I believe I have an unpopular opinion about desktop PCs. The conventional thinking is that desktop computing is boring because a modern PC does everything it is intended to do just fine. That may be true, but the problem is that the industry is not interested in establishing new usage patterns—new things the PC should do.
At the end of last year, I started a series of rants about how modern technology sucks [1] with particular emphasis on the frustrating stagnation of desktop computing and the bothersome way every new portable computing device wants to be a center of attention.
I was pleasantly surprised that the author of the linked article hits the target squarely when he lists off what PCs need. The first item: better displays. He may be speaking more about laptops (and they are deserving of the shame), but allow me to rant a bit about my preferred computing medium—desktops.
The stagnation of desktop displays is, and has been for a decade, the crucial failure of desktop computing. Display stagnation is the limitation that allows all other limitations to be tolerated. It is the barrier that leads the overwhelming majority of users (and even pundits!) who tolerate mediocrity to declare everything else—from processors, to memory and GPUs—as "good enough." I absolutely seethe when I hear any technology declared good enough (at least without a very compelling argument).
Desktop displays, and by extension, desktop computing is so far from good enough that it should be self-evident to anyone who observes users interacting with tablets or mobile phones(!) while seated at a desktop PC. Everything that is wrong with modern computing can be summarized in that single all too common scene:
1. Desktop displays are not pleasant to look at. They are too small. They are too dark. They are too low-fidelity. And they often have annoying bezels down the middle of your view because we routinely compensate for their mediocrity by using more of them, side-by-side.
2. The performance of desktop computers is neglected because "how hard is it to run a browser and Microsoft Office?" This leads to lethargy in updating desktop PCs, both by IT and by users ("I don't want the hassle"). In 2013, I suspect many corporate PCs in fact feel slower than a modern tablet or even mobile phone.
3. Desktop operating systems are actively attempting to move away from (or at least marginalize) their strong suits of personal applications and input devices tailored for precision and all-day usage.
4. Desktop computers--and more accurately personal home networks--have lost their role as the central computing hub for individuals by a misguided means of gaining application omnipresence: what I call "the plain cloud." This is because none in the desktop industry (Microsoft most notably) are working to make personal networks appreciably manageable by laypeople.
5. Mobile phones and tablets are often free of IT shackles and therefore enjoy more R&D (more money to be made).
Desktop displays stopped moving forward in capability in 2001, and in large part regressed (as the article points out) since then. Had they continued to move forward--had the living room's poisonous moniker of "HD" spared computer monitors its wrath--I believe we would have breathtaking desktop displays by now. In that alternate universe, my desktop is equipped with a 50+" display with at least 12,000 horizontal pixels.
Desktop computing needs to leverage immersion (without nausea; VR goggles need not apply, yet). Large form-factor super-high-definition displays would bring all manner of new technology needs with them:
1. Gesture controls.
2. Ultra high-bandwidth wired networking (win for wired network folks) to move super high definition files.
3. Ultra high-capacity storage.
4. Extremely fast processors and GPUs to deal with a much greater visual pipeline.
Such a computing environment is a trojan horse for today's tablets: it turns tablets into subservient devices as seen in science fiction films such as Avatar. The tablet is just a view on your application, allowing you to take your work away from the main work space briefly until you return. I say trojan horse, but that's not quite right because I actually want this subservient kind of tablet very much. I do not want a tablet that is a first-class computing device in its own right (even less do I want a phone to be a first-class computing device). I only want one first-class computing device in my life, running singular instances of applications for me and me only, and I want all my devices to be subservient to that singular application host.
For the time being, that should be the desktop PC. In the long haul, it could be any application host (a local compute server, a compute server I lease from someone else, or maybe even a portable device as envisioned by Ubuntu's phone). But for now, the desktop should re-assert its rightful role as a chief computing environment, making all other devices mobile views.