End Of The PC Era As We Know It
Forbes - Tim Worstall: There’s a good possibility that we’re seeing the end of the PC era. No, not the political correctness one, that’s unfortunately likely to be with us for some time. The era of the personal computer that is.
A map of the rise and rise of the personal computer over the past 30-odd years shows that the platform’s popularity may have at long last peaked.
Blogger Horace Dediu has posted a fascinating graph charting the relative sales of key computing platforms over the past 36 years, from the early days of 8-bit micros to the present day.
The key conclusion: smartphones and tablets are well on their way to becoming the defining personal computing platforms – in terms of units shipped – for the early 21st Century.
And here’s that very chart.
As you can see it’s clear that the iPhone and Android shipments together are larger than PC shipments alone. Perhaps not quite above PC and Mac shipments yet, but we can see that this is the way it’s going.
Of course this doesn’t mean the end of the computer era, not at all. We’re just seeing a change in the form factor and operating systems that our computers run on.
There’s several companies that should be worried about this as well: and not just the manufacturers of traditional box PCs. Microsoft could be seen to be having problems here. While there is indeed an offering for phones from the company it’s not really there in the market is it? And it really will be a change for the company when they’re not only not the default O/S for a new computer, but don’t even have a contender to be so.
Another company that might be looking over its shoulder here is Intel: all of those phones are powered by ARM chips, not by any of Intel’s offerings.
And this all confirms one of my own prejudices: OK, personal experiences is perhaps more accurate.
For reasons of a new job that requires a lot of travelling I’ve just replaced all of my phones/computers. And before I did this I sat down and actually thought about what it is that I used computing for. In reality, it’s, for me at least, a word processor, a browser to give me the internet and email and er, well not a great deal else. Perhaps a very little light spreadsheet use and the occasional YouTube visit. But that’s pretty much it.
And I’m reasonably sure that there’s quite a lot of people out there like me. Computers are simply a tool that we use to perform some number of tasks and we’re really entirely indifferent as to what is under the hood, processor, O/S, form factor, as long as we can perform those tasks.
And as I was running through what I needed a computer to be able to do I realised that a phone running, say, Google‘s Android can pretty much do everything that I want a computer to do. I don’t think it’s quite there yet but I was very close indeed to not buying a PC at all. If I was doing all of this again in perhaps a year, perhaps 18 months, I don’t think I in fact would have bought a PC. Just a reasonably top end smartphone (actually, wouldn’t have to be all that top end) plus, in the two places I’ll be travelling back and forth to, a monitor and keyboard that I could plug into said phone.
A truly portable computer in fast. All that I can see that would be needed as a change on the Android phone I did buy would be the necessary video and keyboard attachment slots. And given that I’ve not bothered to read the manual properly those might well exist already.
Oh sure, I’m sure there will continue to be people who buy PCs. It’ll still be a mass market item as well. But I do have a feeling that it’s going to go back to being a specific machine, used for specific tasks, rather than the general all purpose machine that we all feel somehow naked for not having. That position, the default thing that you’d expect near every adult to have, to be able to use to some level, I do have this feeling that’s going to end up being a smartphone along with a couple of peripherals to turn it into something with decent screen size and input options.
How to prepare for the end of the PC era
TechRepublic - Patrick Gray: Takeaway: The change in market share of core components, like computer memory, should serve as a leading indicator that changes to the traditional IT model are coming, and change always favors the prepared.
I read recently that, for the first time in history, orders for common DRAM memory chips destined for PCs slipped behind orders for mobile devices. This has little immediate impact for CIOs and end users, but it does signify the end of an era when PCs and their manufacturers essentially controlled the market for components like memory chips and processors.
This change also lends observable credence to the concept of a post-PC era, when the once ubiquitous laptop and desktop are no longer the primary computing devices for most users. It’s been easy to laugh off this suggestion from inside the walls of a corporate IT department, but it’s noteworthy that control of the component markets is already shifting away from PC stalwarts like HP and toward a new generation of mobile players, many of whom have a small presence in corporate IT. Apple and Samsung have dominated the mobile phone and tablet markets and tend to have a very small presence in corporate IT, compared to familiar brands like HP, Dell, and Lenovo.
Automatically sign up for our Tablets in the Enterprise newsletter!
Preparing for the end
One of the major hallmarks of the post-PC era, and the one most likely to give the average CIO fits, is that mobile devices are far more personal than the average corporate desktop. Whereas the average worker just a few years ago was quite happy to receive a generic grey laptop and BlackBerry, many now expect their iPhone, Android, iPad, and perhaps even a personal laptop to readily connect to corporate resources. Even if your company forbids access to these resources, employees are showing up with tablets to use as electronic notebooks, forwarding corporate files to cloud-based tools, and the most tech savvy are actively circumventing policies to make their devices work on the corporate network.
This is nothing new to the average CIO, but what is interesting is the growing expectation that corporate IT acts as the dreaded “dumb pipe” — they provide the infrastructure and resources but get out of the way on device selection, configuration, and restriction.
The best initial approach to dealing with this shift is gaining a deeper understanding of how your workforce expects to use its devices. Look to the newest entrants to your company for guidance, spending some time with hires straight out of school as well as hires from other companies. These people are the least familiar with your policies, and in many cases, they’ve come from organizations of different sizes or shapes than your own. Ask these people what they expect in terms of computing resources, and what they experienced at other organizations. You don’t need to adapt to every whim of this community, but their feedback will provide a good gauge of where your company stands in relation to the larger industry, and it may give you an early warning of an end user “revolt” if you have an overly restrictive policy.
For the longer term, consider what it means for your IT organization to get out of the end-user device business. For example, it may be liberating to no longer spend resources provisioning and tracking a giant pool of equipment. On the negative side of the ledger, the problems are well known — like supporting devices not controlled by IT and being deluged with questions related to everything from a bleeding-edge consumer platform to an ancient device that a misguided user wants to connect to the network.
It’s easy to focus on the negatives and dismiss the notion of an era when corporate IT becomes what amounts to a cloud service provider, rather than a one-stop hardware and application provider. The change in market share of core components, like computer memory, should serve as a leading indicator that changes to the traditional IT model are coming, and change always favors the prepared.
Replace PC? Not So Fast!
I'm a big fan of tablets. I recommend them for most organizations as a springboard for encouraging employees at all levels to innovate, as well as for friends whose computing needs begin and end with email, Web browsing, and when they start to feel adventurous, e-books and online news feeds.
But let's not get carried away. From now through the foreseeable future (defined as three years for every business except the Psychic Hotline), tablets aren't going to replace PCs for most employees. There are just too many things PCs can do that tablets can't and, in many cases, aren't going to do.
Here's a look at where tablets fall short and where they fit in.
The tablet in the business environment
To make sure we're using our words the same way: If you give an employee a tablet and run a VDI client on it, the tablet hasn't replaced a PC so far as your software architecture is concerned. VDI doesn't replace PCs; it's just a different way to provide them. That, in fact, is the whole point -- your software doesn't have to change.
Also: As mentioned previously in this space, no matter how much we blather on about untethering knowledge workers, most employees who use PCs need them for heads-down production applications. Customer-service call centers, insurance underwriters, accounts payable staff -- fill in the blanks if you like, it's a very long list -- aren't going to get their jobs done on tablets because ... do I really have to spell this out?
But the PC is more than a software platform. It's a portal -- a window into a universe of information and capabilities. From that perspective, it's reasonable to ask whether tablets might, in fact, replace PCs as the employee portal of choice.
The answer: It depends on the employee. The more sophisticated the employee is in using information technology, the more likely it is the employee will want a tablet as an adjunct and won't accept one as a replacement. They'll want the tablet because when it can do what they need it to do, from anywhere and in a comfortable sitting position (for the employee, that is), untethered because it has batteries that last a day.
Where tablets fall short
For those employees, the tablet will be complementary rather than a replacement because of the long list of shortcomings when comparing current tablet technology to PCs.
Tablet shortcoming No. 1: Windows.
Here we're talking about the user interface style, not the Microsoft OS. PCs (I include Macs in the category) let you have more than one application open simultaneously -- that is, you can see more than one application at the same time.
Whether you're cutting and pasting information from a Web page into a document, clicking on a link in an email to open a Web page, or pasting an Excel chart into PowerPoint, having everything open in front of you makes a big difference. But you knew that.
(Of course, Galaxy Note 10.1 and the forthcoming Windows 8 Metro do include two-app split-screen capabilities, so window functionality may mature sooner than my three-year "foreseeable future." Let's hope.)
Tablet shortcoming No. 2: Screen real estate.
An average desktop PC has more than 200 square inches of real estate on hand. A laptop has about half that, which is still twice what an iPad provides. If a desktop or laptop user needs more, adding a second monitor is cheap and easy.
Whether the employee is working with a big spreadsheet or a layout-intensive document, is moving information around from one application to another (using the windowing capability), or is accessing an application while viewing a scanned document, having enough screen real estate is a bigger deal than just avoiding eyestrain. It allows for certain forms of work possible that would be impossible in a more cramped situation.
But you knew that too.
Tablet shortcoming No. 3: Work that goes beyond text entry.
Here are features I use all the time that aren't even glimmers on the iPad's horizon, whether your mobile word processing app of choice is Pages, Quickoffice, Office2HD, or Documents to Go:
- Style-driven interparagraph spacing (although each app places space automatically between paragraphs, only Documents to Go users can specify the actual before and after spacing)
- Mail-merge
- Footnotes
- Image captioning with automatic table and figure numbering
- Cross-references
- Document markup and commenting (although Office2HD on the iPad does Word-style -- and Word-compatible -- commenting and markup)
If you're sophisticated in your use of Microsoft Word, you knew all of this without my having to mention it. If, on the other hand, you're among those who say, with pride, "I only use 10 percent of Word's features anyway!" then you probably also say, with pride, that you don't know how to balance your checkbook.
Some advice: Learn more features. In this day and age, it's a hallmark of basic professionalism.
Tablet shortcoming No. 4: Printing.
While you can print from iOS and Android devices, caveats abound. To put it simply, with a PC I can print without hassles, on the printer I already own, without requiring new software.
Tablet shortcoming No. 5: Document scanning.
With a PC you can connect to any of a wide variety of cheap scanners or all-in-one devices. With an iPad, you can't. Sure, there are apps that "transform" your iPad into a scanner, but when it comes done to it, they don't cut it compared to what you can connect to a PC.
Tablet shortcoming No. 6: Pivot tables.
I don't use pivot tables very much, but I know lots of people who do. If you perform or consume analytics at any level, this is a big deal. If you did better on your SAT verbals than math, you won't care.
Tablet shortcoming No. 7: Blogging.
Many blog technologies use the TinyMCE editing system. Many people blog, which means many people use TinyMCE -- though likely not on their iPads because several of the selection-based features of TinyMCE don't translate well to the platform. With Android, it's even worse. (To be fair, the situation is improving, but we're a long time into the tablet "revolution" for it to still be as bad as it is.)
Tablet shortcoming No. 8: Backup and restore.
I have an external hard drive I use to back up my laptop. Combined with Allway Sync (or whatever other backup software you happen to like), backing up a PC is straightforward, even if you don't have a centralized IT department to handle the task for you automatically.
With an iPad, you can back up to your PC (hint: this means you're using a PC), or you can rely on cloud-based storage that automagically keeps your tablet synchronized with online storage.
But autosync isn't the same as backup and restore, for a very simple reason: Autosync propagates your mistakes to the cloud, at which point you're sunc -- that is to say, sync sunk. Autosync protects you from device failures, but not from the dreaded oh-no second (the fraction of a second separating your pushing the wrong button from your realizing you did so).
Tablets vs. PCs: Augment, not replace
I got tired of adding "but you knew that" -- except there's nothing here you didn't know. There's also nothing here those touting tablets as complete PC replacements for "average users" don't know. But there's a difference between what people know and what they know right now, when we're talking about the subject, because the usual discussion is about what tablets can do, not what they can't do.
Bottom line: For many employees -- those with heads-down production responsibilities -- tablets are irrelevant. For the rest, tablets are more likely to be an add-on technology, not a replacement. That's annoying from a cost perspective -- and yet another good reason to encourage BYOD.
This is the opportunity that was Microsoft's for the taking. Given the disastrous advance reviews Windows 8 has been receiving, though, it looks like Microsoft won't be taking advantage of it -- which means, sadly enough, that we won't either.
This story, "No, tablets won't replace PCs anytime soon," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis' Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
- Printer-friendly version
- Log in to post comments
- 4513 reads
