- Most users, regardless of whether they purport to care about their privacy or security, don't even fundamentally understand either concept thoroughly enough to even appreciate that they're missing.
- Users are lazy (prefer web app over installation process, or even just taking the time to download a compiled portable binary). Devs are lazy ("why make 3 or 4 clients when we can make 1?"), on the basis that humanity is lazy. A desire to preserve energy and "take the easy way" is hard-coded into our DNA. It's ostensibly a good thing in most circumstances, just not this one.
- Younger people (a considerable chunk of my own generation included) are increasingly not functionally computer literate[1]. While virtually everyone is smartphone literate these days, I believe the days are numbered in which the laptop and desktop computer are used by anyone other than students, technology professionals, hobbyists, and serious PC gamers.
I understand that these hypotheses taken together are a pretty bleak outlook for the form factor of the personal computer that many of us deeply cherish and couldn't imagine life without, but we are the exception in broader society at this point, not the norm[2].
- Most users, regardless of whether they purport to care about their privacy or security, don't even fundamentally understand either concept thoroughly enough to even appreciate that they're missing.
- Users are lazy (prefer web app over installation process, or even just taking the time to download a compiled portable binary). Devs are lazy ("why make 3 or 4 clients when we can make 1?"), on the basis that humanity is lazy. A desire to preserve energy and "take the easy way" is hard-coded into our DNA. It's ostensibly a good thing in most circumstances, just not this one.
- Younger people (a considerable chunk of my own generation included) are increasingly not functionally computer literate[1]. While virtually everyone is smartphone literate these days, I believe the days are numbered in which the laptop and desktop computer are used by anyone other than students, technology professionals, hobbyists, and serious PC gamers.
I understand that these hypotheses taken together are a pretty bleak outlook for the form factor of the personal computer that many of us deeply cherish and couldn't imagine life without, but we are the exception in broader society at this point, not the norm[2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526 [2] https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet...