The iPad was met with a giant “What” by the tech community. That was followed by Steve Jobs’ unusual and very public criticism of Adobe’s Flash. Blogger Charles Stross thinks that he’s figured it out: The personal computer is dead and Apple is merely preparing itself for the inevitable.
It all boils down to greed for Apple. Greed for profits, and a greed to control software. It’s software that will be lucrative in the end, not hardware.
Actually, software has always been lucrative. Witness Microsoft.
Apple has always been a software company, albeit one that creates hardware specifically to run that software. But, according to Stross’ blog, that profit margins on hardware are starting to drop.
The future sees a world where no one has mass storage on their computing devices. No one has software. Everything is on the Internet.
In the future, you use a device like the iPad, something that’s basically a terminal with WiFi. Your information, software, and settings, are all kept on the Internet — which is the cloud computing concept.
Obviously in a world where file systems don’t matter, a gizmo like the iPad makes perfect sense. Apple makes money on the iPad hardware, but where they’re really going to make money is at the App Store.
The problem: You can’t really sell software from the App Store when content-delivery provided by Flash is competition.
Well, at least that’s a theory.
I don’t buy it.
There is power in the desktop. It’s the difference between having your own books, music, and videos in your home versus having them at the Library. That P in PC means personal.
I believe, for the most part, that people want to be themselves, not the robotic SIMs we see in television commercials and marketing campaigns. Honestly, the laid back, good-looking, Joe and Jane professional that the iPad commercial appeals to doesn’t exist. Maybe in Jobs’ head, but not out here in the world where people come in all sizes and colors and intelligence and levels of income.
Of course, I could be wrong. I agree that the PC will continue to be a commodity, and it’s not going away and it’s not going to be sacrificed on the altar of Apple’s greed.
The biggest problem with the computer industry today is an utter lack of software innovation. Our computers are powerful and hardly any software exists that truly takes advantage of the power. Hell, you don’t have any software on your PC today that didn’t exist 15 years ago. That sucks, and it’s the reason why Jobs and others fail to see the future for the PC.
