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Preparing For Life After the PC
New submitter Doctor_Jest links to a recent I, Cringely column, in which Cringely "is speculating how the world will look when the 'Post-PC' era is in full swing." He makes the case that in just a few upgrade cycles, extensible phones and other devices, coupled with remotely stored data, could replace most of today's conventional PCs — but also admits he thought this transition would have already happened.
The key is that the screen size is largely proportional to the amount and type of content being consumed or created.
Small screens are great for basic consumption of small games, music, messages, phone calls; but they are terrible for say editing a word doc, or editing a video. Larger, say iPad screens are great for more complicated consumption like movies or more complicated games. They are also good for basic data entry like say simple form entry; they are still terrible for any content creation beyond a very short document. A laptop is good for some programming, accounting, and a sweet spot for typing documents (probably as they are nearly the same size as a typewriter.) Gaming is better on laptops but still not that great. Keep in mind that gaming in a weird way is content creation as your inputs are as important as what happens on screen. Think of how many "key strokes" in a common game.
The single monitor PC is better for programming, video editing, accounting, and gaming. But it is when you get to the multi monitor setup that content creation is king. There is nothing better when programming, video editing, even editing.
Post-PC is a terrible term, what has been terrible is having Joe-surfs-alot using powerhouse of a machine to watch people puking on each other on YouTube. He should have had an iPad. The professionals will use PCs and the mass-consumers will use more locked in devices.
This also circles around to how the OS will be configured. For joe-surfs-alot the device is best locked up tight as any flexibility will result in misconfigurations and breakage. But a programmer or business user has to be able to tailor the machine to the exact configuration needed for maximum efficiency. As a programmer I have my machine set up in ways that would just be annoying and stupid for most of my non-programming family. The terminal in my dock would be the smallest example of this.
The simple question is what device will be used to create iPad applications? Or the iPad OS?