No, I won't fix your cell phone...

Maybe it's just me, but after reading Coding Horror's latest blog post The PC is Over, it made me realize another trend I've been noticing. Typically, a few times a week I get the question "Hey, you're a computer guy right? My computer is ..." and then they outline the issue. I tend to reply that fixing computers isn't really what I do. I manage to fix my own, but it's not something I'm good at. And lately, it's getting more true, I actually have an existing PC "pausing" issue that I can't seem to fix (it randomly freezes up for a few seconds/minutes then works fine again). Anyhow, back to the point. I've been noticing that people aren't asking me about their computers as often. I still get asked about the same frequency, but now the questions are about their smart phone.

I also started pondering a conundrum we could be in if more people use their phones than their computers. If enough people stop buying computers as frequently as they do, the cost of computers will start to increase. I hope I'm wrong, because to create the software running on the smart phones, we currently need computers. And it will be cost prohibitve to spend the money we need to develop the programs, given most people don't buy apps for their phones like they will for their computer. Unless we get lucky, and the phones literally become replacements for computers, that I can plug in a screen, keyboard and mouse into (or wireless, whatever) and I can run servers, and development environments upon. That would be interesting...

Written on October 2, 2012