The end of an era

So its 2010, and based on my computer buying trends, I'm due to buy a computer this year (or maybe next year at the latest). However, a lot has changed since 2007, which was when I bought my last computer, a 15 inch macbook pro. The current state of that macbook pro is actually respectable, especially for a laptop. The biggest problem with the laptop is that the battery is kaput, even though it has been replaced once during warranty. I thought Apple would produce better batteries than the PC makers, but I guess that was unrealistic. However, the rest of the laptop is holding up fine. The hard drive has plenty of space (I use a network drive to store most files), the ram seems adequate, and the computer is fast enough for most tasks.

However, despite the MacBook pro faring well against obsolescence relative to newer computers, it has been the least used computer I have ever bought. You see, when I got the iPhone 3G in the middle of 2008, the laptop became obsolete. The iPhone basically allowed me to do all my key computer tasks, such as email, web browsing, news reading, social networking. In fact, my iPhone allowed me to do those tasks with a higher level of performance, because the time to walk to my desk and sit down was cut out for all those operations. Not only that, the smaller screen forced most app developers to do only a few tasks and do them well, which has led to superior performance on the iPhone even when excluding the time to walk to my desk. For example, using facebook on an iPhone is a lot easier than on the web. Checking the weather with "The Weather Channel" app is easier as well, since the iPhone preserves the current location with GPS. Google maps is a helluva lot easier on the iPhone than the web, again mainly due to the iPhone being location aware due to the GPS chip. In fact, the only activities that are better on a computer vs the iPhone are work related activities, such as software development, running VMs, photo editing, and writing. My wife handles the photo editing, and I try to do all my software development and VM management at work, so that leaves me with little use for a home computer.

So, I'm not sure I need a new computer this year or maybe ever. The newer computers dont really seem to offer much of performance gain to my nearly 3 year old MacBook pro, and my iPhone seems to pretty much outdo any personal computer for about 90% of the "computing and internet related" tasks. All in all, I have to say the personal computer is just about obsolete, and that the PC era is pretty much over.