I think Atwood is right, PCs are on their way out simply because with tablets there is so much less that can go wrong. He mentions tech support in the article: THAT is why they will win, regardless of whether or not they will fully replace PCs, or whether or not they are better suited to writing emails. Millions of people who can't be bothered with anti-virus updates and the like will just find it a much more pleasant experience: "it just works" indeed.
(I'm a Mac user and I find myself spending a lot less time on tech support type issues than back in the day when I was using Linux and Windows, still it's hard to deny that iPads are currently the epitome of simplicity, compared to their power.)
And that's what I'm worried about: "No user serviceable parts inside". I'm concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow's kids' experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20.
Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly. You turn it on, it's on. You put in a diskette -- well, it didn't load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, and once the game started, it was started. Things were simple and worked, for the most part, quite well. No tech support needed. But the BASIC shell was there right at your fingertips -- hell, the manual came with example BASIC programs.
Quibbling over the merits of BASIC aside, it was a simple experience but it was also tremendously open.
Things got much more complicated since then; network connectivity in particular introduced previously unknown threats to users, so of course this is a simplified comparison. Still, I wonder, is giving up the freedom to tinker with the system really the price tomorrow's consumers will have to pay in order to buy simplicity?
And if you're thinking about replying with links to IDEs running on the iPad: no, something that runs in the cloud and has no direct access whatsoever to the internals of the machine does not qualify as a modern-day replacement for this experience, no matter how sophisticated.
(I'm a Mac user and I find myself spending a lot less time on tech support type issues than back in the day when I was using Linux and Windows, still it's hard to deny that iPads are currently the epitome of simplicity, compared to their power.)
And that's what I'm worried about: "No user serviceable parts inside". I'm concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow's kids' experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20.
Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly. You turn it on, it's on. You put in a diskette -- well, it didn't load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, and once the game started, it was started. Things were simple and worked, for the most part, quite well. No tech support needed. But the BASIC shell was there right at your fingertips -- hell, the manual came with example BASIC programs.
Quibbling over the merits of BASIC aside, it was a simple experience but it was also tremendously open.
Things got much more complicated since then; network connectivity in particular introduced previously unknown threats to users, so of course this is a simplified comparison. Still, I wonder, is giving up the freedom to tinker with the system really the price tomorrow's consumers will have to pay in order to buy simplicity?
And if you're thinking about replying with links to IDEs running on the iPad: no, something that runs in the cloud and has no direct access whatsoever to the internals of the machine does not qualify as a modern-day replacement for this experience, no matter how sophisticated.