A Death in the Family

The tide may be going out on the Desktop Computer, folks. They are bringing back the old Commodore 64. When people start longing for the nostalgia of a bygone era with slow computers, bad graphics and lousy sound, you have to make a pretty compelling case to get people to turn loose of $1500 or so for a new state-of-the-art appliance that is becoming less and less a part of everyone's life. And nobody, not even Apple, seems to be able to do that, now.

I blame the cell phone industry. Whoever it was that first included a little calculator in their cell phone sent us down this path and today we are awash in mobile alternatives to the big, clunky, desktop computer. If a cell phone can do more than just connect you to the pizza delivery guy, if you can do math on it, then why hand over a bag of cash for a desktop computer to do those things? So the value of a desktop computer is decremented by whatever value you assign to the little calculator app. Add in calendaring, Web browsing and Angry Birds, and why would anyone want a desktop computer? Why, indeed.

Flash ahead a few years and desktop computers haven't changed, much. Oh, they're faster. They're always faster. And they have a little more memory than the last one you bought, sure. But when you're at your word processor, trying to decide whether to use "Start" or "Initiate" you aren't taxing your processor. You could make that decision comfortably with an old '286 or a MacPlus. Screens are nicer, bigger and with richer colors, but the screen on my six year old iMac is big, with nice color, too. And it still boots up, every day.

I can browse the Web (to some extent), on my iPhone. I can browse the Web on my iPad, too. I can get my e-mail on either machine. I can do my banking with either one, too. In fact, as far as day-to-day activity goes, I can do everything I would ever want, except take a day off, with my mobile devices (The software vendor behind the accounting for vacation and sick leave here does not work with the best standards-compliant software.).

Today's Apple iPhone, iPad and their contemporaries from other manufacturers can be loaded up with a month's worth of music, video, books, magazines, movies, television programming and podcasts. You can get the weather, including radar imaging for your location, which of course the hardware already knows about, probably. Press a button and find the nearest shoe store, or coffee house. Check in with friends on Facebook. With content management systems like Drupal, you can even work on Web pages with severely clever features, using only a Web browser.

The value proposition is weakening on the desktop. I'll need one to run my income taxes, next year. It is nice to see photographs in big, wide-screen detail and I do enjoy an hour or two of Civilization now and again. But I could see the "Home computer" becoming little more than a wireless router in many homes, practically unseen. A Mac Mini, up in some closet, somewhere, constantly monitoring the temperature, turning off unused household lights, keeping track of how old the milk is in the fridge, and watching out for and snagging old episodes of TV shows to record for later viewing.

The guy that built that first wheel really started something. We can't get enough Wheels. The guy that built the first telegraph started something, too, but now even Western Union is just a money-transfer store. Fewer and fewer homes have land-line telephones these days—there's a machine that came and went in about a century and a half. Could it be that the desktop PCs time was only half a century or so?

We'll see.