Quote:
Originally Posted by
a_greer 
The Apple fanboys here and at sites like this one all seem to miss the fact that the iPad is just a toy when talking about teh post PC era...sure, it kicks the PCs ass when playing angery birds and watching reruns of House on hulu - but practical PRODUCTIVE usage is limited. With ios 5 everything is tied to iCloud which means that everything lives in Apple's data center...there is no way that I have found for corporate IT to disable that, not in exchange or SCCM 2012 and not in mass via any tool from Apple.
But its not just icloud, when your little ipad can produce usefull data visualizations with large sets as fast as I can on my PC with Excel and PowerPivot, give me a call...
The iPad is a PC replacment only for those who only consume and occasionally email. For teh rest of us, it is an accessory.
saying that the ipad replaces a PC is like saying that the neck tie replaces the button up shirt...it does not replace it -- it complements it.
Both visions are right. There will always be a place for the desk top computing environment whether it is fueled by a mainframe computer or by the desktop computer. While laptops may or may not survive, the tablet/iPad type computer will continue to mature and gain capability.
Where the quoted comment above falls apart in limiting the future of the tablet/iPad is very simple. The poster lacks the proper recognition for and appreciation of the history of the PC. He and all of us would do well to remember that, when the first PCs were "born" they were almost toys. They supported simple games and did tasks only hobbyists could enjoy.
In the 1950s, large mainframes could barely do much more than add and subtract large numbers. In the 1970s, personal computers could barely add and subtract while mainframes were capable of solving complex problems. In the 1980s, the first serious personal computers were as capable as a mini computer. Mainframes were thought to be passé and on the way out. In each decade since then, computing sophistication has advanced at each computing power level.
The first PC productivity applications were unsophisticated, almost crude by today's standards. It has taken three decades of desktop maturation to get to the point that productivity of the desktop PC has become ubiquitous.
In time, the tablet/iPad will also get to the point that the desktop is today in terms of power and software sophistication. But, the desktop PC will also continue to evolve. There is a place for each now and in the future and each will have capabilities we only dream of now.