What is it going to take to get it through the heads of some people that the PC market is neither dead nor dying.
It has stabilised. That's all. Just like the car market. or TV sets. Or... well, most things, really.
Most people who want a PC have a PC, so the initial race for everyone to get a PC is over. But there will still be 'newbies'
coming along, though not in the numbers seen previously. And those who do already have a PC will eventually want to buy
another one. But the 'need' to race out and buy the newest, latest, fastest PC with the latest 'new' thing simply isn't there
any more.
Once, there was, because the tech was advancing in big leaps, and quite rapidly. Programs (how I hate the term 'apps')
and operating systems were often left playing catch-up, and games certainly were. Nowadays this isn't the case, the
improvements keep coming, but it isn't that critical to have them 'NOW!' as it once was.
People will still be buying and using x86 PCs for many years to come for the simple reason that they are the best tool for
the job. Anything else is, at best, a compromise. But they'll be buying when they need to, not because they have to. The
newbies will still come. The enterprise market is huge, and will remain so for many years. Private users (such as myself)
who create rather than consume content will be using PCs for many years because, as I said, nothing else is in the same
universe when it comes to being as powerful and versatile as an x86 PC.
Many 'consumer-type' users are quite happy with a tablet or a decent phone for their 'computing' needs, and that's fine. But
they don't need a PC and would almost certainly never have bought a PC in the first place had tabs/phones been around at
the time. And many private/semi-pro users will buy or have bought a tablet as an accessory to their PC. But they don't
regard it as a replacement for their PC.
To use the popularity of tablets and stabilising sales figures as a basis for claiming the PC is dying is to ignore the existing
user-base who have no intention of relinquishing the x86 platform. It's short-sighted in the extreme, incredibly arrogant, and
frankly borders on stupidity.
Did Henry Ford throw it in in 1927 when sales of the Model-T fell off, and say, "Hey fellas, these danged cars ain't sellin' as
quick as they used to. Let's dump the concept, abandon those who've bought our cars, and sell them air-planes instead"?
No, of course he didn't, he released the Model-A, one of their best-ever cars.
So, why are MS, tech journalists (and I use that term very loosely) and touch/tablet fanbois so blindly and arrogantly determined
take away our cars and sell us aircraft?
And why are/were they too stupid to realise that the market would eventually saturate and stabilise. They need to accept that
the boom is over, but also that the normal stable "buy, use, replace, buy, use, replace" kind of market is still there, and doesn't
want to go away or swap to what will always be an inferior format and system.
It makes me soooo angry...
Wenda.
