Is it dead PC? 20 years of controversy

Reflections of the famous futurist Paul Saffo and veteran technical journalism John Dodge regarding predictions about the imminent death of PC.

Saffo was one of the first to predict the demise of the PC back in 1991. A little later, Dodge criticized this position, arguing that the PC is not only not dying, but "will be with us for many more years." These two over the course of 20 years have been on the front pages of almost all disputes regarding the fate of the PC. The controversy, by the way, does not stop, and in the conditions of the current growth in popularity of tablets and smartphones they play with new colors.
Adjusted for modernity, they again reflect on this topic and describe a number of prospects for the development of the PC industry as a whole. Each with its own bell tower, of course.

On October 13, 1991, an article was published in the New York Times in which Saffo declared that “modern personal computers have already entered the path of oblivion, because there are already many autonomous devices that perform a wide range of tasks. PCs will still remain, but they will be perceived in about the same way as typewriters. ”

Saffo, a Stanford University professor and co-founder of Discern, an analyst firm, said that this view was based on his personal conviction that PCs "do not have any meaning for ordinary users."

In 1991, it seemed to everyone that PCs are exactly what people need. What most users want so much. In fact, it took the industry more time to give users what they need.

Under the conditions of modern realities, Saffo slightly corrected his position.

- I would say the same thing that I said then, with only a small amendment. The PC is dead, but for some reason we continue to drag his body along. Longer than it should ...

Here it is worth noting one more thing - Paul believes that the era of "personal" also ends.

The era of something personal, personal was rather brief. For example, the information you post on Facebook, the books that are stored on the Kindle, all this is not yours. Facebook can at any time take and delete your account with all posts, photos and memories. Amazon is able to delete your books. I'm not talking about the end of the era of something personal hardware, here we are dealing with a change in the whole paradigm. And I do not have the most optimistic views on how this new order will be.

Another opinion

In the late 1990s, the popularity of PCs and the Internet grew quite rapidly. In those days, John Dodge was the editor of thick magazine PC Week, dazzling with advertising. In 1999, he wrote that the PC "will be with us for a long time . " His opinion is at odds with not only Saffo’s opinion, but also with the position of Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle. The company at the time promoted the so-called "network" computers.
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Allison considered PC ridiculous devices that will soon be completely replaced by simple diskless terminals connected to the Network and data processing servers.

And while Dodge confronted Saffo, Allison and others took the position of the latter: "In the dispute about whether the PC is dead, if there is an answer, it is dead."

Nowadays Dodge is a community manager at the Enterprise CIO Forum. Looking at his article, he believes that his prediction more or less comes true.

The PC was at its peak then, and maybe it will be there for another 10 years. Of course, the situation is changing a little, new form factors are appearing, people are very attracted to tablets, this is all obvious. The screen interfaces are pretty good. But people still use keyboards ... there’s nothing better than a good keyboard.

John, who uses his Mac about as actively as the tablet, admits that the popularity of PCs is falling, but he considers this not something critical, but leveling.

We have seen a slight decrease in PC sales, but this does not give any reason to say that they suddenly stop altogether. They are still sold at very competitive prices, they are still business-oriented. Without a doubt, the PC will be with us more than one year.

Although he thinks that eventually the PCs will be replaced by something else, he believes that this will happen slowly. Therefore, it condemns all sorts of proclamations about the fact that "the PC is already dead" and so on.

Yes, in the end, the PC will be replaced with something, but the transition process will be slow. That is, there will not be such that people will massively get rid of their PCs or take them somewhere. As for the words Saffo ... he is a futurist. His job is to look into the future. And such proclamations often aim only to attract attention. Research firms do this all the time. All these "His time has passed, he died, the era is over, everyone is already moving to the cloud" - this is like a zero-sum game . This is the same as saying “IT industry will completely abandon this platform and switch to some other platform.” It does not happen. Migrations are slow, rather fragmented, I would say thoughtfully.

As for the future, Dodge believes that the PC will still go through a series of evolutionary changes before it turns into something completely different. PCs will not disappear completely and will cease to be something "only for Windows".

Look at Windows 8. Here is evidence that the PC continues to evolve. You have both a touchscreen and a keyboard. You can use the best of these two worlds. I cannot say with certainty that this is exactly what people need. Plus the big question is whether the PC should be based on the Windows platform? I think everything will be a little different. You will not notice much of the difference, because, as I said, the transition will take place over several years. It is unlikely that something will suddenly appear on the market and completely knock out the PC from it the way we know it. And it is very unlikely that one day you will wake up - and the PC is no more. Totally.

People buy PCs. People buy tablets. They buy smartphones. All these devices have different goals, and all of them already have quite affordable prices.

Paul Saffo was not alone in predicting the end of the PC era. On the image you can see how many different figures have expressed themselves for the same 20 years.

Click on image to enlarge