Microsoft exec says PC 'not even middle-aged,' rejects post-PC label - Page 4

You give some good examples. I don't think people realise how much the workplace has had to adjust to the PC. When people say "can you imagine people being hunched over an iPad in the office?" I think they must be very naive because that was the reality for centuries before the PC. People had pads of paper, they had clipboards, they had files. Often they still use all those things because in many cases the PC can't integrate into their workflow well. Instead the PC is dragged out at the end of the day to input everything into a database. The "digital office" never came to pass because the PC is a fairly clunky device. There's actually an extensive literature of workplace studies about how difficult it is to fit personal computers into the workflows of most professional settings.

The problem, the bias, is that many commentators are developers and IT people whose only experience is of workflows that were built around the PC. If your daily routine is using a particular piece of software on a desktop PC with a mouse and keyboard it's surely difficult to imagine doing things any other way. For doctors and lawyers and engineers and other professionals whose professions vastly predate the PC, the PC has never been a great fit for what they do. The iPad is a much more natural device. You hold it like a pad of paper, you interact directly, it's light and mobile. It is already finding a place in the workflow of thousands of professionals and will continue to do so.

*stage smoke*
*pause*
Apple has also given it a name...
*stage smoke*
*queue "The Final Countdown"*
a name they can build around...
*stage smoke*
a name, post-pc, they see as the future...
*wait for the climax of "The Final Countdown" intro*
a future they plan to define!!
*pyrotechnics!!*

So, in other words, you've got nothing.

Yes, the term PC is just "so PC!"

Hey, I am late to this thread, so I am starting from the end and reading/posting backwards...

I should come across as really smart

Like the guy who walks up and pops in the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle... (after withdrawing it from his pocket).

You know, comments like this were basically unfounded a year ago, but they're totally ridiculous now. I'd love to know specifically what kind of "real work" these power user types like to pretend they're doing with their mice and keyboards and "multiple-window user interfaces."

Maybe I'm just a naive young upstart who doesn't know what real work is -- well, no, actually I'm a 59-year-old novelist who built my own first computer in 1979, but let's not dwell on that -- yet I like to flatter myself that my work is "real" despite the fact that I've been doing it mainly with an iPad for more than a year now.

Au contraire I have the perfect screenplay for your next dinner party entrance.

I love when reality steps in.

@melgross posted the following to another thread:


Follow the link and read the short article.

I found the following paragraph particularly interesting:




...Times they are a-changing'

Thank you for your consideration... I'm always happy to entertain.

I think you give a reasonable timeline... twenty years sounds about right.

... but I do see mobile devices outnumbering traditional pc's in about 7 years (or less) and I see traditional desktop pc's being replaced more and more by laptops and dumb terminals.

The traditional desktop pc is not in middle age... that's just plain stupid. It's in its death throes. We'll be down to 3 manufacturers within 7 years. Margins will still be the same... or worse. Necessity will make companies innovate... not competition... although, in a way, they go hand in hand.

By the time we get to that 20 year timeline I can almost guarantee that we can't even envision at this time what computing will be. I can also almost guarantee that if MS keeps up with this type of shit they will not be here in twenty years.

Emphasis mine, above.





Martin Scorsese Attends Free iMovie Demonstration At Apple Store


And, BTW, iMove runs on the iPad (and the iPhone). In addition, there are apps for storyboarding, set design, scripts...

Whats so ironic is, isnt Apple's Mac OSX and its entire computer line up a "personal" computer ? Aka a "PC" too?

We don't hook up to the mainframe computer to run our operating system or system resources now do we? I'm old enough to have first hand experience with these things by the way.


Only the Chrome OS, currently, is a true "Non-PC" as it utilizes the "cloud" as its OS/system resources of which without it, its just a fancy paper weight or a "dumb terminal" as we liked to call it back in the day.

So Apple, please, stop calling it the end of the "PC era when you yourself is still using a "PC". Speaking of which, if transitioning from the Mac OSX to the iOS platform is considered the "post" PC era, you are all wrong yet again. Why? Because the OS and its core functionality still resides within the device, it is still "personal".

When the essential functionality of an OS resides at another place, THEN can you claim that that particular item is a "non-PC".


When people say its a PC vs Mac world, they dont know what they are talking about.

Give you an analogy:

It's like comparing HDTV vs LCD. HDTV is a general category. LCD is a specific type of HDTV. Plasmas are also a specific type of HDTV.

PC is considered a general category. Mac is a specific type of PC. Windows is also a specific type of PC.

Why are people calling it a PC vs Mac when it really should be Windows vs Mac?

Why does Apple do this? Pure marketing.

It still baffles my mind whenever I hear those comparison phrases.

It's hilarious that Apple tries to differentiate itself away from the general category when it itself resides in one.

Why is that irony?

Yes it is, but iOS is 85% Mac OS X code. Apple has had the brains to move their OS to the new devices, whereas MS is in denial (or at least, fallen behind).

I think it needs to reach a certain minimum performance level to replace a modern desktop or laptop entirely - it can already replace certain uses entirely. Where our opinions differ is that you seem to think an iPad is not intended to go this route whereas I think it inevitably will. Here are examples of what that looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpYiCebcZsw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8AJHQwuJpg

When the iPad was launched, I did think the iPad would not be useful and other tablet manufacturers seem to be finding difficulty convincing buyers that their tablet will be of use. Apple's integrated experience and quality control has set the iPad apart from the others though and I regard the iPad even as it stands now as a highly useful device.

I don't think as it stands, it can replace a laptop or desktop entirely though as it has no connectivity to mass storage and is not currently a master device. iOS 5 will change the latter. It would need a filesystem manager for the former.


That's exactly it. If you put an iPad next to an iMac, the only difference is spec and over time, just like with laptops now, once you hit a certain performance level, it doesn't matter any more. If an iMac goes up to 16 cores, it won't make a difference to people just browsing the web, checking email and basic productivity like writing, movie cutting etc.

You are talking about todays tablets. Think ten years in the future. I can imagine film production on a tablet.

Besides, nobody said PCs are going away. They just said that they will be the trucks. They will only be used for tasks that are not everyday.

Tablets may become a bit more like laptops with wireless peripherals though. If things like AirPlay are any indicator I can see a glimpse of the future.

And you're continuing to measure it by YOUR standards and pretending that it's not useful because it doesn't meet your standards.

Whether the iPad will eventually be a full-fledged computer is irrelevant. (I don't know why you think I said it wouldn't - I never commented on the subject. I fully expect that some day, a tablet will offer more power than almost anyone can use - as in Star Trek). But it's irrelevant.

TODAY, the iPad is a very useful, very powerful took to do a lot of things. Your dismissal of it because it's not an i7 with 8 GB of RAM and some high end video card simply indicates that you're measuring it by the wrong standards.

Do you think it will ever have access to mass storage though? I think they intend the cloud to perform this role.

But on the other hand, Thunderbolt is very fast. Almost suspiciously fast. It makes you wonder whether Apple has bigger plans for it, such as linking an iPad to a Thunderbolt Display in the same way you currently do with a MBA, similar to as you suggest.

"PC" is just being used to pick out a certain class of devices. If you don't like "PC" use some other word to describe the class of devices that includes desktops and laptops and then stick "post-" in front of it. It's a name, not a description, so it doesn't matter if tablets are still "personal." And, yes, Apple has used it in two ways, to denote Windows-based PCs (in the PC vs. Mac campaign) and to denote desktop/laptop style computers. Language tends to be ambiguous. In both cases it's obvious what they're saying from context and both cases it reflects common usage, where PC is used to mean "not-Mac" and to mean the desktop/laptop style devices that have dominated for the past couple of decades.

The "PC" in "post-PC" is the modern desktop/laptop form factor and includes Macs. "Post-PC" means a world where those devices are relegated to niche status, like trucks, and devices like smartphones and tablets are the mainstream computing devices.

I agree with everything you say... except we could quibble about the time frames.

There is certainly a large population of pcs out there.

But, increasingly, as these come up for replacement, they will be replaced by tablets (iPads if the competition doesn't get their shit together).


There is absolutely no reason that a person need be tethered to a desk -- with an iPad they can be productive anywhere, everywhere even while standing in some line.


Then, apps are coming that will exploit the iPad capabilities and advantages -- that will result in wholesale obsolescence of some "productivity jobs" as we know them!


I had one foot in the corporate world (IBM) and the other in personal [micro] computers (opened a Computer store in 1978). When VisiCalc, the first SpreadSheet, came available on the Apple ][, it turned industry ass over teakettle -- easily replacing many"productivity jobs" involving budgeting, pricing/forecasting, financial planning...

AIR, VisiCalc cost $79. Major corporations were buying multiple Apple ][ systems (printers, hard disks, networks, etc) costing $5,000-$10,000 each -- just so they could run that $79 copy of VisiCalc.

The "productivity jobs" replaced were accountants with desktop calculators and Data Processing (IT) departments with access to corporate mainframe computers.


One of the secrets of VisiCalc's success was that you could do all the calculations for a budget or forecast in minutes, then show it to your manager, VP, etc. Then he would say "What if we change this..." Type, type (no mouses then) Wham/Bam... "then the answer would be this!"

There was no way the accountant could do that -- and it took at least a month to get a Data Processing (IT) approval to change a program and about 18 months to get the change implemented.

If you were planning to introduce a new product whose success depended on "crunching the numbers" -- you were "SOL" -- especially if your competition had VisiCalc.


I have no idea of the number of "productivity jobs" that were changed or discontinued by VisiCalc and the spreadsheet apps that followed -- but I suspect it was in the hundreds of thousands or even millions.

The point: nobody saw it coming; everyone wanted/needed it; the hardware it required was incidental to the results -- they were buying capability.

The iPad provides capability and opportunity,

Mmmm.... CO [pronounced cee-oh] Capability, Opportunity...

... Not a bad acronym... Anyone looking foe an acronym

How about [iPad] CO... to replace that pickup truck that doesn't satisfy the wants/needs of most people?

Maybe, we're going to se a co world!

Hah. The Pink Panther strikes again...

Nicely put! These examples come from my workplace, I work in healthcare IT..
Remember the paperless office? Didn't happen with the PC for the reasons you mentioned.
Sure, you may need a pc to type a document and spreadsheet..... But we can do admissions of patients directly in the waiting area using an iPad, charting... We used to use tablets anyway, but battery life got in the way! Now the iPad lasts as long as the shift, is lighter and instantly on... Not to mention the price difference

Most of our regular users input tidbits of data and look thing up. They don't type their life story at least they're not supposed to . I'm sure our advertising department will need full blon workstations, so will many others, but for clinical people the physical keyboard is just another thing they need to disinfect.

What past of "Post" aren't you comprehending. "Post-PC" doesn't mean the elimination of the PC it just means after in an order of time. Meaning the focus of the future of computing isn't going to be the traditional PC but all these other computing devices that we use for tasks once only done by 'PCs'. I know people who are and aren't computer savvy that have one 'PC' but have an iPad and modern smartphone. These are two Post-PC devices to one. If you include the Kindle which is growing in usability and likely yo grow into a proper tablet it'll be no question it's also a Post-PC device.

Look at the landscape of unit sales. How many PCs are sold worldwide compared to tablets and smartphones running modern mobile OSes. These markets are growing. These are what people are reaching to for quick access to data. It does not and has never meant the 'PC" will go away. It shouldn't be that hard to understand.

It is not hilarious, but in fact something that makes Apple so successful today. They are not afraid to sacrifice their current setup when they envisage a future. So, yes, the Mac is a 'truck' too and Apple knows it.

You can read that as inconsistent (and thus position yourself in the status quo) or you can go outside that box and see that Apple actually is smart enough not to remain locked in to the current situation, unwilling to see a future where their current lineup is not there anymore. Ballmer sees "Windows everywhere". If that is more than a branding statement (and it seems that it is), it strongly suggests marketing myopia. If Microsoft cannot see a future where the PC is irrelevant in many areas, they will be badly positioned to react to it if it indeed does happen.

In the meantime, Apple is working to cut the umbilical cord that connects non-PC devices to the PC. Like iPod, iPhone, iPad. AppleTV2 is already arguably the first non-PC computing device that is not dependent on the PC anymore. As these devices become disconnected from the PC, they are post-PC. You do not need a PC anymore to use them.

Now, if all these devices become less dependent on a PC, the PC is going to become less relevant for many people. But certainly not for all. There will remain an important role for trucks.

He might be correct... for another year or two... The whole "PC" paradigm is you need a big box on your desk because it has lots of power and lots of storage. Laptops have long been eroding that idea, but because they needed to run the same heavy-weight operating system, they never evolved past the PC. Where Apple went with iOS and the iPas/Phone/Touch is hardware beyond what had been stuffed into such a small package in terms of speed and storage, and created an OS that was light-weight and built for that same purpose.

Once a person is holding TB's of storage in their hands, as I'm sure we'll see in the next few years of iPads and such, when storage in 'the cloud' keeps our data everywhere at once, there won't be a need for a 'homebase' computer.... whether that is a PC/Windows device, or even an iMac as far as that goes. People may still choose that configuration because of its convenience, but no one will "need" a PC.

MS needs to do what Apple did... start with a new paradigm... throw out the old Windows code... provide compatibility with an emulation layer if necessary (like Rosetta did for PPC hardware), and move on. There was a time when supporting 10,000 graphics cards was needed... that was in 1995...

RE: timeframes. I think we're moving into the post-PC era very fast. Much faster than I expected. There's a number of factors involved:

1. There's a parallel trend to the cloud. More and more businesses are moving from proprietary apps to cloud-based "software as a service" apps. Making these mobile-compitable is relatively straightforward and something that happens outside the public eye. These kind of services can adapt very quickly to new devices. That makes it easier for businesses to support a variety of devices.

2. Businesses can adopt mobile devices in bulk. We're seeing this happen already with some companies moving tens of thousands of workers to smartphones and tablets.

3. The PC market is collapsing for entirely different reasons. Margins are low. IBM bowed out a long time ago because services are more profitable. Now HP has gone. Generally the PC industry, being low margin, will move East. Those margins will look pretty good to Chinese companies looking to move up the supply chain. But importantly, the ability of the PC industry as a whole to respond to disruption is being severely diminished. The encroachment of tablets is not being met with any significant resistance. Even Microsoft doesn't appear to be putting up much of a fight.

4. I think there was a lot of pent-up consumer demand for a device like this anyway. The PC has long been overkill for the needs of most people. The form factors have always been awkward for casual use.

I'm very bullish on this post-PC trend. I've been watching the market for a long time and the iPhone/iPad really is a fulfilment of the vision of people like Alan Kay and Mark Weiser. I view the PC as a minor detour on the road to the tablet. There are people alive now, in my opinion, who will never use a mouse. They'll wonder how the hell we ever put up with not being able to hold and touch our screens. They won't believe that people were once tethered to their desks by their computers. They'll find the current situation as unbelievable as many people find the idea of tablets being used for productive and creative tasks. I also think the tablet is, in many ways, a permanent achievement and while there will be other complementary UI technologies (such as speech), the tablet form factor will be with us much longer than the PC (laptop/desktop) form factor ever was. (The tablet is basically the computerisation of print media and the two-dimensional surface used for writing, diagraming and depiction is basic to human civilisation.)

What tablets can't do: they don't have large screen and never will. Hence the need to be able to send signal wirelessly to external display and to intelligently find and pair with available one around it.

Keyboard is the most efficient way to do certain things, and programming and interacting with the computer is one of them. I'm a software developer and I hate when I walk over to someone that doesn't bloody know how to touch type let alone use advanced text editor like VIM or Emacs. Makes me want to take the keyboard and smack them on the head. It literally takes these people a week to do something a proficient UNIX geek does in 10 min.

20 years from now we may not even have offices. With cloud computing and IBMs new chip that interfaces directly with the brain, there's no reason to think that keyboards will remain faster than just thinking to a computer or that people will still huddle up in cubicles to do work when they can be more connected with someone across the globe than in their own living room. The iPad is the 2nd device (iPhone is the first) of a new era, where computers are built to work with us and not built for us to learn how to use them. The post-pc era means that we're moving away from these devices that use artificial tools for input which do not match how we as humans intuitively work and think. PCs will be around for quite awhile, but their functions will be continuing to diminish, and at some point in the future, the current embodiment of a box with a display a mouse and a keyboard will seem as outdated as a rotary phone.

Absolutely.

When I had a work Blackberry, I found it unacceptable for anything but replying to an email with a few words. I didn't feel I could do real work on it. It was more of a tool to let me know what I had to take care of once I returned home or to the office.

When the iPhone was released, the email and web were so far superior, it enabled me to be able to "leave the house" and still be able to respond effectively to clients. While slow, I could still view decent renditions of spreadsheets, Word documents, etc. It was a life-changer.

But it still doesn't replace a PC/Mac. When I need to do real work: write specs, respond with long emails, create spreadsheets, Visio diagrams, Photoshop work, etc., neither the phone, nor today's tablets work very well. Personally, I find that typing on the iPad, even when it's horizontal, hurts my hands.

I think we're seeing a split in the market. For those who primarily read ebooks, browse websites, listen to music, play videos, play games, tweet, send short emails, etc., the Pads are terrific and that's all they probably need. But for those who still do complex work on a computer and need to produce it efficiently, the traditional computer or laptop is still a far more effective tool and looks like it will remain that way far into the future. The only problem will be is that since the masses would probably be fine with a Pad, whether Apple and the PC manufacturers will continue aggressive development of the traditional computer for what will probably be a declining market.

From my perspective, I'm sorry to see HP leave the market and I'm sorry to see their Pad fail (except it seems to be quite successful at $99). I think competition is good for the market and good competition helps keep the lid on Apple's arrogance.

From one UNIX geek to another: it's all UNIX in the end ol'timer! All of this is STILL UNIX!
But the fact that people don't even know it is its success!

Cheers!

Ever notice Ballmer'd response to a New Apple technology the MS does not posess?

iPod- Who's goin' to pay 400 bucks. There are plenty of MP3 players. We aren't concerned

iPhone- Who's goin' to pay 400 bucks for one of those things. We aren't concerned.

iPad- Who's goin' to pay 500 bucks for one of those things. We aren't concerned.

Then later... We are not in a post PC world, we are in a PC plus world. We aren't concerned.

Seems like he he could do more market research. Seems like people are willing to pay X bucks for products what Apple sells.

Shouldnt be concerned? Why doe MS list Apple and Google as there two biggest threats to the well being of MS. maybe BS, oh, i mean SB could read his own company's 10-K statement.

I don't believe that Apple wants to reveal the file system on iOS -- they want to reveal less of the file system. For example, ~/Library is hidden in OS X Lion.

If you can recall the first time you fired up OS X 10.1, the file system was about the only thing that worked.

And it was confusing -- especially coming from the Mac or Windows.

Where is everything? Where do I put my stuff? Whose got the Data?

I didn't much care for it (and I have a mainframe background).

Anyway, I adjusted my work habits, developed my own naming schemes and folder/file structure -- but I still need Spotlight to search the metadata to find where the file that I was working on a couple of months ago -- I think it was May -- and I named it "Video Wall" or "VideoWall" or some such.

The key here is metadata -- and the fact that, behind-the-scene, the Mac is examining my files, categorizing them and providing "meaningful" access to them -- as opposed to a drill-down of the file system.

Why should I have to know where the OS, or I put something -- as long as I can find it.

An oversimplification, to be sure.

Then there are things called "Smart Folders" where you can ask the OS to categorize things based on Names, Tags, Dates, Keywords, Content.


Apple may be taking the first tentative baby steps away from a rigid file system to one that is more natural.

iOS's lack of a file system is frustrating to us because there is nothing to replace it.

But, maybe a replacement is in the wings.

Before I get into that, Think about the last time you showed your gf, Mom or any non-techie how to use a Mac -- and how to trip-toe through the file system. Kinda' like teaching someone to drive.

After several hours of frustration, it goes something like this -- you tell them (your voice raising):

1) You will find the programs in the "Applications" folder -- no, I don't know why they didn't call it "Programs"

2) Put your stuff in the "Documents" folder or the "Desktop" folder -- and look for it there.

3) Don't touch any of the other folders.

4) I'll come back in a couple of weeks, when you are more familiar with the system and help you organize all the piles of stuff you have lying around.


...Awww... You touched the "Pictures" folder


Remember, put yourself in their position -- when you first learned a computer, GUI, mouse, click and point [sic] and now a file system.

OK?


What Apple appears to be doing is repurposing the file system by:

1) identifying files by when they were created -- regardless of what they are, every file has a creation date -- and that means something.

2) organizing files into "smart collections" -- where the files are categorized by metadata (names, keywords, content) -- regardless of where the files are actually stored or which Apps are used to create and manipulate them.

3) providing efficient, intuitive means of locating and accessing the files -- without needing to know or care how the OS's file system handles them

I think this is already happening Mac OS X -- and will soon be ported to iOS,

HP got out of the PC business because their margins were approaching ZERO.

In reality, PCs will not be disappearing as production with one is clearly immense in the right hands, but the majority of consumers don't utilize the full capacity of these systems. Yes, having both will become standard, but the highest profit margins reside in the Embedded space.

Apple makes higher profit margin solutions in both spaces and sales aren't slowing down in their niche of the PC space.

Generic BTO boxes are cutting HP out of the profits area for PCs. Their perceived added value relative to a generic build to order or build your own PC from Newegg has been declining for a long time. Printers were compensating for their declining margins.

Apple has an end-to-end solution for the Digital Entertainment value Consumers use the most. HP tried years after Apple perfected it and were unsuccessful.

With more professionals in the various engineering, sciences and more using Macs for their consumer portion of their lifestyle it just makes sense for those OEMs to start porting their heavy applications over to the Mac. The bleed over from just Windows for Science/Engineering and just Macs for Arts/Entertainment isn't going from the Mac to the PC like it once was, but just the reverse.

Apple is the growth platform for the youth and that means entering University freshmen are spending their money away from Windows where both margins and popularity are exploding. Companies like Autodesk aren't going to pass the opportunity to expand their entire line up on those growth markets.

When HP announced they are getting out of the HP Workstation/PC business this no doubt sent a shock wave out to the likes of ANSYS, PTC [Creo the new Pro/Engineer, etc], Mentor Graphics and more who all have intricate relationships in their end-to-end design and printing solutions with HP.

Expect major Engineering solutions to start porting to the Mac in 2012.

The move to the home office/telecommuting will be greatly accelerated by socio-economic conditions... faltering economies, crumbling infrastructure, expensive gas, safety concerns, robotic mechanization of manufacturing plants, computers designing and building new computers, green concerns. As we moved from the farm, so shall we move from the cubicle.

I idea of "post-PC" is not there will be no PC, but PC will no longer be the center of computing like it used it.

By contrast, the kb is an inferior means of doing other things:

-- drawing or editing a picture
-- zooming and panning
-- controlling visual objects such as sliders, knobs, dials
-- architectural diagrams, blueprints
-- computing while standing (as I'm doing this) in line

For the above, the kb is incidental, at best -- a virtual kb for text is sufficient.

The story goes that Ballmer was fitted with a clear-glass navel -- so he can see where he is going with his head up his ass

Nailed it!

VDI or equivalent will be the corporate desktop. The rest will be mobile thin clients.

High performance stuff may still be workstation centric, but by far not mainstream!

That's OK. Like IBM and their once mighty mainframes, Microsoft will ride the PC train to the bitter end. To the bitter end.

PCs, whether using Windows, MacOS X or some other OS, are going to stick around as your heavy duty content creation machines. Tablets, smartphones are going to be mainly fir light weight content creation and content consuming. That doesn't mean there won't be any cross-over, but when approaching these devices their strengths and usage scenarios need to be understood.

Saying Windows is dead is short sighted. At the same time saying that an OS designed fir a desktop is great for a tablet is also short sighted.