Coding Horror - Welcome to the Post PC Era

Ok folks, let me know when you throw out your computers. I mean, seriously. I don't want to hear the 100th story about how ipad changed your life unless you literally get rid of your computer. If the number of people who <i>replaced</i> a computer with a tablet exceeds the number of people who <i>still have</i> one, we can talk about that post-pc mumbo-jumbo. So, how's gonna be?

I think Atwood is right, PCs are on their way out simply because with tablets there is so much less that can go wrong. He mentions tech support in the article: THAT is why they will win, regardless of whether or not they will fully replace PCs, or whether or not they are better suited to writing emails. Millions of people who can't be bothered with anti-virus updates and the like will just find it a much more pleasant experience: "it just works" indeed.<p>(I'm a Mac user and I find myself spending a lot less time on tech support type issues than back in the day when I was using Linux and Windows, still it's hard to deny that iPads are currently the epitome of simplicity, compared to their power.)<p>And that's what I'm worried about: "No user serviceable parts inside". I'm concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow's kids' experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer, a Commodore VIC 20.<p>Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly. You turn it on, it's on. You put in a diskette -- well, it didn't load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, and once the game started, it was started. Things were simple and worked, for the most part, quite well. No tech support needed. But the BASIC shell was there right at your fingertips -- hell, the manual came with example BASIC programs.<p>Quibbling over the merits of BASIC aside, it was a simple experience but it was also tremendously open.<p>Things got much more complicated since then; network connectivity in particular introduced previously unknown threats to users, so of course this is a simplified comparison. Still, I wonder, is giving up the freedom to tinker with the system really the price tomorrow's consumers will have to pay in order to buy simplicity?<p>And if you're thinking about replying with links to IDEs running on the iPad: no, something that runs in the cloud and has no direct access whatsoever to the internals of the machine does not qualify as a modern-day replacement for this experience, no matter how sophisticated.

Atwood's thesis is that the new iPad improved on those things that make tablets useful.<p>I agree with him that the updated display is the killer feature. But you have to give props to a high performance wireless network architecture too.<p>That being said, two tablets with identical specs, I prefer an Android tablet and a more accessible ecosystem, the problem for Android right now is the R&#38;D and supply chain investment competition. Ten manufacturers each investing 10 million in their tablet design is not nearly as efficient as one person investing 100 million in their tablet design.<p>I keep hoping Google will address that issue by providing hardware/manufacturing R&#38;D but it isn't one of their core competencies. When I worked there folks would call me to get in introduction to the folks designing the next Android phone, I'd chuckle and explain they had to go talk to Motorola or HTC. Perhaps now with their Motorola acquisition they will be in a place to make that investment, time will tell.

"But until the iPhone and iPad, near as I can tell, nobody else was even trying to improve resolution on computer displays"<p>The original Droid came out in Nov '09 and had a 265ppi screen (same as the new iPad). When I upgraded from my 1st gen iPhone to the Nexus One shortly after that and put the two side-by-side, I simply could not stop admiring how incredible the screen was.<p>Sorry, but it really was just simple economics and we would've gotten high-DPI displays regardless.

I disagree with the post.<p>"""The slope of this graph is the whole story. The complicated general purpose computers are at the bottom, and the simpler specialized computers are at the top."""<p>This is a terrible graph. The Mac has always been a premium niche computer. 28 years ago computing was in its infancy and computers were expensive, unnetworked with limited benefit to the average household.<p>Compare this the iPad / iPod Touch and iPhone. These are main stream devices that achieved immediate traction. It is unrealistic to compare Mac sales with those of main stream devices.<p>You then have the desktop market as a whole. If you compare any single company or brand of desktop against iPad sales, desktop sales would look in trouble. However, if you compare desktop sales to tablet sales it is clear that tablets are still only in their infancy.<p>BUT TABLETS ARE SELLING FASTER THAN DESKTOPS!<p>I don't know if this true but it doesn't matter and it doesn't say much about the state of desktops. Everyone has a computer, the market is saturated. No one has a tablet. It makes sense that tablet sales would rocket.<p>Buying tablets also make a lot of sense for people who just consume content. The fact is though that the iPad isn't great for productivity. It is far better for consuming content. This is what most people do.<p>However if you want to program, edit images, write a novel, maintain spreadsheets, make movies etc a desktop / laptop is what you need.<p>The PC isn't dead and it isn't dying. It has reached a point where people only buy replacements. Now yes, some people may switch perminantly to a tablet. Thats fine. For the forseeable future though there will be a large market of business and consumers who require more than a tablet can provide.<p>------<p>The article also touches on how great the new iPad screen is. I don't think its all that. I walked past the demo of 'the new iPad' twice before asking a sales guy to point to which one was 'the new iPad'. Yes, if you put the screen close to your face you see less pixelation on icons. For general web surfing though I saw no perceived difference. Hell, I don't really see any pixelation on my iPad2. Perhaps I am not holding it close enough to my face...

The day I can code an iPad app on the iPad is the day I enter the post-pc era.<p>Or code, test &#38; deploy web apps from an iPad.<p>Or design &#38; layout web pages on an iPad.<p>We live in a post-mainframe era even though mainframes are still alive an kicking. But a mainframe isn't required create, test and deploy PC software. Once PCs are no longer required to create, test and deploy code for mobile devices we'll be in a post-PC era - that is, once PCs are no longer a required part of the general purpose computing ecosystem.

<i>But Steve Jobs certainly saw the Post PC era looming as far back as 1996:<p>The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.<p>If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth – and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.</i><p>The fact that Steve jobs could see this coming from back in 1996 is incredible. Add to that, that Steve also knew all through the Tablet PC initiatives of the early 2000's that it was too soon, technology wasn't able to properly support the post-PC form factors yet, and that styluses were a loser proposition. Bill Gates also saw the same forces at play, but he responded in the early 2000's with a failed attempt to move the PC into the next era. I guess that's a natural reaction for the winner of the PC era -- to try and carry it on.<p>You can see the same forces at play in the audio industry. Audio has gone beyond the early DIY tinkerer days, through a period of standardization and ubiquity, through an era where big, complicated, elaborate machinery was a status display, to a time of maturity where convenience and design prevails and the technology fades into the background.<p>The problem with audio, is that it doesn't let us extrapolate to the future. What's next? I can see a period where feature-phones increase in capability to the point where they're like the 1st generation smartphones, but with networks that are 1000X more capable -- just in time for widespread adoption by the developing world.<p>Will the developing world leapfrog the developed world in much the same way that it skipped over the era of hardwired networks straight to mobile? Will they be coming to economic power just as the digital realm has obsoleted many forms of material wealth?

As happens all too often at HN, these comments are devolving into a pedantic argument about definitions and irrelevant technicalities.<p>Atwood does not say "hey throw out your PCs". In fact, he opens by stating that <i>PCs are already ubiquitous</i>. This article examines the idea that major innovation is currently happening in the post PC area. He posits that the new iPad display is a killer feature.<p>This is a much more interesting talking point than "o noes but my Linux netbook is kewler".

Laptops were way more revolutionary than *pads.<p>"Post-pc" is just a talking point. The post-PC era will eliminate PCs like McDonalds eliminated kitchens.

&#62;&#62; <i></i>iPad 3 reviews that complain "all they did was improve the display" are clueless bordering on stupidity. Tablets are pretty much by definition all display; nothing is more fundamental to the tablet experience than the quality of the display.<i></i><p>While I agree that the display improvements are noteworthy, I would say that tablets are not "by definition all display." The tactile interaction is as much a part of a tablet's worth.

Jeff is making the point that [Apple is] "fundamentally innovating in computing as a whole...".<p>I see the iOS devices (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad), as just the beginning. Apple has made astounding progress on these mobile devices where their competitors haven't really caught up to yet:<p>1) The display, amazingly higher-res than HDTVs now (2048-by-1536-pixel resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi))<p>2) Connectivity (Wifi/multiple carriers/LTE even)<p>3) Battery life to weight ratio (9hrs using cellular network, at 1.46lbs)*<p>4) Graphics/Processor punch (Dual A5X processor with quad-core graphics)<p>5) An ecosystem of applications that are on the whole, of good quality, and generate a lot of revenue (25 Billion apps sold [2])<p>When I say "just the beginning", I really mean that. And I don't mean that Apple will always be at the top, probably not by a long shot. What I want to ask, and I wonder why everyone else isn't asking is, what's next? Apple won't be at the tippy top forever, so won't the next generation of innovators please stand up?<p>[1] Anyone remember lugging around their 8+ lbs Dell laptop, that had a battery that lasted maybe 2 hours in 2005? I do. My back still hurts.<p>[2] <a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/05Apples-App-Store-Downloads-Top-25-Billion.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/03/05Apples-App-Store-D...</a>

I realize I'm straying dangerously close to Get Off My Lawn territory, but I worry about the post-PC era. As a programmer, I worry about turning into a sharecropper on a closed platform [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace" rel="nofollow">http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...</a><p>As a consumer, I worry about "buying" a closed, networked device and discovering that I don't really own it, but merely have a licence to use it under draconian terms of service. I don't want to "buy" a book or a movie or a piece of software, only to have it yanked off my device remotely.<p>Meanwhile, the government of my country (Canada) is rolling out a new copyright law that will make it a criminal offence to circumvent "digital locks", even if it's for legitimate, legal personal use.<p>However, I still hold out hope that as the technology matures, costs fall and competitors catch up to Apple's tight vertical integration, it becomes more feasible to run a full-featured open source device with a healthy ecosystem built around it.

<i>"nothing is more fundamental to the tablet experience than the quality of the display"</i><p>Well, I'd have to say the OS's interface and overall UX is more important. Maybe not for some, but it's a big deal for me.

I love my iPad 2, don't get me wrong. The thing is, for me the iPad supplements my MacBook Pro: acts as a second monitor, I use it for reading, and it is just large enough to be good for watching movies.<p>The thing is, most of my computer use is programming and writing. I need a keyboard, support for a term window, Emacs and IntelliJ, TeXShop, etc.<p>I might be able to earn a living using just an iPad by running a term app and doing development using a remote Linux server with SSH, Emacs, etc. and do writing using Pages, but that would be like running a race hopping on one foot.<p>I think that "iPad 5" might do it for me however: a larger physical screen size, about half the weight, and great IDE support for doing Lisp, Java, Clojure, etc. I'll wait 2 years and see. I think that this will require new paradigms in writing and programming tools. Mind is open.

Not yet.<p>My wife is not an advanced user of computers by any stretch of the imagination, but I would never buy an iPad for her.<p>She has a DSLR and 60k photos in iPhoto (~320G). iPads will eventually store this much in 3 years, but you will want it backed up somewhere (and in 3 years the "cloud" <i>still</i> won't be doing this much (personal) data at a reasonable personal cost compared to a physical device). And she will not be tolerant of doing edits or looking at photos on a 10" screen.<p>Not to mention that once you increase the screen size, portability goes out the window -- you will have a monitor. And guess what? Touch input doesn't really work ergonomically on a 24" monitor.<p>There are solutions, Airplay will obviously be involved, as will BT input devices. But it's not quite ready for prime-time yet.

Yep, the article is right BUT it's for consumers. The iPad has allowed my grandmother (who is so old fashioned she doesn't believe woman should <i>drive</i>) to pick up a device and video call me on the other side of the world - we told her "It's not a computer, it's a new invention" and she picked it up and invested time in learning it.<p>Most people here are actually producers when it comes to computers, so most people say things like "I still need to product (spreadsheet | programming | lolcat images)" and the pc will never go away. But I think this article was talking about your websurfing, facebook updating, web <i>reading</i> consumers.

To all the people who are sad - it will be OK.<p>Workstations killed mainframes, because you didn't need that stupid command line. You could point and click. But real software engineers would install UNIX tools, or SSH (or telnet) into a server, and take advantage of the pretty display for richer reports.<p>PCs killed workstations, because they were cheaper, and their OS was more user friendly. Unfortunately, "user friendly" meant "dumbed down". You could take advantage of innovations in IDEs, word processors, email programs, and web browser; but it was harder to instal UNIX tools. You could still SSH into a server (which would be a workstation, if you were on a tight budget) and get UNIX stuff done. You could also configure X, and do workstation stuff.<p>Now, tablets are killing PCs, because they are cheaper, more portable, and more "user friendly" (dumbed down). There's probably no way to install UNIX tools. But you can get a virtual server for peanuts (or set up a home PC), hook up a USB keyboard, and an SSH "app", and everything is fine. The display is a bit small, but many tablets these days can power a HD display (look at the Raspberry Pi, which uses mobile phone components). Apple may or may not include the right port, but Android tablets can. And you can take advantage of innovations in touch interfaces.

"Very, very small PCs – the kind you could fit in your pocket – are starting to have the same amount of computing grunt as a high end desktop PC of, say, 5 years ago. And that was plenty, even back then, for a relatively inefficient general purpose operating system."<p>I would argue that it's more than they need, that a service like OnLive is before its time but not more than a few years from hitting prime. I would say get ready for the Post Hardware Era.

I was so inspired by this article that I actually went to the Apple store in San Francisco and purchased the iPad this evening. After spending a couple hours with it, I'm certainly impressed by the hardware, but I've already decided to return the device tomorrow.<p>It's a great couch device, but it's too heavy to carry with you. I don't carry a murse, and I'd rather sling a Macbook Air than this for the extra functionality.<p>Minor things include it running too hot, and the flip cover leaving striated streaks on the display. In my opinion, iOS doesn't scale properly at this size - there is too much white space between the icons on the home screen, for example, and I would prefer to see widgets to show more information without having to open an app.<p>Ultimately, whether you're happy with the iPad is how much you buy into the Apple cloud versus the Google cloud.<p>In all truth, there is very little difference between the iPad 2 and the iPad HD. If you squint and peer very close to the screen you can see how high quality the screen is, but looking at the device from where it rests in your hands it's almost impossible to tell the difference.

Just today in the IT department (this is why it's good to occasionally work in the office): "So my old PC at home finally bought it. I've seen you're all using Macs (this guy is observant) and I've been wondering if I should get one of them. Or could I just get an iPad instead? I've been tempted to get one of them anyways".<p>Turns out the iPad does everything he and the wife want, which is mostly surfing the web, listening to iTunes[1] and getting pictures from their point-and-shoot camera to someplace safe. Remaining issue: printing the odd document. But you can get an AirPrint enabled smearjet for £35.<p>Our recommendation: Get the iPad now, see if it does everything you want. If it does, get another iPad for the wife instead of that Mac you'd share between you.<p>[1] Explaining iTunes Match made his eyes light up: "So I won't need to back it up[2] to an USB disk anymore? And I don't need to buy the 64 GB iPad to fit it all on?" (Hey, it's like someone designed this service for people like him).<p>[2] Most casual computer users seem to do this these days because they've already learnt the hard lesson of losing all their stuff once.

Two years ago I bought my mom an iPad. I was hesitant to do so because I wasn't sure if she would actually use it. A year ago I bought her a new iMac (upgrade from a previous gen. iMac). She likes it, but now considers the iPad to be her main computing device.<p>My 5 year old son spends 90% of his supervised 'computer time' on an iPad. He doesn't understand the concept of a pixel, or why it's good that we don't see them. He has an older iMac in his room, but still prefers using the iPad as his 'main computing device'.<p>Talk about burning a candle at both ends! The term 'desktop' is archaic when thinking about a computer as a tool. Designers and engineers on the forefront of technology are spending their time creating devices for the 'Post PC' generation... not creating a better 'desktop'.<p>Reading some of the comments here, I cannot help but picture the accountant who still keeps his numbers in a [paper] notebook. At least they still make pencils!

PCs will stick around, of course. The worry for me is that when PCs serve only engineers and content creators the production scales will diminish, and prices increase.

For me, the time per day I spend on a PC has not changed since getting a tablet. However I can count on my hands the number of times I have bothered turn on TV since getting tablet. The tablet has replaced the TV for me.

Apple already announced the Post-PC era. It'll be a slow transition for a couple of more years. We really better input options. Fingers are great but sometimes I want precision.<p>What's interesting about Jeff coming around is that he's a pretty hard-core Windows guy. It was funny to have Macs come up on the StackOverFlow podcast. Joel would recommend it for family, etc and you could hear it in Jeff's voice that he didn't see the need. We'll find out in 6 months if it's going to be a 3 horse race.<p>Now Jeff has a reason to learn C. Not to worry, ObjC on iOS is not your father's C. It's a lot more fun.

As a hacker, I feel like I am missing out on the wonders of tablets and the Ipad that I see non-hackers getting extremely excited about. I can get super excited about my smartphone, but that's because the device(s) it replaced were infinitely less exciting (my dumbphone, my mp3 player). But for Ipads, I just feel like everything I could do with them can be done on my laptop better. My laptop has a bigger screen so movies is a more pleasant experience. I can play more fun games on my laptop (The many many years of flash games is probably more vast than the games on the Ipad). I can compose documents more comfortably than i can type on a touch screen. I can CODE on my laptop! Granted, my laptop doesn't have 10 hours of battery, or that level of pixel density (where i completely agree with Atwood, displays need to get better), but I have yet to find a reason to buy a tablet. I think that non-hackers who don't really use that many features of a PC should get VERY excited about tablets, but until I can program on a tablet comfortably, I don't think I could bite the bullet and buy one.

Email has been around (in some form) since 1965. However, I think it's a bit too early to say that we're living in a "post-mail era". Will such a thing every truly happen? I don't see that happening until we invent teleporters for all the physical items we need shipped.<p>By that same token, are we <i>truly</i> in a post-PC era, or is it simply an era where tablet use is on the rise and PC use is on the fall? Nifty charts and screen resolutions aside, I don't see any evidence that we're past the age of the PC. My parents still haven't replaced their computer with an iPad. Neither have any of my old friends from school. I use my tablet for more and more, but I just still can't avoid using my laptop for certain things. And I most certainly don't have a tablet or phone hooked up to my television. And how many offices have you seen where all the PCs have been replaced by mobile devices?<p>In short, while I see things moving more towards tablets and mobile devices, I'll be convinced that we're in a post-PC era when I see it. Until then, it's all arbitrary speculation.

Screen resolutions are not growing because Windows doesn't scale display well.<p>Real world: many people and a business I know use HD resolution on Full HD displays (and 800x600 on 1280x1024 displays) just because letters are bigger.<p>I really hate current standard resolution: 1366x768. It fits 20 lines of code in Visual Studio. Even 10 years ago we had better monitors.

There is an exponential relation between required dpi and distance of the eye from the printed material or monitor (further you are, less and less dpi is needed). Therefore I'm not sure retina screens are such a great idea for big desktop screens, in a usual desktop setup you probably just wouldn't notice that much difference.

"all the existing HCI research tells us that higher resolution displays are a deep fundamental improvement in computing"<p>Citations, please?

<i>Updates. Toolbars. Service Packs. Settings. Anti-virus. Filesystems. Control panels. All the stuff you hate when your Mom calls you for tech support?</i><p>Sounds more like a Windows problem then a pc problem. Since converting my family to Macs, I haven't had to handle any of this stuff but when they used Windows it was a monthly annoyance.

Open hardware to the rescue of the PC!<p>I think the (not-too-distant) future of home computing will have a lot in common with today's PCs. Articles like this one always seem to underestimate the amount of real creative or productive work people want to do -- something which is still a challenge on the iPads of today. Have YOU compared typing on a small screen to a big one?<p>With custom manufacturing becoming affordable, as traditional computers start dying, open source hardware will start replacing them. I think we are seeing the first steps in this direction with Raspberry PI, hobbyist open hardware people, 3D printing (in the future: cheap chip printing?), CryogenMod, etc.

I'd argue that there is one last barrier to these slate based computers (smartphones, tablets) and that is to take these screens and make them sunlight readable (reflective), color, same retina resolution, and same refresh rate.<p>once the screen no longer requires a backlight, and can be readable any place a book can, computers will truly be ubiquitous. as for creation tools on these machines they are beginning to arrive now, and they will become more and more mature as time goes on. hopefully a less controlled ecosystem will win out but that much I dont know I can predict.

I usually agree with most everything Jeff writes, but I'm highly skeptical that what pushed the "post-PC" era over the top was better display support.<p>I've seen the screens, they look nice and crisp and clear and...I kind of don't care. Oh, the views on it are great, but it offers me nothing new.<p>Quite frankly, as product releases go, I question whether Steve would have let this out the door. It's a nice product, but insanely great? In comparison to prior developments, I don't think it meets that bar.

It is probably not much the hardware itself as the concept. Everybody can figure out how to use a tablet, the app store, etc. but not everybody can figure out how to use Windows or Ubuntu or OS X. We are close to the point in which everything a 'normal' person (not a developer) may want to do with a computer, such as listen to music, watching videos, receiving and sending email, buying plane tickets he or she can do with an iPad.

I've been netbooking it for my chillin' computin' for the past couple years. Since getting an 800x400 AMOLED screen on a smartphone, I haven't even thought about getting a new netbook. There are all sorts of useful form factors. the iPad _IS_ a PC. It just uses a different CPU and proprietary hardware.<p>Now... a small and light PC that is completely intractable with via a touchscreen, wireless data, etc...<p>That's a goddamn miracle.<p>Bloggers just love to historicize the present.

I think the demand for tablet-like-PCs is potentially huge. If I'm right, their first couple of years will probably tell us where the frontiers between PCs and post-PCs are and what the world will look like.

I'm curious how that chart would look taking into account US and international population growth in the last few decades. Perhaps devices per capita is a better ratio?

Really? Hi-def = no more pc? What does an iPad 3 do that an iPad 2 doesn't? How did hd res change anything?<p>The end of the PC era may be near but it's not because of 10inch hd screens.

An apple product changed everything? Again? Does this one even connect via USB for data transfer? What about HDMI?

It's 264 PPI, not DPI.<p>My monitor is 2048 x 1152 23 inches.<p>20.05" × 11.28" (50.92cm × 28.64cm) = 102.16 PPI, 0.2486mm dot pitch, 10437 PPI²<p>At one foot away I still cannot see the individual dots.<p>There's been a 200 PPI option for over a decade now:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors</a><p>If the ipad3 has added expense or limited availability to get ppi above 100, it was a waste.

I think the article is correct except for its timing. The iPad 1 did all of this, the updated display resolution really doesn't change the device fundamentally. Sure the fonts and icons look great to Jeff, who just bought his first iPad. But guess what? They looked great on iPad 1 too.

What irks me the most about the "post pc era" is its genesis. It is portrayed as a revolution that will fundamentally change computing.<p>However, by dubbing the tablet the "post-pc", its very definition still depends on the pc, being a definition ex negativo. Many of the arguments here are about whether the tablet can do <i>everything a pc does</i>.<p>The tablet does not revolutionise cultural artifacts or cultural goods, it merely allows for a consumption that is somewhat different from the consumption the pc offers. The consumed goods do not change, social media, media, art and science remain exactly the same, namely consumable goods.<p>The established dichotomy between the pc and the tablet is a fake one, used to artificially create demand that can then be met through new supplies.<p>The tablet does not change the mode of production, it is merely another facet of consumption, this time even more openly advertised as such by being advertised a "consumer device".<p>Calling it innovation is in my opinion a misrepresentation, because it basically reinvents the wheel once more, it undergoes the same syntheses and evolution as the pc did, just accelerated thanks to already available knowledge.<p>The tablet is a clever remix of technologies already available. It combines different modes of consumption previously divided, but it only changes the mode of reception, not production.<p>True innovation on the other hand has to change the modes of production first. The tablet cannot achieve anything other items cannot <i>also</i> do, and is thus not innovation or revolution, it is merely evolution, or even just another playing field added alongside others.<p>Film, recorded music, books and the radio changed the means of production, as did the pc. The walkman, the tablet and the tv may have changed the modes of reception, but nothing new can be created through them that wasn't already available beforehand and is merely refined, not substantially altered.<p>The "war" of tablets vs pc is just another sales pitch to make either more appealing to their individual audiences.<p>&#62;&#62; edit (for ease of understanding, an example)<p>As an example that is less abstract, take the "Hipster". Wearing clothing that is tattered might be "cool" to you and you wear it "ironically, as a statement". If you are poor however, you might have to wear tattered clothes because you lack the means to afford something else. Ironically or not, you are fundamentally still wearing tattered clothes. Irony does not influence the plane of action, but instead the plane of ideas, or in other words: ideology. It's the same in the debate of tablet vs pc: Whether you type a blog-post on your touchscreened tablet or with a keyboard on your pc doesn't change the underlying action, just the mode of action. Whether you prefer one over the other is ideology, the basic action remains unchanged.<p>&#62;&#62; end edit

Lets play to the clairvoyant, the post-tablet era is going to be glasses-PC (circa 2025) and after that is going to be micro holographic touch projectors (circa 2040); and those are going to be more like terminals with everything in the cloud.

a guy that writes a blog about coding happy that the new 'era' will not allow you any coding

The author conflates 'PC' with 'desktop' and 'general purpose computer', which I take issue with. Three points:<p>Firstly: The iPad is a PC, a 'personal computer'<p>Secondly: The quotes refer to 'desktop computer' era being over (though one uses the term 'PC' in the context of 'PC wars'), so why not use 'desktop computer era is over' as the title?(more accurate though less shocking)<p>Thirdly: Through all this conflation, the author also tries to say that the 'general purpose computer' era is over. Personally, I believe there is a big future in 'general-purpose computer' tablets/phones/etc. (non 'desktop'), as well as in desktops and there is not a shred of evidence in the article which challenges this view...

The lack of a decent point in this article makes me wonder whether Apple paid Atwood to write this piece.