot+ PC with Windows 11 and Office 365'; but that's just not going to happen in a great many cases; and we've seen behavior in the past(eg. having Windows Update function normally even on PCs that have failed activation for a prolonged period of time) that suggests that they know that a major threat to their customers is their poorer or less enthusiastic customers running
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...buy a shiny new 'Copilot+ PC with Windows 11 and Office 365'...
And here's going to be another problem - Joe/Joanne User doesn't know (or care) about the difference between ARM and x86/64, but will be mightily pissed off if their new Windows PC won't run their favourite app properly, or at all.
Apple users are used to the fundamental architecture & instruction set being changed every few years, and being told to suck it up if stuff doesn't work on the "new hotness."
On the other hand, Windows users - and the media - are so vocal that a hefty chunk of every new OS ver
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but will be mightily pissed off if their new Windows PC won't run their favourite app properly, or at all.
What is their favourite app? No one is buying these low powered devices for gaming. No one considers antivirus or security software their favourite app. Major apps already support ARM, and for virtually everything else Prism will handle translation transparently, even for 64bit applications.
Just as we saw with the first roll-out of ChromeBooks, I foresee lots of dissatisfied customers returning ARM-based Windows machines.
ARM machines have been on the market now for 5 years. While they haven't sold spectacularly well, they also haven't seen any massive returns or disgruntled users either. Having used a Surface Pro X many times I suspect m
What's the point of local AI? (Score:2)
Superresolution and distilling of a local data search index, that's about it. Even if you use AI search of your local data, it will probably use remote models in the process since they are just so much better.
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Privacy.
If you think people's search engine terms can be revealing, wait until you see what people type at Enterprise Autocorrect.
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it will probably use remote models in the process since they are just so much better.
So the MS feature everyone is mad about only uses a local model. MS has performance requirements to be called an AI PC specifically so it can run the local models. The issue wasn't the processing it was the storage. It was (haven't seen a analysis of their updated version) trivially easy to steal the database of screenshots if you got access to the PC.
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If you got access to a logged in account someone will put something on github to still make it trivial. If Recall can access it, you can access it.
What does this DO for me? (Score:3)
Ok, wise salesguys, what does this magic AI enabled chip actually DO for me? Why should I want it?
I'm waiting for you answer.
Still waiting.
No answer? Then why should I buy it? I don't need it. I don't want if. You act all surprised that tacking on the letters AI aren't magically selling new PCs. The marketing hype still has sailsdroids brainwashed on this useless crap and someone still has enough money to bombard us with unwarranted praise for AI every five seconds.
It's like how Windows 8 tried to turn desktop PCs in to large cell phones. Nobody wanted that.
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Ok, wise salesguys, what does this magic AI enabled chip actually DO for me? Why should I want it?
imagine playing a game, like strategy or rpg, and the game implements a way to display the game world to your computers "AI" interface in text format .. as well as enabling the "AI" to call functions in your game, in real time, to control the NPCs.. and you could use anyones "AI" software implementation instructed exactly the way you wanted, you could actually have diplomatic negotiations with other factions or council of war with your generals and governors .. keeping track of everything that needs to be i
Too expensive (Score:2)
20 years ago I would upgrade my PC a few times a year because PC related parts were sanely priced and it was fun. Today, not so much. When run of the mill motherboards cost $200+ and CPU upgrades year to year offer little to no performance benefit then what's the point? The icing on the cake is that Windows has become absolute shit removing the fun out of building and upgrading PCs. Sure, Linux is an option, but it's not even close to being ready for every day desktop adoption sadly. The tech industry is sl
Re: Too expensive (Score:2)
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CPU upgrades year to year offer little to no performance benefit
Are we really complaining about this? I'm perfectly happy to not feel the need to upgrade more often for performance reasons. I ran my main PC with a 4790K for over 5 years. I replaced it with a 9900XE (OK I might have gone a bit overboard but I run a lot of VMs for work/play so it made sense) in 2020 and I expect to run that until at least 2026 or 2027 before I will actually need to upgrade, and then probably more for faster PCIE/RAM speeds than CPU being too old.
This reminds me of people complaining a
Waiting for 11 Deadline (Score:2)
I do think we will see a rebound in 2025 as businesses start migrating to W11. They will likely flip machines rather than rebuild/upgrade.
For Linux folks, there
The answer is simple (Score:2)
Older computers work fine for most people.
The current generation of AI is nearly useless, but hypemongers and investors demand that it be shoved down our throats NOW.
Windows on ARM is a bad, bad, horrible, no good, awful idea. Backward compatibility is a really good thing. For some, it's absolutely essential.
The latest news about Intel processor instability makes some people skeptical about new processors.
That Subject Line... (Score:1)
I'm going to not so dangerously speculate that most people are very done with all the spying that industry does on them. They're sick of the constant barrage of ads from every goddamned electronic thing they buy; and that "AI" buzzword just means more of that shit is going to be shoveled into their brainspace. That's a huge net negative for the average person, irrespective of what some delusionally extroverted influencer is peddling.
I think i
AI PC boxes were supposed to fire up buyer ... (Score:2)
AI PC boxes were supposed to fire up buyer enthusiasm
Was anyone other than maybe some marketing people at PC makers or some goofs at Gartner actually predicting this? Like actual, reliable (!), industry analysts? I can't think of any and I can't think of any reason why consumers would be persuaded by AI specific features at this point in time.
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I must have missed this "buzz" (Score:2)
What in the world is an "AI PC"? I get what Apple Intelligence is ... pure marketing genius offered to a gullible market segment. But what is an AI PC? Are these PCs with 4090's for people either not connected to the Internet or who can't stomach the hundreds of millisecond lag in cloud-based AI response?
I do give the PC makers some credit for realizing that they don't have Apple fairy dust and that a marketing blitz would not only be futile but also ridiculed. That's why the first time I've heard about