Are we Nearing the Post PC World?

Apple have boldly stated that we are living in a ‘post PC world’ and added on top of that, that they were driving this change. At the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference which was attended by 5,200 developers, Apple Exec Scott Forstall said that, “with the iPad we are ushering in this post PC world,” and while that may be a while off, there are some very impressive figures that lean towards what he is saying. In the last 14 months alone there have been sales of 200 million iOS devices and the numbers regarding what we have been putting onto those devices are even more astounding with 15 billion songs downloaded since 2003 and a huge 14 billion applications have been downloaded from the iStore. Steve Jobs believes that an integral part of this shift will be in the way in which we store data and files such as music, photos and video and he states that, “We are going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.”

Don't Dump The PC Just Yet

The move means a downgrade for the PC, from a central storage unit to just another device that we use, and as mobile devices become more powerful Jobs’ declared that the iCloud will become that storage space. While the last decade has seen the PC being used for all our data backup needs, moving forward, that will be the cloud, and Harry McCracken of Technologizer stated that, "Steve Jobs set it up correctly. He said for the last 10 years that Apple has tried to put the Mac at the centre of everything and this is about making the Mac or a Windows PC another device and the centre is now the cloud.” It’s a good idea not to be considering dumping your home PC just yet however as McCracken continues with, "But it's tremendously difficult to do the cloud well. Mr Jobs acknowledged that with Mobile Me which was a lot less ambitious and had problems. So this vision does not lack for ambition but it will be a major challenge to do well." Many observers believe that this change has been coming for some time, with many people now using free cloud based tools such as gmail and Google docs, and with the introduction of Google Chrome we headed even further that way. It will happen, however hold on to your home PC a tad longer.