In the Post-PC era, different people use different hardware

The post-PC is upon us, but perhaps is not quite what we were expecting. Instead of a replacement for the PC, the post-PC age sees the PC co-existing with other computing devices.

In the post-PC era, the Personal Computer loses its position as the standard unit of computing. Now we have (in addition to PCs) phones, tablets, game consoles, virtual servers, and wearables. But not everyone uses everything. Some people use tablets, others use game consoles, and some use traditional PCs.

I see the following types of users:

Consumers Ordinary folks like you and me when we're at home. We don't need much in terms of computing power; we simply want to:

• read and write e-mail
• update Facebook
• chat with friends
• keep appointments
• play lightweight games
• watch videos
• do some online banking
• read e-books

For these tasks we use phones, tablets, and wearables (Google Glass or the Apple iWatch).

Gamers The serious game players want the high-end games, and maybe some videos. For them, game consoles (Xbox, PS4) are the way to go. (Gamers may also use tablets when they are being ordinary folks, too.)

Office managers and workers In the office, managers and workers will be performing the same tasks that they have been performing for the past decade:

• read and write e-mail
• calendar
• review and compose documents
• review and compose spreadsheets
• browse the web
• project management and scheduling

For them, traditional PCs will be necessary. These tasks need the rapid input of real keyboards (although mouse operations may be replaced by touch operations).

Office executives Also in the office but focussed more on meetings and personal interactions, executives will:

• read and write e-mail
• update calendars
• review documents
• review spreadsheets
• review presentations

Notice that they do little in the way of composition. Executives will find phones and tablets (most likely Windows) more useful than traditional PCs.

Looking at this list, it seems that PCs are limited to the office. Not quite true; I think a number of specialists will want PCs. For example, developers will want IDE and version control systems on PCs. Graphic designers will want to use Photoshop or Gimp on PCs.

The post-PC era does not mean the end of the PC. It does mean the end of the PC as the default choice for a computing device. We are entering an age of varied computing devices, each with strengths (and weaknesses).

The end of complex PC apps

Businesses are facing a problem with technology: PCs (and tablets, and smart phones) are changing. Specifically, they are changing faster than businesses would like.

Corporations have many programs that they use internally. Some corporations build their own software, others buy software "off the shelf". Many companies use a combination of both.

All of the companies with whom I have worked wanted stable platforms on which to build their systems and processes. Whether it was a complex program built in C++, a comprehensive model built in a spreadsheet, or an office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, and e-mail), companies want to invest their effort in their custom solutions. They did not want to spend money or time on upgrades and changes to the operating system or commercially available applications.

While they dislike change, corporations are willing to upgrade systems. Corporations want long upgrade cycles. They want gentle upgrade paths, with easy transitions from one version to the next. They were happy with the old Microsoft world: Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP were excellent examples of the long, gentle upgrades desired by corporations.

That is no longer the world of PCs. The new world sees fast update cycles for operating systems, major updates that require changes to applications. For companies with custom-made applications, they have to invest time and effort in updating their applications to match the new operating systems. (Consider Windows Vista and Windows 8.) For companies with off-the-shelf applications, they have to purchase new versions that run on the new operating systems.

What is a corporation to do?

My guess is that corporations will seek out other platforms and move their apps to those platforms. My guess is that corporations will recognize the cost of frequent change in the PC and mobile platforms, and look for other solutions with lower cost.

If they do, then PCs will lose their title to the development world. The PC platform will not be the primary target for applications.

What are the new platforms? I suspect the two "winning" platforms will be web apps (browsers and servers), and mobile/cloud (tablets and phones with virtualized servers). While the front ends for these systems undergo frequent changes, the back ends are relatively stable. The browsers for web apps are mostly stable and they buffer the app from changes to the operating system. Tablets and smart phones undergo frequent updates; this cost can be minimized with simple apps that can be updated easily.

The big trend is away from complex PC applications. These are too expensive to maintain in the new world of frequent updates to operating systems.

For PCs, small may be the new big thing

PCs have had the same size and shape (roughly) for the past thirty years. While we have seen improvements to processors (faster), memory (more), video adapters (faster and more memory), hard disks (bigger), and communication ports (faster, more, and simpler), the general design of a PC has been stagnant. The color may have changed from IBM's beige to Compaq's brown, to Dell's white, and to HP's black-and-silver, but the PC box has remained... a box.

In the early PC days, the large, spacious box with its expansion slots made sense. In the early days, PCs needed expansion and customization. The "base" PC was not enough for corporate work. When we bought a PC, we added video cards, memory cards, serial and parallel port cards, terminal emulator cards, and network cards. We even added cards with real-time clocks. It was necessary to open the PC and add these cards.

Over the years, more and more "extra" features became "standard". The IBM PC AT came with a built-in real-time clock, which eliminated one card. Memory increased. Hard drives became larger and faster. The serial ports and parallel ports were replaced by USB ports. Today's PC has enough memory, a capable video card, a big enough hard disk, a network interface, and ample USB ports. (Apple computers have slightly different communication options, but enough.)

The one constant in the thirty years of change has been the size of the PC. The original IBM PC was about the size of today's tower PC. PCs still have the card slots and drive bays for expansion, although few corporate users need such things.

That's about to change. PCs will shrink from their current size to one of two smaller sizes: small and nothing. The small PCs will be the size of the Apple Mini: a 4-inch by 4-inch box with ports and no expansion capabilities. The "nothing" size PCs will be virtual machines, existing only in larger computers. (Let's focus on the "small" size. We can discuss virtual PCs another time.)

The small PCs have all the features of a real PC: processor, memory, storage, video, and communications. They may have some compromises, with perhaps not the fastest processors and the most capable video cards, but they are good enough. They can run Windows or Linux, and the Apple Mini Mac runs MacOS, of course. All you need is a display, a keyboard, and a network connection. (These small-form PCs often have wire network interfaces and not wireless.)

I suppose that we can give credit to Apple for the change. Apple's Mini Mac showed that there was a steady demand for smaller, non-PC-shaped PCs. Intel has their "Next Unit of Computing" or NUC device, a small 4-inch by 4-inch PC with communication ports.

Other manufacturers had built small PCs prior to Apple's Mini Mac (the Shuttle PC is a notable pioneer) but received little notice.

The Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, and the Beaglebone and also small-form devices, designed mainly for tinkerers. I expect little interest from the corporate market in these devices.

But I do expect interest in the smaller "professional" units from Apple and Intel. I also expect to see units from other manufacturers like Lenova, Asus, HP, and Dell.

Small will be the new big thing.

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.

Mobile/cloud apps will be different than PC apps

As a participant in the PC revolution, I was comfortable with the bright future of personal computers. I *knew* -- that is, I strongly believed -- that PCs were superior to mainframes.

It turned out that PCs were *different* from mainframes, but not necessarily superior.

Mainframe programs were, primarily, accounting systems. Oh, there were programs to compute ballistics tables, and programs for engineering and astronomy, and system utilities, but the big use of mainframe computers was accounting (general ledger, inventory, billing, payment processing, payables, receivables, and market forecasts). These uses were shaped by the entities that could afford mainframe computers (large corporations and governments) and the data that was most important to those organizations.

But the data was also shaped by technology. Computers read input on punch cards and stored data on magnetic tape. The batch processing systems were useful for certain types of processing and made efficient use of transactions and master files. Even when terminals were invented, the processing remained in batch mode.

Personal computers were more interactive than mainframes. They started with terminals and interactive applications. From the beginning, personal computers were used for tasks very different than the tasks of mainframe computers. The biggest applications for PCs were word processors and spreadsheets. (They still are today.)

Some "traditional" computer applications were ported to personal computers. There were (and still are) systems for accounting and database management. There were utility programs and programming languages: BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, and later C and Pascal. But the biggest applications were the interactive ones, the ones that broke from the batch processing mold of mainframe computing.

(I am simplifying greatly here. There were interactive programs for mainframes. The BASIC language was designed as an interactive environment for programming, on mainframe computers.)

I cannot help but think that the typical mainframe programmer, looking at the new personal computers that appeared in the late 1970s, could only puzzle at what possible advantage they could offer. Personal computers were smaller, slower, and less capable than mainframes in every degree. Processors were slower and less capable. Memory was smaller. Storage was laughably primitive. PC software was also primitive, with nothing approaching the sophistication of mainframe operating systems, database management systems, or utilities.

The only ways in which personal computers were superior to mainframes were the BASIC language (Microsoft BASIC was more powerful than mainframe BASIC), word processors, and spreadsheets. Notice that these are all interactive programs. The cost and size of a personal computer made it possible for a person to own one, but the interactive nature of applications made it sensible for a person to own one.

That single attribute of interactive applications made the PC revolution possible. The success of modern-day PCs and the Microsoft empire was built on interactive applications.

I suspect that the success of cell phones and tablets will be built on a single attribute. But what that attribute is, I do not know. It may be portability. It may be location-aware capabilities. It may be a different level of interactivity.

I *know* -- that is, I feel very strongly -- that mobile/cloud is going to have a brilliant future.

I also feel that the key applications for mobile/cloud will be different from traditional PC applications, just as PC applications are different from mainframe applications. Any attempt to port PC applications to mobile/cloud will be doomed to failure, just as mainframe applications failed to port to PCs.

Mainframe applications live on, in their batch mode glory, to this day. Large companies and governments need accounting systems, and will continue to need them. PC applications will live through the mobile/cloud revolution, although some may fade; PowerPoint-style presentations may be better served on synchronized mobile devices than with a single PC and a projector.

Expect mobile/cloud apps to surprise us. They will not be word processors and spreadsheets. (Nor will they be accounting systems.) They will be more like Twitter and Facebook, with status updates and connections to our network of people.

Linux in the post-PC world

The advent of tablets and mobile computing devices has generated much discussion. The post-PC world offers convenience and reliability, and a stirring of the marketplace that could re-arrange the major players.

One topic that I have not seen is the viability of Linux. Can Linux survive in the post-PC world?

The PC world was defined by hardware. The "IBM PC standard" was set in 1981, with the introduction of the IBM PC.

The post-PC world is also defined by devices. It is a world in which the primary (and possibly only) devices we use (directly) are not PCs but tablets and smartphones (and possibly a few other devices).

What does this have to do with Linux?

Linux was -- and is -- a parasite in the PC world. It runs on PCs, and we can run it on PCs for two reasons. First, Linux is written to be compatible with the PC standard. Second, the PC standard is open and we can run anything on it. (That is, we can boot any operating system.)

The tablet world is different. Apple's iPads and Microsoft's Surface tablets are locked down: they run only approved software. An iPad will boot only iOS and a Microsoft Surface tablet will boot only a signed operating system. (It doesn't have to be Windows, but it does have to be signed with a specific key.) The lock-down is not limited to iPads and Surface tablets; Amazon.com Kindles and Barnes and Noble Nooks have the same restrictions.

This lock-down in the tablet world means that we are limited in our choice of operating systems. We cannot boot anything that we want; we can boot only the approved operating systems.

(I know that one can jail-break devices. One can put a "real" Linux on a Kindle or a Nook. IPads can be broken. I suspect that Surface tablets will be broken, too. But it takes extra effort, voids your warrantee, and casts doubt over any future problem. (Is the problem caused by jail-breaking?) I suspect few people will jail-break their devices.

Linux was able to thrive because it was easy to install. In the post-PC world, it will not be easy to install Linux.

I suspect that the future of Linux will lie in the server room. Servers are quite different from consumer PCs and the consumer-oriented tablets. Servers are attended by system administrators, and they expect (and want) fine-grained control over devices. Linux meets their needs. Consumers want devices that "just work", so they choose the easy-to-use devices and that creates market pressure for iPads and Surfaces. System administrators want control, and that creates market pressure for Linux.

Bigger than you think

The brave new world of tablets will change business. It will change not just business but the way that we do business.

Managers like to think that they make decisions that drive technology. And they do, to an extent. They buy technologies that make their businesses more efficient and more capable.

But the arrow points both ways. Not only does business drive technology, but technology drives business.

PCs changed the way we do business: In the "Mad Men" world of the 1950s business were run with typewriters, filing cabinets, secretaries; now we run businesses with desktop PCs, servers, and IT support teams.

Managers may like to think that they were in charge of that transition, but much of it was forced upon business managers. Typewriter manufacturers went out of business, filing cabinets became "old-fashioned", and secretaries became luxuries reserved for the uppermost managers. Businesses had to adopt PCs because other businesses were using them, and because previous technologies were expensive. Businesses had little choice in the matter.

The internet and the world wide web changed the way we do business: In the pre-web era companies communicated with customers by letter, phone, possibly e-mail, and in person. The web era allowed companies to communicate with web pages. Customers select their purchases without assistance from salespeople (or telephone order operators). Businesses had to adopt the web because other businesses adopted the web and customers expected it. Businesses had little choice in the matter.

Tablet computing and cloud computing will become big, for individuals and businesses. Businesses will adopt them, because they have little choice in the matter.

Individuals will stop buying desktops and start buying tablets (if they already have not done so). Most PC applications are poorly suited for the individual and home user: no one really needs an office suite with word processing and spreadsheets, and certainly not presentation software. Individuals want Facebook, Twitter, and yes, Angry Birds. They will want smartphone apps and tablet apps for banking and shopping. Businesses that provide these apps will thrive; businesses that don't will see sales suffer.

Businesses will stop buying desktops and start buying tablets because PC manufacturers will stop selling PCs. Or they will allow workers to bring tablets from home, reducing their outlays to zero. Changing to tablets will cause confusion and change for businesses, but it will not drive businesses out of existence.

The shift from desktop PCs to tablets will cause businesses and governments to change their organization. Commercial and government entities have organized their information around spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. But these organizations do not have to organize themselves that way. In the pre-PC era, they organized themselves around weekly and monthly reports from the mainframe. In the post-PC era, they will organize themselves around cloud-based services and tablet-based apps that present data in real-time.

Companies long ago outsourced non-core tasks such as payroll, the generation of electricity, and the production of paper. With tablets and cloud, they can focus their core processes and on continue to outsource non-core tasks. IT support is a likely candidate for outsourcing, as is Human Resource administration.

New companies will form to offer new forms of corporate support. (IT support and Human Resource administration are two areas that come to mind.) These new companies will offer services to other companies, much like web services offer services to other web applications.

Outsourcing is not the only change. Just as PCs allowed large companies to eliminate jobs (such as secretaries), tablets and cloud will allow companies to eliminate more jobs. I suspect that companies will keep the jobs that require creativity and outsource the jobs that consist of rote tasks. The remaining jobs will be closely tied to the performance of the company's core processes.

The brave new world of tablet computing will be different from the current world. I think it will be a better world, with clearer focus on core competencies and "value added". Some folks may find the transition uncomfortable; others will thrive.