Reports of PC&#8217;s Impending Death Greatly Exaggerated
<p>One Farhad Manjoo has attracted some attention by <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2257495">projecting in an article written for <cite>Slate</cite></a> that desktop PCs are headed for extinction,  outcompeted by laptops and netbooks.</p>
<p>I have seen the future and I say &#8220;Balderdash!&#8221; It is undoubtedly true that computers will continue to get smaller and lighter and more portable.  Indeed, I&#8217;m expecting that for most people, descendants of smartphones will become their primary computing devices. I am, however also certain that this does <em>not</em> imply the demise of &#8220;desktop&#8221; systems.</p>
<p>Manjoo, and other enthusiasts for the imminent death of the desktop PC, are missing a basic ergonomic point.  Computers themselves could shrink to the size of a matchbox without inconveniencing anyone &#8211; but some of the things attached to them are scaled to humans and don&#8217;t shrink so easily. Of these, the two most significant are display screens and keyboards.</p>
<p><span id="more-2085"></span></p>
<p>The kind of tiny display that will fit on a smartphone is just barely usable for browsing the Web, provided you&#8217;re willing to accept some inconveniences like not having an actual mouse. Tiny keyboards are OK for tiny amounts of text.  We accept these inconveniences in a smartphone because it has to fit in a pocket.</p>
<p>But, for steady use, there are no good substitutes for having at least 1K by 1K pixels on a display large enough to mostly fill your visual field, and a full-size/full-travel keyboard.  Furthermore, being able to adjust the position of your keyboard and monitor separately can be pretty important if you want to avoid a stiff neck and other posture-related aches and pains.  </p>
<p>These ergonomic constraints can&#8217;t be satisfied by anything in a smartphone, netbook, or laptop package. Instead, I expect that human-sized peripherals will begin to decouple from ever-tinier computers.  As I&#8217;ve previously projected, there will be a growing  market for human-scale peripherals meant to be slaved to a computing core that you walk up to them, using a USB docking cradle or some analogous technology. </p>
<p>There&#8217;s a conceptual error in projections like Manjoo&#8217;s, that of thinking of a &#8220;computer&#8221; as an indissoluble lump that has to bundle together all of the hardware capabilities we associate with a PC. But human needs are more various than that. In the future, the  hardware to meet them will be too.</p>
