The post-PC era is about coolness or lack thereof

Some have pointed to the popularity of tablets as the indicator for the imminent demise of the PC. I look at the "post PC" era not as the death of the PC, but as something worse: PCs have become boring.

Looking back, we can see that PCs started with lots of excitement and enthusiasm, yet that excitement has diminished over time.

First, consider hardware:

• Microcomputers were cool (even with just a front panel and a tape drive for storage)
• ASCII terminals were clearly better than front panels
• Storing data on floppy disks was clearly better than storing data on tape
• Hard drives were better than floppy disks
• Color monitors were better than monochrome displays
• High resolution color monitors were better than low resolution color monitors
• Flat panel monitors were better than CRT monitors

These were exciting improvements. These changes were *cool*. But the coolness factor has evaporated. Consider these new technologies:

• LED monitors are better than LCD monitors, if you're tracking power consumption
• Solid state drives are better than hard drives, if you look hard enough
• Processors after the original Pentium are nice, but not excitingly nice

Consider operating systems:

• CP/M was exciting (as anyone who ran it could tell you)
• MS-DOS was clearly better than CP/M
• Windows 3.1 on DOS was clearly better than plain MS-DOS
• Windows 95 was clearly better than Windows 3.1
• Windows NT (or 2000) was clearly better than Windows 95 (or 98, or ME)

But the coolness factor declined with Windows XP and its successors:

• Windows XP was *nice* but not *cool*
• Windows Vista was not clearly better than Windows XP -- and many have argued that it was worse
• Windows 7 was better than Windows Vista, in that it fixed problems
• Windows 8 is (for most people) not cool

The loss of coolness is not limited to Microsoft. A similar effect happened with Apple's operating systems.

• DOS (Apple's DOS for Apple ][ computers) was cool
• MacOS was clearly better than DOS
• MacOS 9 was clearly better than MacOS 8
• Mac OSX was clearly better than MacOS 9

But the Mac OSX versions have not been clearly better than their predecessors. They have some nice features, but the improvements are small, and a significant number of people might say that the latest OSX is not better than the prior version.

The problem for PCs (including Apple Macintosh PCs) is the loss of coolness. Tablets are cool; PCs are boring. The "arc of coolness" for PCs saw its greatest rise in the 1980s and 1990s, a moderate rise in the 2000s, and now sees decline.

This is the meaning of the "post PC era". It's not that we give up PCs. It's that PCs become dull and routine. PC applications become dull and routine.

It also means that there will be few new things developed for PCs. In a sense, this happened long ago, with the development of the web. Then, the Cool New Things were developed to run on servers and in browsers. Now, the Cool New Things will be developed for the mobile/cloud platform.

So don't expect PCs and existing PC applications to vanish. They will remain; it is too expensive to re-build them on the mobile/cloud platform.

But don't expect new PC applications.

Welcome to the post-PC era.

Windows is the de facto standard, and that's a bad thing

A simple phrase can conjure up interesting memories, and such is the case with the phrase "de facto standard".

From its 3.1 release, Windows has been the standard. It was a de facto standard -- it was not adopted by a standards body or codified in law -- but no one called it that -- they simple said "Windows".

The last product in tech that had the attribute "de facto standard" was the predecessor to PC-DOS: a small operating system known as CP/M. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, prior to the introduction of the IBM PC and PC-DOS, CP/M was the most popular operating system. It did not have the near-universal acceptance of Windows; operating systems like Radio Shack's TRS-DOS and Apple's DOS were major contenders, and there were a bunch of minor competitors. CP/M had a majority of the market but not an overwhelming majority, and people called CP/M "the de facto standard". *

The "de facto" label was, for CP/M, no guarantee of success. With the introduction of the IBM PC, CP/M was quickly replaced by PC-DOS. It became The Way Everyone Uses Computers. No one used the phrase "de facto standard". They simply called it "DOS", and there was no discussion or consideration of alternatives (except for a few eccentric Macintosh users.)

Later, PC-DOS was replaced by Windows. With release 3.1, Windows became The Way Everyone Uses Computers. No one used the term "de facto standard" for Windows, either. (The same group of eccentric Macintosh users were present, and folks mostly ignored them.)

This past year has seen alternate operating systems rise to challenge the dominance of Windows. Mac OSX has made inroads for desktops and laptops. Linux has taken some of the server market. For phones, iOS and Android far surpass Windows.


Now, people are calling Windows the de facto standard. I think this is a bad thing for Windows. It is an admission of competition, an acknowledgement of fallibility. The presence of the term means that people consider alternate operating systems a viable threat to Windows. The pervasive group-think has shifted from "Windows as only operating system" to "Windows is our operating system and we want to keep it that way". Windows is no longer The Way Everyone Uses Computers; now it is The Way We Use Computers.

Perhaps I am reading too much into the phrase "de facto standard". Perhaps the memory of IBM and Microsoft taking away our cherished microcomputer independence still stings. Perhaps nothing has changed in the mindset of programmers, consumers, and businesses.

Or perhaps people are ready to move to a new computing platform.


* The popularity of different operating systems in the pre-PC age is difficult to measure, and arguments can be made that specific operating systems were the most popular. Operating systems were sometimes sold separately and sometimes bundled with hardware, and the fans of Commodore C64 computers have a good case for their Microsoft BASIC as the most popular operating system. I have seen the term "de facto" applied only to CP/M and not to any competitors.