On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 08:15:39 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
> [snip]

I apologize for the tone I'm using, I shouldn't jump on that train.
I'll clarify my position on this: I'm not completely absolutely sure that smartphones will kill the PC market, but I do think it's a possibility that just can't be dismissed.

On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 09:32:01 UTC, Laurent Tréguier wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 08:15:39 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
>> Longer battery life is a convenience not a requirement.
>
> What is a convenience and a requirement is completely subjective. I'd classify the removable battery example as a requirement more than a convenience, but other people don't.

Unless lack of the feature in question stops you from doing something you *must* be able to do with the device then it is not a requirement.

You can classify however you like, but you can still do everything you could whether with a fixed or removable battery. If battery life is a concern you can get a portable charger.


>> You can still buy the old brick phones with longer battery life. Smartphones have taken over but they havent killed that market completely.
>
> Just like you can buy pretty much any old thing, obviously markets don't get 100% killed, nobody here is talking about complete, absolute annihilation of the PC to the point that is doesn't exist anymore...

Markets get "adjusted", some things get killed, AFAIK you cant buy VHS recorders any more, but you can still buy vinyl records. In fact the market for vinyl has grown almost 100% in the last 10 years.

Weird but true, people buy stuff for all sorts of reasons.


>> It's not about phones overtaking desktops in the market, that's long past, it's about phones killing the desktop market completely.
>
> You're just playing on words here.

No I'm not, it's what Joakim has been saying all along, and as you used the same language it's fair to assume you meant the same as he did.


>> All the advantages in the world are no good if it doesnt do something you **require** it to do. If I'm doing pro audio Android is useless, no hardware, not enough processing power, no DAW apps. Doesn't matter if it has an amazing screen, 3 sims, year long battery, etc etc..
>
> Correction: "All the advantages in the world are no good if it doesn't do something MOST PEOPLE **require** it to do".
> I personally wanted phones to always have a removable battery, but I'm not representative of the whole population.

If I require an 12 channel balanced audio interface, I wont buy a ****ing phone because it cant do that.

If you require a removable battery and cant find a phone that has one, you will still buy a phone with a fixed battery. Because your not buying it to charge batteries.

Its a different thing.


> You're doing pro audio. Do most people in the world do pro audio ?
> I think not.

Apple survived for 20 years just selling computers mostly to the pro-audio and publishing industry, its a big market.


> "no hardware": if it exists in this plane of the universe, so it must have hardware in some way, don't you think ?
> "not enough processing power": IIRC the very beginning of this train-wreck of a thread was the fact that processing power on smartphones is constantly increasing... So that's probably just a matter of time.

If Sony came out with a PS5 tomorrow that had 100X the power of the PS4 you think all the developers and users would "nah that's too much man, we wouldnt know what to do with it, 10X is all we need"

Or would they be creaming their pants thinking of all the cool shit that can be done with that kind of processing power.

Pro audio is that, so is video, so is PC gaming.

On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 10:02:05 UTC, Laurent Tréguier wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 08:15:39 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
>> [snip]
>
> I apologize for the tone I'm using, I shouldn't jump on that train.
> I'll clarify my position on this: I'm not completely absolutely sure that smartphones will kill the PC market, but I do think it's a possibility that just can't be dismissed.

No need to apologise, I didnt pick up any "tone".

FWIW I agree with your position in the long term. I mean I dont think we can predict 15 years from now what computing will look like. Most everything said in this thread could be irrelevant by then.

On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 13:33:31 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
> No need to apologise, I didnt pick up any "tone".

I felt like I sounded aggressive; I tend to get worked up very quickly over nothing sometimes. ("this train-wreck of a thread"...)

> FWIW I agree with your position in the long term. I mean I dont think we can predict 15 years from now what computing will look like. Most everything said in this thread could be irrelevant by then.

Yep. Besides, I probably shouldn't even talk about such things, I'm not really qualified to talk about markets and all that, so I'll stop here.

In the 80's, some people thought we would have personal flying cars by now; instead we have mini-computers in our pockets that are more powerful than what was used to send people to the moon.
Technology is simply unpredictable sometimes...

On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 05:45:52 UTC, Laurent Tréguier wrote:
> Why did the iPhone, and after that the smartphone industry as a whole, completely crush the classic cell phones when they have such a poor battery life? Smartphones don't have everything previous phones had. The pros simply outweighed the cons.

The iPhone became a status symbol very quickly. That drove adoption much better than mere features could.

On Thursday, 20 September 2018 at 10:02:05 UTC, Laurent Tréguier wrote:
> I apologize for the tone I'm using, I shouldn't jump on that train.
> I'll clarify my position on this: I'm not completely absolutely sure that smartphones will kill the PC market, but I do think it's a possibility that just can't be dismissed.

The PC market will change but dying is a big word.

PC sales have dropped over the years for multiple reasons:

* Adoption of smartphones and tablets
* PC hardware getting so powerful, that people have little reason to upgrade
* Consoles taking over PC for couch gaming

But ...

PC are a integral part of our daily business life. This is a market where PC decline is hard simply because the flexibility that PCs offer.

You can do a lot with a smartphone and tablet but a lot of those tasks are way harder or time consuming then doing them on a PC.

I can install termux on my phone but no way i will program for hours on a 6" screen. Let alone all the IDE and debugging tools i that are not available ( lets not start Vim discussions, thank you very much ).

You can attach a keyboard to your phone, a bigger screen to your phone and you have half a PC. But you are still missing the software...

We will probably move to a hybrid solution like this in the future, where people can use their smartphones as PCs ( with attachments for productivity ) but its a LONG road to get even close to the same level that a basic PC offers in terms of power and flexibility.

A smartphone is nothing else then a smaller tablet, what is nothing else then a less flexible laptop, what is nothing else then a compacter and not flexible PC.

Just basic concept like multi windows handling is like a alien idea on smartphones and badly done. Even Windows 3.1 was more capable on this part. Currently smartphones are not designed for the creativity and flexibility you need.

Can they become this? Sure ... but not with the current mobile operating systems. Android is a resource hog ( JVM thank you very much ) that uses more memory then my Windows 10 installation while offering less flexibility! Microsoft tried and fell flat on their face.

Its possible we may see devices that are plenty powerful to do day to day tasks and see PCs become specialized tools requiring (high paid) experts. But smartphones will always be limited with cooling and power usage compared to a full blown pc. The only way to mitigate this is by having servers offload intensive tasks.

I do not see PCs dying out, just changing in nature. A smartphone is a PC, just one that is less flexible and is power limited because of its size. And that law will always be true. If you can put X power in a small device, you can put X * 10 in a bigger device, you can put X * 100 in a even bigger device.

And do not be so sure that ARM is the future... I have several NUCs around here and those things are darn powerful ( think 8 year old PC ) these days, with a very low power usage ( 6W ). And Risk-V is coming up...

The PC world as we know, never stops changing. But predictions that X will die are wrong. They simply evolve. A Smartphone/Tablet is a PC, so anybody making claims how PCs are dying, is simply stating that PCs are simple evolving into different forms.

And by the way, smartphone sales are also starting to plateau because people are less fast on replacing their phones these days. If it was not for the battery dying on people, people will hold on for years these days. Wait until we have electric cars and those batteries *ha*... forced redundant, you bet your ass on it. So do not be so happy about PCs changing because the change is not in the interest of the consumer. No reuse, forced redundancy, ... Great for companies, bad for consumers like us.

On Friday, 21 September 2018 at 00:55:25 UTC, RhyS wrote:
> The PC market will change but dying is a big word.

So I'm stuck between "smartphones overtaking PC's" which I've been told has already happened, and "PC's dying" which apparently has too strong of a meaning...

> PC sales have dropped over the years for multiple reasons:
>
> * Adoption of smartphones and tablets
> * PC hardware getting so powerful, that people have little reason to upgrade
> * Consoles taking over PC for couch gaming
>
> But ...
>
> PC are a integral part of our daily business life. This is a market where PC decline is hard simply because the flexibility that PCs offer.
>
> You can do a lot with a smartphone and tablet but a lot of those tasks are way harder or time consuming then doing them on a PC.

Things can evolve. Maybe in the future we'll simply talk to our phones all the time with good enough voice command software instead of typing on a keyboard ? Who knows.

> I can install termux on my phone but no way i will program for hours on a 6" screen. Let alone all the IDE and debugging tools i that are not available ( lets not start Vim discussions, thank you very much ).

Don't worry, I'm not the one who's going to lecture you on vim being the best editor. I only ever use vim when git launches it to type a commit message (that is... if I haven't set `EDITOR=nano`).
However, even if you won't program on a smartphone, maybe future generations of developers could at some point. If some people started learning on a smartphone they could get used to it and just continue on the platform they're comfortable with. (that's really speculation, I have no idea if it could actually happen)

> You can attach a keyboard to your phone, a bigger screen to your phone and you have half a PC. But you are still missing the software...

That can change, software can be ported to Android after all (like LDC).

> We will probably move to a hybrid solution like this in the future, where people can use their smartphones as PCs ( with attachments for productivity ) but its a LONG road to get even close to the same level that a basic PC offers in terms of power and flexibility.

A huge chunk of development nowadays is web development, which doesn't require all that much power AFAIK.
You're right on flexibility though.

> A smartphone is nothing else then a smaller tablet, what is nothing else then a less flexible laptop, what is nothing else then a compacter and not flexible PC.
>
> Just basic concept like multi windows handling is like a alien idea on smartphones and badly done. Even Windows 3.1 was more capable on this part. Currently smartphones are not designed for the creativity and flexibility you need.
>
> Can they become this? Sure ... but not with the current mobile operating systems. Android is a resource hog ( JVM thank you very much ) that uses more memory then my Windows 10 installation while offering less flexibility! Microsoft tried and fell flat on their face.

Out of curiosity, how did you come to such a situation regarding Android vs Windows 10 ? Win 10 on my machine takes at least 2Gb of RAM, Android certainly doesn't on my phone...

> Its possible we may see devices that are plenty powerful to do day to day tasks and see PCs become specialized tools requiring (high paid) experts. But smartphones will always be limited with cooling and power usage compared to a full blown pc. The only way to mitigate this is by having servers offload intensive tasks.

Just like desktop computers will always be limited with cooling and power usage compared to any super-computer from the NASA.

> I do not see PCs dying out, just changing in nature. A smartphone is a PC, just one that is less flexible and is power limited because of its size. And that law will always be true. If you can put X power in a small device, you can put X * 10 in a bigger device, you can put X * 100 in a even bigger device.

That law will always be true, yes. But if we can cram more and more in terms of power in less and less in terms of size, at some point we could have enough power in a very small device.

> And do not be so sure that ARM is the future... I have several NUCs around here and those things are darn powerful ( think 8 year old PC ) these days, with a very low power usage ( 6W ). And Risk-V is coming up...

I never said anything about ARM being the future.

> The PC world as we know, never stops changing. But predictions that X will die are wrong. They simply evolve. A Smartphone/Tablet is a PC, so anybody making claims how PCs are dying, is simply stating that PCs are simple evolving into different forms.

You're right; that was a wrong wording again. I should have talked about "classic desktop computers" instead of just "PC". (but "PC" is shorter to write and I'm lazy)

> And by the way, smartphone sales are also starting to plateau because people are less fast on replacing their phones these days. If it was not for the battery dying on people, people will hold on for years these days. Wait until we have electric cars and those batteries *ha*... forced redundant, you bet your ass on it. So do not be so happy about PCs changing because the change is not in the interest of the consumer. No reuse, forced redundancy, ... Great for companies, bad for consumers like us.

I never said I was happy with this potential change. I know that a lot of companies care about money and not about their consumers, and I also don't fancy the idea of working on a smartphone. But just because I don't like it doesn't mean it can't happen...

On Monday, 10 September 2018 at 13:43:46 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> LDC recently added a linux/AArch64 CI for both its main branches and 64-bit ARM, ie AArch64, builds have been put out for both linux and Android. It does not seem that many are paying attention to this sea change that is going on with computing though, so let me lay out some evidence.
>
> [...]

Two more interesting bits of news I saw lately:

- The octa-core AArch64 CPU in the latest iPad Pro benchmarks better than last year's core i7 Macbook Pro, a bit behind this year's core i9 Macbook Pro:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/apple-walks-ars-through-the-ipad-pros-a12x-system-on-a-chip/

- Samsung just announced a beta linux app that allows you to run desktop Ubuntu on DeX with the Note 9 or Tab S4:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-s-Linux-on-DeX-will-let-you-run-desktop-Linux-on-your-Android-phone.358061.0.html

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SgMHhrO8d8s

On Saturday, 10 November 2018 at 07:29:17 UTC, Joakim wrote:
On Saturday, 10 November 2018 at 07:29:17 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Two more interesting bits of news I saw lately:
>
> - The octa-core AArch64 CPU in the latest iPad Pro benchmarks better than last year's core i7 Macbook Pro, a bit behind this year's core i9 Macbook Pro:
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/apple-walks-ars-through-the-ipad-pros-a12x-system-on-a-chip/
>
> - Samsung just announced a beta linux app that allows you to run desktop Ubuntu on DeX with the Note 9 or Tab S4:
>
> https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-s-Linux-on-DeX-will-let-you-run-desktop-Linux-on-your-Android-phone.358061.0.html
>
> https://youtube.com/watch?v=SgMHhrO8d8s

I hope some one can fix LDC for ios,  will bring a lot more user.

On Saturday, 10 November 2018 at 07:29:17 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Monday, 10 September 2018 at 13:43:46 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> LDC recently added a linux/AArch64 CI for both its main branches and 64-bit ARM, ie AArch64, builds have been put out for both linux and Android. It does not seem that many are paying attention to this sea change that is going on with computing though, so let me lay out some evidence.
>>
>> [...]
>
> Two more interesting bits of news I saw lately:
>
> - The octa-core AArch64 CPU in the latest iPad Pro benchmarks better than last year's core i7 Macbook Pro, a bit behind this year's core i9 Macbook Pro:
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/11/apple-walks-ars-through-the-ipad-pros-a12x-system-on-a-chip/

Not really that impressive, my desktop i5-2500k from like 8 years ago is still faster than the CPU in last years Macbook pro. Intel has been stagnate with their 14nm processors. Even this years CPUs is still based on the same architecture as their CPU from 2-3 years ago. With Ryzen we're expected to see a CPU next year with 64 cores and 128 threads at 7nm. Still nice to see mobile finally catching up to laptops.

That GPU performance though, pretty impressive considering how large the heatsinks and amount of fans are on traditional GPUs.