Kennedy continues, “Speaking at the Digital Landscapes conference at UCD, Herlihy said that the cloud-computing opportunity will make sure that every mobile device will be capable of doing rapid-scale applications. ‘In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.’ Herlihy [echoed] comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the recent GSM Association Mobile World Congress 2010 that everything the company will do going forward will be via a mobile lens, centring on the cloud, computing and connectivity.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In three years desktops will be irrelevant? For most people, we’d have to agree.
I would tend to agree! I use my iPhone a hundred times more than my i7 iMac.
If only my iPhone could drive this 30 inch screen!
What about the mobile desktop?
I bet Google’s sales chief doesn’t play MMOs. TOR on an iPad?! I don’t think so ….
Um, no…..we have seen how the “predictions” of the sales people do. And it is NOT well….
@ericdano
I Agree! Where’s my flying car?
Not for me it won’t. As a 3D motion graphics artist / video editor, I am in constant need of the most powerful desktops I can get my hands on. This prediction, if it holds true, spells bad things for my future, as desktop use becomes more niche, development slows, and prices skyrocket.
’twill be a dark day indeed….
NOT! Only if mobile can be as powerful as a desktop will they ever be irrelevant. I don’t see that happening at all, certainly not in 3 years. Maybe 30 years. The main problem with making a mobile device as powerful as a desktop is power consumption and cooling.
Neither has been solved as of yet.
Yes, in three years time, instead of working at my desk, I’ll walk up and down the corridor carrying my iPad. It’s so much easier to type standing up, and who needs folders anyway?
this won’t happen (as quickly) if data plans continue as they are…
the fact this was a google guy, people actually quoted him. All he did was say the obvious and gave a vague timeline…
i too envision in 3 years… Fatter people, more disease, etc…
Yeah they mean iPhones and iPads
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> bring it on !
I agree it’s moving that way but not in three years. The infustructure of the internet, wireless and networks in the US is not there and won’t be there in three years. Japan and some other countries maybe, the US no way. Sure, the technology and software will be there but the implementation and adoption will be many years out.
I can think of many wonderful thing that don’t ever move forward because of cost and adoption. If that was the case, we’d all have solar homes, in home fibre optics and hydrogen vehicles.
Nope, not three years.
Ridiculous.
I’ve been hearing that for 20 years now.
Nah, The arrival of the iPad will make an iMac a more attractive machine as the other part of a desktop/ultra mobile platform duo.
Screw your laptop. An iMac and an iPad will be the way to go. They’re both better at what they do best, over a laptop and together they will cost about as much as a Macbook Pro.
Desktops will be with us for a good while longer.
Great, just what I need! It is nice to think ahead and “utopize” to delirium. How about a 30″ iMac foldable into an 2×3″ iPhone, or rollable into a 10″ pen (also usable as a massage tool)?
@ iQuack-
to paraphrase Avery Brooks in an IBM commercial in 2000…
“It is the year 2010. But where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars! I don’t see any flying cars! Why? Why? …Why?!”
no flying cars… yet. but we can look forward to Star Trek-y looking iPads in a few weeks time!!
@ Constant Refresher
Totally agree – until I can get a tablet that’s big and powerful enough to do heavy image editing on. Then I’ll have little use for an iMac either. Laptops are a gap-stop that have worked well enough, but their days are numbered.
Now I’m facing a quandary – a friend is in the market for a 24″ iMac and he said he’d buy mine rather than a refurb, and with my tax refund I’ll finally be able to upgrade. But do I really want to buy a new iMac right now?
I do, but I’m not sure what’s coming… are touchscreen iMacs still far off? The iPad has thankfully solved my portable problem, but I’ll still need a Lightroom/Photoshop machine. What to do…
Stop gap? Yeah… it’s early. Shut up, Ampar. =P
How many million play WoW on a daily basis? How many more play weekly? Now add in a number of other games … like that new Star Trek game that bears more than a slight similarity to WoW, or any of the first-person-shooters.
I have sat in front to the TV with my MacBook in my lap and played WoW during the ads. That 13″ screen is amazingly crisp, but the input – the keyboard and scratch pad – cannot compete with a mouse and keyboard to make it a positive game experience. OK, just about good enough for checking in-game mail and working the Auction House.
I dunno, I can’t imagine a whole bunch of folks without desktops… certainly laptops/mobile computing and smart phones/devices are going to keep growing, but I think the desktop will remain as the basis for most work.
The laptop is the endangered species, not the desktop.
@C1
I’d like to see Gap stopped too. They’re wicked expensive.
No new iMacs for at least 3-4 months.
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
BTW: rather than the death knell of DESKtops, could this not be the death knell of Net Books, and Ultra-lights? And maybe low-powered portables of all descriptions? The iPad, as currently expected, is far from a replacement for any of these when they are worked at their hardest, but how many come close to that? And … how long will the iPad be as anemic as the intro model is expected to be? As the iPad gets buffer, and as cloud computing takes over, it will be better able to replace more of the functions of a larger/heavier portable. In three years? I’d rather offer five, but three could do it.
@willieG
as a content creator also, consumers not having desktops will be our boon. No more ‘nephews’ dabbling in graphics and undervaluing our work. There will only be limited places to get the graphics that drive all consumer content.
I’m one who still needs a new 12 core Mac Pro with 20GB ram. woohoo!!!
@ chano
Yeah, I looked at that a few days ago. I think I’m going to just go with the 27″ i7 like I’ve been wanting to for a while. Just waiting for the lousy socialist government to give me my money back.
Does anyone here read past the headline?
In three years, people will no longer CONSUME INFORMATION AND ENTERTAINMENT on desktop.
Nobody said that desktops will be entirely gone, as it is an asinine premise. There will OBVIOUSLY be need for all those who use Adobe CS stuff, Final Cut stuff, Maya/Lightwave/Cinema 4D/Blender, QuarkXpress and many other heavy-duty tools.
Vast majority of people who buy cheap Windows desktops and laptops today only to surf web, do e-mail, IM, iTunes, YouTube, pictures, recreational gaming and occasional Word/Excel/PowerPoint file will switch to mobile platform(s). Obviously, Apple is in the pole position for this.
Desktops aren’t disappearing in three years; they’re just getting re-purposed for the things for which they were meant to be used — heavy lifting.
@ maclover
So true! Maybe people will stop thinking everyone who has a point-and-shot is a professional photographer. (fingers crossed)
…”No more ‘nephews’ dabbling in graphics and undervaluing our work.”
Don’t get your hopes up, maclover. There are already plenty of apps for iPhone that provide tools for all those ‘nephews’ dabbling in graphics. You can count on your work being undervalued for many years to come. Such is the nature of technological development; the barriers of entry are now so low that ANYONE can produce ANYTHING with little to no investment, be it signs, flyers, business cards, brochures, or musical recordings (using GarageBand), or movies… And the worst thing is, the aunts and uncles often tend to be thoroughly impress with their nephews’ “professional” results… The pool of people who can genuinely appreciate the quality of professional artistic work is slowly shrinking.
This is from the same company that created the “Superphone”.
I believe he is speaking for Mac users. As the PC side seems locked into the windows mind set of hauling around a desktop on any thing that they can HAUL around.
I can believe this for Apple users. They have moved the market in this direction since Apple focused on the mobile side.
Yes, Mac or Apple users are moving quickly away from the desktop.
No, Windows will have a slow churn away from the desktop. As always.
@ ChrissyOne,
Wouldn’t a multi-touch iMac have to be almost horizontal to work with? Gorilla arm anyone? Would Apple do just a touch screen iMac?
I could see a multi-touch 27″ iMac screen at a 5 to 10° angle being a lot of fun to work with.
No way! I love my iPhone, and use it constantly, but my eyes suck enough as it is. Long live my MacPro and 30″ screen!!!
Desktops can not be repaced as they have heavy specs on space, CPU speed, memory, etc.
Need to haul a heavy load, sit down behind a desktop.
Lite loads, email, surfing, etc.; go mobile.
Surfing, reading, texting, etc; ultra light with an iPhone, touch, or the iPad.
As I sit here wrapped by 3-wide 30″ Cinema HD screens on my to-the-max Mac Pro, I can only say to this … I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
@Altivec
I’m with you. And, for anyone over 40, the screen size of a phone is far too small to be useful for anything other than emergencies… I hardly ever browse the net on the iPhone – its too slow, its too cumbersome (no tabbed browsing for a start) and I can’t read the display unless I enlarge each section. PAINFUL…
@ Big Als MBP
I’m thinking of the iMac-with-the-docking-iPad screen concept. I can’t see Apple making the same mistakes that HP made with their useless touchscreen computers. A more useful solution would be a dockable monitor that the user could remove and use as a big tablet.
Imagine being able to lay that big screen down flat and using it as a light table (a small-ass table?). When docked, it runs full desktop OS X, and is connected to desktop-grade processors in the base stations. When away from the dock, it uses an A4-like mobile chip and the iPhone OS.
Yes, I’m dreaming. Sosumi!
That’s an easy prediction. Nobody knows what will happen in 2 years (2012) let alone 3. You can say whatever you want.
Though I hate for a flight to be canceled because the pilot misplaced the iPad that controls the plane.
@ Fin Fang Foom
The iPad looks more futuristic than a 24th century Star Trek P.A.D.D.!
economy desktops – yes! High-end, no!
Not for 3D it wont.
@ Constant Refresher
Exactly! My buying intention has switched from MacBook Air + external display to iMac + iPad.
“My buying intention has switched from MacBook Air + external display to iMac + iPad”
Precisely how I feel. A quad iMac and an iPad for me. Goodbye MBP.
Amen to Predrag!
What these kind of predictions ignore is the basic difference between users/consumers and content creators. Sure, a large majority of users might get their info, compose their email, and share their media on a device like the iPad. But that will not negate the need for designers and editors, and musicians, etc., to use high-powered desktop systems to create and format all that content. As a professional graphic designer, it’s laughable to think I will ever not need a desktop system to do the work I do now. It’s important to note that Google is not in the business of enabling content creators (like Apple or Adobe), and therefore their focus is on the rest of the consuming majority.
I completely agree it means the minimizing of laptops, not desktops. People will second guess purchasing a laptop for the purpose of surfing the Internet, email, and entertainment and consider a better, more secure, dumb proof device like the iPad or iPhone/iPod touch moble device.
Google’s sales chief is a world-class idiot if he actually believes this.
I’m not sure what’s coming… are touchscreen iMacs still far off? —ChrissyOne
Vertical touchscreens would be an ergonomic disaster for anyone who spends hours a day doing actual work on a computer (as opposed to just surfing the web and reading email). You heard it here first.
I’m still waiting for the desktop to make this a “paperless society” as Professor F. W. Lancaster predicted would happen by the end of the twentieth century! Whennnnnnnn???… Wait… This was predicted by an Ivy League, nose stuck up in the air, Haavard type, ego-centric boob of a prefessor… that explains it!
@ alansky
“You heard it here first.”
…and you would have read it here first if you’d read my comments above…
…I can’t see Apple making the same mistakes that HP made with their useless touchscreen computers. A more useful solution would be a dockable monitor that the user could remove and use as a big tablet.
See, this is why Google should stick to being a search engine.
Mobile devices will never, ever make desktops irrelevent. There are 2 simple reasons why:
1. Desktops will always be vastly more powerful because they don’t have the size and battery constrains mobile devices do.
2. Desktops will always have the bigger displays.
That’s it. I can still remember how a few years ago, the pundits were speculating laptops would make desktops irrelevent. Which of course they didn’t, for the same two reasons. Incidentally, smartphones will never make laptops irrelevent, also for the same two reasons.
All three types of computer each fill a specific niche that can never be filled by the other two types of computer.
John Herlihy would know this if he had half a clue. Sadly…
Oh, and by the way, computers will make paper irrelevant any day now.
Predrag<//b> and <b>Aldebaran, are you under the strange impression that the several millions of us who play World of Warcraft, or the many other millions who play first person shooters are “content creators”? Well, I am – check out my PodCast – but most of us are not. Still, we want those big vertical screens with keyboards and other devices that control our killing and movement. The iPad is just Too Tiny for that.
What about doing some work. There is no way I’m using Photoshop on a mobile.
I agree with Constant Refresher . I can’t see any truly mobile device replacing my iMac. It gives me a migraine just thinking of trying to sort, organize and edit photos on anything other than a desktop Mac. Also, while I’ve no problems with “The Cloud”, I’d prefer to have my photos local….. at least that way if I loose them it’ll be my own fault…….
You can take my desktop computer (hence my Mac) when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
I still prefer my desktop over my laptop!
I hope not since I just purchased my i7 iMac today. To me, there will still be that need to log into work (unfortunately in windows), and I will still need that central media hub for the household, which I would not trust to a cloud. Lots of things have to happen for googles vision to come true. Three years seems to be a bit soon. I see most of my time on an iPad, but still will need my iMac for some crucial tasks.
“… sales chief” says it all. Yeah right.
Predictions are a dime a dozen. The world has ended hundreds of times. It is always amusing when such ‘prophets’ are themselves made irrelevant. (o_0)
There are insightful people in the world, but not from marketing. Sorry.