The personal computer is not dying. Yes, people aren't buying desktop and laptop computers as much, but there is a very simple explanation people often like to brush off to the side when making wild claims like this. The reason is computing power has reached a point where you don't need to upgrade your computer every year to run the latest games or suite of word processing software. My Core i5 PC which I was running for years before only recently upgrading is still going and can still run everything I throw at it. People just don't need to upgrade as often as they did during the nineties when computing power was increasing basically every year as was storage.
As a developer who can't do his day job without a PC, I couldn't picture using my phone or a tablet to code with or administer servers. Believe me, I've tried using my phone for many aspects of my job and besides being able to maybe restart a server, NOTHING beats a good old fashioned terminal and keyboard. The restrictive nature of applications available for devices like iPhones and iPad's also means there are certain things I cannot do (like transferring large database dumps that are tens of gigabytes to a remote server).
I work for a design-led agency and let me tell you something, you cannot design on a mobile phone or tablet (well tablet you sort of can, but the results aren't that pretty or easy to accomplish). I'm sure some will argue otherwise, but I challenge you to open up a 1gb PSD file on an iPad and see how well you can work with it (switching between layers/groups, text sizes, resizing things). Some devices aren't meant to do everything and people like Dustin have been generalising and proclaiming these new portable touch devices will replace everything, but the reality is they cannot replace everything.
People use different devices for different purposes. I've never seen anyone coding on a train using an iPad or their iPhone before. People seem to use their portable devices for email, gaming, phone calls and social media mostly. How often do you see someone on public transport on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? A hell of a lot more then you would using said devices for other purposes.
Then there is the issue of battery life. These new phones (especially phablet phones) are lucky to last a day on a full charge with the stock battery because of the constant drain of the screen, GPS and Wifi. You can't rely on a smartphone, not even in 2014 to be reliable. Battery life followed by form factor are the two biggest hurdles and the bigger you go, the less you can call the device a phone or tablet. I can get like 5 hours from my laptop, comparative use on my phone would maybe be half that...
As a developer who can't do his day job without a PC, I couldn't picture using my phone or a tablet to code with or administer servers. Believe me, I've tried using my phone for many aspects of my job and besides being able to maybe restart a server, NOTHING beats a good old fashioned terminal and keyboard. The restrictive nature of applications available for devices like iPhones and iPad's also means there are certain things I cannot do (like transferring large database dumps that are tens of gigabytes to a remote server).
I work for a design-led agency and let me tell you something, you cannot design on a mobile phone or tablet (well tablet you sort of can, but the results aren't that pretty or easy to accomplish). I'm sure some will argue otherwise, but I challenge you to open up a 1gb PSD file on an iPad and see how well you can work with it (switching between layers/groups, text sizes, resizing things). Some devices aren't meant to do everything and people like Dustin have been generalising and proclaiming these new portable touch devices will replace everything, but the reality is they cannot replace everything.
People use different devices for different purposes. I've never seen anyone coding on a train using an iPad or their iPhone before. People seem to use their portable devices for email, gaming, phone calls and social media mostly. How often do you see someone on public transport on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? A hell of a lot more then you would using said devices for other purposes.
Then there is the issue of battery life. These new phones (especially phablet phones) are lucky to last a day on a full charge with the stock battery because of the constant drain of the screen, GPS and Wifi. You can't rely on a smartphone, not even in 2014 to be reliable. Battery life followed by form factor are the two biggest hurdles and the bigger you go, the less you can call the device a phone or tablet. I can get like 5 hours from my laptop, comparative use on my phone would maybe be half that...