Why Are PC Sales Up and Tablet Sales Down? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Are PC Sales Up and Tablet Sales Down?

#71

Post by bztzt » Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 12:12 AM UTC

voteapathy wrote: post #38

Just a general thought. At some point (for consumers anyway), these paradigms will unite. As such, what will follow is the necessity for window management that can handle different use cases. Right now the only OS really attempting to bridge the gap is Windows 8, which is currently an unfortunate juxtaposition of two battling WM's rather than a seamless unification. Apple isn't really bothering to unify at the moment…

Definitely agreed. Another interesting problem for the near? future is multi-device window management - can you use the collection of devices and screens (whether phone/tablet/desktop/whatever) on hand at a given moment as a kind of ad hoc multimonitor workstation? What about when multiple users are involved? (of course all of this is a systems/OS and privacy/security challenge, as well as an interaction design challenge)

I sometimes get the impression most people now think of window management as either a solved problem and/or one rendered irrelevant by the rise of "mobile", but it's quite the opposite IMO.

Re: Why Are PC Sales Up and Tablet Sales Down?

#72

Post by bztzt » Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 12:21 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #35

randallsquared wrote: post #28

The "super tablets" that the article claims as the next step are what every nearly tablet before the iPad tried to be, and they universally fell on their face.

In arguing for "super tablets" the author writes: PCs are expensive, prone to failure, easy to break and magnets for viruses and malware. After just a bit of use, many PCs are susceptible to constant freezes and crashes. I don't see how a super tablet addresses any of that except perhaps cost. Ever drop a tablet? Have it fall into water? Ever see people using phones and tablets with shattered glass? I don't see them…

You're right that there's nothing inherent to the tablet form factor per se that makes it less vulnerable to malware. It's just that the different input mechanism and smaller screen size makes backward compatibility less useful, and it's easier for platforms (including Windows RT) to build security into their app models if they don't have to worry about compatibility.

Re: Why Are PC Sales Up and Tablet Sales Down?

#73

Post by lazylizard » Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 3:37 AM UTC

gerbal wrote: post #59

clairity wrote: post #47

make no mistake, tablets are the next wave of computing for the mass market. the article basically says that we're in the lull between saturating the early adopter segments and addressing the majority segments, i.e., we're peering into the chasm. it's not a reversal of the market toward pc's. the reasoning, in my reading of the article, is that the tablet market materialized so quickly that most manufacturers (includ…

>15" tablets with wireless keyboards/mice and robust remote management capabilities you just described a chromebook. And at 1/3 the price of a tablet, Chromebooks are plenty appealing in ways a tablet just isn't

if its going to be bigger than 10", lets have them run x86 processors instead of arm stuff, since we have battery?

Re: Why Are PC Sales Up and Tablet Sales Down?

#74

Post by RealGeek » Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 4:25 AM UTC

manishsharan wrote: post #11

Tablets are simple appliances limited to consuming content . My IPad 1 lets me watch Netflix, Youtube and surf the web just as well as the latest version of the IPad .Therefore I see no reason to buy the latest version. I have in the meanwhile bought/upgraded laptops thrice for myself as I see an immediate improvement in my productivity with faster CPU and more RAM or bigger SSD.

I was happy with my iPad 2 until I upgraded to iOS 7. iOS 7 has slowed down my iPad 2 to a point it is barely useable. I bought a new iPad Air only because of iOS 7, otherwise I didn't need another tablet.

Re: Why Are PC Sales Up and Tablet Sales Down?

#75

Post by Larrikin » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 12:53 AM UTC

elorant wrote: post #43

Tablets will become obsolete once smartphone's screen size increases. We're already into the 5"+ region for smartphones and rumors have it that the next iPhone will be in the region of 6". That's enough screen real estate to browse web sites. Past that the device becomes cumbersome to carry around and if you're in a fixed position you can use your PC/ultrabook.

My biggest use case for my iPad is reading textbooks and a phone of that size is really only good for reading text that can easily be moved around like a novel.