The post-PC era is a term that was made popular by Apple at its introduction of the iPad in 2010, and one that a lot of people took to mean the PC will eventually die and tablets and smartphones will take its place. The PC isn’t exactly healthy right now, but it’s also nowhere near death, no matter how many stories try to exaggerate its continued decline.
I’ve never been a fan of the term “post-PC era”, since it’s obviously just a marketing ploy.
Post-PC has been a bs term ever since it was introduced, especially because Apple’s so-called post-PC devices require a PC (I’m including Macs in that category) to make full use of them.
they don’t each require a PC/Mac. I know several businesses that have like 2 desktop machines, 5 laptops, and 10+ tablets. This is a recent phenonema, I’d say in the last 2 years.
Also, in attending general meetings in the education field in USA shows over 50% of the staff with tablets instead of laptops.
Tablets and smartphones are sure nice to handle but are not feature complete. The screen is too little and the input method is not par with a real keyboard. Would you like to Photoshop or Eclipse on such a device, with only 10% of the functionalities available to be ‘touch friendly’ ?
Seriously…
Well, with a device like a Surface Pro, you can use it in tablet mode and then hook up a keyboard/mouse when you need full functionality. I don’t think Android is up to the same level as Windows with a keyboard and mouse, but I figure it’ll get there over time.
I have a Bluetooth keyboard with my Nexus 7 (2012) but the UI remains too huge because ‘touch’ oriented, hence occupy too much place on screen.
BTW, a Surface pro is not what I call a ‘table’, it’s more a laptop with detachable keyboard.
It is a big rectangle, responds to touch input, and has good battery life. How is it not a tablet?
Is there some weight cutoff no one told me about?
Now, I admit it is more effort to hold a Surface Pro than it is to hold an iPad but you do get used to it. Think of all the arm strength you are developing!
Arm strength ? Get an old IBM Thinkpad. Or this :
http://www.oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html
Edited 2015-08-11 05:02 UTC
Android actually has very decent keyboard and mouse support. Before purchasing my current tablet I had a Toshiba Thrive 10.1″ tablet with Android 4.0. For about 3-4 months I used it as a laptop replacement with a bluetooth keyboard and USB mouse. It was surprisingly comfortable and stable. This was 3 years ago. I would presume an ASUS Transform would feel just as natural.
The problem with using a tablet this way is the size of the screen. The screen was too small for everyday use. A 10″ laptop would be equally problematic. I had a netbook back when they were all the hype and after a year sold it because it was never used. The Surface Pro has gotten away with it because of the 12″ screen, but I’d imagine the base model with 10″ screen would be equally problematic.
We used to have these small devices with tiny screens and keyboards. Oh what were they called…oh yeah, netbooks!
Basically, we’re saying the Surface Pro becomes more useable once you convert it into a Netbook. Which isn’t an advertisement for Tablets.
While true, it’s also irrelevant to most of the population, all those people who aren’t software developers, and who don’t do photo editing beyond the simple touch-ups that many phone/tablet photo apps can handle just fine…
I think all “content makers” need a tool far more sophisticated (computer) than a tablet (a toy) to have their work done: Graphical designers, 3D designers, musicians, serious writers, website content publishers, ITs, software developers, etc.
And though there are serious apps for tablets, their main use is and will be (I guess) to consume information.
I wouldn’t like to use a spreadsheet on a touch system either, surely you’re not going to claim that isn’t a mainstream application – it was largely the reason PCs became accepted as a general business tool.
For casual use (at home, for example) a tablet is fine, for everything else they are just not optimal.
50% of devices in MEETINGS being tablets says NOTHING about PCs. You can’t take a PC to a meeting, so all you’re saying is that tablets are equally popular as laptops for settings that require a portable device.
Why do you say that?
You don’t need a computer at all. I know quite a number of folks who are fine with a combination of phone and tv streaming device ( mostly iPhone / Apple TV but also Android based offerings ). Add a tablet and unless you actually work on a computer it really offers only modest value.
No one does anything productive on tablets, and sales are already dropping precipitously. The tablet was just a fad.
I’d say 50% of the users in the last 5 projects total are on tablets primarily, with maybe 20% of them on tablets only. we write general business apps for small to mid-size businesses and workgroups. mainstream main street sort of stuff.
so in my field tablet is becoming the target platform. i don’t think desktop is going away in the next 10 years but it’s not growing and might never again.
the only general computing interface i see coming is the household wall (bulletin board, tv, calendar, photo viewer, etc.) and that’s all gestrure, touch, or simple controller interface. none of that is mouse and keyboard driven.
Post-Post-PC Era..
Though mainly, the dropping sales in PCs as they are increasingly staying good enough for longer and longer, does mean that IT growth has been post-PC even if reality itself has not been and wont be for a long time.
We certainly are past the point of growth for the PC era, though, but that’s because there is total saturation in most markets, and the constant upgrade treadmill has slowed considerably.
But isn’t that becoming true for tablets, as well? http://www.osnews.com/story/28739/Tablet_market_keeps_shrinking
There has always been market for handheld PIM devices, and such devices have existed since the early 1990s with the introduction of the Apple Newton.
The real innovation introduced by the launch of the iPad was not that a new market was being created, but that browsing the internet did not have to be so limiting on a handheld device. I had a Windows Pocket PC device and the browser was horrible!
The truth is that no one needs a Core i7 with 8 GB of RAM to check their Facebook status (this is an exaggerated example, by the way), but before the introduction of tablets it was virtually impossible to do it any other way.
Drumhellar,
Hence why the latest watch-craziness, OEMs need another cow to milk.
Almost all usage is “post” today, As Dvorak said “electronics is a microcosm, and it runs in cycles and the model that we fought against is finally consuming us”
He was talking about freedom of association on the internet.
Edited 2015-08-10 23:03 UTC
If one looks at where OS´s are going, it is getting realtime, and it is getting everywhere. JLG was probably right in his time, but “internet appliances” didn´t sound too great.
Now though, low-jitter OS´s definately are in the same areas as hi-fis, phones, information technology, communication and design devices etc.
Someone just fails to get the right sales pitch.
Indeed the hyper successful C64 was based on the design of the Apple I, the magic seed of Wozniak. Why it was successful nobody knows, but it sold, as so was mimicked. And indeed, in a time where people thought they could get datalice of computers, that was a miracle.
The term ‘post-PC’ era literally meant ( as Jobs originally explained ) a period in time where PC’s ( aka personal computers ) were no longer a significant facet of a persons life.
I think it’s fair to say that this period is upon us. The article itself says:
PCs in their traditional sense are dying off
You might argue that PC is now personal computing and no loner personal computer but that’s just changing the playing field.
Not that I’m disagreeing with your overall sentiment, but if I’m going to need a PC to restore my fondleslab each time an OTA update brings a can full of borkage with it, I’d say it’s still a pretty fuckin significant facet of my life. A master key is still a master key, even if the landlord rarely uses it.
I don’t know anyone that has needed a PC to restore their iPad. The cloud handles most of all of that, and oh yeah, the iPad’s really don’t ever crash or run into problems like a windows desktop.
I think I’ve only rebooted my iPad about once a year. They are pretty rock solid, I don’t think I need a computer to do anything for it.
I don’t even think I’ve ever synced my iPad with my mac. They haven’t needed that for several versions now.
Sadly, your experience isn’t even remotely similar to mine. I absolutely DESPISE the iTunes desktop app and try to use it as little as possible, but Apple doesn’t seem to like that behavior, so they intentionally bork my devices via OTA whenever they see fit (they must keep logs of me, with all the hate I’ve showered iTunes all over the web). iOS 8 alone bricked my iPhone 6 twice since purchase, and iOS 7 bricked my mom’s iPad early last year. Can’t unbrick from DFU mode (or whatever thr f*ck its called) from iCloud, sadly.
Sorry about your experience. Doesn’t sound fun. Also sounds very rare. That’s a bunch of stuff I haven’t heard much of, including from IT people rolling out hundreds of iPads.
One of my clients currently has an iPad that is giving everyone problems, strangest thing. We test on various iPads and none show this behavior, but this one has a gremlin or something in it and is always failing on tasks the others complete. It’s all network based with extensive syncing, so I suspect hardware problems with that pad trips up the sync and then things go south from there.
Not that rare if you visit the various iOS support forums. You’ll see threads like this that span from anywhere between 20 to 100+ pages, and almost all the time the answer from the admins/mods will be to resort to the cop-out “restore from iTunes” method. Till this isn’t an issue, iOS devices will never be standalone computers in my book.
kristoph,
Do you think the drop in tablet sales means tablets are becoming irrelevant to consumers as well? Or do you think it’s more likely that the market is becoming saturated?
Sure, for some PCs were always just a toy, and tablets can become the next toy, but I’m hard pressed to think of many people for whom PCs were a “significant facet” of their life manage to ditch them for tablets. PCs are still leading in the productivity use cases that made them so popular.
What’s changed is the upgrade cycle. I think nearly everyone who uses computers is keeping them longer. My last new computer was over ten years ago since my last 4 computers were bought used, thus depriving the market of new sales. For better or worse, this kind of consumer behavior has had a major negative effect on PC sales. Just keep in mind that it would be false to conclude that PCs are not a significant facet of my life despite the fact that I haven’t bought a new computer in a long time.
Edited 2015-08-11 02:26 UTC
Willfully misunderstanding something doesn’t discredit it. We’re post-PC just like we’re post-command line, post-big iron, and post-writing all your own programs. All of these things are bigger and more important in raw numbers than ever before, but all of them have a smaller share — and especially mindshare — of the industry than they used to.
I have friends whose only computer or Internet connection is their cell phone, and I have friends with basements full of hobby machines like me. And it’s not a random distribution. The trend line is obvious.
Wrong, wrong wrong. We are not post-PC, we need PCs just like before! We need Coreldraw, Ardour, Blender, Adobe, CAD and many of those heavyweight applications to run on our notebooks and desktops.
First, what you can do on a PC like (browsing, socializing, casual gaming) you can do it in your smartphone or tablets. So those traditional people who don’t use computers to begin with are now using tablets/smartphones because this is a transition from the dumb/feature phones era to PC-like mobile tablets/phones era.
Second, the rise of social networks from Friendster to Facebook requires family members to have access to these social tools now as a necessity not as a luxury. Some of these people are not computer users at home(at least in my country), but use computers only at companies they are working traditionally, now that social network and other online activities are needed, they need tools to access these online activities, so they need mobile gadgets like smartphones and tablets for these activities so that explains the stagnant sale of PC from 2008 onward. What these people learned is that they can upgrade their dumb phones to smartphones aside from they were able to do (call/text) on their phones, but they can now use their smartphones for their needed online activities. So that explains why Personal computer sales are stagnant and the increase of mobile computers.
This is not a PC era to Smartphone/Tablet era. The transition is from feature/dumb phone era to Smartphones and tablets. This is where most of you here who used the term post-PC got it all wrong.
Edited 2015-08-11 03:44 UTC
You are misunderstanding atsureki’s point. In fact you are misunderstanding the point atsureki was specifically trying to clear up.
See the example given of post-command line for an illustration. In no way could the industry cope if all the command line applications had to be replaced in a rush, just as in no way could it cope if all the PCs had to be replaced with smartphones.
They are vital, but no longer exciting and often neglected. Perhaps the best illustration of this is that people talk about “needing them” (as you do) rather than “desiring them”.
PCs are slipping out of the forefront of the industry and our lives, even while they remain an essential part of both. They are sinking into the bedrock of the industry— out of sight, out of mind, supporting everything else.
Edited 2015-08-11 09:04 UTC
If this were the case, then the same could be said about tablets. Sales are no longer growing as before. Does that mean tablets are irrelevant? No, it just means, as another posted pointed out, that the market has saturated. People no longer “desire” the latest and greatest because last year’s model is still perfect for their use case.
Smartphones get a little help from the fact that people, at least in the US, have always upgraded their phones when they renew their contract, or else you would be paying for a subsidy that you weren’t getting. However, even that model is in jeopardy today. T-Mobile has been offering bring-your-own-phone + new-phone-payment-plan plans for a few years now, and Verizon just announced they will do the same. I, for example, have had my phone for almost 3 years. A friend, has had his for 3 years, as well.
My dad has always said that the pocket is the weakest part of the body. Without the build-in subsidy in every phone plan for a new phone, I’m going to venture a guess that, in the future, people will keep their phones longer, just like PCs and, now, tablets.
Edited 2015-08-11 16:07 UTC
I’m not sure I disagree with anything you’ve written, just like I’m not sure you really disagree with anything the previous poster wrote. Not every thread needs to be framed as an argument.
The whole thing boils down to the tech press looking at the market from a Wall Street day traders point of view.
From there, anything that is not going up is a dead man walking.
Also, i fear certain other interests wants to see the venerable PC dead and buried, along with the internet as we know it.
This because it is just too open to user modification, in both software and hardware. This means they can’t put in “reliable” measures to shore up revenue streams.