[AlexMuir]

PCs are now fucked in the moneyed mass market. The 'PC' brand is sunk - PC is to computer what Blackberry is to phone - you'll get one from your company, but you covet an iPhone/Macbook. This is thanks to:

a) The sub-par cheap plastic laptops/netbooks that have been thrown out for the last three years at $300. They were barely usable at first, and now the keys have fallen off the keyboard and the speakers don't work. And that advert to renew some antivirus keeps popping up. And the computer whizzkid who used to fix it says he doesn't know much about PCs now - he's moved to an Apple Mac.

b) Windows and IE. People are noticing that Facebook runs like crap in IE. And that their harddrive still needs formatting every year or the computer runs like a bag of shit. What's that Microsoft? Windows 8 has all this fixed. It doesn't matter - there are still millions of computers out there running Vista and Win 7, taking 60 seconds to boot up (standby mode never works - fuck knows why). Everytime I sit in front of one and right click-Exit all that shit down at the bottom right I curse you.

c) The death of desktop software.

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This is one of the two reasons I'm bullish on Apple (the other is that I want to see them move into the living room.)

Now PCs and Linux - that's more like it but there's no profit in it.

[feralmoan]

I think on the Windows side of things there's been a huge drop in the quality of PC games which is often overlooked, contributing to an overall degradation of the market. I used to only build rigs and run windows for games and dual boot into real work mode (ubuntu), but with such low quality content on PC nowdays its hard to even justify installing windows let alone building a PC. *disclaimer: I'm neither old or jaded, its a trend I've noticed amongst my peers also.

[ladzoppelin]

"low quality content on PC" is completely wrong. Some of the best programs around are desktop software. Samplitude, Sublime 2, Studio One 2 are a brief few. What happens in your circle of friends does not represent anything and is one of the reasons why I think Facebook is so unhealthy for the younger generation. BTW if you do real pro audio/video work you are not going to be using Linux simply because most "Pro" audio/video does not come in a Linux version.

[TalkSic]

Nuke, Smoke, Houdini, Maya, rv.

Wrong on second point regarding video.