Rhodri Marsden: Is the humble PC on the way out?

The IBM 5150, the company's original PC from 1981. Photo / Supplied

Rhodri Marsden wonders if the humble PC is on the way out.

Back in the late 1950s, the then head of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, was rumoured to have predicted a potential world market for "maybe five computers", an estimate that illustrates how radically the role of the computer has changed.

Now, on the 30th anniversary of the first IBM PC, one of its 12 designers has taken to the internet to herald the PC's imminent passing.

"They're going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs," wrote Dr Mark Dean, admitting that back on August 12, 1981, when his IBM 5150 was unveiled at the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom in New York, he didn't think he'd live long enough to witness its decline.

PC, of course, stands for personal computer - and there is no let-up in our fascination with them, in all their increasingly diverse forms: smartphones, tablets, televisions and games consoles, often controlled by the swipe of a finger on a screen, even a gesture in the air.

The gadget to which Dr Dean is waving an emotional but nevertheless enthusiastic goodbye is the kind of machine he had a hand in designing, the one operated by a clunking keyboard and errant mouse.

The IBM 5150, with its 16k of ram (barely enough for one Word document), no hard disk and a price tag then of just over US$1500, was one of the first indications of a worldwide computing revolution, along with the Commodore PET, Apple II and Atari 800. But Dean believes that its direct descendants are now outmoded.

"I, personally, have moved beyond the PC," he wrote. "My primary computer now is a tablet."

Sales of tablets and smartphones have grown rapidly in the past year, as has an increasing dependence on "the cloud", with our information stored on the internet rather than on a weighty box sitting on a desk.

For the majority of people using new online services to consume entertainment and interact via the web, tablets and smartphones are all they need. They may have migrated from a PC, but it is possible they were reluctant PC-users in any case.

But while Dean notes that most current innovation is happening in "social spaces ... where people and ideas meet and interact", a wealth of creativity still happens using the standard PC unit and those creators have taken to the internet to argue vehemently against his assertion.

Making music, video and games is still tricky via small, touch-screen interfaces and, for all their strong links to the past, the traditional keyboard and mouse still have a role to play. Also distancing itself from Dean's statement is Microsoft, a company still heavily invested in the PC market and which prefers to call the new era "PC-plus". IBM, perhaps tellingly, sold its PC division to Lenovo in 2005.

The debate essentially surrounds form and function. Dean may well be right, but your beloved PC won't disappear without something just as flexible and powerful taking its place. The PC was always just a stepping stone to smaller and better things. Even if it is going to bite the dust, there's no more need to mourn its passing than to mourn the passing of the typewriter.

- The Independent