Microsoft isn’t too happy with the “post-PC” title Steve Jobs and others like to use for our increasingly tablet- and smartphone-centric world. With Jobs’ passion for everything sleek, thin and mobile, and consumers eating out of the palm of his hand, it seems like the PC giants of yore are being left in the dust.
“We’re not in the ‘post-PC’ era,” Microsoft VP of corporate communications Frank Shaw claimed in a recent blog post. “We’re in the ‘PC plus’ era.”
“In the past year, and again in the past few weeks, I’ve seen a resurgence of the term ‘post’ applied to the PC,” Shaw wrote. “Most of the time, new objects enhance and complement the things we’ve already got. They don’t replace them.”
Shaw believes that mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, set top boxes and e-readers are “highly optimized to do a great job on a subset of things any PC can also do.”
In recent years, the line between mobile and PC has blurred significantly. Although few have completely abandoned their notebooks or desktops, many people are relying on their mobile devices in more and more situations, especially when traveling. Some even factor in the iPad in notebook market share tabulations, since it’s increasingly use to replace notebooks.
But what exactly does the term “post-PC” mean? It’s a scary sounding word, especially to Microsoft. Redmond’s bread and butter is providing software to the personal computing platform. As that platform transforms from productivity to more entertainment and media, the company has struggled to stay relevant. For the first time this year, Apple overtook Microsoft in profits.
The shift towards the tablet platform has dramatically changed the way Microsoft and other PC-focused companies have had to think about computing. No mouse? No keyboard? Those have been staples Microsoft has included in their platform for about thirty years now.
In response to iOS and Android, Microsoft has made an about-face with its mobile operations. The company delivered Windows Phone 7, and partnered up with flailing Nokia for some solid hardware for the platform. And like Apple’s more “unified” OSX Lion, Microsoft is now bringing some mobile back to the desktop with its upcoming Windows 8. The company may even produce their own Windows 8 branded tablet, if rumors prove to true.
So it’s understandable that the company would want to spin the phrase around into something a bit more favorable towards their (historically) core product. But some analysts say Shaw doesn’t really need to fear the phrase. Not yet, at least.
“The post-PC era does not mean that older form factors of PCs — such as desktops and laptops — cease to exist,” Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps wrote in a May report. “It does mean, however, that those older form factors are joined by newer form factors that support consumers’ and workers’ desire for ubiquitous, casual, and intimate computing experiences. Today, those form factors include smartphones and tablets; tomorrow, wear-ables, accessories, and surfaces will contribute to the post-PC experience.”
So in a post-PC world, things like wireless connectivity and cloud-based storage allow us to do computing anywhere, anytime. We can take our computing devices on the go, filling the quiet moments of the day with personal, productive digital interactions: reading on a Kindle on our morning commute, pulling out our smartphone to decide where to grab dinner, a game of Angry Birds on the toilet. It’s a mix of technological advances (now our devices are small enough to carry around, and powerful enough to be worthwhile in doing so) and social behaviors (texting at dinner? A-OK!) have molded this change.
Microsoft’s Windows 8 seems to fit Rotman Epps’ bill for a “Post-PC” ecosystem: the touch UI and emphasis on apps for a personal experience, the elimination of a mouse and keyboard, the potential for a significantly speedier, ARM-based mobile product.
“Tablets are now a preferred vehicle for web browsing, media content and video watching,” says Randy Hellman, senior analyst with Resolve Market Research. “The position of the PC in the consumers’ device hierarchy is changing, but the raw power and utility of the PC – even if it is only a consequence of its form factor – will ensure it still plays an integral role in our device landscape going forward.”
In the blog post, Microsoft’s Shaw says that ‘non-PC’ objects do a good job of allowing people to communicate with one another and consume media in “innovative and interesting ways.” What they’re not good at, he says, is creation and collaboration. But one company is set on a mission to fix that: Apple.
When Steve Jobs announced the iPad 2, it wasn’t billed as just another device for consuming media. It was a device for creative content creation. “This is something you can use for real work,” Jobs said of GarageBand for iPad. But although apps like iMovie and GarageBand were ported over to the tablet form factor in order to foster tablet-based video and music development, there still remains a lot of room for improvement for the iPad to become a true tool for creation.
“Further on down the line as apps become more business capable, we should expect the PC form-factor and tablet ‘always-on’ experiences to converge for business users; making tablets and PCs one in the same,” Hellman says.
But for now, “Post-PC” definitely doesn’t mean no PC.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
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