Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, Are you hey there, Tex Stuff listeners. This
Speaker 1: is Jonathan Strickland and I have got a request for
Speaker 1: all of you. Now. Chris and I have decided that
Speaker 1: we're going to try and experiment. We're doing our first
Speaker 1: crowdsourced episode of tech Stuff and we want to know
Speaker 1: what your pick is for the worst video game of
Speaker 1: all time. Now, nominations you can. You can make one nomination.
Speaker 1: You nominate one game, and you need to tell us
Speaker 1: the name of the game and the platform it was on.
Speaker 1: And it could be any platform. It could be an
Speaker 1: arcade game, it could be a PC, Mac, Xbox, PS three,
Speaker 1: Nintendo handheld console. It can be web based if you like.
Speaker 1: But just you let us know what the platform is
Speaker 1: so we can make sure we count that as the votes.
Speaker 1: So you can nominate your game either through email, which
Speaker 1: is text stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can nominate through Twitter or Facebook. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: put ah cut off date on this. I want to
Speaker 1: have the episode go up by the end of September
Speaker 1: of even so let's say you need to get your
Speaker 1: nominations in by September eleven, So if you get those
Speaker 1: nominations into us, we will make sure we include those
Speaker 1: in the process and we will have an episode where
Speaker 1: we give you the worst video games of all time
Speaker 1: based upon the votes of our listeners. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: You can't wait to hear from you. Get in touch
Speaker 1: with technology with tech Stuff from how stuff Looks dot com.
Speaker 1: Hello again, everyone, Welcome to tex Stuff. My name is
Speaker 1: Chris Poulette, and I'm an editor at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Across from me, as he always is, sits
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. If you start me up, I'll
Speaker 1: never stop. Well, I can see you're gathering no moss, No,
Speaker 1: I am not. So we wanted to talk today about
Speaker 1: whether or not we are in a post PC era,
Speaker 1: and I hear you guys asking right now. Hey, Jonathan
Speaker 1: and Chris, why are you talking about whether or not
Speaker 1: we're in a post PC era? Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: it's because Mark Dean, the Chief Technology Officer of IBM
Speaker 1: Middle East in Africa, who is a fellow who worked
Speaker 1: on the very first IBM PC, said it may be
Speaker 1: odd for me to say this, but I am also
Speaker 1: proud IBM decided to leave the personal computer business in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, selling our PC division to Lenovo. How
Speaker 1: many in the tech industry questioned IBM's decision to exit
Speaker 1: the business at the time, it's now clear there a
Speaker 1: company was in the vanguard of the post PC era.
Speaker 1: I personally have moved beyond the PC as well. My
Speaker 1: primary computer now is a tablet. When I helped design
Speaker 1: the PC, I didn't think i'd live long enough to
Speaker 1: witness its decline. But while PCs will continue to be
Speaker 1: much used devices, they're no longer the leading edge of computing.
Speaker 1: They're going the way of the vacuum tube typewriter, vinyl records, CRT,
Speaker 1: and incandescent light bulbs. So we wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: you know what do we think about that? Well, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you two things that are making a comeback include
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes and vinyl. Right. So, but what he says
Speaker 1: is that there are no lot that PCs are no
Speaker 1: longer in the leading edge of computing. And he does
Speaker 1: say they will continue to continue to be much used devices.
Speaker 1: Well so, and ncandescent lightbulbs still much used. So when
Speaker 1: so when was this? When was this that he made
Speaker 1: this statement? It was not long ago. It was like
Speaker 1: in August because David Clark, who was an m I
Speaker 1: T research scientists who scientists said, actually gave a a
Speaker 1: talk called the post PC Internet. UM. And I found
Speaker 1: that out actually because I was reading an article from
Speaker 1: Sarah Rotman Epps, a forester UM who said that the
Speaker 1: post PC era doesn't mean and a time when there
Speaker 1: are no more computers. And that's the way I was
Speaker 1: interpreting it. Yeah, exactly. Um. She says that what the
Speaker 1: post PC era means is basically at a time of
Speaker 1: ubiquitous technology and ubiquitous computing. I should say specifically, um,
Speaker 1: in which case I would say, yes, we are there,
Speaker 1: We're there. I agree. See that. That's what The reaction
Speaker 1: to Dean's uh A statement was was kind of across
Speaker 1: the board in technology journals and blogs. There were some
Speaker 1: people who took it to say the PC is dead,
Speaker 1: which is not what Dean said. He he specifically said
Speaker 1: that they will continue to be much used devices. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they're dead. Um. But there were a
Speaker 1: lot of people who wrote the death of the PC
Speaker 1: and that I guess that gets eyes on your article,
Speaker 1: but it's not a really accurate representation of what Dean
Speaker 1: was saying, uh, but you know there are other indicators
Speaker 1: that show that this is this is not this is
Speaker 1: not lightly said. Now, first, you've got the example that
Speaker 1: Dean himself gave, which is not just not the personal
Speaker 1: example which is interesting, but the example of IBM selling
Speaker 1: off its PC division to Lenovo. That that was that
Speaker 1: that caused some eyebrows to raise back in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: and it still does in August of eleven if you're
Speaker 1: recording this, because uh, I was sitting at my desk
Speaker 1: just sort of going about my daily business when Jonathan
Speaker 1: dropped me an instant message that said, hey, guess what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that IBM isn't alone August eighteen eleven, which
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast was yesterday. On August,
Speaker 1: HP announced it was considering spinning off its PC division. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was after and and um enough, well oddly in
Speaker 1: off because people are are equating the post PC era
Speaker 1: with um things like tablets and smartphones and other things. Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course we talked about in the podcast about the
Speaker 1: history of Palm, how HP acquired Palm for his web os,
Speaker 1: and I actually recently, probably about a month ago now,
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to play with one of the HP
Speaker 1: tablets with the web os. I was wondering, because you
Speaker 1: have a habit of killing technologies, as I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you were responsible for this Anyhow, I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the web os. When I was poking around on it
Speaker 1: um in the store, I thought, this was really nice.
Speaker 1: I really like it. And of course I've got an
Speaker 1: iPad and I enjoy my iPad UM and I really
Speaker 1: liked I liked the difference. And I've also used an
Speaker 1: Android tablet and I liked it too. But I was
Speaker 1: I'd never actually used the web o s before that,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, this is this is pretty neat.
Speaker 1: I'm glad HP did this well. In the same announcement,
Speaker 1: HP said that it will it is divesting itself. It's
Speaker 1: saying no more. While it's not investing it there that
Speaker 1: would require a buyer. They're actually shutting it down and
Speaker 1: incurring a massive cost. I saw people commenting that, um,
Speaker 1: they had bought it for, you know, to eliminate the competition. No,
Speaker 1: if they bought it to eliminate the competition, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made anything else that used the os um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're shutting down and they are all that unit and
Speaker 1: and it looks like they're going to divest themselves of
Speaker 1: their PC holdings as well. Yeah, so that means that
Speaker 1: they are no longer supporting the continuation of of web
Speaker 1: Os devices, although they did say that they were hoping
Speaker 1: to continue software development in some way. So what that
Speaker 1: means in the future, we don't know. Maybe it means
Speaker 1: that that eventually they will sell web Os off to
Speaker 1: someone else, Maybe they'll I hope so, or maybe it
Speaker 1: just means that for all those people who went out
Speaker 1: there and bought a web Os device, don't worry. We
Speaker 1: won't completely drop the support of the existing devices. We're
Speaker 1: just not going to build any new ones. Right. Um. However,
Speaker 1: you could argue that that is officially the death of Palm,
Speaker 1: which you know, we we did an episode on the
Speaker 1: history of Palm and we talked about how it was
Speaker 1: the web Os was kind of its end and uh,
Speaker 1: its legacy that was living on an HP and how
Speaker 1: it looks like that's no more, which is just kind
Speaker 1: of sad. But so let's talk about some of the
Speaker 1: things that have led to this post PC era. Keeping
Speaker 1: in mind again, we should say, first of all, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what roles that PCs are going to continue
Speaker 1: to fill. Let's do that first, because we need to
Speaker 1: get out of the way. Otherwise people are going to
Speaker 1: write in and tell us how important their PC is. Again,
Speaker 1: we're not saying PCs aren't important. We're just saying they're
Speaker 1: no longer the forefront of computing. Uh. There are roles
Speaker 1: that PCs are are always going to be, or I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say always, but for the foreseeable future, will be
Speaker 1: the best device to do certain kinds of tasks. Song.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like your typical office work. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's going to go away from most PCs for a while.
Speaker 1: It's just that that's a very efficient and easy way
Speaker 1: to manage a lot of office work, things like tablets,
Speaker 1: if it's anything where you're doing a lot of data
Speaker 1: entry or anything along those lines. We're still not quite
Speaker 1: there yet. Now. It's it's rather a pain in the
Speaker 1: neck to try to write a paper on a tablet,
Speaker 1: because trust me, I've tried, and it's it's doable, but
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as easy as it is with a computer.
Speaker 1: And sure, you could get docking stations that have keyboards
Speaker 1: on them and everything, but they're they're just not quite
Speaker 1: as versatile as an UM laptop or a desktop computer. Yep,
Speaker 1: then we've got gaming. Now. You can play lots of
Speaker 1: very popular games on tablets and smartphones. There's no doubt
Speaker 1: about Angry Birds has shown the world that a simple
Speaker 1: game can really dominate the market. But if you are
Speaker 1: a hardcore gamer, someone who really likes to play uh
Speaker 1: the cutting edge uh graphically intensive games that are out there,
Speaker 1: the ones that take a lot of processor power just
Speaker 1: to to play, not just for the graphics, but for
Speaker 1: the gameplay itself and the physics engine and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, then a desktop PC or laptop is
Speaker 1: not going to just go away from you because the
Speaker 1: other devices that are out there just don't have that
Speaker 1: process and capability of running those games at that level
Speaker 1: that that that the elite gamers expect. So if you
Speaker 1: are into media creation or editing, the PC is not
Speaker 1: gonna go away. I mean, you can do some some
Speaker 1: of that on on some tablets. There are applications that
Speaker 1: lets you do some work like that, but it's shoot,
Speaker 1: you can do some of it on smartphones, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's um, it's limited. You're not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: You're not gonna have nearly the versatility that you would
Speaker 1: have with a full desktop computer. Um. And also depending
Speaker 1: on what you're doing, it may take it's going to
Speaker 1: either produce something that's of a lower quality than what
Speaker 1: you expect or it's going to take a lot longer
Speaker 1: to complete. Well, I can tell you from personal experience
Speaker 1: that that shooting high definition video and editing that work
Speaker 1: on a computer, um, the end result will you know,
Speaker 1: stretch into gigabytes of space, if not terabytes, depending on
Speaker 1: the length of the project. And you're not going to
Speaker 1: find that on a table that amount of space on
Speaker 1: a tablet or a smartphone. So I mean, there there
Speaker 1: are certain things that you can use to do that
Speaker 1: with and I would argue that all the different types
Speaker 1: of devices can be useful in working together towards the
Speaker 1: completion of a project like that. But you can't actually
Speaker 1: do that level of editing with that, you know, with
Speaker 1: that level sophistication on something like a tablet. Sure, So
Speaker 1: now we can talk about I mean, those those are
Speaker 1: just a few examples. There are others. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about uh doing some heavy duty processing,
Speaker 1: like things like when you're folding proteins. Uh, then you're
Speaker 1: gonna need some they're so small. But then in that
Speaker 1: case you're talking about using actual computers, and not necessarily
Speaker 1: the processing needs are greater than what the mobile devices
Speaker 1: are capable of delivering. But in general, those are just
Speaker 1: some examples. Now let's move on and talk about the
Speaker 1: things that make the post PC era possible. From a
Speaker 1: hardware perspective, we already touched on this, but mobile devices
Speaker 1: are really the the chief element here. So smartphones and
Speaker 1: tablets are really what we're focusing on. These products have
Speaker 1: really hit it big in the consumer marketplace over the
Speaker 1: last three years or so four years, Uh, starting with
Speaker 1: really the Apple iPhone, I would argue, I mean there
Speaker 1: were smartphones on the market before then, but at least
Speaker 1: in the United States. Uh, the smartphone market was really
Speaker 1: just kind of limited to executives and a few early adopters. Well,
Speaker 1: it sort of depends on how you look at it now.
Speaker 1: I mean, there there were tablets before to the Windows
Speaker 1: based tablets, I don't really catch on. Well, no, they
Speaker 1: The thing is, these things sort of laid the groundwork. Um,
Speaker 1: but the thing is, you'd have people like doctors, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, especially people in the medical industry were really
Speaker 1: using tablets, but they were big. They were like laptops
Speaker 1: that had been flipped inside out so that the screen
Speaker 1: was on the outside. They weren't heavy. They're still around.
Speaker 1: I've seen some um and you know the palm pilot
Speaker 1: where you had the device in your hand, which gradually
Speaker 1: became a smartphone. But you're right, they were primarily these
Speaker 1: were tools that the executive would use or the you know,
Speaker 1: the business professional would use, not things like the iPhone,
Speaker 1: which sort of broke that wall down. It was really
Speaker 1: aimed at the general consumer who wanted to have essentially
Speaker 1: a portable computer that they could that also acted as
Speaker 1: a phone. Uh. Sarah Rotman Epps said that one of
Speaker 1: the delineators is that it's more of a casual experience
Speaker 1: and it's more are intimate than it used to be,
Speaker 1: rather than being something that was set on your desk
Speaker 1: and you'd have to go to your desk to do it.
Speaker 1: Even with a laptop, you know, you have the keyboard
Speaker 1: and the screen up, and it also gives you the
Speaker 1: opportunity to interact with your environment no matter where you are,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like if you have a computer if
Speaker 1: it's a desktop, then you are limited to the desk
Speaker 1: unless you unplug everything and you move that desktop over
Speaker 1: someplace else for some sort of land party or something.
Speaker 1: Then party laptop is a little more portable, but not
Speaker 1: so portable that you're gonna be whipping the laptop out
Speaker 1: just casually wherever you happen to be. I've worked with people,
Speaker 1: Sorry interrupt, I was gonna say, I've worked with people who,
Speaker 1: even in the laptop era, had a sling for their
Speaker 1: desktop PC so that they could carry it to land
Speaker 1: parties because laptops didn't and I would argue, to some
Speaker 1: degree still don't have the kind of processing power that
Speaker 1: you can put in a desktop PC. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: find some gaming laptops out there that put my desktop
Speaker 1: to shame, but they are still like, compared to the
Speaker 1: cutting edge gaming PC are still still behind. And it's
Speaker 1: because you know, you can only fit so many components
Speaker 1: into a laptop case and not have it melt. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we while we've talked about it many times,
Speaker 1: how processors, especially very sophisticated high end processors, generate a
Speaker 1: whole lot of heat and uh a lot of the
Speaker 1: gaming PCs, you know, some of them are liquid cooled. Uh,
Speaker 1: many of them require multiple fans to keep their innards cool.
Speaker 1: They might have multiple processors, well, most of them do graphics,
Speaker 1: high end graphics processors, again generating more heat. Um so,
Speaker 1: I mean there are things that you but but you
Speaker 1: can do a lot of work with that, a lot
Speaker 1: of computing work. Well in games, yes they're games, but
Speaker 1: they're doing a lot of processing work, computing work to
Speaker 1: render that information that you see on the screen. So
Speaker 1: if you're not doing that, if you if you want
Speaker 1: to be able to interact with your environment easily, then
Speaker 1: a smartphone and tablet that that makes perfect sense. Like
Speaker 1: you're walking around town and you wanted to look up
Speaker 1: the address of a place because you think, oh, that
Speaker 1: that restaurant I heard of is nearby. I know it's
Speaker 1: near here, I just don't know exactly where it is. Well,
Speaker 1: that's where that kind of thing comes in handy. And
Speaker 1: once people really started to embrace that, the app world
Speaker 1: exploded and we suddenly got all these apps that let
Speaker 1: us interact with our environment in ways we never really
Speaker 1: thought of before, like augmented reality. Augmented reality is a
Speaker 1: great example, and of course augmented reality goes beyond just
Speaker 1: smartphones and tablets. We've seen that incorporated into handheld gaming
Speaker 1: consoles as well. And we should also add that even
Speaker 1: though we're talking about smartphones and tablets right now, we
Speaker 1: should there are other things we can talk about, like
Speaker 1: set top boxes or even just TVs that have computing
Speaker 1: elements built into them that people are are using to
Speaker 1: interact with the digital world far more frequently than they
Speaker 1: are with a PC. I'm sorry, well, I was gonna
Speaker 1: add on to something that's married to this idea of
Speaker 1: the mobile device and the things that you have around you. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are two other related concepts. There's the ecosystem, the
Speaker 1: idea of creating a digital ecosystem where your devices can
Speaker 1: interact with one another in a fairly seamless way so
Speaker 1: that your experience like you're you're playing a game on
Speaker 1: your smartphone, let's say, and then you switch over to
Speaker 1: a tablet and you are able to pick up exactly
Speaker 1: where you left off on the smartphone, and now you're
Speaker 1: playing in a tablet, and you know, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful message you can send to a consumer.
Speaker 1: But married to that is the idea of cloud computing.
Speaker 1: Cloud computing has really done a lot too to bring
Speaker 1: on the post PC era, because before cloud computing, you
Speaker 1: essentially had to have a device capable of doing whatever
Speaker 1: processing needs you had all on its own, right Like
Speaker 1: you you had to have if you wanted to play
Speaker 1: a particular game that was on the store shelf, you
Speaker 1: needed to have a PC that had the stats that
Speaker 1: that game required at bare minimum. Otherwise you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I would love to play this game. I've got the
Speaker 1: money to play this game, but my computer is not
Speaker 1: capable of running it. Now, cloud computing, at least theoretically,
Speaker 1: what you would do is you create a very low
Speaker 1: powered browser window or or framework on your computer which
Speaker 1: doesn't require a lot of processor speed. Um that would
Speaker 1: be what would be run on your computer. Then you
Speaker 1: would have a high speed Internet connection to the cloud
Speaker 1: service operator, which would be running the game on its end,
Speaker 1: and you would essentially be accessing it through the framework
Speaker 1: that's on your computer. So all the heavy lifting is
Speaker 1: being done on a computer potentially thousands of miles away
Speaker 1: from you, and it's only that you're when you press
Speaker 1: a button like instead of pressing a button and your
Speaker 1: processor tells the game okay, jump, you're pressing a button
Speaker 1: in the your your computer sends a message to this
Speaker 1: computer that's thousands of miles away that tells its processor okay,
Speaker 1: now jump now. Getting the lag time down, the latency
Speaker 1: time down, so that that doesn't become a factor in
Speaker 1: the game. That's important. But we're seeing that happen. I
Speaker 1: mean there are business is built around it. Online is
Speaker 1: built around that business. So you've got once you have
Speaker 1: the cloud computing agent there, it means that you no
Speaker 1: longer have to go out and buy the newest computer
Speaker 1: in order to access some of the coolest software that's
Speaker 1: out there. So that has taken away the the the
Speaker 1: incentive to go out and replace your computer every couple
Speaker 1: of years just to stay up to speed, assuming that
Speaker 1: the things that you need are available in the cloud.
Speaker 1: Not not everything you need is going to be there.
Speaker 1: So a lot of this comes down to personal choice
Speaker 1: about whether or not you are there certain things that
Speaker 1: you just don't feel like you that you feel you
Speaker 1: can do without. Like I know that I can't access
Speaker 1: this particular program without having a fast computer. Do I
Speaker 1: need that program? If I don't need that program, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to go to a cloud based system and
Speaker 1: buy a cheap computer, or maybe not even a computer.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm I can access it through a tablet or smartphone. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that has really helped urge on this this post
Speaker 1: PC era. Yes, right now, we don't need these these
Speaker 1: desktop computers are laptop computers in order to access some
Speaker 1: of the cool applications that previously would have required them. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just good to know that more about what the
Speaker 1: post PC era means to those people who have described it.
Speaker 1: I think it's easy with a name like that, or
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate that they chose that description because people seem
Speaker 1: to think that that was the death knell of the computer.
Speaker 1: But uh, obviously, I mean computers are in so many
Speaker 1: different kinds of things. Uh, you know, it's it's just
Speaker 1: going to evolve, and it's it's become easier to do
Speaker 1: these things. It's become more cost effective to do to
Speaker 1: put computers in different devices. Um. And uh, I mean
Speaker 1: we have the Internet of Things where your fridge is
Speaker 1: talking to the internet. Um, you know, it's it's Uh,
Speaker 1: it's good to have some description about what's really going
Speaker 1: on and what people actually mean by that, because um,
Speaker 1: I think it should probably I think we've not only started.
Speaker 1: We've been in the post PC era for a couple
Speaker 1: of years anyway. Yeah, it's just it's right now. It's
Speaker 1: it's I think a lot easier to recognize and to
Speaker 1: acknowledge the fact that we are in that era. I mean, um, again,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that you're gonna walk home and realize
Speaker 1: that something all your computers don't work or they've disappeared. Uh,
Speaker 1: they've all run off. They don't have a little gem
Speaker 1: blinking indicating that they need to be on the run,
Speaker 1: because otherwise the computer executors are going to show up.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so, uh well, I don't know if anyone's
Speaker 1: going to get that joke. If you do, let us know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of you will. All right, all of you old
Speaker 1: timers out there who get that joke, don't yell at
Speaker 1: me for assuming that you're you're young or young timers
Speaker 1: who who have seen it. That would just blow me away.
Speaker 1: I know there's remake coming anyway. Okay, I'm getting off track.
Speaker 1: Let's wrap this up. Yes there is. Let's wrap this up.
Speaker 1: We are going to uh say that, yes, we're in
Speaker 1: a post PC era. No, it does not mean the
Speaker 1: computer is actually going away. And I think I think
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable with that. So if you guys have any
Speaker 1: topics you would like us to talk about anything that
Speaker 1: you specifically think needs to be addressed, You can write
Speaker 1: us an email our addresses, text stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter, or handle it. Both of those is Text
Speaker 1: stuff H. S W and Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Be sure to check out
Speaker 1: our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
Speaker 1: Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
Speaker 1: perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works iPhone app
Speaker 1: has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you
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