[onlyrealcuzzo]

15-20 years? How are you SURE that smartphones will still be a thing in 20 years? Let alone that Apple will still be the hip premium brand? 20 years is a LONG time. The average lifespan for an S&P 500 company is less than that these days.

[Despegar]

Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare. The smartphone is unlikely to be replaced for a long time to come. There will be plenty of head fakes along the way no doubt (smart speakers and voice bots come to mind), but the smartphone is simply too good and has too much utility to be easily challenged.

And you also have to make a bet that Apple won't come to dominate that area as well (even if they aren't first to it). AR glasses have some promise to be a new general purpose computing platform, but even then I'm skeptical that it will be able to mount a serious challenge to the smartphone.

[rabidrat]

> Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare.

They've only happened every decade so far: 1960 (IC), 1970 (DARPA), 1980 (PC), 1990 (GUI), 2000 (Internet), 2010 (smartphone).

[runako]

Point of order: the last 3 transitions have been layering versus actual shifts.

Text-based computing -> GUIs was a shift. Broadly speaking, there is no market today for consumer-facing computers where text is the only input capability.

The most profitable company in the PC era also has the most profitable PC unit today. The Internet runs on top of the GUI layer. The smartphone is (in much of the world) an "also" not an "instead."

(One could argue that the original MSFT goal of being on every desktop was centered on work. By that metric, most smartphone usage falls into a separate category of consumer computing that largely is distinct from business computing, where desktops & laptops still rule.)

A grandparent(-ish) post compares the iPhone to the Google Home. Much like the iPhone did not replace my laptop (which did not replace the server in the datacenter), voice-driven devices will not replace mobile phones. All Excel (ahem) at different use cases.

[zjaffee]

Tacking on to your comment, one could argue that voice alongside increasing number of sensors and inputs available on smartphones are very similar paradigm shifts to that of the text-based computing to GUI shift.

We're replacing the keyboard and GUI to one that is far more ubiquitous and backgrounded, and computing experiences are based on all data that is available and economical to process rather than having things be the more traditional user giving an input and then getting an output.

[runako]

I partially agree. My terrible pun of including Excel was a reference to a very common application that's not going ubiquitous or backgrounded anytime soon. Similarly, nobody's soon going to be coding via a voice-drive device without a display.

On the mobile side, imagine the hellscape of privacy intrusion that would result if people all used voice to message each other (instead of text/email/etc).

GUIs are sticking around because they are the best available option for many use cases. Portable GUIs are likewise going to stick around for a long time. Fashionable nerds may decide to stop calling these "PCs" or "mobile phones" at some point, but the form factors will prove resilient.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I watched The Office for the first time a few months ago.

I was AMAZED that a show that recent had a lot of office workers with desks with no computer.

In 20 years, I don't think it's crazy to think the next generation will look back at our time and think... I can't believe you sat there staring at a rectangle and pushing buttons all day.

I'm not betting on it, but it seems plausible to me that in 20 years Hololens / Google Glasses combined with voice recognition and some type of gesture control could be good enough and desirable for most people.

[Swizec]

From a hardware perspective: servers, personal computers, smartphones

That’s 3 computing paradigm shifts in 60 years.

[jen20]

Are you calling out the time these became mainstream? I'd argue if the PC can be slotted in at 1980 (the IBM PC didn't come out until 1981), the GUI should be listed as 1984, not 1990. Alternatively, the PC should be listed a lot later.

[rabidrat]

I was not going for exact years but some semblance of "around then" which conveniently rounded up to the nearest decade. The Apple II was 1978 and the PC was 1981. I agree that the GUI should be listed as 1984 in some official capacity (or is it 1978 with PARC?), but most of the world and I were using text mode by default in the 80s; it wasn't until Windows 3.1 (1990) that the GUI became the default. Similarly the internet was around before 2000 but became The Thing with the dotcom bubble (maybe this one should be called Google instead of Internet since I already put DARPA at 1970. Maybe 1970 should be UNIX instead?). Anyway I don't think this detracts from the larger point, which was that these huge shifts do seem to come along about once a decade in the computing sphere. Oh and we forgot to mention virtualization/cloud, is that more or less of a paradigm shift than Google and the smartphone?

[Despegar]

The GUI is not something I'd break out separately from the PC. And the internet is something that massively improved the utility of PCs and increased demand for them, it wasn't something that was going to replace it.

[philwelch]

> And the internet is something that massively improved the utility of PCs and increased demand for them, it wasn't something that was going to replace it.

No, it just devastated the market for native PC applications.

[iainmerrick]

The GUI is not something I'd break out separately from the PC.

Why not? The PC (and I’d include things like the Apple ][ and C64) was a legitimate success before GUIs took off. The GUI was a separate step, also hugely important.

And ~1980 and ~1990 are reasonable dates for when personal computers and Windows took off, give or take a few years.

[samatman]

and Apple is still profitable on a product line they introduced in 1984.

[phaus]

All its going to take for the next paradigm shift will be for voice assistants and batteries to get better, and for google glass-like devices get so good that they match the feature set of smartphones and standalone VR systems and also become so small that they fit in a regular looking pair of sunglasses.

I'm not sure how long it will take, but it honestly seems inevitable.

Maybe it won't be glasses, but it will almost certainly be something we wear instead of a thing that we carry around forever.

[cft]

A smartphone with a connection to a monitor, keyboard and mouse could replace a desktop. If I were the CEO of MSFT, I'd put serious R&D funds into this.

[pazimzadeh]

Think about all of the things that you don't have to carry with you if your smartphone is good enough: camera, wallet, keys, pieces of paper (containing printed maps/directions, emails etc).

It's notable that a combination of Apple Watch + Airpods can fulfill most of these needs, with the exception of being a high quality camera and a few other things that require a larger screen. But that just shows you that if anyone is going to disrupt Apple, it's going to be Apple.

[icanhackit]

> How are you SURE that smartphones will still be a thing in 20 years?

I'm sure someone asked a similar question about personal computers in the early 80's. They didn't go away when smartphones became prevalent, they became computational work-horses and in the same way an AR system will never be able to pack the computing punch and battery life of a smartphone.

But similar to how a smart-phone complements a PC, AR tech will simplify how we interact with specific parts of the world around us like navigation, notifications, and merge with existing tech like wireless earphones with noise cancellation and conversation/audio-enhancement to provide minimum necessary utility.

More features will bleed down the chain from PC to phone to AR, but with size comes certain advantages and disadvantages, and a large object can always hold more juice and computational power.

I think the biggest disruption will come from global low latency wireless internet - suddenly computational power can be uncoupled from the device and AR would be able to offload the power-hungry CPU/GPU's and large batteries needed for fluid and powerful interaction. But I'm not sure Elon Musk's satellite internet project will be that disruptor - so it might be another long wait until that next big thing happens.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

It seems pretty obvious that personal computers (not workstations) are going the way of the typewriter right now. Most people just don't need a computer when they have a smartphone.

The PC can be dated back 1975. But even in 2000, only 51% of US households had a personal computer. Not even 20 years later, it sure looks like the PC is going the way of the calculator and typewriter.

The first modern smartphone can be dated back to 1996, but it wasn't until 2013 that 50% of US adults had one.

Two year later, in late 2015, mobile web traffic had already overtaken desktop.

By 2033, I would be surprised if we don't have something challenging the smartphone. And the technology is probably around already.

These technologies seem to have about a 40-50 year life cycle. The first half of the life-cycle is the stage it takes to get to 50% saturation. Then the next third of the stage they dominate. The final third of the stage, they phase out to a niche market.

Sure, the smartphone is the bees knees today. But, really, is it? You've got to carry it with you everywhere you go. What if you just had a contact you kept over your eye at all times? What if you just had something you kept tucked behind your ear at all times?

How often do you REALLY need that screen? Remember, when the iPhone came out -- most people were thinking -- who's going to buy a smartphone without a freaking keyboard? Within literally 2 years, Blackberry's stock had dropped like 70%. Within 5 years, it was on the brink of bankruptcy.

And before that, when the first Palm came out in 1996 -- how many people do you think REALLY envisioned the smartphones we have today dominating web traffic and starting to encroach on the work station?

[zjaffee]

Why should I believe that AR will even be it's own unique product platform rather than just a part of every single smartphone app. Smartphones were much easier for people to adapt too since virtually everyone had already carried around wallets and keys, and I'd be hard pressed to believe that wearing glasses will ever be something that the majority of people do voluntarily, in the same way smart watches never became completely ubiquitous, short of maybe within professions where you both need your hands to be free and where visual computing would be useful.

[threeseed]

Apple is only hip and premium because they make quality products.

And that comes down to the culture and mindset of the company. Which given that they have Apple University and have an executive team which very much encapsulates the “Apple Way” isn’t going to change.

Yes there are plenty of failed companies but very few aggressively defend their culture like Apple does. And culture rot for me is such a big part of failure.

[cft]

Because Moore's law has ended.