IBM Declares the End of the PC Era

Are we living in a "post-Personal computer" universe? Steve Jobs thinks so, and helium often refers to the iPad atomic number 3 a "post-PC" gimmick. Now an IBM administrator has added fuel to the fire–its chief applied science officer for the Middle East and Africa area, Mark Dean, says that the company did the right matter in getting out of the PC business sector.

Lordly 12 marks the 30th anniversary of the IBM 5150 PC, whose debut was widely considered to grade the beginning of the Microcomputer geological era. IBM, for years, led the way in ensuring a PC in every home, a campaign that successively spurred an industry that now sells hundreds of millions of units every year.

Jobs and James Dean: Strange Bedfellows

Considering that Doyen was on the team that helped shape IBM's PC concern, his commentary is stunning. He lauds the company for selling its computer business to Lenovo in 2005.

"While many in the tech industry questioned IBM's decision to exit the business at the time, it's now clear that our company was in the vanguard of the station-PC era," Doyen wrote in a blog post Wed.

Whoa, did he really just say that? Yes he did, and he goes connected to say that he himself has moved beyond the PC. Without revealing which brand he's using, Dean admits his primary computation device is right away a tablet.

The PC is no more at the leading edge of computing, and Dean argues that services–not another computing device–are leading the way.

His argument makes sentience: Flavour at the rise of social networking. The service itself is distinguish, not the ironware it's running on. This is true crosswise a range of other computer diligence sectors likewise.

The Microcomputer-Plus Era, Non the Post-PC Era

Obviously not everyone agrees. In a secernate web log post, Microsoft corporate communications head Free-spoken Shaw says that he likes to think out of the rife country of computing as the "PC-plus" era. He adds that more than 400 million PCs will be shipped in 2011 alone.

"We'll continue to lead the industry progressive in bringing engineering to the next billion (operating room 2 billion or 6 billion) people on our planet," Shaw writes. "We'll behave that as we always have, away working with our partners to deliver amazing experiences to individuals and businesses."

That certainly sounds to me like Microsoft thinks that the PC as a platform wish be around for a long, prospicient time.

I happen to agree with Jobs–and now Dean's–position. The PC as we hump it is done. As our computing lives move onto the cloud, raw calculation power becomes less and less important. The screaming computing is happening on the server side and not on your home computer.

This is indeed turning our computing world upside polish. Only in an of all time Sir Thomas More interconnected society, is it all that surprising?

What coif you think, PCWorld readers? Is the PC era over? Are we moving to a whole new frontier in computing? I'd love to see your thoughts in the comments, and I'll use them in a future write up on the idea of the "billet-PC era."

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