Intel Jeff is telling Laptop and desktop will survive the holocaust
But Desktop/Laptop is wounded and wound is going to be bigger and bigger, eventually going to take place of mainframe computer. Is the Laptops natural evolution of Desktops? Is the Tablets natural evolution of Laptop? What causing Laptops bigger, loosing batteries sooner, heavier -- all those things affected its portability? Is that Keyboard good enough to interact with? Is there better interfaces available? etc etc It looks like interface to interact with such system may not be keyboard in few years. In my opinion aged keyboard and mouse based interface is going to be replaced by Touch, Voice and motion based one (What Intel's partner MS calls NUI -- natural user interface). But it is just taking shape. It will take few years or decade but eventually to blog or type or anything fit at that time frame and interact with the devices, I just talk to voice aware things/editors -- it is natural evaluation and I think Intel would accept that. We are not sitting on pentium era, we are on fusion era where CPU + GPU in single package. Most people would have booed but eventually it happen. I understand Intel is not in that race but I hope they catch up soon. Moor's law is playing big role in the interface evaluation too -- look at iPhone to multi touch track pad, multi touch mouse and new Apple's motion aware keyboard patent and MS surface, MS kinect is huge hit and MS plan to integrate it with windows and going to support ARM based proc. I really mean it and we will see it within 10 years.
What about big monitors?
He is also referring use of big monitors but looking at projection technology and flexible OLED -> AMOLED (Galaxy S, Nexus S etc now -- though not flexible to fold :)) can roll out to satisfy biggie needs. Holography also possible successor waiting to give immersive experience.
ARM is new king of the hills with great commanders like NVIDIA, TI, Qualcom etc thats what CES 2011 proclaimed.
The main point is iPad proved laptop and desktop is being cannibalized -- Yes read the 2011 Q1 call and what Tim Cooks said about cannibalization -- They boldly accepted it because they have device which is doing that but for Intel, it is ARM based multiples cannibalizing it. This is shivering news for Intel when I see my executive pestering to get access internal corporate network from iPad/tablet. Either he is saving Intel as it is not on lime light or Intel needs to fire him for the lack of vision, oh.. thats what AMD did to its CEO(Dirk Meyer).
All these new evolution needs new app to fully utilize the feature, demand low power, light weight, ever connected, instant on devices -- base foundation component is processor -- most importantly low power processor and hence market will be opened up for new players.
By the way, I am typing this blog using latest Intel Core i7 2720qm, 8 GB memory and SSD running Ubuntu 11.04 today's build but I definitely know I am ready to switch to right kind of device soon. The fact is my first computer is not desktop, it is Laptop. May be for next generation, first computer is going to become smart phone and next big one would be tablet. I don't need biggie unless I do programing, fire up Eclipse or XCode or Visual Studio I need better CPU equipped one. But what if IDE evolves in phase with tablet? thats what iWork did, thats what Microsoft One Note did. This will happen to photoshop and other heavy apps. Nvidia Tegra 2 is driving full HD to external monitor and tv -- promising quad core in Tegra 3 or 4. Evolution is playing there also.
