We're Entering a Post-Device Era | Hacker News Reader

We're Entering a Post-Device Era

fastcompany.com

27 pointsjonbaer21 comments

There are 2 main issues with this - latency and software innovation. And they are related.

The first issue is latency. Information can only be transmitted as fast as the speed of light. Thus for a given distance - there is a hard lower limit on latency.

The second issue is software innovation. People are constantly coming up with new ways to use computing power - and often latency is a big deal. Take for example shell vs GUI. If you are just typing commands in a line oriented manner, a dumb terminal works great. If you try to run Excel fully remotely with a round trip every time you edit a cell - you will go crazy.

Another example will be artificial intelligence. A lot of the algorithms are compute intensive. As AI becomes more prevalent and more used by people, an experience that has a lower latency will become an advantage. To achieve this - more computing will need to be done on the device to avoid server round-trip latencies.

If you look at the history of computing, it seems that just about the time when everybody seems assured that centralized servers with dumb terminals will win the day - some new innovation comes that tips the balance towards powerful devices. I suspect it will be this way again.

This has worked in cycles between thin and fat clients since computers started. We're not in a post-device era any more than we were in a post-server era as mainframes gave way to PCs.

And the line between "device" and "PC" is blurring more and more, as well as the line between "thin" and "fat" clients. When I'm using an app on my phone, I have no idea if any of the workload is being done on my phone or in the cloud. With services like iCloud, I start something on my phone and finish it seamlessly on my Mac, then display it on my iPad without doing a single thing to make this happen. It just happens. When I take a picture on my iPhone, it's on OneDrive within minutes. When I need to write something in Word, I go to word.office.com and it downloads the Word application and runs it in my browser, deleting it as soon as I close the page.

What's really happening is terms like "device" and "PC" or "thin client" vs "fat client" are becoming useless as technology converges more and more, as computers become "fast enough" that we don't need more and more computing power every day. Devices have become powerful enough that they can take their place along side PCs, rather than replacing them.

The TV didn't replace the radio. The computer didn't replace the TV. TVs just got smarter, and radio found its specialty and they enjoy a life side by side with the more advanced technologies.

Thinking about the behavior in the mobile market drives me insane. When the tech is hard to make small, we go for the smallest possible devices. When it's easy to make small we go for the biggest possible devices in the name of screen size. When storage is finally pennies per GB with super small media, we loose removable media slots and accept paying $100 per storage tier and then pay even more to store everything in the cloud. I'm hoping eventually we'll hit a cycle where 4" screens, removable batteries, removable SD and hardware keyboard comes back in style and is available in an unlocked phone that can run Cyanogenmod. If that happens, I'll buy 3 of them with a life time supply of batteries.

My current phone has the optimum width and height to fit in a pocket. I wouldn't look for any one with a very different size. Although it could be thicker if it comes with some gain, making it thinner wouldn't be of any use for me. I also would loss nothing if it weighted twice as much.

By the way, it has a removable battery and SD. I'd get a hardware keyboard only if it did not reduce the screen.

But that is me. My wife, for example prefer smaller phones because she does not carry it in a pocket.

Outside of the Apple realm, phones have some diversity. And while manufacturers completely refuse to offer some features (like big batteries) for reasonable prices, one is able to get approximately what he wants.

Bunk. Illogical bunk from people who have no idea how this stuff works.

The iPhone didn't end the PC, the tablet didn't end the PC, the laptop didn't end the PC. All of these things are still around and all of these things are still used for a variety of purposes by a variety of professionals. The only people who ever come up with this "end of X tool" are thin users, people who never leave a web browser and are convinced because they don't need a dual cpu workstation with 64 gig of ram and four video cards to type their nonsense, that no one else does either.

So tiring.

How true! Context is everything.

Whoa, for a minute I thought this was a 2010 "Death of the PC" article, because the arguments are at times almost verbatim.

In my opinion, this is not "peak-smartphone" in the way it is "peak-PC". PC growth slowed because people were buying/using Smartphones instead.

Smartphone growth (especially iPhone growth) has slowed because the high penetration rate among those who could afford a smartphone. However, nothing is replacing smartphones at the moment.

Also from 2008, 2007, 2005, 2003 etc.

Every time there is a rush to the good ol' terminal - big computer days people remember that we aren't connected 24/7 and cloud applications work best in the conditions where having a big box under your desk isn't an inconvenience.

Considering that "smartphones" (or any other similar device) is used often when there is no effective connectivity, and even when there is one you usually pay a higher penalty for using that connectivity as far as your battery life goes than using the onboard processing power - this is because the presentation layer costs just the same, your hardware power consumption (screen, sensors, audio, memory etc.) are almost the same, and the CPU is often more power efficient than your radio even at pretty intensive tasks.

And 1996, remember the JavaStation?

http://www.cnet.com/news/sun-gets-tough-with-javastation/

PC growth also slowed because, in general, hardware upgrades aren't needed as frequently as they used to.

The move to the cloud is a big factor here too. I now generally judge a machine based on how many browser tabs I can have open at a time while still getting good performance.

>However, nothing is replacing smartphones at the moment.

Could it be wearables?

Not yet. I worked on some strategic initiatives in this space and - for consumers - wearables at this point are at best complimentary.

What the big dogs (AMZN/GOOG/MSFT) seem to be pushing for consumers now isn't wearables as much as voice accessed AI assistants like Alexa.

Yes that's the other option I considered, after I had already written my comment. Imagine an omnipresent voice assistant/AI that you can summon from anywhere (home, office, business) and which projects things on whatever screen you happen to be looking at at the moment (as judged by eye tracking or gestures). No personal device needed!

This is what drives tech bubbles, catchy phrases, how would you make use of your computerized information services if it's not making use of a device?

Pc's never went away, smartphones will never go away, server side programming never went away, big data, JS, the cloud (which translates to my server on someone else location) never took away.

Different tools have different uses, that's here to stay.

No tools have ever gone extinct in human history

http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/02/04/133188723/to...

Post-device era? I'm still waiting for that alleged "Post-PC era" to arrive. I'm not holding my breath.

Wait what, why didn't anyone tell me? Here I was thinking this was the year of Linux on the desktop.

Garbage article by some author that just wants to be able to claim 'I told you so' or 'I said it first'. Given that the author runs a market research / consulting firm this is basically a shill piece to help drum up business.

Yeah, and I'm typing this comment on my netbook...NOT!

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