The End of the PC Era

Repent for the end is nigh!

Repentence may not be necessary, but the end is near. The end of the PC era, that is.

I'm going to take some liberty with the phrase "PC" and start the PC era in 1977 with the introduction of the Apple II computer. (Or the "Apple ][", as we wrote it then.) I'm going to ignore the marketing for the IBM PC in 1981.

The Apple II (and the Radio Shack TRS-80, and the Commodore PET, and the Heathkit H-8) began the era of personal computers. (Yes, technically the IMSAI 8008 could be considered the beginning, but that was strictly for serious hackers. The Apple and Radio Shack and Commodore were made for "real people".)

Why do I send that the end is near? I suspect that soon Apple will discontinue the Macintosh line. (All of it, including the iMac, the MacBook, and the Mac Mini.)

With the popularity of the iPhone, the iPod, and the iPad, consumers have no need for a full-blown PC like the Macintosh, nor the patience to put up with the work for personal computers. The iPhone/Pod/Pad collection is good enough, and much simpler to use.

When Apple announces the end of the Macintosh, a few things will happen:

1) The Microsoftians will cheer
2) The Linux crowd will look up from their screens and see nothing to cheer (or boo)
3) A lot of graphic designers will be rather unhappy

Graphic designers will be unhappy because their platform of choice will disappear. They will have to move to either Windows or Linux. The iPad will not support their work. But neither do Windows or Linux, in the way that the Macintosh supported it. Yet this is inevitable -- the market for graphics work is too small to interest Apple.

The Linux crowd will be neutral. They don't need the Mac or Mac OSX -- or so they think.

THe Microsoft crowd will be ecstatic -- they will think that they have "won" some might battle against the forces of non-Microsoft darkness. Some will proudly (and loudly) proclaim that this decision by Apple proves the superiority of the Microsoft .NET platform. Sadly, they will be wrong.

By abandoning the Macintosh, Apple will be free to pursue the consumer market. The iPhone/iPod/iPad set offer a much better consumer experience than the Macintosh. Apple has every incentive to move people to the "triple-IP set" than keep them on the Macintosh.

Microsoft ends up with the corporate desktop, something they already own. Yet the corporate desktop is changing, moving to the virtual world. The corporate world will abandon desktop hardware for virtual desktops, and the equipment on the desktop will be a minimal system, just enough to run the virtual environment. In many ways, this configuration is the old IBM 3270 terminal on a desk. (But with spiffier graphics.)

These two moves bode poorly for desktop manufacturers. People will by iPhone and not desktops. Corporations will buy virtual PCs and servers but not real PCs. Even the small "Mom and Pop" operations will buy virtual PCs from the cloud.

I predict that by 2015, the PC market will collapse. Sales of real PCs will plummet. (Sales of gaming consoles will remain robust, though.) And by then, everyone will acknowledge the end of the PC era.

Unfortunately for the Linux crowd, the demise of PCs will mean a demise to hackers. The Linux world will have to move to virtual PCs on servers. I'm not sure how that is going to work for the average hacker.