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Hardware is dead

venturebeat.com

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Re: Hardware is dead

#121

Post by enraged_camel »

sien wrote: post #115
enraged_camel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The free-fall in PC prices in the 90s "killed" the PC, except that every major PC manufacturer still sells high-end models, and retailers still make money on them. Yes, but how lucrative is the market in general compared to before? How many new players do you see, and how much innovation is happening? I've always been of the opinion that commoditization is good for the consumer only in the short run (since prices d…

True. Other than PCI, PCIe, USB, Bluetooth, discrete 2D graphics cards, 3D accelerators, multi-core x86, DDR, SSDs, High quality LCDs and hundreds of other improvements it is worth saying has you do, Reg, 'What has commoditization ever done for us?'

Incremental improvement is not innovation. Very few of what you listed made a big enough difference in the status quo that I would qualify them as innovation.

I mean, lack of innovation in the computer hardware industry is a big enough problem that a software company is entering the market: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429111/can-valve-innova...

Re: Hardware is dead

#122

Post by ChuckMcM »

wpietri wrote: post #111
ChuckMcM wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say exactly that. Markets are zombies and dollars are brains. But the title is less thrilling than "Ok everyone knows how to make a tablet now, that won't be a high margin business." In this case margin being the proxy for expertise in putting together a tablet. But there actually is a story here which VentureBeat came so close too and missed, the cost of compute. Even in the 80's when I went to work for…

Markets are zombies and dollars are brains. That is beautiful. Like, "I may need to get that as a tatoo" beautiful. Is it yours?

Is it mine in the sense that it spewed out of my keyboard without much forethought? Yes. But the concept that markets are an unkillable mechanism that seek out money is universal.

Re: Hardware is dead

#123

Post by rhinosix »

Hardware is evolving. We spent years turning a computer from a room-sized machine that could print out a few bits of data, to a small component that can handle the most complex tasks and fit into any other machine. And connect itself wirelessly to all the other machines.

We were just making the brains for what we really want to build. We're branching out in multiple directions at once.

The hardware of the present is VR/ AR, robotics, 3D printers, bioprinters, new modes of transport, drones, and biotechnology.

Tablets, phones, desktop computers - anyone can throw those together. They're archaic.

Re: Hardware is dead

#124

Post by michaelt »

freshhawk wrote: post #44
jgrahamc wrote: post #22

"At these levels there is almost no profit margin left in the hardware business. A $45 tablet is cheap enough to be an impulse purchase at the check-out line in Best Buy. A $45 price puts tablets within reach of a whole host of other activities not traditionally associated with computers. Tablets could be used by waiters in restaurants." I've been to plenty of restaurants where waiters having been using handheld, wir…

"... then we are entering a golden age of hardware ... It can also herald an era of 'mom and pop' hardware companies." Exactly! I never understand bloggers and pundits who analyze these things from the perspective of the stockholders or owners of the large players instead of the consumers/small players. Why the hell would you cheer about the high margins charged on the products you are paying for? Is marketing gettin…

  Why the hell would you cheer about the high margins 
  charged on the products you are paying for?
I don't cheer high margins, but in some industries cheap medium-low quality products crowd more expensive higher quality products out of the market.

Consider inkjet printers; there are many cheap products on the market, but the consensus opinion among techies seems to be that there's no suppler with a good product.

It would be a shame if more of the technology industry went in that direction.

Re: Hardware is dead

#125

Post by dsrguru »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #5
ck2 wrote: post #2

I never understood why good articles have tiny non-descriptive titles, like the author got tired. Certainly it's not for lack of space, it is the web after all and not a print newspaper. If you have a 20+ paragraph story, at least give us some motivation to read it. At least put a subtitle or appositive clause on the title.

On sites like this the author doesn't come up with the title.

Why is that?

Re: Hardware is dead

#126

Post by dholowiski »

prostoalex wrote: post #84
dholowiski wrote: post #62

A $45 knock off tablet, bought in China miles from the manufacturer doesn't equate to a $45 price tag in the USA. Put a brand name on it (and some quality control), put in the 8 or 16gb the market requires (this tablet was 4gb) and shipping and import fees, and you're easily up to the $200 we're paying today. This is a non-story.

Maybe not $200 http://dx.com/p/7-0-resistive-touch-screen-android-2-2-table... but agree on non-story.

Yes, but people aren't going to but those, look at the specs. What kind of experience does a 350mhz cpu give you?

Re: Hardware is dead

#127

Post by freshhawk »

michaelt wrote: post #124
freshhawk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... then we are entering a golden age of hardware ... It can also herald an era of 'mom and pop' hardware companies." Exactly! I never understand bloggers and pundits who analyze these things from the perspective of the stockholders or owners of the large players instead of the consumers/small players. Why the hell would you cheer about the high margins charged on the products you are paying for? Is marketing gettin…

Why the hell would you cheer about the high margins charged on the products you are paying for? I don't cheer high margins, but in some industries cheap medium-low quality products crowd more expensive higher quality products out of the market. Consider inkjet printers; there are many cheap products on the market, but the consensus opinion among techies seems to be that there's no suppler with a good product. It woul…

I'm not sure inkjet printers are a good example, although you can say that since the cheap printers flooded the market there are fewer "good" printers and they lost the economies of scale so they are more expensive.

This example is so polluted by the whole ink cartridge "sell the razor blades" business model and the legal challenges around 3rd party cartridges that I would be very hesitant to generalize from the printer example.

With that said, the kindle business model is that same model so maybe there is something to it.

Re: Hardware is dead

#129

Post by vidarh »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #103
happycube wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add a keyboard(/trackpad?) case to one of these 7" tablets and you pretty much get the original Asus netbook concept, only faster, cheaper, and more versatile.

And if you remember the CeBIT where ASus abortively introduced an ARM based laptop you got to see the who ecosystem in action. I wish the full details of that came out but the scuttlebutt was that Microsoft threatened to cut off Asus completely if they shipped it. They were already pissed that the EeePC's had a Linux distro that was easy enough for windows users to use but couldn't really put Vista on them, their re-…

But Asus has a whole line of what are effectively ARM based laptops:

The Asus Transformer series of "tablets" + keyboard dock. Sure, they're shipped with Android, but you can install Ubuntu on them.

Re: Hardware is dead

#130

Post by ChuckMcM »

vidarh wrote: post #129
ChuckMcM wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you remember the CeBIT where ASus abortively introduced an ARM based laptop you got to see the who ecosystem in action. I wish the full details of that came out but the scuttlebutt was that Microsoft threatened to cut off Asus completely if they shipped it. They were already pissed that the EeePC's had a Linux distro that was easy enough for windows users to use but couldn't really put Vista on them, their re-…

But Asus has a whole line of what are effectively ARM based laptops: The Asus Transformer series of "tablets" + keyboard dock. Sure, they're shipped with Android, but you can install Ubuntu on them.

Yes, they do now and they run Android. But at CeBit in 2008 when they were doing a follow on to the EeePC 900 there was no Android.
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