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There is no "post-PC"

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  There is no "post-PC" RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-08-11 15:58 +0000
    Re: There is no "post-PC" Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2015-08-12 10:47 +1000
      Re: There is no "post-PC" Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-08-12 01:50 -0400
      Re: There is no "post-PC" Peter Mc Donough <mcd-mail-lists@gmx.net> - 2015-08-12 13:47 +0200
        Re: There is no "post-PC" Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-08-13 14:00 +0000
          Eyes on stalks RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-08-14 10:30 +0300
            Re: Eyes on stalks Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-08-16 02:04 +0000

#8339 — There is no "post-PC"

From the «all just marketing ploy» department:
Title: There's no such thing as post-PC
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 15:01:49 -0400
Link: http://osnews.com/story/28765/There_s_no_such_thing_as_post-PC

The post-PC era is a term that was made popular by Apple at its introduction of
the iPad in 2010, and one that a lot of people took to mean the PC will
eventually die and tablets and smartphones will take its place. The PC isn't
exactly healthy right now, but it's also nowhere near death, no matter how many
stories try to exaggerate its continued decline. I've never been a fan of the
term "post-PC era", since it's obviously just a marketing ploy.


--
Posting to comp.misc, sci.misc, and misc.news.internet.discuss

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#8340

On 12/08/2015 1:58 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>  From the «all just marketing ploy» department:
> Title: There's no such thing as post-PC
> Author: Thom Holwerda
> Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 15:01:49 -0400
> Link: http://osnews.com/story/28765/There_s_no_such_thing_as_post-PC
>
> The post-PC era is a term that was made popular by Apple at its introduction of
> the iPad in 2010, and one that a lot of people took to mean the PC will
> eventually die and tablets and smartphones will take its place. The PC isn't
> exactly healthy right now, but it's also nowhere near death, no matter how many
> stories try to exaggerate its continued decline. I've never been a fan of the
> term "post-PC era", since it's obviously just a marketing ploy.
>
>
> --
> Posting to comp.misc, sci.misc, and misc.news.internet.discuss
>

Tablets are great for consumers of content.

With a few exceptions, anyone who wants to create content (I don't count 
Tweets as content) needs a PC.

Sylvia.

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#8341

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On Wed, 12 Aug 2015, Sylvia Else wrote:

> On 12/08/2015 1:58 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>>  From the «all just marketing ploy» department:
>> Title: There's no such thing as post-PC
>> Author: Thom Holwerda
>> Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 15:01:49 -0400
>> Link: http://osnews.com/story/28765/There_s_no_such_thing_as_post-PC
>> 
>> The post-PC era is a term that was made popular by Apple at its 
>> introduction of
>> the iPad in 2010, and one that a lot of people took to mean the PC will
>> eventually die and tablets and smartphones will take its place. The PC 
>> isn't
>> exactly healthy right now, but it's also nowhere near death, no matter how 
>> many
>> stories try to exaggerate its continued decline. I've never been a fan of 
>> the
>> term "post-PC era", since it's obviously just a marketing ploy.
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Posting to comp.misc, sci.misc, and misc.news.internet.discuss
>> 
>
> Tablets are great for consumers of content.
>
> With a few exceptions, anyone who wants to create content (I don't count 
> Tweets as content) needs a PC.
>
I think that's a fair dividing point.

The thing is, as more of the population gets online, the smaller the 
percentage that is interested in creating content.  At best, most people 
will add some detail to a wikipedia entry, or retweet something.  So they 
can be "participants" without having to do the heavy lifting.

Previously, those people had no choice but to get a "PC" of some sort, now 
that they can get tablets or smartphones, they are no longer restricted. 
And indeed, for the consumer, having portability really is a useful thing.

   Michael

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#8344

Am 12.08.2015 um 02:47 schrieb Sylvia Else:
> On 12/08/2015 1:58 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>>  From the «all just marketing ploy» department:
>> Title: There's no such thing as post-PC
>> Author: Thom Holwerda
>> Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2015 15:01:49 -0400
>> Link: http://osnews.com/story/28765/There_s_no_such_thing_as_post-PC
>> --
>> Posting to comp.misc, sci.misc, and misc.news.internet.discuss
>>
>
> Tablets are great for consumers of content.
>
> With a few exceptions, anyone who wants to create content (I don't count
> Tweets as content) needs a PC.

Not quite true. You need a suitable input device which may be a keyboard 
, a microphone, motion sensors or whatever is suitable to the purpose. A 
smart-phone sized device may be enough to send content to the real 
processing box, which might not even anywhere near you.

cu
Peter

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#8352

On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 13:47:44 +0200, Peter Mc Donough wrote:

> Am 12.08.2015 um 02:47 schrieb Sylvia Else:
>> On 12/08/2015 1:58 AM, RS Wood wrote:
>>>  From the «all just marketing ploy» department:
>>> Title: There's no such thing as post-PC Author: Thom Holwerda Date:
>>> Mon, 10 Aug 2015 15:01:49 -0400 Link:
>>> http://osnews.com/story/28765/There_s_no_such_thing_as_post-PC --
>>> Posting to comp.misc, sci.misc, and misc.news.internet.discuss
>>>
>>>
>> Tablets are great for consumers of content.
>>
>> With a few exceptions, anyone who wants to create content (I don't
>> count Tweets as content) needs a PC.
> 
> Not quite true. You need a suitable input device which may be a keyboard
> , a microphone, motion sensors or whatever is suitable to the purpose. A
> smart-phone sized device may be enough to send content to the real
> processing box, which might not even anywhere near you.
> 

 Ah, latency. It wasn't exactly a winner in the "Eyes On Long Stalks" 
branch of the Primate Family Tree.

 As much as having your eyes on long flexible stalks might seem appealing 
to some (over having them set right into the front of your face), I'm 
afraid the latency involved was a bit of a killer in the "Survivability 
of the Species" stakes.

 I'm not saying there's *no* place for the 'slim desktop' model, 
'everything in the cloud' paradigm, just that for a lot of the 'more 
interesting stuff' such a model is no substitute for the immediacy of a 
good old fashioned desktop PC where (importantly) you still 'own' all of 
the resources (particularly the storage media itself).

 Quite frankly, just the thought of the concept of 'Cloud Services' gives 
me a bad case of the heeby jeebies and any articles/advert copy on the 
subject causes ME(to)GO.

 The whole 'Cloud Service' paradigm, particularly that of 'Cloud Storage' 
is being pushed to the 'Consumer Market' where it has an appeal to the 
billions of owners[1] of handheld devices in that it endows such devices 
with 'unlimited storage', mitigating the otherwise serious lack of data 
storage that marks them off from being a 'Real PC' (never mind the 
crippled by necessity one handed interface and tiny displays factor).

[1] Just 'follow the money'... Forget the original customer base you 
started with and start chasing down billions of consumers if you *really* 
want to satisfy your shareholders and the lunati... er Bean Counters 
who've taken over the company.

-- 
Johnny B Good

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#8355 — Eyes on stalks

On 2015-08-13 17:00:14 +0300, Johnny B Good said:

> On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 13:47:44 +0200, Peter Mc Donough wrote:
>  Ah, latency. It wasn't exactly a winner in the "Eyes On Long Stalks"
> branch of the Primate Family Tree.
> 
>  As much as having your eyes on long flexible stalks might seem appealing
> to some (over having them set right into the front of your face), I'm
> afraid the latency involved was a bit of a killer in the "Survivability
> of the Species" stakes.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24832-mantis-shrimps-darting-eyes-ape-the-way-primates-see/ 


That 'whooshing' sound you hear is the sound of the metaphor going 
right over my head.  I turned up this interesting article about Mantis 
Shrimp, though.

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#8360 — Re: Eyes on stalks

On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 10:30:19 +0300, RS Wood wrote:

> On 2015-08-13 17:00:14 +0300, Johnny B Good said:
> 
>> On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 13:47:44 +0200, Peter Mc Donough wrote:
>>  Ah, latency. It wasn't exactly a winner in the "Eyes On Long Stalks"
>> branch of the Primate Family Tree.
>> 
>>  As much as having your eyes on long flexible stalks might seem
>>  appealing
>> to some (over having them set right into the front of your face), I'm
>> afraid the latency involved was a bit of a killer in the "Survivability
>> of the Species" stakes.
> 
> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24832-mantis-shrimps-darting-
eyes-ape-the-way-primates-see/
> 
> 
> That 'whooshing' sound you hear is the sound of the metaphor going right
> over my head.  I turned up this interesting article about Mantis Shrimp,
> though.

 You've neglected scaling effects (for which I was going to mock you) but 
that turns out to be beside the point. I simply picked a bad metaphor. I 
had it in mind that the propagation speed of nerve impulses varies over 
the range 3 to 100 metres per second depending on how thick the nerve 
fibres are (thicker being faster).

 Unfortunately, I had overlooked the speed/efficiency enhancing effect of 
the myelin sheathing in most of the nerve bundles to be found in 
mammalian life-forms.

 The sensory nerve bundles (optical and auditory) are of this type so it 
seems (as best as I could determine from googling) that an *extra* 10 cms 
on the optic nerve route to support an eyes on stalks morphology is only 
likely to add another millisecond or three to the overall latency (a 
small fraction of the visual cortex processing and reaction time on the 
order of a few hundred milliseconds or so in total - ignoring simple 
reflex 'startle' responses which may only be a matter of tens of 
milliseconds).

 Obviously, nerve propagation latency over such short centimetre 
distances wasn't a major evolutionary driver other than to avoid having 
excessively long optic nerve routings measured in metre lengths to allow 
the brain to be relocated to a more protected part of the anatomy than a 
more exposed location required by the eyes to more effectively scan the 
environment. Evolution had long since come to the conclusion that the 
eyes warranted the same protection as the central nervous system (a 
blinded animal is as good as dead regardless of the brain surviving the 
initial trauma).

 Still, as any serious on-line 1st person shoot 'em up gamers will tell 
you, high latency (more than about 30ms or so) can be a real 'killer' (at 
least in the virtual world of on-line gaming). However, it's not just 
interactive multi-player on-line games that suffer from latencies 
measured in tens of milliseconds, there are plenty of more 'serious' 
applications that would suffer performance hits trying to use the 
services of remote cloud storage.

 Internet cloud storage is an effective way to provide diversified back 
up storage from anywhere in the world where internet access is available. 
It's also an effective way to enhance data storage on devices with 
limited local storage (cameras, tablets and smartphones). it's also, 
unfortunately, an excellent fit for data mining apps and tracking 
software (mostly crapware/malware which the consumer typically remains 
blissfully unaware of). To be fair, this last nefarious use, is all part 
and parcel of the "Double Edged Sword" nature of technology.

 There's no doubting that the world demand for desktop PCs is shrinking 
but, to paraphrase Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the reports of its demise 
have been greatly exaggerated. I'd not be too surprised to see Desktop 
PCs still being produced for the next couple of decades at least. 
Obviously, this is just my opinion and nobody can really predict the 
ultimate fate of the Desktop PC. It will most likely simply evolve into 
something we'd barely recognise as an "IBM Clone PC" today.

-- 
Johnny B Good

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