Mobile is the new PC and AArch64 is the new x64

[Joakim]

On Monday, 17 September 2018 at 22:27:41 UTC, Neia Neutuladh 
wrote:
> On Monday, 17 September 2018 at 15:47:14 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Not sure why that matters if you agree with Kay that HTML is 
>> an abortion? :) I actually think it's great that mobile is 
>> killing off the web, as the Comscore usage stats I linked 
>> earlier show.
>
> HTML is a somewhat open standard. I'm more happy with HTML and 
> Javascript, as ugly as they are and as dominated by Google and 
> Microsoft as they are, than having to target private companies' 
> frameworks.

So you'd rather target an incredibly badly designed open standard 
than a mostly open source "private company's" framework that's 
certainly not great, but much better? It's no contest for me, 
give me the latter any day. And then of course, there's always 
cross-platform OSS toolkits like Flutter or DlangUI.

On Monday, 17 September 2018 at 23:42:03 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Monday, 17 September 2018 at 15:47:14 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 15:41:41 UTC, tide wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 16 September 2018 at 15:11:42 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>>>>> I say that almost 30% drop in PC sales over the last 7
>>>
>>> Might be, but so is trying to convince everyone your 
>>> predictions are correct so they will focus their work on the 
>>> issues important to you.
>>
>> Not at all, because if my predictions are correct, this 
>> language will disappear along with the PC platform it's built 
>> on. And I've never suggested anybody work on anything 
>> "important to [me]," my original post even stated that D may 
>> never do well on mobile.
>
> You are making your arguments to fit your desires.

I can't make head nor tails of this claim, you have a talent for 
vague non sequiturs. My arguments are based on data, the 
overwhelming sales numbers I linked. I have no idea what desires 
you think are involved, I suspect you don't either. :)

>>>> Plateaus almost never happen, it's not the natural order of 
>>>> things.
>>>
>>> OK the market stabilises.
>>
>> I don't see how you changing the word you used changes 
>> anything about the underlying phenomenon: that doesn't happen.
>
> You're seriously suggesting that markets never stabilise, say 
> oil prices stay steady for a few years or some such?

Prices flit all over the place, that's not what we're talking 
about. Oil _production_ has been remarkably consistent and 
growing for many, many decades:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crude_NGPL_IEAtotal_1960-2008.svg

The only hiccup was in the early '80s because of extraordinary 
measures taken by governments, like price controls and cartel 
orders, which was still only a 15% drop.

If oil production ever drops 30% because some workable substitute 
comes along, as has happened to PCs now, yes, there is no chance 
of stabilization. It will be a steady decline from there, as 
these trends have a kind of momentum.

>>> Most households have more devices than ever before, and 
>>> hardware is only getting cheaper. The idea that people will 
>>> have to choose just one device is plainly wrong.
>>
>> You need to get out in the world a bit more. The majority of 
>> smartphones these days are bought in emerging markets where 
>> _nobody in their home has ever owned a PC or used the 
>> internet_. I've talked to these working stiffs in developing 
>> markets, you clearly haven't.
>
> And what happens when the emerging markets mature? Do they 
> still just cling on to one smart phone in the house? Or are 
> they yearning for more technology?

They buy more mobile devices, the PC will be long since dead and 
gone.

>>>> I find it strange that you think the PC won't also be rolled 
>>>> up by mobile like this.
>>>
>>> Can you put a 3GB hard drive in your phone?
>>
>> Why would I ever want to do this when I noted my phone has 128 
>> GBs of space? ;) If you mean 3 _TB_, yes, I simply attach my 
>> slim 1 TB external drive and back up whatever I want over USB 
>> 3.0.
>
> So you're not averse to having some external hardware sat on 
> your desk. Hmmm.

My original post links to examples of using your smartphone 
connected to a keyboard and monitor or a laptop shell, so I'm not 
sure where you ever got the idea I was against "external 
hardware."

>>> Or a high end graphics card?
>>
>> Smartphones come with very powerful graphics cards these days, 
>> plenty powerful enough to drive lots of graphic loads.
>
> Not if you're into high end gaming.

The vast majority of PCs don't have cards capable of that either. 
For the few who want it, there will be specialized solutions, 
whether consoles or whatever.

>>>Or a soundcard with balanced outputs?
>>
>> Some phones come with high-end DACs and the like, or you could 
>> always attach something externally if you really needed to.
>
> There's no such thing as professional audio breakout box for 
> android AFAIK. Up until a few years ago the problem was Android 
> couldn't do low latency audio, I'm not sure if the situation 
> has changed.

If and when that becomes a market that actually matters, somebody 
will cater to it, just as google optimized the Android video 
stack for VR a couple years ago:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/android-7-0-nougat-review-do-more-on-your-gigantic-smartphone/11/#h2

>>> http://authorearnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slide29.jpg
>>
>> And how does that contradict anything I said?
>
> It contradicts your statement...
>
> "print is pretty much dead"
>
> If you can make the argument that print is dead and ebooks 
> booming when print still outsells ebooks in unit sales 2 to 1, 
> and even more than that if you look at revenue then you need to 
> see a shrink. :)

Or I actually understand market dynamics, :) which it's now 
become clear that you don't. This print decline is never going to 
stop.

>> ebooks have peaked while print keeps growing, whereas the 
>> article I linked and this guy's data show ebooks growing and 
>> print continuing to decline.
>
> You didnt read the article carefully enough. The growth is in 
> "adult fiction", the market as a whole has fallen.

It's funny how you keep making mistakes and then act as though I 
made them. The article notes that the indie ebook market has 
likely "taken off," more than making up for the slight drop in 
ebook sales from publishers.

Adult fiction is examined because it's a particularly relevant 
market. Since you like that Author Earnings site so much and link 
to more graphs from his report, you should've taken a moment to 
read what he actually writes. He notes in his latest report:

"a huge chunk of those print dollars are actually going to 
textbooks and other academic/professional print titles 
(strangely, the DSM-5 Psychiatric Manual of Mental Disorders was 
a particularly high 2017 seller). Textbooks, which are generally 
priced in the $60-$200 range, skew the dollar total significantly 
toward print. As do children’s books (including Board Books), 
another huge category of book sales where almost all purchases 
are in print.

When we leave out textbooks and children’s titles, and look only 
at adult fiction & trade nonfiction, the picture changes 
somewhat..."
http://authorearnings.com/report/january-2018-report-us-online-book-sales-q2-q4-2017/

So the reason to look at the 4 to 1 ratio of ebook sales to print 
of adult fiction online is because it's a bellwether, as one of 
the largest market segments that's actually driven by consumers. 
Textbooks and giant medical manuals are the last to switch to any 
new tech, as they're selected or purchased by large, hidebound 
institutions that always adopt new tech last or are more about 
signaling, ie students and doctors showing off that "I be 
learning" or "I can look up stuff" with those fat print books 
that they almost never crack open. Children's print books sell 
because many parents are wary of exposing their kids to too much 
screen time.

But since adult readers are showing so overwhelmingly that they 
don't care for print, even those last educational/medical 
holdouts will soon switch en masse and the print collapse begins.

>> I never said ebook sales had passed print yet, only linked to 
>> that article saying that it's hard to measure now but it's 
>> likely print is still declining, and that print is effectively 
>> dead, as it's only going to keep declining into irrelevance.
>
> So it's hard to measure but it's definitely going to die. LOL.

I don't know what you find contradictory about that. A dying 
market doesn't want to signal that it's going away: that's why 
the newspaper ad revenue chart I linked before ends in 2014. 
Their newspaper trade group stopped publishing the data then, 
clearly because the ongoing collapse only made them look more and 
more irrelevant.

Similarly, we're not getting all the data now because it doesn't 
suit Amazon's or indie authors' interests to tip their hands. 
When they've finally killed off print, they'll start trumpeting 
their numbers and how they did it.

>>> and yes that's with indie published books included.
>>>
>>> Another interesting thing from that report was the average 
>>> price of indie ebooks was $2.95
>>>
>>> http://authorearnings.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Slide26.jpg
>>>
>>> So even selling ebooks for peanuts cant catch them up.
>>
>> They aren't selling them for "peanuts," they've simply 
>> stripped out a bunch of legacy costs like paper, editors, 
>> publishers, and the like. The reason authors still prefer 
>> indie ebooks is they get more money per book even at that 
>> lower price, as the rest of the supply chain and distribution 
>> had squeezed them down to only 5-15% of the much higher print 
>> price.
>
> How much profit the author makes is irrelevant. The point is 
> you can buy an ebook for an average of $2.95 or a print book 
> for (uninformed guess) $8. And yet more people still choose the 
> print book.

Ah, now we get to the crux of the matter: you don't know much 
economics. The fact that the indie ebook author makes a lot more 
profit is one of the most important factors in this market, and 
is one of the main reasons why the indie ebook market is 
currently booming.

As for prices bearing on buyers, you should actually _look_ at 
your data linked above. It notes that prices of indie and Amazon 
print books are 2-3X those of ebooks, which is why the ebooks 
sell 10-60X as many units!

You try to extrapolate that same price ratio to publishers' 
ebooks, but the article I linked explicitly noted that publishers 
will often stupidly charge more for their ebooks than the print 
version, and your whole argument was invalidated by the note 
above about textbook/manual prices skewing print prices upwards.

> And this is what even now you dont understand. People like real 
> books, they like the feel of it the immediacy, the intimacy. 
> They like their kindles too.

Heh, the go-to last-resort argument of fans of a dying tech: 
people just love "the look" of VHS more!

> It's not one or the other. I cant believe you dont understand 
> that.

Yes, yes, we all know how many people are still rocking VHS 
tapes, iPods, point-and-shoot cameras, etc., all the tech I've 
pointed out has basically died off.

Print is as dead as VHS, not in sales yet, but in terms of having 
a future. Everybody knows this, even you.

Anyway, I'll stop lecturing you on basic economics and business, 
and bow out from responding to these often silly arguments from 
you from here on.