The Mac is Over
 

Remember when the iPod was important? They are still around but the iPhone is far more important to Apple and far more popular. I am convinced that in a few years, the Mac will be about as important to Apple as the iPod is now. The iPad will take over, is taking over, from the Mac.

Here are a couple of articles that have helped to convince me of this.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/08/02/per...nal-computing/

http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the...nal-computing/

I know it's early to be making this call, but I believe it will happen. Note that Microsoft now has 3 operating systems that run on touchscreens, and none for desktop/laptop only. I think they see which way things are going.

As others have said, long term growth in the computer industry is not about what you or I want. It's about the billions of people who have phones but no computer. They will continue to upgrade to smartphones, and their first computer will be a tablet.

Note that I consider an iPod touch as part of the iPhone family. I will consider the first iPad with a built-in keyboard as part of the iOS family. That iPad with a keyboard will make the decline of the Mac official. I don't think we will see it next year, maybe in 2015, probably on the iPad mini first.

The Mac won't become extinct until and unless an iPad can run three external monitors and render movies and edit gigantic TIFF images in Photoshop and run Windows 7 in a virtual machine and MacOS 10.7 in another, FAX an edited PDF to someone's office and print the item that was just scanned on the scanner after doing optical character recognition on it.

At which point it doesn't greatly matter, does it?

No. It was never important to me. Of course, the iPhone isn't important to me either...nor is the iPad - I don't own or desire any of these products.

Apple, sure.

I disagree. The iPhone can do everything an iPod could do - and what the iPod could do was VERY limited. That's not the same with the Mac. The iPad would have to get a LOT more powerful and utility before it could replace a Mac (and what one can do with it - I realize some users just use it for email and porn). Essentially, it would have to become a MBP, complete with the ports necessary to make it useful on a desktop, but maintain its present form factor. I think that's a way off, but it might get there eventually - but at that point, I don't think anyone will cry at the disappearance of Macs.

Thanks for the comments, people. My responses:

@ahunter3 - I don't think the Mac will become extinct with the rise of pads, as the mainframe did not become extinct with the rise of the Mac and it's imitators. What is over is the Mac as the most culturally and technologically significant "computer" in current use.

@onceagain - I had a Nokia smartphone years before the iPhone came out. It didn't play music as well as the iPod I owned then, but it seemed clear at that point the iPod's days as the preferred personal music player for most people were numbered. At the present time for Mac vs. pads, "days of glory are numbered" may be more accurate, but less entertaining, than "over."

@mclbruce: I'm going to sidestep the thrust of this conversation just to recommend that if you find Horace Dediu's work at Asymco informative, then you may want to try his podcast, The Critical Path. He does some great work there explaining and exploring the underlying ideas which guide the perspectives he brings to analysis. On top of that, there are episodes which get into some related but tangential ideas, and some which try to capture the same frameworks as they occur in other industries (often entertainment—whether that's TV, Hollywood, etc.).

Out of the 60 episodes which have aired, I think only one of them didn't strike some chord for me, though certainly some resonated more than others. If you're new to his podcast and would like some recommendations, just let me know. Otherwise, you could catch up either with the podcast archive or by getting his book which provides a transcript of the episodes from the first year. My understanding is that he plans to release an additional first-year volume of the interviews he did with others, and he plans to release future volumes (presumably on an annual basis).

Podcast Archive: http://5by5.tv/criticalpath

Print Book of the First Year of the Podcast: http://store.asymco.com/products/thecriticalpathbook

Kindle eBook of the First Year of the Podcast: http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Path-.../dp/B009JGYOPI

I know there's supposed to be an iBooks version, but I believe it hasn't yet cleared the Apple approval process.

I'm with you on that, NaOH. His interview of Jean Luis Gassée was just great! A must listen for anyone interested in the history of the Mac and Apple.

http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/59

The PC is over as well
 

I think Microsoft sees the writing on the wall. To me, Windows 8 is their attempt to move their desktop users to tablets.

It looks like history is repeating itself. Apple started the move to GUI by making a clean break from Apple //. Microsoft followed up later by adding Windows on top of DOS. Now we have a clean break from Mac to iOS and the inclusive strategy of Windows 7 to Windows 8.

If the historical analogy holds, then it may take a while for MS to get their tablet OS working well. It took them until Windows 3.1 to get the GUI OS working well enough for it to become popular. I expect MS to keep working away on Windows for tablets no matter how well or poorly Windows 8 does.

The only question is, does Microsoft have time to get Windows working well on tablets, or will many of their desktop users leave MS behind and move to some other tablet first. I don't know the answer to that; it will be interesting to see how things play out.

Google is the wild card right now. Android has a chance to become dominant on tablets, that's for sure. I think ChromeOS is too little, too late. To continue the historical analogy, Google already has Mac and now they are introducing Apple //? That doesn't make sense to me. I think they should concentrate on Android.

uh... no. Tablets cannot replace desktops. They can't even replace laptops.
This is like handing me a shiny new bike and saying, "here! You don't need a car anymore!" Sure, so long as I don't have to go very far or very fast.

Until you can give me a tablet that can do everything my desktop can do.

I think that tablets meet the needs of "what most people want to do" -- communication, Audiovisual media, games, writing documents and various other simple content creation.
However, the bigger, more powerful machines, that are more complete in function and with more flexibility, will still be needed and used for "work". So we are likely to see a split where offices have "computers" and homes have tablets.

Consider the laser printer. Plenty of people have a 600dpi A4 mono printer in their homes. Not many people have a 2400dpi A3 colour laser with duplexing, networked print server, collation trays and in-line staplers.
Similarly, back in the 80s, "microcomputers" were popular in the home. No one had a mainframe in their garage.

Increasingly, "full" computers are going to become the reserve of professionals -- programmers, graphic designers, musicians, scientists … and quirky hobbyists. :p

Absolutely, just a matter of when. Star Trek has been predicting the future of technology for decades.... never a piece of paper, all written communication was on what appears to be, for all intent and purpose, a mini iPad with both touch screen and voice recognition. All exchanges with the central computer were through voice command with either a verbal response or a screen to show data. Why not?

And digital photography cannot replace film photography.

Like digital photography, tablets are rapidly reaching the point of "good enough" for most people. It may take a long time before they are good enough for power users, as it took longer for the DSLR to become popular than for the digital P&S.

I don't think that matching all features of traditional computers is important for tablets. What will push tablets dramatically to the forefront is when they do something compelling that traditional computers *cannot* do. In other words a killer app.

Yep.

I think it already has the necessary "apps" of this era: the web browser, portability, and connectivity.

....in the meantime, we still have the fax machine. Yes, the FAX machine - a machine whose usefulness should have died out 20 years ago.

You may be right. What I'm thinking about is the popularity of the WorldWide Web in the mid 1990's, which gave PC adoption in the home a huge push. I wonder if something will come along in the next two or three years that makes that big of a difference with tablet adoption...

I took the short route on my earlier answer and skipped directly addressing that perspective. It seems like the devices are app enabled and that's one significant factor, if a seemingly fragmented one—I may have apps for reading while your big focus is on games and someone else is all about music. In that context, it's why the killer "apps' seem to be the browser (the focal point of interaction with the Internet), portability (devices can go everywhere with users), and connectivity (enabling usage of apps which draw on the Internet in some way, whether that's Dropbox, email, or loads of ther things).

In this context it doesn't seem like there's a need for a killer app to garner interest. Using Apple as an example, is there a really new app they've developed that's had widespread adoption (or usage)? Doesn't seem like it. What was the company's last big, new application? Maybe Garage Band, but I don't get the sense that took off in the "killer app" way.

Of course, none of this precludes me from missing someone doing something really new. But I'm just not seeing where there's a gap in functionality for the broad range of users, especially when app-enabled devices allow for people to scratch nearly any computing itch. It used to seem to me that the web allowed for people to easily connect with others who had similar obscure interests. Like, if you were big into something like train sets, the web allowed you to find and connect with likeminded folks. The range of apps seems to have that same ability to reach those with diverse (or uncommon) computer uses.

Yes, Asymco makes the point that apps are very important, partly because they are available worldwide much more than music or books (on tablets). Apple, Google or whoever don't have to negotiate with some existing company to roll apps out, like they do for books or music. The concept of apps in general could be the "killer app."

But on the other hand, can you imagine laptops without WiFi? They were on the market for many years before WiFi. I just wonder if, in 5 years or so, people will say, hey, back then we used tablets before ___ came along. LIke you though, I don't see any obvious needs to fill, or upcoming breakthroughs.

That's easy for me to remember since I still use the last model PowerBook G3 (Pismo). It has an Airport Card slot, but it was a build-to-order option, and I've never bothered to put one in.

It seems like all the big companies in this space are leaving apps to third-party developers. That makes sense since the companies like Apple, Google, etc. don't stand to make significant money from selling software. I mean, I'm sure Apple has made money from something like Pages for iOS, but I think software like that is more about making the tablet platform viable for most use cases. For an Apple-type company, it seems like a poor use of resources to try to develop the successful niche apps like Instapaper or Angry Birds, so they focus on the platform developments so others can create such apps.

But to the bigger issue we're discussing, we know Apple makes its money from hardware, but the big companies (Apple, Google, Amazon) focus on data-based services (Siri, Google Now, mapping, Amazon recommendations, etc.) as one of the keys to making the hardware appealing. If I were to guess, it will be one (or a number) of these which services will underly some big shift.

No, I don't dare try to predict which one(s).

I still say you're all jumping the gun. Tablets are certainly much better than they were 10 years ago, but they're still not productive. Yay, they're fast enough to watch Youtube and click "like" on Facebook, but try typing a letter on one. Businesses are not going to dump an office-full of PCs for little tablets that are easily stolen or broken, and nobody can type on faster than 20 wpm. And if they have to buy additional keyboards and mice to go with them, why bother? A desktop would still be cheaper.
Second, many home users are not going to want to give up their 24" monitors for a device that the kids can walk off with and drop in the toilet.

Tablets are nice and all for what they are, but they're still not serious desktop replacements. Give it another 20 years and we'll see where the technology has advanced.

OK, you can't run Logic or InDesign or AutoCAD on an iPad, but to say that tablets are incapable of productivity is easily refuted. I recently used an iPad to help me organise and catalogue a library. i can't see how I might have been more productive with a laptop. There are music notation apps; drawing apps; organizational apps; databases - all sorts of things.
As to the typing speed thing: why type when you can dictate?

As I said above: of course businesses aren't going to do all their work on tablets, though many businesses have bought a lot of tablets. "Computers" are going to be the preserve of workplaces, and homes are going to have tablets. I can see a time coming when having a "work computer" in your home will be a cause for comment.

I don't think anyone, least of all the OP, is suggesting that Macs or desktop computers are NOW redundant: but I can see the argument that the use of "traditional computers" in homes is likely to decrease.

Of course, as we all know, predicting the future of tech is never easy and rarely accurate.

There is an independent pizza place I visit that seems to do much of their business with an iPad, at least what I can see. They may keep the books on a PC in the back for all I know. I have seen many restaurants that use a touch based terminal system of some kind for order tracking. Perhaps no-name Android clones would be cheaper and easier, once somebody ports the software over. Of course in bigger businesses with IT departments it's a different story.

Yearly sales of traditional computers may never increase again, but certainly use will continue. Tablet sales (mostly iPad now) are growing phenomenally. The next milestone is when tablet sales volume passes up traditional computer sales volume. Horace Dediu at Asymco predicted that it will happen about a year from now.

http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/upl...2.09.42-PM.png

It's fun though!

I think the tablet market is going to grow and expand.
However I think it's going to grow mostly independently of the home PC market. They may likely take the place of many situations where a laptop might have been purchased. We're going to see many households with a home PC, and tablet(s) for mobile computing or kids.

Irrelevant. More people buy smartphones than computers too. This is not proof that they are replacing computers. In a family of four, you might have a tablet for each child, yet still have a desktop/laptop for each adult.
Second, PCs have plateaued. Both in performance and longevity. The newest models on the market are no longer so much faster than the one I bought three years ago, that I must upgrade it to run the newest software. Sales have dropped because we're keeping our PCs longer than before. We're not getting rid of them for tablets. Tablets are just the newest toy fad to play with.

Yes, that's exactly the kind of use a tablet is great for! Walking around, tapping buttons on the screen, saving data back to the server.
The back end system then notifies the kitchen of orders to make, the billing system of pending sales, etc, etc. Perfect place to use an iPad or Android tablet. There's a few customized restaurant client-server apps out there for exactly this kind of setup. Brilliant idea I think.
At Ford, we have a group of engineers who all have iPads. They use them strictly for either web browsing or remote desktop clients while running around the manufacturing floor. It's handy for them to be able to remote into their PCs from anywhere--but they still have to have that PC to remote into.

Very good points. Measuring total PCs in service would be a much better indicator than sales.

Tablets are evolving at a rapid rate. Tasks that need a computer now may be easier on a tablet in the near future. Also, what about families that have never owned a PC? That's a lot of people around the world. Once they get their smartphones, I think that many of those families will buy tablets, and it may be a long time afterwards that a PC shows up, if it ever does.

I think the larger the company, the more persistant computers will be compared to tablets. As tablets mature, perhaps the desktop PCs could become part of a server farm, leaving only a keyboard and large screen for the tablet to plug into. That's pie in the sky right now, but as tablets get better things could change.

[/QUOTE]Businesses are not going to dump an office-full of PCs for little tablets that are easily stolen or broken, and nobody can type on faster than 20 wpm.[/QUOTE]

Um, I am a three finger typist and I can type well over 20wpm..

What do you do with the other seven?