What computers look like for the past ten years
Answers
In 10 years? It will probably look like a smart phone.
Or that will be the core of the computer's processing and storage. I mean, look at the specs of a high end modern smartphone like a Galaxy S7.
-4 GB of RAM
- 64 GB of storage, up to a few hundred with a microSD card.
Those were specs for an average person's laptop computer not so long ago. 8 years ago, a high-end smartphone was perhaps 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB storage. So around a 4 fold change. Supposing an exponential trend, conservatively, a good smartphone 10 years from now might be 16 GB of RAM with 256 GB of internal storage. That's a solid computer today.
While Microsoft is not doing very well in the mobile sphere right now, I do think long term, they have the right idea with Windows 10 and Continuum - the idea that you have one OS and one device, but that the interface adapts to the context in which it is being used.
So, in 10 years I think it's kind of a no-brainer for something like this to become the reality. A smartphone becomes a general purpose computer that you interface with in different ways based on use case.
Walking around, you use it as a smartphone.
You arrive at your desk, you plug it in and it connects to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
In the living room it can connect to your TV and talk to a controller to become a game system.
In your car it connects into the car's navigation and entertainment system and you interface through that.
There will doubtless still be special purpose desktop workstations and gaming consoles so as to be able to affordably take advantage of the leading edge of technology, but something general purpose and adaptive that can fit in your pocket will likely be good enough for a lot of what we need computers for.
The phone becomes a general purpose CPU/GPU, storage, and networking device that you can interact with differently based on the needs of the moment.