4 ms·

I think we need to realize that PCs (laptops or desktops) and mobile devices (tablets and mobile phones) are good at different things, and going forward will be

I think we need to realize that PCs (laptops or desktops) and mobile devices (tablets and mobile phones) are good at different things, and going forward will be used for different things. For example, I'm sure everyone (especially on this site) has noticed that software development is kind of a big thing. I don't see any indication that I'll be developing any software on a mobile device any time soon (especially not an iOS device, as far as I know running user-written code is still against the App Store TOS). As for the "three years" projection, I'm not sure what the article is saying. Our (mobile) data will be in the cloud within three years? Probably. That Apple will kill Microsoft in three years? Absolutely not. No way. Don't underestimate the power of inertia. Even if Apple manages to entirely kill Microsoft's consumer market share (unlikely) they can survive off enterprise customers just fine. I mean, what do you use on a Mac to compose documents? Word. Are there any others? (I don't have a Mac, so feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.) I don't think PCs are going anywhere. People will always need to get serious work done, and larger systems will always be better at that than smaller systems of the same era, if only for the sheer amount of numbers they can crunch. Mobiles are great products with a tremendous amount of utility, but they're complements, not substitutes.

TomOfTTB 15y ago
Cringely is in the business of trying to look prophetic so he makes wild predictions like this to get attention. I don't think anyone, Apple included, things the Personal Computer is going anywhere for the very reasons you laid out above. Even with a wireless keyboard and a Monitor hooked up the iPad isn't sufficient for any serious writing, coding, photo editing, etc... You still need a PC for that. I think Apple laid out its position very clearly yesterday. The PC isn't going away it's just being demoted. It isn't t he center of your digital universe anymore. But that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
- nostromo 15y ago
  You're exactly right -- Jobs said himself that PCs will be like trucks of the automobile universe and will always be around -- they just won't be used by as many people as often. Here's the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Dlq4B56CI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Dlq4B56CI
- MaysonL 15y ago
  Cringely is in the business of trying to look prophetic so he makes wild predictions like this to get attention. Yeah, but in the long run, he may be right. Has peak Windows occurred? It's not quite clear, but it may have, with the total PC business going at -1% yoy. And when Windows/Office sales start showing big year over year declines, Microsoft will be hurting very badly, if they haven't developed some other revenue source.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    Peak Windows? Huh? Noy even close. The sales rate has reduced due to many reasons unrelated to Apple, saturation is high, repalcement rate is low because they are fast enough for many years etc. etc. Measuring installed base makes more sense than pure sales. So the PC business going at -1% yoy is not really a good metric. MS is still making money hand over fist, look at their financials.
SoftwareMaven 15y ago
I mean, what do you use on a Mac to compose documents? Word. No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice. Given how seamless the iWork experience is becoming between iDevices (which will be including Macs), how much cheaper iWork is, and how much better the iWork user experience is (they don't have 20 years of feature-cruft littering the interface), there is absolutely no reason for a home Mac user to use Office and few reasons (usually an iron-fisted corporate IT group) for a corporate Mac user to use it.
- evilduck 15y ago
  Google Docs for me on OSX. The no-hassle availability anywhere without an install covers 95% of my document creation needs, the fact that everything's autosaved to the cloud and can be collaborated on, versioned, and exported keeps me coming back, and I don't have to worry about software version compatibility with anyone I share with which is a killer feature. Anything that requires style or aesthetics gets drafted in Google Docs and then imported into Pages or Keynote for finishing touches, both of which are lightyears ahead of Word or Powerpoint in that regard (at least for 2007/Win 2008/OSX MS Office releases).
  - Total_Meltdown 15y ago
    Google Docs is Office's closest competitor, but not outside individuals and small organizations, simply BECAUSE it's all stored on "the cloud". BitBucket and GitHub have the same problem. It's not that they're not good products, it's that there are many, many, many very large companies that want to keep their data to themselves. And by the way, being "encrypted" on the cloud doesn't usually mean what most people seem to think it means. Example: http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/security/229500683 http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/security/2295006...
- eropple 15y ago
  No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice. And if you need to do something remotely complex, neither works. Pages is decent for the very baseline word processing; OpenOffice is good for very little of anything. The overwhelming majority of people use Office because what you call "cruft" is what other people call "important".
JonnieCache 15y ago
I think we can all envisage a future where we are exclusively using web-based office suites on post-PC devices. A lot of people are already doing this. What I can't imagine is a world where we are developing those web-based office suites on the same post-PC devices that they are deployed to. Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it? Or autocad, or solidworks or arcGIS, or any number of other industrial applications. For the PC to disappear, somebody is going to need to define a whole new category of much more powerful post-PC devices. I can envisage a superpowered tablet with a bluetooth keyboard that wirelessly links to any nearby display, but that doesn't sound very post-PC to me. And it doesn't answer the question of how to develop UIs for tasks of irreducible complexity without violating iOS's mandatory UX simplicity.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it? No one needs to supplant the workstation form-factor. What we're in the process of is realizing that there are tons of other opportunities in mobile form factors. Try to think of all the workplace activities that involve taking down data on pieces of paper and taking them over to a computer where they get entered. Try to think of all the times when people read off information from a specialized instrument and enter it into a computer. All of these are opportunities for mobile computing.
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    Totally agreed, one of the biggest industrial users of tablets is in hospitals, which is exactly what you're talking about. Lots of people do seem to think that workstations will be supplanted though. So much hype about the "death of the PC," the "post-PC era," although I accept that "post" doesnt necessarily imply a world where that thing is totally gone.
rimantas 15y ago
> I don't see any indication that I'll be developing any > software on a mobile device any time soon There is more to development than coding. See e.g. http://www.appcooker.com/ http://www.appcooker.com/
tintin 15y ago
Very true! I like to have my documents on my own computer creating backups by myself. There might be people who like to have there documents in the clouds but others don't. I'm an Ubuntu user and never used Ubuntu One.

TomOfTTB 15y ago

Cringely is in the business of trying to look prophetic so he makes wild predictions like this to get attention. I don't think anyone, Apple included, things the Personal Computer is going anywhere for the very reasons you laid out above. Even with a wireless keyboard and a Monitor hooked up the iPad isn't sufficient for any serious writing, coding, photo editing, etc... You still need a PC for that. I think Apple laid out its position very clearly yesterday. The PC isn't going away it's just being demoted. It isn't t he center of your digital universe anymore. But that doesn't mean it isn't useful.

nostromo 15y ago
You're exactly right -- Jobs said himself that PCs will be like trucks of the automobile universe and will always be around -- they just won't be used by as many people as often. Here's the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Dlq4B56CI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Dlq4B56CI
MaysonL 15y ago
Cringely is in the business of trying to look prophetic so he makes wild predictions like this to get attention. Yeah, but in the long run, he may be right. Has peak Windows occurred? It's not quite clear, but it may have, with the total PC business going at -1% yoy. And when Windows/Office sales start showing big year over year declines, Microsoft will be hurting very badly, if they haven't developed some other revenue source.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  Peak Windows? Huh? Noy even close. The sales rate has reduced due to many reasons unrelated to Apple, saturation is high, repalcement rate is low because they are fast enough for many years etc. etc. Measuring installed base makes more sense than pure sales. So the PC business going at -1% yoy is not really a good metric. MS is still making money hand over fist, look at their financials.

SoftwareMaven 15y ago

I mean, what do you use on a Mac to compose documents? Word. No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice. Given how seamless the iWork experience is becoming between iDevices (which will be including Macs), how much cheaper iWork is, and how much better the iWork user experience is (they don't have 20 years of feature-cruft littering the interface), there is absolutely no reason for a home Mac user to use Office and few reasons (usually an iron-fisted corporate IT group) for a corporate Mac user to use it.

evilduck 15y ago
Google Docs for me on OSX. The no-hassle availability anywhere without an install covers 95% of my document creation needs, the fact that everything's autosaved to the cloud and can be collaborated on, versioned, and exported keeps me coming back, and I don't have to worry about software version compatibility with anyone I share with which is a killer feature. Anything that requires style or aesthetics gets drafted in Google Docs and then imported into Pages or Keynote for finishing touches, both of which are lightyears ahead of Word or Powerpoint in that regard (at least for 2007/Win 2008/OSX MS Office releases).
- Total_Meltdown 15y ago
  Google Docs is Office's closest competitor, but not outside individuals and small organizations, simply BECAUSE it's all stored on "the cloud". BitBucket and GitHub have the same problem. It's not that they're not good products, it's that there are many, many, many very large companies that want to keep their data to themselves. And by the way, being "encrypted" on the cloud doesn't usually mean what most people seem to think it means. Example: http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/security/229500683 http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/security/2295006...
eropple 15y ago
No. I use Pages (part of Apple's iWork) for almost everything. If I need Word comparability, I open LibreOffice. And if you need to do something remotely complex, neither works. Pages is decent for the very baseline word processing; OpenOffice is good for very little of anything. The overwhelming majority of people use Office because what you call "cruft" is what other people call "important".

JonnieCache 15y ago

I think we can all envisage a future where we are exclusively using web-based office suites on post-PC devices. A lot of people are already doing this. What I can't imagine is a world where we are developing those web-based office suites on the same post-PC devices that they are deployed to. Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it? Or autocad, or solidworks or arcGIS, or any number of other industrial applications. For the PC to disappear, somebody is going to need to define a whole new category of much more powerful post-PC devices. I can envisage a superpowered tablet with a bluetooth keyboard that wirelessly links to any nearby display, but that doesn't sound very post-PC to me. And it doesn't answer the question of how to develop UIs for tasks of irreducible complexity without violating iOS's mandatory UX simplicity.

stcredzero 15y ago
Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it? No one needs to supplant the workstation form-factor. What we're in the process of is realizing that there are tons of other opportunities in mobile form factors. Try to think of all the workplace activities that involve taking down data on pieces of paper and taking them over to a computer where they get entered. Try to think of all the times when people read off information from a specialized instrument and enter it into a computer. All of these are opportunities for mobile computing.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  Totally agreed, one of the biggest industrial users of tablets is in hospitals, which is exactly what you're talking about. Lots of people do seem to think that workstations will be supplanted though. So much hype about the "death of the PC," the "post-PC era," although I accept that "post" doesnt necessarily imply a world where that thing is totally gone.

rimantas 15y ago

> I don't see any indication that I'll be developing any > software on a mobile device any time soon There is more to development than coding. See e.g. http://www.appcooker.com/ http://www.appcooker.com/

tintin 15y ago

Very true! I like to have my documents on my own computer creating backups by myself. There might be people who like to have there documents in the clouds but others don't. I'm an Ubuntu user and never used Ubuntu One.