[marshray]

How many people do you know who have an iPad but not a PC (or a Mac)?

My sample is completely non-scientific, but I can't think of anyone I know like that. My impression is iOS and Android are taking eyeball-time and consumer purchasing money away from PCs, but I just don't see them replacing PCs any more than iPhones or Playstations did. Yet.

What am I missing?

[MrFoof]

>How many people do you know who have an iPad but not a PC (or a Mac)?

Here's an edge case -- my parents' apartment community. This is a 2-building apartment complex (with about a dozen condo units in the front) with about 500ish total residents. When my folks sold their home a few years ago and moved in, no one else on their floor (two buildings, three floors each) owned a computer, and many never had owned one in the past. My parents today are still on the younger side of the spectrum (57 and 63), so we're talking about a population whose kids went off to college or moved out in 1992 or earlier.

However, there was a desire amongst people they met to own one as they were aware of what could be done, they just didn't want to deal with the hassle. My mother (a textbook technophobe) showed folks her Kindle, and people in the community felt that was easy enough to deal with (especially when getting to a library in the sticks can be a hassle). As a result, my parents helped get folks set up with 3G Kindles. My parents bought themselves iPad 2s about 18 months ago. My father, unlike my mother, was comfortable around computers, but his computer/iPad usage shifted to 10/90% after about 3 months. My mother was initially more 70/30, but is now more along the lines of 20/80. As of right now, they have no intention of replacing their computer with another one. Moreover, my mother who was always paranoid of someone "messing up" the family computer 15-20 years ago is eminently comfortable with her iPad. An even weirder outcome is she apparently follows Apple product news a bit, as do one or two of her aged 55-65 friends.

The new thing? The septuagenarians and octogenarians are now getting iPads. They're buying an Airport Express, calling Comcast to get internet access, and the iPad is the first computer they've ever owned. And they're pretty chuffed about it. And using them. Significantly. Do you have any idea how fantastic the idea of HD FaceTime is to grandparents who almost never get to see their grandkids (and that they'll use it every chance they get)? When I mentioned LetterPress to my mom, the next time I talked to her she mentioned how big a hit it was at her community.

I think to date my parents have set up a dozen other residents with Kindles and about another dozen so far with iPads + internet access. This number will continue to grow.

[klibertp]

That's kind of old news. On the other end of a spectrum I know quite a few people who are my age (nearing 30 (already?! eh...)) and who never had a PC or had one for some time and then didn't replace it when it broke. They were using, however, game consoles and then early smartphones and then tablets. They wouldn't use Kindle, though...

It's just that not everyone needs the full power and flexibility of a PC. I think in reality just a tiny fraction of users needs one, and as a number of users grows that percentage only lowers. The truth is that a PC always was and always will be much too hard for average user to operate (by design!) while not offering anything meaningful for said average user.

I suspect that tablets and other narrowly focused devices will only gain popularity with time, replacing PCs for most day to day tasks for most users. They are easy to use and they give people something of value without too much hassle. I welcome this trend with joy: it means less calls from family to help them set up/configure/uninstall/clean up things.

There is one thing, however, that I'd like to see included in this future of tablets and similar devices. It would be a tiny, protected with PIN, but mandatory on every single device icon which, when clicked/taped, would invoke a BASIC interpreter (or Lua, or anything similar). I'm worried that while it's getting easier for average user to use these devices, it's also getting harder and harder to hack them. And when there won't be a PC in a household anymore, how children are supposed to learn to love computing? Instead of just using devices...

[snuze]

I've experienced something similar. My grandma recently got into computers because of being able to stream her favorite shows on demand. She now also has an iPad where she can watch her shows and play casual games (solitaire/bejeweled/etc). This is a person who has never really used computers before. My mom is another case. Never used computers seriously other than a rare web lookup, until I got her an iPad. She too now does casual gaming and streams shows.

[brigade]

I know a number of old people that never learned how to use or were never confident in using a desktop OS that now only use tablets. My father as well, but for other reasons.

Also think of how long the shift from desktops to laptops took; for a decade they were just secondary machines and everyone who had a laptop also had a desktop. Now... the only person I know to even own a desktop built it himself 6 years ago and stopped upgrading it altogether a few years ago in favor of laptops.

A similar shift to tablets isn't as inevitable as the shift to laptops was (in hindsight), but if it's happening it's proceeding in much the same way, only faster.

[marshray]

I think as long as people have asses we will have chairs, and as long as there are chairs there will be desks and we will want to use our hands at them.

So I don't think the physical keyboard is going away, it will still be the most efficient way to bang out a school paper, computer code, or a thoughtful business email.

The screen we prefer to look at while sitting down will probably always be larger than the one we prefer to carry around.

[njharman]

> it will still be the most efficient way to bang out a school paper, computer code, or a thoughtful business email

Those are niches. Most computer use is and will be going fwd, consumption. Majority of creation will be photos/videos/minor typing (txting, tweets, short emails)/other forms that don't require keyboard.

[bathat]

It's been a while since I was in high school, but aren't students still required to write long-form reports? I recall writing book reports and essays about historical events. In college I distinctly remember having to write a least one multi-page document for most courses (and for virtually all courses outside the hard sciences). Most people stop there, but those continuing on to grad school (even in the hard sciences) will need to write many 5- to 15-page documents, as well as a 50- to 100-page thesis.

I don't doubt that most people will not need a keyboard most of the time, but not needing a keyboard in the house seems more likely to be the niche. The niche will be 23 to 30 year-olds who have finished school but don't yet have kids in school, and the 55's, and up, whose kids have finished secondary school. Perhaps the computer will again be relegated to the spare bedroom / home office, but I can't imagine a scenario for the majority of middle-class households that doesn't have some sort of physical keyboard.

[jseliger]

>It's been a while since I was in high school, but aren't students still required to write long-form reports?

This is a tangent, but I'm a grad student in English lit at the University of Arizona, and, based on what I've seen, the answer is often "no;" a lot of students say they've never had to write anything longer than two or three pages before taking Intro to Comp.

Some, to be sure, have done substantive writing, but that appears to be the norm.

A lot of 18-year-old freshmen also appear to be MUCH more proficient at typing on phones and tablets than I am, which definitely gives me a bit of culture shock, and reminds me of the typing proficiency I have that many of my own professors appear not to.

[marshray]

So I agree, PCs aren't really the greatest platform for content consumption (except perhaps for very involved 3D games). But how much has this been a driver of PC sales historically?

The PC was doing just fine before websurfing came along and even before DVD playback.

[dingfeng_quek]

1. It's possible to connect a keyboard to an iPad/Android tablet. (and larger screens as well) 2. You imply that only a minority of people would be doing "heavy" production work on a computer. The trends seem to be the opposite of that, at least in modern cities (I doubt office workers can avoid keyboards and decent-sized-screens.)

[klibertp]

Also, isn't a "thoughtful business email" a bit of contradiction? ;)

[klibertp]

Hey, I was joking! I even indicated this with an emoticon! Why the downvote?

[plinkplonk]

One liners including 'jokes' aren't really appreciated on HN. HN is not reddit, and has a different ethos. Some people do manage this occasionally, but in general if you make smart aleck one liner comments, usually you'll be downvoted into oblivion.

And yes, don't complain about being downvoted. From the HN guidelines, http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "

[gnaffle]

I think it's important to separate two things. One is the tablet trend, but along with that you have an OS platform play.

I think it's completely plausible that in the next couple of years Apple and Google will launch add-ons to your average tablet that gives you a big, high-res screen to do work on along with a tablet.

Or maybe apps will be able to show content on other tablets (like AirPlay does to a TV today) so that you will have more space available for the apps you use.

I think there will be an opportunity for iOS and Android to innovate in this space, in a far more profound way than the "no compromise" dual-UI that is the current Windows 8.

[milep]

You can have a docking station with a keyboard and larger screen.

[gamble]

An awful lot of people have new iPads and ancient computers they don't need to replace because the iPad does 95% of what they need day-to-day.

[dhimes]

Upvoted because I get your point, but it depends how you measure "95%." I've not met anybody who enjoys typing on them. Perhaps for the few who will also add a bluetooth keyboard it will replace, but I think those are fairly tech-savvy (where do you save your docs? etc.).

It may be coming...But they've got to get a lot better first.

[wtvanhest]

I think the 95% could have been better phrased as "a lot of people", but the OP's point holds for me personally. I'm currently typing this on my 3 year old VAIO I paid $600 for. I just bought a Kindle Fire HD 8.9 for $370ish, and don't intend to buy another computer for 2 or 3 years.

If it wasn't for the tablet, I'd probably be buying a new computer in the next 12 months. Effectively windows just lost a license sale to the Kindle.

Now, where things get interesting is when it stabilizes. What happens in 24 months when everyone has a tablet and a PC/Mac? Which do people replace, and what does that do to tablet sales vs laptop sales? I have no idea, and I'm sure it depends on new technology, but the future is not as clear to me as many writers assume.

[foxylad]

My wife has used a Galaxy Tab exclusively for the last year, despite her laptop being an arm's length away the whole time. Tablets cater for her browsing and light email use with no problem at all, and that laptop will never get replaced.

[dhimes]

But is that 95%? I mean, my wife likes the tablet too, but she's not using it to put her powerpoint slides together (which she is doing as we speak).

[jshen]

I find it odd that you demand evidence for his number, yet provide none about your claim that people will have a PC cause they hate typing on a tablet.

I don't have any hard numbers either, but people that can't touch type can often type faster using a tab with swiftkey than on a keyboard.

[dhimes]

I didn't mean to ignore your point- a good one, by the way- I've been out of the country and without wifi computer. I could have answered you on my iPhone, but....

To my defense, I wasn't citing numbers. The 95% thing sounds like a made-up number.

To your point: I don't know exactly what swiftkey is- but it's an interesting idea that these new devices may allow a touch-typing replacement to gain traction. That could be a game-changer, I agree.

[InclinedPlane]

That's actually not a relevant metric. What matters for MS is when someone buys an ipad instead of buying a new pc. That can mean not having a pc but it can also mean forgoing updating an older pc. That phenomenon seems to be occuring and it very much is affecting pc sales to the tune of billions of dollars per year.

[pmelendez]

I don't think that comparison is valid. It's like saying that MS would be worry 12 years ago because people was buying blackberry devices and wouldn't upgrade old PCs because they had a new way to send and receive emails.

Granted, you can do a lot more with an Ipad than with the 1st generation of blackberry devices but being an owner of an iPad I can't think in somebody that would prefer to write an email or a blog entry in an iPad rather than in a computer.

[InclinedPlane]

That's an interesting theory. But the fact is that the data doesn't lie. People have bought iPads and other tablets in huge numbers and their purchasing of PCs has slacked off by an enormous amount. The timing and severeness of the change is too much to be accounted for reasonably by any other phenomenon.

The conclusion is clear: people are forgoing purchases of PCs because they are buying tablets.

You may think it's ridiculous, but the market is speaking loudly with the voice of billions of dollars, and any company which ignores that is doomed.

As I pointed out, this may not be because people are not using PCs, it just means that they aren't buying new PCs. Perhaps they find that an old, clunky computer is just fine for writing emails and so-forth and their tablets and smartphones are preferable for doing everything else. Or maybe they aren't satisfied with their technology choices at all but because they spent so much money on a tablet they have to delay any updates to their laptop/desktop machine for financial reasons.

[pmelendez]

> But the fact is that the data doesn't lie

Well correlation doesn't imply causation. (http://xkcd.com/552/) Sorry I couldn't help it :P

The thing I don't think your conclusion is necessarily true. I can understand that people just don't need to upgrade their PCs as often of they used to (I noticed that on my self too). In my case, I just don't need to upgrade and since Win 8 is running faster in the same old hardware I don't see that happening anytime soon.

But the true is that people is just wasting their money in something else. I wonder if that grow in the tablet market will decline now that new game consoles cycle is coming up.

[kalid]

Imagine you're a user whose "blog" is facebook, and primarily sends texts, tweets, and 2-line status updates / comments. Email is like paper mail, used as an archive for official documents / notices, or used on the work computer for work things, and rarely replied to ("Why did you email me? Just text me or facebook me." aka "Why did you send me a real letter?").

This sounds like a hypothetical, right? My brother's laptop broke for a year, and he was fine on his phone until it was recently replaced.

[taylodl]

Did that this year. Bought an iPad instead of a new PC. I might not even do that again - thinking of buying a device like the Nexus 10 next.

I have a family with lots of eyeballs. Yes, there is still work requiring a PC and so every family should have one. But not every person in the family needs one.

[kalid]

> What am I missing?

How many people do you know under 10? That's the generation MSFT needs to worry about.

Anecdotally, the kids I've seen get tablets/phones/ipod touches and blast away on them. They'd vastly prefer a tablet to a laptop. Arguments like "You can do real work on a PC!" are not going to sway them. If anything, it reinforces "regular computers = drudgery, to be minimized as much as possible".

[marshray]

I have kids bracketing that age range. They all enjoy the family tablets.

However, as soon as they need to complete a school assignment, they have always used a desktop with a keyboard (we don't have floater laptops). This despite never having had any instruction on how to type. I have never heard them once consider using a tablet for this.

[kalid]

Ah, now we're getting away from PC (as defined by an OS) to PC as a synonym for having a keyboard :).

If your kids had a tablet with an excellent keyboard touch cover, would that be enough to never use a traditional PC? They aren't in a position to buy it themselves, of course, but if you had them side-by-side I wonder what they'd prefer.

[suresk]

If we're talking about differentiating features (at least at a hardware level), I think it would be:

- Larger display - Keyboard - Mouse - Power

It depends on what your usage requirements are, of course, but once you start carrying around one or more peripherals to make your tablet work for your situation, you have to start asking "Is this really better than a laptop?"

[ErikHuisman]

You forgot one: Better cut and paste..

[marshray]

We have a keyboard dock for our Galaxy Tab 10.1, but haven't used it much. When I've tried to use it, I've found that apps developed for the tablet tend to be clunky when used from the keyboard.

I have a Surface RT with touch cover, but haven't let the kids loose with it much. :-) It's not replacing any of my real PC gear, but mainly because it doesn't run any of my existing apps. However, the Surface Pro is going to be a very interesting mix of capabilities.

[WayneDB]

Once you add a keyboard to a tablet, it's just a laptop with a touch screen, but whatever you call it, I just hope the keyboard has tactile feedback, the screen is big enough to see what I want, I can add a mouse and most importantly: I can run a general-purpose operating system on it.

(My paranoid side is convinced that our NWO techno-slave-masters are simply using these new form-factors as an excuse to kill freedom.)

[rgbrenner]

Wait... 10 year old kids would prefer to play on a tablet rather than do WORK(!!) on a PC?! AND they are unswayed that they can do work on a PC?!

What is the world coming to? Next you'll be telling me kids no longer find their chores fun.

[kalid]

I'm confused by the sarcasm, since we seem to be in agreement on this "obvious" trend. Yes, tablets/phones are absorbing the "fun" computer scenarios and PCs are left with the "work" scenarios.

Over time, will people veer towards doing "more work" on a tablet or trying to have "more fun" on their PC? I know which side I'd bet on.

[rgbrenner]

>I'm confused by the sarcasm

10 year old kids might not be the best indicator of future trends. After all, we aren't doing our work on the Wii, building our homes using Legos, or any of the other things children spend their time on.

[kalid]

I think the change isn't in the exact use of the item, but expectations. Did the 80's Nintendo generation (me) expect more or less video games in their adult lives, compared to other types of recreation?

Kids won't do work on the wii... but will they expect (or demand) that devices be motion-aware by default? Screens be touchable by default? Have 10-hour battery life by default? Be comfortably handheld by default?

Think about how downtime has evolved. This century we went from "I'm bored, let me grab a newspaper" to "I'm bored, what's on the radio?" to "I'm bored, what's on TV?" to "I'm bored, what's on the desktop computer?" to "I'm bored, what's on my phone/tablet?"

The earlier industries are dead or stagnant (newspaper/radio), regular TV (at a specific time, interrupted by commercials) is on its way out, the growth is in the new form factor/experience Microsoft is barely relevant in. That's the nightmare.

[WayneDB]

If people start veering towards more work on a tablet, then the tablet is going to have to take on more characteristics of the PC like a keyboard and some of the features of a more flexible/general purpose OS.

So, what do we have then? Do we still have just a tablet? Maybe, but the definition will have changed.

[marshray]

A Microsoft Surface?

Disclosure: I recently accpeted a position at MSFT (not related to Surface) and am drinking the koolaid.

[pmelendez]

Congrats! I want to drink that koolaid too where I should send my resume? :P

[danso]

Isn't the problem that many of those iPad users eventually go from PC to a Mac? I've been in the Apple system enough to actually be ok with using different OSes. I recently got an Android phone and more than one person asked me if it was difficult to use Android while having an OS X laptop.

[barrynolan]

I hear what you're saying but in my family (Irish so sample size is huge) Dad, my father in-law, my kids (<5), two teenage nieces (admittedly the have access to a Mac, but its probably a 20% use case) are iPad only.

[leak]

Both my parents only use an iPad and never ever used anything else.

[wiredfool]

My inlaws got an iPad last christmas. They've always had windows machines of one form or another, and hated them.

They liked the iPad experience so much that three of their friends have bought iPads. There's a big market there, and it's hardly been touched.

There are a couple places where they need a bit more than an iPad. The big one is photo management, with a library that's bigger than can fit on the ipad. iCloud isn't there yet. They want to be able to print, write cds/dvds, email them and show them off. There's an opportunity there somewhere.

[leak]

My parents had the same exact issue. I use dropbox for that. I just change the size of all the images to 1024x768 and share a folder with them with all the pictures. It works marvelously!

[wiredfool]

Dropbox is an interesting idea with that. Given their API, it's entirely possible to build a bunch of services on top of it, such as archival DVDs, or uploads to printing companies. When I was on vacation, I wound up sending my photos I wanted to print to snapfish via Flickr. (after running them through iPhoto for editing)

There are a couple of sticking points:

* There's still going to be space management issues. 2gb on Dropbox doesn't go far when you've got a 4gb cf in the camera, and the next step up is 100gb@$100/yr.

* the other half of space management is clearing it off of the iPad. It's difficult to manage storage of imported photos, it turns out that if you don't delete them after import to iPhoto on your desktop, you either have to delete them individually or use image capture on the Mac to do it. I'd love to see the high res ones synced off to the cloud, leaving smaller jpegs around, but with the promise that the high res ones were securely stored. What I wound up doing for that was using a USB stick and my work netbook as the real storage for all the holiday images, rather than being able to do it on the iPad.

Finally, and this isn't a problem for the inlaws, but for me as a photographer, I shot raw+jpeg. iphoto imported raw+jpeg, and then didn't use any of the raw data, just the small(well, 8mp) jpegs. I tore through them, using iPhoto as a passible Lightroom substitute. And now, the adjustments are orphaned if I want to apply any of them to the raw files. That's annoying. Not critical, but annoying. And it's not as if there isn't a raw converter in the core of OSX that couldn't be used here.

[marshray]

This is a common theme and seems to support the idea that tablets are growing new markets moreso than displacing old ones.

[jarcoal]

I know a handful of people that have completely left the PC market for the tablet market (read: iPad), but you know what they say about anecdotal evidence.

Sidenote: they are thrilled with the transition.

[marshray]

What types of things do they do on their tablets? Anything professional (i.e., more than just content consumption)?

[jarcoal]

No, not by our definition. But for many people email, web browsing, and writing the occasional text document is their professional life. The iPad is well equipped to do those things (most of those handful bought a keyboard as well).

[baddox]

I know several people who have bought at least one tablet in the last 5 years, but not a PC or Mac.

[suresk]

This may partially be due to the maturity of the two: desktops and laptops are, of course, continuing to improve, but at a much slower rate, and you probably won't get a huge benefit out of an upgrade unless you are doing high-end stuff. Tablets are improving dramatically with every release.

I used to upgrade my main computer yearly, but now doing so every 3 years or so feels more than enough. Most people I know keep theirs for even longer.

On the other hand, my iPad 1 - less than 2 years older than the iPad 3 I now own - feels downright sluggish and old. Many apps don't work on it, and I get tons of crashes on it due to memory issues. I think that trend will probably continue for a few more years (I think phones are in a similar position).

[rsheridan6]

I don't know anyone who has an iPad but not a PC, but I know several people who have smartphones but no PCs. They're good enough for people who aren't heavy internet users and don't want to spend money on a PC or a separate internet connection.