I mean, different use cases yeah? There’s certainly a big market for people that just do the basics on their devices, ie email, web browsing, documents/spreadsheets etc that don’t need a full blown powerhouse computer, nevermind that they have no clue what an operating system even is nor do they care, as long as they get their memes and cat videos in between work tasks.
I’ll bet there will always be an x86 segment of the market for gamers, power users, tinkerers, and the like. Though, that market may unfortunately shrink in the coming years that could lead to vendors abandoning the space, which could lead to fewer choices and higher component prices. On top of which, major venders might see it as an opportunity for lock-in and advertising, so yeah it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
The sliver of hope here is that the hacking community has always found ways around proprietary bullshit, and we can only hope and support that those efforts continue, lest we further our race in to a stupid corporate dystopia.
I think that there’s a legitimate place for all-in-one “smartphone” SoC PCs. You can make them cheaper, smaller, and use less power.
It’s just not really what I want for myself in a PC. I want the modularity and third-parties competing to provide components.
But I am pretty sure that there are plenty of people who don’t care about that.
There has to be enough scale to support products like that, though. SoC systems might cannibalize enough to make scale hard.
sigh
Well, we’ll see where things go.
I mean, different use cases yeah? There’s certainly a big market for people that just do the basics on their devices, ie email, web browsing, documents/spreadsheets etc that don’t need a full blown powerhouse computer, nevermind that they have no clue what an operating system even is nor do they care, as long as they get their memes and cat videos in between work tasks.
I’ll bet there will always be an x86 segment of the market for gamers, power users, tinkerers, and the like. Though, that market may unfortunately shrink in the coming years that could lead to vendors abandoning the space, which could lead to fewer choices and higher component prices. On top of which, major venders might see it as an opportunity for lock-in and advertising, so yeah it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
The sliver of hope here is that the hacking community has always found ways around proprietary bullshit, and we can only hope and support that those efforts continue, lest we further our race in to a stupid corporate dystopia.