The End of the PC Era and Apple's Plan To Survive

Hugh Pickens writes "Charlie Stross has written a very interesting essay, ostensibly about the 'real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash,' but really about how Jobs is betting Apple's future on an all-or-nothing push into a new market as Moore's law tapers off and the personal computer industry craters and turns into a profitability wasteland. Stross says that Apple is trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem — one that rivals the 26-year-old Macintosh environment — to maturity in five years flat — the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry and turn PC manufacturers into suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligible profit. 'Any threat to the growth of the app store software platform is going to be resisted, vigorously, at this stage,' writes Stross. 'And he really does not want cross-platform apps that might divert attention and energy away from his application ecosystem.' The long-term goal is to support the long-term migration of Apple from being a hardware company with a software arm into being a cloud computing company with a hardware subsidiary. 'This is why there's a stench of panic hanging over Silicon Valley. This is why Apple have turned into paranoid security Nazis, why HP have just ditched Microsoft from a forthcoming major platform and splurged a billion-plus on buying up a near-failure; it's why everyone is terrified of Google,' writes Stross. 'The PC revolution is almost coming to an end, and everyone's trying to work out a strategy for surviving the aftermath.'"

Comments

Moore's law

[Hatta]

Moore's law is tapering off? I've heard about the impending end of Moore's law for at least the past 10 years, but they keep on going. What evidence is there that Moore's law is tapering off? Wikipedia cites Intel in 2008 as predicting Moore's law to continue until 2029. Not an unbiased source, but I think we'd see the end coming if it was to come in the next 10 years.

Re:Moore's law

[Infiniti2000]

What evidence is there that Moore's law is tapering off?

None. It's called Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt (FUD) and is a standard marketing strategy, albeit an unethical one.

Apple's grudge with Flash

[zr-rifle]

I thought Apple's grudge against Flash was all about free Flash applications competing with it's own commercial apps from the App Store. Want your lame "fart button"? Just browse to www.fartbutton.com and have a field day for *free*; it's faster than a micro-transaction and less painful, especially when you have to justify to your spouse all those micro-purchases making a macro-dent on your income.

No Flash, no cool little applications on your Phone for free... your only source for a quick fix is the App Store.

I remember it

[wiredog]

I remember how much time and money was spent updating software and hardware to deal with it. I remember that despite that there were still glitches.

Re:Remember, remember...

[geekoid]

The Y2K bug was a real issue, and it was fixed do to ahrd work and money.

No, airplanes weren't going to fall out of the sky. I did witness the spectacular failure of several financial systems I was involved with in 1997.

At the time it was estimated that if it happens in production on new years eve, the system would need to be shut down, data fixed by comparing it to previous back-ups, and the ode fixed, then tested that brought online and then some people would still be off because they might have deposited money between the last back up and the failure. So 1m- 3 YEARS before people could get their money. What do you think would have happened?

Re:Who is this idiot?

[Peter Trepan]

Whoever this fucktard is

He is a top-tier science fiction author with Hugo and Locus awards, including a nomination this year. Before that, he was a programmer and tech journalist with a monthly column on Linux.