Comment by tommica

I don't think component prices will kill personal computing. Prices used to be far higher in the heyday of personal computing. Millions of people buy phones every two years that cost twice as much as a perfectly capable PC.

Personal computing in the sense of actually controlling our hardware and software will be killed (or rather degraded) by government regulation and platform oligopolies.

> It always felt as a staple, that I could always buy components, that someone would manufacturer them and I could cobble together a machine.

I feel the same. But at the same time the generalization of laptops (with custom motherboard, and soldered parts) and smartphones (custom SoC) means this is already a niche thing. Gamers were the last mass market for upgradeable modular deskops, but a sufficiently long hardware drought would most likely make game editors way more resource conscious, which may kill this niche entirely.

Personal computing is already dead. We use locked down mobile endpoints that run pre-approved thin client software connecting to giant mainframes over monopolized radio networks.