Recently this post on Hacker News related some feeling about what’s so far been a rather quite fading of the of the PC industry. After reading it, and especially after reading what other people thought about the subject, I guess I really don’t understand why everyone’s getting so uptight about the changes in the computer market.
There seem to be many saying “the PC industry has lost our divine favoring, whatever shall we do?!” This reactionist speach is troublesome, since what we’re seeing is not everyone in the world suddenly making a change to mobile for no reason. It’s not as though suddenly the stars changed position and now PC is mysteriously dying.
No, what happened is what always happens with technology: someone made a better tool for the mass market to do what they want to do, which is to consume content and be entertained. Magic wireless Netflix machines that fit in the average persons pockets are just better at that than PC’s are and there’s nothing wrong with that. Most people want to look at funny cat pictures, see what their friends are doing, or watch Youtube, and phones make that easier than PCs do. It’s evolution, and even as a PC enthusiast and power user, I’m more than glad to see people better able to do what they enjoy.
That’s not to say I’ll be giving up my hand picked keyboard, large screen, and heavy tower, but I’m not to worried. There’s always going to be money in serving the needs of people who get work done on computers, even if it’s not quite as much money as it used to be.