Did anyone else notice how many times Apple's new CEO referred to the "Post PC Era"? So the desktop is now dead? I think so, at least for the majority of home users.
For some, especially new home users maybe, but I can't see how the business sector moves to tablets or something alike. It's quite arrogant of that guy to speak of the "Post PC era" only if his company caters to that select crowd that does not need a PC or have multiple devices. While Apple is arrogant, MS is foolish to focus their Windows 8 UI on touch screens which >99% of the users don't have and don't need...
This "Post PC" is just more Hipster Apple marketing jibber jabber. Current forecast for worldwide PC sales is 192 million more units than Apple sold iOS devices last year, so it's far from a small market. 368 million PC's projected to be sold this year is a lot of sales, and any headline that claims PC sales are stalling or that PC sales are in decline are written by morons. Beyond that, I can easily see Apple push close to 200 million iOS in 2012 versus the 176 million they sold in 2011 since iOS devices make perfect adjuncts to their large, vastly more powerful PC brethren. I'll start believing the Post PC balooey when Apple makes an iPad that can chew on a 6.5 GB Adobe Photoshop project as quickly as my Intel box can.
When a "post PC" device can run this room, let me know. It's coming, not there yet though. Also, see iPad in the pic! Image Unavailable, Please Login
The post-pc era is coming, but not by replacing the PC with more capable and powerful tablets. Rather, the processing and storage will move to the cloud, and the handheld devices will merely act as access points. For a handheld, a gesture-based OS is a fairly nice solution. For a big screen, it's stupid. A lot more software needs to be developed and a really robust worldwide wireless network with much higher speeds than those available today is needed. Not sure if the network part will happen, but plenty of companies are trying. I really can't stand Apple hype. Amazing how many people fall for it.
I don't need a PC anymore, a laptop is better for me. Although I use to not think I would really care for one. I'm wondering if Apple's CEO was referring to actual desktops, or was he referring to Windows?
What will be coming in the future? Kinect from MS/ PS eye are part of the future. a radar based system, or a laser/ or IR grid will eliminate those silly gloves Tom Cruise used in Minority Report. Large projection based images in some sort of tiling will exist, and 3d will still be a gimmick for a while. These systems wont be used by the gen. public, but people using graphic intensive programs. Weather it is for organizing, or aranging... we still need our physical Peripheral interface. A keyboard simply cannot be replaced. Voice commands aren't useful in the house; and very few people will take up dictation to their computers for most uses. designers will still need their tablets, because there is no superior way to input pressure sensitivity than direct input. engineers will still need their spreadsheets, and data capture, and analysis... and you can extrapolate the rest. Just my $.02
With kids growing up text messaging, it isn't that big of a leap to an onscreen keyboard. Most home users, IMHO, only surf the web, do some photos, watch videos and type a few letters, all of which the iPad can do with some good apps and cloud storage. The idea of having every document, photo, video, & song sync across all IOS devices is pretty handy. For business use, my remote offices use tiny computers (like 4"x6"x1") to connect to our terminal servers to run business applications, which is much easier to administer than a bunch of PCs. With the exception of scientific, audio or graphical work (I'm sure there are more exceptions) few home or business users need the horsepower of a dedicated PC. So, while I really dislike the way he used "Post PC era", I think to a large degree he is correct - especially going forward.
There isn't going to be a "Post PC Era" until network latency from all points is in the 20ms range on top of 100 mbit or greater speeds on top of no transfer caps. Gimme all that, and then we can start talking about remote computing. Beyond that, we've got most of the parts needed to make it work. Tablets that can process what's being beamed to them in a timely fashion and stick it into our eyeballs? Check. Those tablets can also beam that output to a TV at 1080p? Check. A mobile OS that is simple to use which also offers a depth of offerings from education to entertainment to gaming...to anything really, in an easy to use package that offers a lot of everything to a lot of people? That's not Google with their fragmented store offerings. It sure as hell isn't Microsoft that don't know the difference between a mobile OS and a desktop one. MS's first ten years as a tablet OS maker tried to force down our mouths a desktop OS on a mobile device. Now that mobile devices are all the rage, they are trying to cram down our mouths a mobile UI, but made for desktop systems. Oui. WTF, really, MS? What Apple is doing with iOS certainly feels like the way forward. But we don't have the network to handle this disconnect between display device and the thing that computes. Really off the beaten path, but totally on subject, Wolfram Alpha for mobile is just spooky at how awesome it is. Want to get a peek at the future? You don't have to with WA's incredible mobile apps. Coupla bucks each for iOS, and Android. Mind bendingly awesome. Buy them, try them.
Ive been thinking about that. It seems like whats holding Apples 'post PC' world is 'other companies' technology. Do you think Apple may get into that business ?
Doesn't seem like it. Besides, they are plenty happy letting their customers suffer at the hands of Verizon and AT&T. Years ago, I thought Google would step in an tear it up with the networking giants, but that wasn't to be. Our telecom infrastructure is not much more than smoke blankets compared to lots of other countries.
What do you use it for? On the subject of the Post-PC era, we will still need to do the same things we do today with full-blown computers. For me, this means: - video and photo-editing (tablets/iPad does this reasonably well) - surfing the web (on tablets - check) - media consumption ie. movies, songs, etc. (on tablets - check) - rapid text and numeric input (with a bluetooth keyboard, I suppose it's possible) - some heavy duty apps (not on the tablet yet, but you could remote in to a desktop) - multi-tasking, with windows open side by side for reference (not on tablets, but you could remote in to a desktop, I suppose, dunno about cut and paste between the two environments). All in all, it's still for casual computing, not professional/expert level. Once it gets there, PC manufacturers will really have to cater to the new market with the new class of computing devices and peripherals/nodes for home and office servers and perhaps bringing the cloud closer to the user's end with caching technology. Not there yet, but we are moving inexorably towards it.
This is interesting because I was thinking about this earlier this week. One morning last week I was locked out of our office for about 90 minutes. I sat in my car, and using my iPad2 I was able to do everything I was planning to do at my PC in the locked office. Literally everything. From emails to looking a reports and editing spreadsheets (our files are "in the cloud"), to remotely logging into the POS systems at our stores and doing things with those.
