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no but that would be a sweet homework assignment.
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What will desktop macs look like in 10 years?
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no but that would be a sweet homework assignment.
Surface is going to be a bigger and bigger part of home/desktop computing. MS has gotten it wrong with the super expensive surface coffee tables that are also displays.
Eventually we will have surface technology that is cheap enough and ubiquitous enough that it will be involved in every aspect of computing. RFID fits in here also.
For example;
Why do you need a keyboard? What if the entire surface of your desk was a surface aware device that could recognize not only keyboard typing but also gesture manipulation both against the surface as well as in the 3D space that is within proximity of the surface.
Throw down your bank card on your desk and immediately the account information displays on your screen. Put a mobile device (iphone, itablet, etc) on the surface and it begins to wirelessly charge as well as sync not only "static" data but also meta data such as where you have traveled recently, etc.
Voice recognition will have its big breakthrough sometime before 10 years are up. VR can already do a great job in recognizing 99% of spoken language from very good English speakers. Future advancements and cloud based processing support will allow for even the mumblers and southern drawlers to be understood by voice recognition. This unfortunately has the downside of the quality of the spoken word continuing to degrade.
Personal assistants will be embedded in ALL of our personal computing devices (including our vehicles, even our bicycles!) in a cloud structure and they will all communicate about what we are doing all of the time. Imagine something like Mobile Me that;
1. Didn't suck.
2. Could understand regular spoken english.
3. Could access as much information as you would like.
As to the direct question of what will desktop computers look like in 10 years.
I think it's likely that the average home will have one very powerful central server that will manage everything about the wired home. It will be a central repository for media, will run all of the homes automated systems, will download their entertainment (video and games) and will provide auxiliary processing power for all of the sprinkling of 100GB wireless enabled systems that are spread throughout the home (smart displays, phones, tablets, netbooks, readers, etc).
Instead of $2000 iMacs you would likely have a very large touchscreen display that ran a powerful embedded OS that could interact with a variety of other devices such as touch surfaces, portable computers and the homes central server.
The reality is that the desktop computer will soon be dead, to be replaced by architectures as described above. Powerful central computers located probably in the home media center will do most of the work and will augment the capabilities of small, cheap, lightweight devices that have enough power to get normal tasks done quite easily.
As time goes on (20+ years), we will become increasingly dependant on technology and high speed network connections being ALWAYS on and available wherever we are. Access to unlimited data will be as convenient as flipping a light switch is today. Being in a "dead spot" will feel like you are stuck in the desert with no water.
This will lead to two large scale movements who will war over the future of humanity in 30-45 years;
1. The singularists who want humans to further merge with machines and eventually have human consciousness deposited into machines.
2. The phobes who will feel that we are losing our base humanity, that we are affronting God, etc. They will become violently anti technological.
Eventually we will have surface technology that is cheap enough and ubiquitous enough that it will be involved in every aspect of computing. RFID fits in here also.
For example;
Why do you need a keyboard? What if the entire surface of your desk was a surface aware device that could recognize not only keyboard typing but also gesture manipulation both against the surface as well as in the 3D space that is within proximity of the surface.
Throw down your bank card on your desk and immediately the account information displays on your screen. Put a mobile device (iphone, itablet, etc) on the surface and it begins to wirelessly charge as well as sync not only "static" data but also meta data such as where you have traveled recently, etc.
Voice recognition will have its big breakthrough sometime before 10 years are up. VR can already do a great job in recognizing 99% of spoken language from very good English speakers. Future advancements and cloud based processing support will allow for even the mumblers and southern drawlers to be understood by voice recognition. This unfortunately has the downside of the quality of the spoken word continuing to degrade.
Personal assistants will be embedded in ALL of our personal computing devices (including our vehicles, even our bicycles!) in a cloud structure and they will all communicate about what we are doing all of the time. Imagine something like Mobile Me that;
1. Didn't suck.
2. Could understand regular spoken english.
3. Could access as much information as you would like.
As to the direct question of what will desktop computers look like in 10 years.
I think it's likely that the average home will have one very powerful central server that will manage everything about the wired home. It will be a central repository for media, will run all of the homes automated systems, will download their entertainment (video and games) and will provide auxiliary processing power for all of the sprinkling of 100GB wireless enabled systems that are spread throughout the home (smart displays, phones, tablets, netbooks, readers, etc).
Instead of $2000 iMacs you would likely have a very large touchscreen display that ran a powerful embedded OS that could interact with a variety of other devices such as touch surfaces, portable computers and the homes central server.
The reality is that the desktop computer will soon be dead, to be replaced by architectures as described above. Powerful central computers located probably in the home media center will do most of the work and will augment the capabilities of small, cheap, lightweight devices that have enough power to get normal tasks done quite easily.
As time goes on (20+ years), we will become increasingly dependant on technology and high speed network connections being ALWAYS on and available wherever we are. Access to unlimited data will be as convenient as flipping a light switch is today. Being in a "dead spot" will feel like you are stuck in the desert with no water.
This will lead to two large scale movements who will war over the future of humanity in 30-45 years;
1. The singularists who want humans to further merge with machines and eventually have human consciousness deposited into machines.
2. The phobes who will feel that we are losing our base humanity, that we are affronting God, etc. They will become violently anti technological.
i have a feeling that in ten years there will be computers very similar to today for the tasks we do now, but there will also be some really cool new technology that will spark new computing interfaces. for example a pair of glasses could display information that you could control through eye movement that a small camera detects. also its not inconceivable that a small sensor in those glasses could detect certain brain waves and interpret them, then convert them into things like text. Think of an iPhone that is completely integrated into someones glasses, or better yet, contacts.....
EDIT: Just saw this over at engadget... we are closer than i thought....
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/07/lockheed-martin-and-microvision-developing-wearable-displays-for/
EDIT: Just saw this over at engadget... we are closer than i thought....
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/07/lockheed-martin-and-microvision-developing-wearable-displays-for/
I agree with you in that Surface is the way of the future, mostly. However, as many people have said, a physical keyboard is going to be DAMN hard to replace. Lack of haptic feedback from a touch surface, as well as the ergonomic concerns of banging your fingers against a flat surface all day, will be the two major concerns that will, IMO, keep physical keyboards around in a a pretty big way for decades to come...
Again, voice is over-hyped. I don't care how well it is done, it is a kind of embarrassing way to interact with a computer when others are around, and is hard to do period in a crowded area with lots of background noise. I really don't see this one ever coming to pass, or at least not in such a way as to completely supplant physical keyboards...
There will have to be a huge leep forward in server usability for this to happen. This is certainly something that Apple just might be able to pull off (fingers crossed, I think). I agree that the concept is super cool, but the system will have to be the epitome of wireless "plug-and-play" if it is to get any sort of following beyond the technophile culture.
LOL, this reads like something out of a science-fiction thriller movie
Sadly, I don't think you are too far off. The way tech is headed right now, it is definitely setting itself up to become ubiquitous. As wicked awesome as a lot of that might be, I really shudder to think of the complete and utter death of privacy, the constant bombardment of advertisements, and the state of a humanity that really will be somewhat helpless without the internet... Call me one of your "phobes", but this is not a direction I would like to see humanity head in. Without some element of consumer control to the technology they use / do not use, totalitarianism is nie inevitable. I refer here to this: in that future you refer to (20+ years out), I see the "cloud" becoming far more evil than good. As the cloud becomes controlled by only a few corporations, content will be able to be filtered easier than one might think, and without much choices outside the cloud, consumers will have to either go with it in order to keep the innumerable conveniences of a connected life, or deny it, and be one of those "in the desert with no water".
Anyway, the thread is asking about 10 years, and I fear we have both drifted a bit off course.
Ultimately, I'd say in 10 years' time, desktops computers will be a dying breed, as notebooks will ultimately have the power to do 99% of tasks that need doing. I see advances in interface technology making all local network and peripheral communication near instantaneous. With USB 3.0 (4.0 by then?), FW 3200/6400, SATA 6 Gb/s, and hopefully some affordable form of universal memory, loading bars and waiting for files to copy will become a thing of the past. The only bottleneck I see by 2019 will be the network infrastructure, with wideband networks becoming the norm, but still struggling to keep up with the latest and gratest media streaming wants and needs (4320p anyone?
)Virtualization virtualization virtualization. Everyone will carry their OS install with them on a flash drive type deal, and use whatever computers they like to boot off of them. Mac vs. PC becomes OS X vs. Windows, running on anything.
Apple will fight it.
Apple will fight it.
Interesting concept. With USB 3.0, that could actually be very, very doable. Apple will for sure fight it. They make most of their money off hardware, after all...
You wouldn't need to "boot" anything. You would have a large table of preferences in any kind of portable device such as a phone, PMP, tablet, etc.
This device would simply load your thousands (millions) of preferences over high speed encrypted connection to the target terminal and in a matter of a couple of seconds you would be working with the interface methodology of your choice.
With SSD drive technology that is available today you can boot an entire OS from scratch in a matter of seconds. This is only going to get faster.
Additionally chances are you won't have to "boot" anything at all. A terminal will simply sit there with a pre-configured framework which your settings will be dumped into at extremely high speeds resulting in a user environment that is ready to go as fast as the user is.
I don't think that the keyboard will be "dead", per se, but it's likely that the keyboard will simply be 50% of the equation. Reserved for those tasks that you can't manage via surface/gesture technology or dictation.
Actually I respectfully disagree. If anything, we are getting more isolated and cut off from each other. Even if voice command is used sparingly when "in public" I see it as being the primary way in which interactions are handled in more private settings.
For example, sound modulation can already do a good job of killing offending surround noises. Imagine an office cubicle in which there is a "cone of silence (queue Get Smart jokes)" that renders the worker inaudible to his peers. Pair this with sub-vocal miniature microphones and you have a pretty effective way for the user to vocally interact in a semi-public setting.
Remember. The typical office worker can only type around 45 wpm (I type 90 wpm myself but I'm in the minority).
If someone needs to open 10 documents and edit one page on each of them, it might take them 2-3 hours to do this with a keyboard and mouse.
Or, they could just do this;
"Computer, open document A".
"Highlight 2nd paragraph".
"replace text follows".
"blah blah blah".
One document done in 30 seconds.
Actually I think it's pretty certain that this will happen. Look at the differences in CPU technology over the past 10 years. Intel is already working with organic computers and photonic switching. The CPU of 2019 will in all likelihood make the current fastest Quad Core CPU chips of today look like pocket calculators, and will probably be mass produced at a cost of $50.
The powerful home media server is almost certainly going to become a reality, at least for the upper middle income home.
I'm bookmarking this thread. It's too late and I'm too tired to type up my theory tonight, but I'll do it tomorrow.
Preview: "Desktop computer" will have a completely different definition 10 years from now than it does today. They won't look at all the same.
Oh, by the way; thanks for broaching this topic. I've never collected my thoughts on this in one place before, so it'll be nice to do so.
Tomorrow was five days ago. We're still waiting for you to 'enlighten' us.
My predictions:
Desktop computers will still be around. But they will be much, much cheaper. A $2000 iMac today will be sold for $500.
I doubt the iMac desktop line will utilize a touch interface. Maybe there will be "gesture support" built into the mouse or keyboard somehow.
I don't think there will be major revolutions in terms of desktop computers...it will be more of an evolution.
Therefore, I expect "standard" computers to come with >5 TB of hard drive space, 16 GB ram, etc.
To summarize, I expect major price decreases and fast, fast computers! Can't wait.
Desktop computers will still be around. But they will be much, much cheaper. A $2000 iMac today will be sold for $500.
I doubt the iMac desktop line will utilize a touch interface. Maybe there will be "gesture support" built into the mouse or keyboard somehow.
I don't think there will be major revolutions in terms of desktop computers...it will be more of an evolution.
Therefore, I expect "standard" computers to come with >5 TB of hard drive space, 16 GB ram, etc.
To summarize, I expect major price decreases and fast, fast computers! Can't wait.
Let's take a walk through Apple AIO computer history, shall we?
First up, the Mac SE:
Next, the iMac G3:
The Intel iMac:
The alu iMac:
Yeah, I know I left many holes in there, I'm just making a quick point.
So, what progresses with these Apple All-In-Ones?
1) They get thinner
2) The screens get bigger
3) They get arguably less ugly
4) The screens get glossier
5) Generally more innovation.
So, by my calculations, something like this:
First up, the Mac SE:
Next, the iMac G3:
The Intel iMac:
The alu iMac:
Yeah, I know I left many holes in there, I'm just making a quick point.
So, what progresses with these Apple All-In-Ones?
1) They get thinner
2) The screens get bigger
3) They get arguably less ugly
4) The screens get glossier
5) Generally more innovation.
So, by my calculations, something like this:
Attachments
![imac[s].jpg](/data/attachments/154/154615-1311606cba020e9327f4c3c0620dd38c.jpg)
You forgot the iMac G4 (which many want to return in terms of form factor).
Anyway, the Mac Pro is not going anywhere in ten years. Just based on the expansion of greater than HD resolutions, high end processors are going to be needed to edit these videos that are in 2k and 4k (and greater) resolution. An iPhone size device, or even a laptop, will not have that kind of power.
As for the iMac, that likely will be around as well. The market share may drop, but people do use and need desktop computers. Not everyone want to connect they laptop to an external display.
Anyway, the Mac Pro is not going anywhere in ten years. Just based on the expansion of greater than HD resolutions, high end processors are going to be needed to edit these videos that are in 2k and 4k (and greater) resolution. An iPhone size device, or even a laptop, will not have that kind of power.
As for the iMac, that likely will be around as well. The market share may drop, but people do use and need desktop computers. Not everyone want to connect they laptop to an external display.
In 10 years in Soviet Russia, Mac computes you!
Seriously though, I think in 10 years our computers will be partly integrated into our lives (although it will take many more for complete integration), for example when we come to a shop our computer will be making us suggestions based on our previous preferences. A really interesting video is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html
This gives us a look into our future, and looking at the aforementioned video and the progress MIT have already made in that department the future looks good!
Seriously though, I think in 10 years our computers will be partly integrated into our lives (although it will take many more for complete integration), for example when we come to a shop our computer will be making us suggestions based on our previous preferences. A really interesting video is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html
This gives us a look into our future, and looking at the aforementioned video and the progress MIT have already made in that department the future looks good!
The latest issue of Popular Science has a cool thing. It is a keyboard with the internals of an Asus Eee. It also adds a touch screen thing to the right and runs XP. For a monitor, it beams stuff wirelessly to your TV. Maybe this is the future of Macs or computers in general.
Not "whoa"; this happens NOW:
http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/0...der-sends-1080p-hd-video-up-to-100-feet-away/
I tried to find the article online, but to no avail.
I can't wait until those get cheap. They'll replace cables as our primary means of getting a picture on our TVs, though videophiles and audiophiles will insist on using a cable.