From TechConnect:
You may never buy another laptop.
Ten years ago, laptop sales overtook desktop PC sales to become the dominant hardware platform for computing. Now smartphones are about to do to laptops what laptops did to desktops.
But wait, you may ask. What’s wrong with laptops?
. . . .
For the past decade, Apple has led and dominated the laptop market with design and innovation. The company has been moving toward better quality, so-called “Retina” screens. Apple’s keyboard designs and unibody aluminum construction have been heavily imitated. The company used to dazzle the industry by sweating the small stuff, like the MagSafe power connector and lights that shine through aluminum.
It’s not just that Apple innovated. It’s that its laptop innovations evolved their products toward elegance and usability. And that’s over.
After years without a significant new laptop design, their latest release, last year’s MacBook Pro, landed with a thud. The laptop was seriously underpowered — called by some a MacBook Air at a MacBook Pro price. The company ditched its incredibly popular MagSafe power connector in favor of USB C power.
. . . .
The best thing that can be said about the MacBook Pro is that it’s faster and has a better screen than previous models. But this is inevitable and expected, not revolutionary.
There’s nothing about this laptop that’s going to drive the industry to imitate. Rivals are more likely to see the new MacBook Pro as an opportunity to provide something different, not something similar.
. . . .
The U.S. and U.K. governments recently banned all non-medical electronic devices larger than a smartphone as carry-on for U.S.-bound flights on specific airlines from specific airports in the Middle East and North Africa. Passengers are required to check their laptops.
. . . .
There are several assumptions we can make about the ban.
First, like so many security measures, the ban may spread globally and eventually include all flights. For the next few years, it may become impossible to use a laptop on a commercial flight.
Second, such a ban will affect laptop sales. Many travelers won’t want to place an expensive laptop in checked luggage for fear of loss or theft. The general fear, uncertainty and doubt around laptops on airplanes is enough to change consumer behavior. And the frequent flier is the laptop industry’s best customer base.
Third, the ban will be an incentive to develop alternatives so passengers can travel without laptops.
. . . .
Samsung announced this week its upcoming Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones, and the public is impressed. But even more impressive is a Galaxy S8 peripheral called the DeX Station.
The DeX is a smartphone dock into which you plug a keyboard, mouse and monitor. DeX enables you to use your Galaxy S8 as a desktop PC. (Instead of a monitor, you can also plug in a TV or projector.) The dock outputs at a 4K resolution, and it supports Ethernet for faster connections.
I expect some of you business users to buy two — one permanently installed in your office and another in your home office. That would enable you to use your smartphone full time as your only device, even as you benefit from the giant screen, full-size keyboard goodness of a desktop PC everywhere you work.
You can take it with you on trips, and use it in hotel rooms to plug into the room’s big TV.
Link to the rest at TechConnect
After reading the headline, and noticing that the article was published on 4/1, I’m guessing this was an April Fools’ article.
I thought the whole matter was settled. Silly boy.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, …
My laptop is a 17-inch Asus.
It will run anything I want it to, with the bonus that I can take it with me if necessary. I use it as my desktop computer, with a Razor backlit keyboard, my favorite Logitech trackball mouse, good speakers, and a large monitor.
I’ve had it for about 4 years now. Maybe I’ll upgrade in another year or two (House Hunney and I are like the Tim Taylors of computers: “More power, arr, arr, arr!”).
Maybe I’ll upgrade to a smaller laptop, and build my own desktop system (again). But I’m pretty certain I’m always going to have a laptop for both backup and travel, even though I have a tablet too.
As usual, I’m different from the rest of TPV.
I adore my MacBook Pro. Had to buy one because my then-toddler vomited into the keyboard of my MacBook and short-circuited the motherboard. So this one has a silicone keyboard cover and a track pad cover, thanks.
I find the interface elegant and stable. I’m happy to pay for quality when I use my laptop for hours on end. I really don’t want to have to check it in on a plane.
This! Well, except for the toddler part of the story.
I don’t fly except for oceans, and with the Border Patrol swiping phones and all, I take no electronics except my Kindle.
I’m also willing to use Scrivener on my iPhone SE, if I have to. I find that easier than reading. I can’t explain that, either.
You can use Scrivener on a smartphone???
Yep
I really am a dinosaur. I bought a laptop – small Lenovo – about six months ago, but only so I could get used to Win10 without losing Win7 [on my desktop]. I can now teach people to use Win10 but I won’t use it myself so the laptop languishes. Meanwhile, my desktop continues to do everything I want and more. I write, do a fair bit of graphics work and play MMOs. Long live the desktop!
A friend of mine was bragging about powerful his new smartphone was, and how it would do everything his desktop used to do.
“And that’s Facebook, Tumblr, and checking Gmail once a day, right?”
lmao – I’d love to see someone try to play Final Fantasy XIV on a smartphone!
As I keep telling my children, “obsolete” doesn’t mean useless. If that were the case, I’d have been consigned to a landfill a long time ago. I like my HP laptop, which I’ve customized to use exclusively for writing. It’s never had an Internet connection established on it, therefore virus and worm free. Did that on purpose and am I glad I did.
The OP didn’t have a clue about the laptop market… so all the rest was also rubbish.
It’s a little bizarre that Apple supposedly “dominates” the laptop market, considering that they’ve never had much more than a 10 percent market share. The tech media loves them, but they’re usually lucky to be in the top 5 in sales.
Friends insisted I get a Mac when I was recently shopping for a laptop, but no way. Many years ago I bought one because their TV ads were so good. Yeah, I’m that easy. I also liked the lighted keyboard that would end the problem of my wearing the letters off keyboards in a few months. I hated it. I’d always heard the Mac was “elegant” and “intuitive” — but having to drag a file to trash in order to burn it on a CD made both adjectives crazy. Word was terrible on the Mac, though I suppose they’ve fixed that problem by now. I couldn’t unload that it fast enough. I think I gave it all of a week of my life before I sold it.
Can’t imagine going without a laptop. In the past week I’ve purchased four: ASUS, HP, Lenovo, and Dell. I returned the Lenovo Yoga. HATED it because the edge of the wrist rest felt like a knife cutting into me. Best Buy kindly gave me a full refund. Returned the ASUS to Amazon because the touch pad was broken (seemed to have been put into the frame cockeyed so buttons didn’t work). I’m not wild about the HP, either, but am keeping it because it cost only $219 and it’ll serve as a spare in case my favorite purchase gives out (the Dell).
I shopped for days trying to find a laptop with a 15.6″ screen and a keyboard that did not include a number pad (useless to me, and I hate an off-center keyboard). Very hard to find. The Lenovo had that, but little else to offer. The Dell, which is the smallest one with a mere 13″ screen, has a keyboard I love. I’m getting used to the small screen because, other than size, it’s very nice. I think it doubles as a touch tablet, but I’m uninterested in that.
Years ago I saw many articles about the dramatic dip in laptop sales. There was great fretting in the industry. It was attributed to the introduction of Win8. People didn’t want that operating system with its tiles and charms. Win10 was also unpopular for a while, but more accepted when the start button was restored. I use Classic Shell on my Dell to make it as much like Win7 as it can be.
Can you send me a link to the Dell with the centered keyboard. I also abhor the off center letter part…throws me off.
I love laptops. I’m not mad about tablets, as I prefer having a keyboard and having the screen UPRIGHT. Folks buying attachable keyboards and propping up screens is like, well, I could just buy a laptop and not attach stuff. 😀
In portables, I have a Macbook Pro 2012, an Toshiba laptop (2015) and an older ASUS touchscreen laptop. And 3 chromebooks. I mostly use the chromebooks and the Toshiba. The tablet I take with me is my Kindle Fire….fits in my bag and it’s for reading. If I need to write, I take a Chromebook (lighter) and use Google Docs.
For me, the laptop is still really, really useful.
I bought it at Costco (in store). Here’s a description:
Dell Inspiron 13
5000 Series
Model 5378
Gray
13.3″ full HD Touch Display
Intel Core i7-7500U
8GB Memory
256GB Solid State Drive
Integrated Intel HD Graphics
Windows 10
Wireless-AC & Bluetooth 4.0
Media Card Reader
HDMI and USB 3.0
Backlit Keyboard
Waves MaxxAudio
Costco gives a full refund if you return it within 90 days. You also get tech support 24/7
I just got it, but already forget what I paid for it. I *think* it was $699.99 plus tax, and that might have been with $150 off — but I’ve looked at so many computers, I’m unsure about that.
If you got it with that $150, off, nice. 😀 THANKS>
I bought an Asus Linux laptop a year ago – very small – because I wanted something simple for the few times I needed it. I replaced their Linux with Ubuntu, and I’m very happy with that. No Win 8 or 10 on my computers!
Most of my computer time is on a PC. I just gave it some more RAM, and it’s doing fine. Once Win 7 is no longer supported, I’ll shift it to Ubuntu, as well. I now have a smart phone, but I mainly use it for Messenger and the occational phone call. And the camera has become useful. I cannot imagine typing anything larger than a quick message on that phone.
And I still use a very old, very comfortable Compaq keyboard at home. I persuaded my IT friend to give it to me when they replaced my work computer. By now I have worn off the labels on two keys. Being a touch typer, it doesn’t matter.
It looks like this is it:
https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-i5378-7171GRY-Generation-Window/dp/B01L8PDMOG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491272799&sr=8-1&keywords=dell+inspiron+13+5000+series+model+5378
I looked at this when I was looking online, but it doesn’t show the keyboard so I kept on surfing. I see I could have saved a few bucks. Reviewers aren’t very enthusiastic, but so far I love it. Took me a while to get settings right so the cursor wouldn’t have a mind of it’s own. Other computers I bought had uncontrollable cursors. I’d be typing and all of a sudden the cursor would fly into another paragraph while I was finishing a word. Very frustrating. This one doesn’t do that now that I’ve made adjustments to the touch pad.
Edited to add:
Here you can see the keyboard — and the customers seem happier than the Amazon crowd, but apparently the dollars-off is from a price much higher than Amazon’s:
https://www.costco.com/Dell-Inspiron-13-5000-Series-2-in-1-Touchscreen-Laptop—Intel-Core-i7—1080p.product.100316044.html
My laptop isn’t dead yet.
[looks at laptop] Are you dead? Because the infamous They are saying you’re dead.
No? Okay. As you were.
+100
Apple hasn’t made a laptop innovation that competitors could copy. Therefore the laptop is dead.
Isn’t it going on ten years since the last one? He’s a bit late to the party if that is his driver.
(I checked. 9 Years since the Macbook Air.)
Long live the laptop…
An ‘industry insider’ who’s out of touch. I read the first few paragraphs and am STILL thinking of Shatzkin.
Definitely.
They ‘may’ be right — for consumers, not so much for creators though.
If all you do is watch youtube and do emails and facebook then you might as well plug your wireless keyboard and mouse into one of those little Raspberry Pi 3 toys for under $100 for the whole kit.
For me a netbook for on the go, desktop beast for artwork. And a pay-as-you-go dumb phone. $200 for the three year plan comes to $5.56 a month and that not spent on a smart phone plan goes towards my next netbook/desktop (which unless Ms cleans up their act it will be a Linux system.)
You can take my integrated keyboard on which I can comfortably type well over 80 words per minute away from me in an alternate universe in which Steve Jobs doesn’t fail typing in middle school. Even prying it from my cold, dead hands might not be enough — I actually wore out a Northgate keyboard.
All humor aside, that’s the real problem here: Virtually all of these “predictions” are being made by people who do not have to work with documents longer than a page or two, frequently with meaningless (and mathematically challenged) tables or figures or graphs (or pictures of kittens) in the middle padding the length. One of the reasons is that designing reliable, portable keyboards is hard, and they’d rather stick to easy.
Northgates were great.
We bought a pair for our secretaries back in the day and they loved them.
I was thinking about my Northgate keyboards when I first read the OP, C.E.
I bought them for myself and each of my two secretaries back in the day and immediately replaced them with another Northgate at the slightest sign of keyboard fatigue.
I’ve been using a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard for several years, but would instantly switch back to a Northgate with or without ergo configuration if it became available.
Not only was Northgate a great keystroke,
mine(s) had the F-keys on the left side in two rows.
I was able to continue touch-typing and still
click the CORRECT F-key.
That’s one of the reasons why we got them; they were ideal for Word Perfect users.
Back when I still used a desktop computer, I used many Microsoft ergo keyboards. I say keyboards, plural, because I would regularly wear off the keys in six-months. And Microsoft kept mailing me replacements. Free. They’d have me send back the old ones when the new ones arrived. They wanted it for quality control purposes.
I still use the keyboard from my first PC/AT. An IBM engineer told me the key layout was derived from the Selectric typewriter, unlike later keyboards which owed more to terminal and keypunch designs. Function keys are on the left, enter key about the size of a potato, which is a boon to anyone with ulnar nerve entrapment in the right arm. Weighs enough to break your foot if you drop it. I stack three adapters to plug it into a USB port. But it is still my favorite. I haven’t noticed one on the market for years, but at the rate this one is going, it will last until 2050.
Yeah, I’d like to see them try to do some real work on a phone. Long documents, big spreadsheets, web design, programming, graphics, intensive math/science stuff (whatever those math/science people do; I wouldn’t know, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be easy to do on a phone)
I couldn’t imagine doing my job on a phone. I do a mix of programming, math and design. No way in hell that can be done on a phone.
Unless we’re talking one of those phones that sci-fi has imagined where it projects a screen/keyboard and you can manipulate it that way. That’d be exciting.
I also read an article about a (real) company that’s looking to manufacture neural lace. Which is basically implanting a computer into your brain. There are a lot of issues with that — obviously.
Check this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ncf_gmmuVgk
It’s long been a staple of SF in one form or another.
Niven and Pournelle did it in OATH OF FEALTY where it was an incidental tech, not the point of the story (which is sociopolitical) but they did cool things with it. Most of which we now do with phones.
It’s not that phones aren’t useful.
It’s that they are far from being the solution to every computing or even communication problem.
Hah! I just read about neural lace as well, although I think Musk is a bit premature in his predictions of the timeframe. Human nature always opts for the easiest solution to any problem, and messing directly with the brain is not what most people would call ‘easy’. I actually think it will be easier to embed digital tech into every single thing /around/ us. Imagine talking to a shoe to check for the right size, or interrogating a sticky bun for its caloric content. 😀
That last part can be done right now with RFID tags and the right software.
Yes, because it is SO EASY to type on a phone, and manipulate pixels when using a graphics program. Ri-i-i-i-ight. Like CE says above, they can pry my laptop out of my cold, dead fingers.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F0JD5CG/ref=twister_B00NX8YUO8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
I’ve got one of these for when I need to use my phone for something serious.
While I much prefer my model M keyboard, the laser keyboard is surprisingly good.
at some point, someone is going to include one of these along with a pico projector into a fat phone, and you’ll have the new ‘netbook’. project the keyboard onto the table, and the display onto a wall or piece of paper/fabric and you have something that’s more usable than anything else remotely close in size.
the processors in the high-end phones are actually pretty good, where the phones fall short is in RAM (and in the fact that most of the software loaded on them is setup exclusively for small touchscreens, but Android is Linux under the covers, so it is able to run a lot more without much development effort)
I’m using an IBM mechanical keyboard that was made in 1985. It weighs more than a couple of modern laptop computers, but I don’t have to chase it around the desk either…
Dammit! Why didn’t someone tell me this before I bought my new laptop and docking station?
I’m always behind the trends.
Well, I’ll just have to plug along on my dual large-screen monitors and wireless keyboard, with the new Dell laptop that weighs so little I thought I was opening the keyboard box–knowing that I am behind the times and hopelessly out of fashion.
This. Although my next computer will NOT be Apple for [reasons]. I need a large display at eye level, a full-sized keyboard, at least one non-cloud drive, and places for USB ports.
I like being behind the trend. I don’t enjoy being at the bleeding edge.
“I like being behind the trend.”
Yes, let the bleeding edgers find the flaws and problems (or if something was nothing but overpriced hype in the first place.
I generally prefer buying last year’s tech for myself. By then the showstoppers have blown up in others’ faces (sometimes literally, sadly) and the price has come down.
(Contrary to popular myth, not all engineers are cheap but most of us do know how to value our toys.)
I think the article is making a good point in a very ham fisted Manor.
Though I would imagine that what will kill the laptop, and the tablet to for that matter, Will be the invention of flexible fold up screens.
Afterall, why carry around three devices when you can just use one.
“The new macbook sucks and you can’t take a laptop on some international flights, therefore the laptop is dead.”
logical overreach, thy name is clickbait
You got it.
First it was netbook, then it was tablets, now it is dockable phones.
And still good old PCs keep rolling along.
Show me a phone that can hang with a core i7, or even an i3, at the same price, and then we’ll talk.
Sheesh!
Reminds me of the business writer who discovered he could scribble a two page note on a PalmPilot and proclaimed that was all the computer anybody would ever need.
Besides, by the time dockable phones become viable, if ever, terrorists will have phone dock bombs and maybe even phone bombs. The only reason terrorists focus on laptops for their bombs is they are big enough to hide enough explosive in them. Which means anything with a battery big enough to be useful is a risk.
My laptop has an i5 CPU. Most of the time it’s running at 800MHz, because it’s not doing anything CPU-intensive. When I bought it, I didn’t even look at how fast the CPU was, I just wanted a 17″ screen on a laptop that would run Linux.
For most people, if you’re doing something CPU-intensive on a laptop, you’re doing it wrong.
But the phone thing is kind of silly. Why would I want to plug my phone into a monitor and keyboard to write, when I can sit on the sofa with my laptop?
And they miss the elephant in the room. In twenty years, no business people will be carrying laptops on planes because they won’t be traveling anywhere. VR is going to kill the travel business.
Come on! Don’t you know the future will be just like the present except for the calendar on the wall?
Why plan for the long term?
Why even try to fit the tool to the task?
One size fits all!
Why would a successful businessman go through TSA hassle when he can send a flunky instead?
Besides, when you’re high enough on the corporate ladder, you use charter flights or the company plane and bypass the security theater anyway.
I hadn’t thought about the Palm Pilot for a very long time, Felix.
As with all things technical, I loved my Palm until something better came along.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the entries in my current electronic address book are the same ones that started in the Palm and have survived an incredible number of transfers from one program to another over the years.
Who are you, and what have you done to Passive Guy? The real PG would never say, “I hadn’t”, “I loved”, and “I wouldn’t”, even in comments.
Not unheard of.
I have some contacts and documents dating back to my Philips HPC. It had a built-in modem so I could surf the Internet, check and send e-mail, and ever create or edit word documents. And I could read ebooks on it.
It doesn’t go quite as far back as the Palm Pilot but it was a First gen Windows CE. And in several ways still better than android and iOS. Multitasking, for one.
Not that long ago in human terms but a couple centuries in internet time.
Tech moves fast.
my, I know. I don’t understand why I’d suddenly want to do everything on my phone because i have to check my laptop??