The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the PC, or perhaps that which we call a rose by any other name will smell just as sweet. I don't see how a tablet is any different from a PC except for form factor, especially when they catch up with PCs in terms of general utility.
"""The PC will never die. When the average tablet is robust enough to productively operate my entire development stack, or modular enough to allow enthusiasts to build performance gaming tablets, maybe we'll see an end to the PC"""
How about, in 10 years most people just get a tablet + keyboard or something, and the PC doesn't die, but get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of demand?
get's 4-5 times more expensive because of lack of demand?
Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs.
My point is that PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply transition into tablets as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse = a PC.
"""Why would that happen? Tablets are simply low power PCs wrapped in a touchscreen LCD. If these tablets were optimized for performance instead of battery life many of them could outperform most consumer PCs. My point is that PCs won't disappear, their functionality will simply transition into tablets as they become capable. A tablet + keyboard + mouse = a PC""".
It's not that simple. What you describe is desktop PC vs laptop.
Tablets on the other hand have different operating systems (at least the only tablet that people > 1% actually buy, the iPad) than PCs.
We can imagine a feature where most people use tablets, perhaps equally capable as any PC, but WITHOUT today's full PC OS flexibility, and PCs are left for only small professions (programmers, creatives, etc).
tablets on the other hand have different operating systems (at least the only tablet that people > 1% actually buy, the iPad) than PCs.
This is only true in today's world. In a future where tablets are so capable and ubiquitous that they've displaced laptop and desktop computers, both paradigms will have long merged. Microsoft, Google, Canonical, and others are all in the process of transitioning their platforms into x86 or ARM (whichever they lack). Additionally, AMD and Intel both have true x86 answers to ARM on the horizon. The flexibility of the x86 platform is not going anywhere any time soon.
