

What's a Post-PC device? - strandev
http://www.asymco.com/2011/03/08/whats-a-post-pc-device/

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raganwald
Tethering to a PC/Mac is an obvious hack, but nevertheless today's tablets
(whether iOS, Android, or whatever) are _clearly_ post-PC devices. Why?

The filesystem has gone away.

Everything about the previous generation of computers revolved around files.
To a user, everything on a PC is a file. Nothing on my iPad looks like a file.
There are icons for applications. Are they files? Or is this HTML presented in
a browser? Does a user know or care?

This simple difference changes everything. No files means that DVDs, floppy
discs, thumb drives, and all other forms of storage are suddenly repositioned.
iTunes sucks in so many ways, but one way it doesn't suck is that I don't care
where my songs are, just that there's a database of songs with an interface
that is song-specific. Music playing applications are post-PC ways to
manipulate music.

Obviously iTunes exists on a Mac/PC as well as on an iOS device. On a Mac or a
PC, it provides an interface for dealing with music files, but I can still
hunt for the files if I want to. If I move a file, I break the carefully
crafted illusion of there just being music.

On a Mac, I install software by downloading it and dragging it into my
Applications folder. I'm manipulating files. Sure, there are fronts put up so
I can avoid the files, like installer packages and the new Mac App Store. But
the application files are still there to be manipulated and I can still fool
around with the Library and stumble over the filesystem's spoor when I go
trekking through the Finder.

On an iOS device, there are no files, there is no Finder. Software is
installed by some magic process that never exposes me to the implementation.
The illusion is complete. This is what makes an iOS device a post-PC device. I
imagine that there are or will be tablets and phones where I can break into
the device and discover that hidden from the user is a world of files. Such
devices won't be post-PC devices, they'll be PCs in a tablet form factor.

To summarize, my contention is that "Post-PC Device" doesn't mean tablet or
phone, it means "No filesystem."

~~~
pavel_lishin
> one way it doesn't suck is that I don't care where my songs are

Until it's time to back them up, right?

~~~
raganwald
What is "backing them up?" Why am I doing this? What purpose does it serve? It
sounds like something that people with pocket protectors care about... They
like the arcana of playing with PCs whereas I like music.

In all seriousness, if losing all your music when you lose your tablet is a
fatal flaw, the solution is to expand MobileMe so that it syncs my music to
the cloud, not to ask me to know what FAT32 is and why some hard drives can
hold a 1080p movie but others can't even if they claim to have enough disc
space and...

Oh, my head hurts just trying to describe the awful experience that is using a
PC.

~~~
nickbp
If someone's too air-headed to understand the utility of backups, why would
they pay $100/yr to do it?

And that $100 would only get you 20GB, so you'd be limited to a total of
around 2.5 of those 1080p movies you're apparently throwing around (assuming a
conservative 8GB each). And it'd take approximately a million years to sync
them on any typical home broadband connection. And you'd better not be doing
that over 3G, oh boy.

No, moving to THE CLOUD just gives you a different set of problems.

~~~
raganwald
Let's have a little empathy for people like me who aren't so technical,
please. "Backup" is jargon for one particularly brittle and error-prone way to
solve the problem of "What happens to my music when I drop my tablet into a
vat of acid?"

It's no surprise that people don't understand its utility. Quite honestly, it
seems like most companies don't implement backups particularly effectively. If
"professionals" can't get it right, how does giving someone a filesystem solve
the problem?

My suggestion to you is to think about how a post-PC device should solve the
disaster-recovery problem in a way that appeals to postPC users. If you can
invent something that a luddite like me would use, you have a YCombinator
startup right there.

Think about DropBox as an example. It's a folder. And it syncs. DropBox is
right on the edge of PC/Post-PC. It still works with files, but all of the
moving parts are out of sight.

So go out and invent the post-PC disaster-recovery mechanism. Make it like
DropBox, not like backing up music. Just don't try to drag people backwards to
being sysadmins. That's not going to work.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Someone needs to make a much cheaper and more user-friendly Drobo-style
solution, perhaps with compatible cables for iPads, iPhones, etc.

You plug your device in, it synchs, and then you're free to fling it out the
window. No monthly fees to keep up with, and if done well, it's basically a
one-time $100 back-up investment. Make it work easily with OS X and Windows,
and people like my parents would never have to worry about the dog eating
their laptop again.

------
subway
I'm not sure I understand the need to organize new innovations into
"generations". I see the current tablet offerings as a solution to a different
problem than the one PCs currently solve.

The idea that tablets are "post-pc" seems far too limiting, and I think it
reflects the current trend in consumer electronics to race for some lowest-
common-denominator-does-it-all-general-purpose device, rather than
understanding that different needs can sometimes be better solved with
different devices.

------
SlipperySlope
Steve Jobs uses "post-PC" to drive a brand wedge between the previously
dominant Microsoft Windows/X86 platform - the PC, and IOS/ARM - the iPhone &
iPad. He wants customers to regard the "PC" as old-fashioned, behind the
times, and unable to catch-up. Post-PC is a brilliant marketing slogan that
fully illustrates the positioning of the Apple mobile platform brand.

Microsoft and Intel are indeed faced with the innovators dilemma. Both are
fully constrained by their legacy product lines, which respectively define
their brands. Intel went so far as to sell off its ARM CPU business to Marvell
in 2006. Intel's Atom, even if eventually energy competitive with ARM, will
face commodity pricing rather than monopoly pricing. Likewise Microsoft
already has ARM-compatible Windows CE and Windows Mobile. These do not run
typical cash-cow Windows applications. In order to make the leap to the Post-
PC era, both Microsoft and Intel must leave their cash cows behind, or worse,
participate in their decline.

We are at just the beginning of the Post-PC era, and I'm very excited about
the multitude of sensors and potential actuators that can be coupled with, and
enhance the usefulness of, smartphone and tablet devices. The GPS,
accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, speaker, cameras, and NFC are just the
starting point. Expected in a few years are barometric pressure, humidity, and
temperature sensors. Most of these don't these make sense on a PC.
Furthermore, smartphones and tablets will mesh with each other and with the
increasingly intelligent devices encountered in our everyday environment.

The Post-PC era is additionally characterized by responsive cloud services
that offset the limited hardware capabilities of ARM mobile devices. For
example, Google is rolling out a real time speech translation app that simply
wraps up the microphone input, translates it at a server farm, then
immediately sends the translated speech waveforms to the speaker output. Your
Post-PC device can hear and talk. Likewise, imagine what happens when the
video camera output is processed by a powerful cloud server - we have product
and facial recognition, and beyond that I expect general vision capabilities
to arise.

------
brudgers
"Post-PC device" is Newspeak for "Personal Digital Assistant."

------
ChuckMcM
I don't buy the taxonomy, I don't buy the evolutionary relationship. Is a
screw driver a post-hammer device?

People have a relationship with data, they refine it, they explore it, they
correlate it, they hoard it, they spend it to get more data.

Computation, networks, and storage are the tools of data manipulation.
Visualization via iPad, visualization via color plotter serves different
versions of the same purpose.

As the cost of assembling a sufficiently rich network of computation, network
and storage resources drops below the personal value of the data manipulation
that the set of resources is capable of, an economic opportunity is created.

Look at network attached LCD 'picture frames' as a canonical example of this
value equation playing out in the real world. In 1984 people took color slides
printed on cellulose, put a 250W lamp behind them and projected them
periodically on the wall. The cost of doing a 'picture frame' application with
acceptable resolution was north of $250,000 (yes a quarter of a million
dollars, I worked at the Image Processing Institute at USC and we had such a
system in house for flipping through a variety of images in "true color" (24
bit RGB) and that is what it cost.) My Mom got a Kodak "easy share" picture
frame in 2006 with better resolution and more storage for less than $250.

The constant here is a personal relationship with data (pictures) the variable
here is that cost to instantiate that data such that it can be interacted
with.

Post-PC implies a sequential relationship with PC. I claim that its a parallel
economic relationship. An economic choice is made to view images with the
picture frame rather than the slide projector or the laboratory image analysis
setup (or the PC).

PC's have a low marginal cost for adding a new data manipulation capability,
that gives them great value when new data is encountered. For established data
they have a high unrecoverable cost (and on-going maintenance burden).

Tablets 'work' because they provide a data interaction service (surfing the
web, reading, watching video, tracking your friends) at less economic cost
than a laptop.

------
dualboot
I would actually say that Microsoft's tunnel-vision on everything being a
Windows powered "pc" is why they have always failed in the tablet market over
the years.

------
uvTwitch
A Post-PC Device is a Marketing Term used to refer to a iPad, and as far as
apple are concerned, Only an iPad.

Personal implies choice, customization, and individuality, and these are
precisely the things apple strives to remove from it's devices and services.
The ability to choose one of seven particular colors and three price-range
specific models is a laughable substitute.

The iPad is the first Computer which is post-Personal.

------
ohadpr
I actually believe that PCs are so == Computers for most of humanity that its
perfectly fine to discuss post-PC devices

I personally think that a Post-PC device is simply a device that for some (and
later many) people replaces a PC in their day-to-day computer-related tasks.
So if whatever they used to do on a PC they now mostly do on say an iPad then
an iPad would be a post-PC device.

------
chris_j
While it's not fair to define a new generation of computing by its isolation
and exclusion of the previous generation, people have been taking a pop at the
iPad because a PC (or a Mac) is required before your iPad will work. At all.
I'm pretty certain that the Apple II didn't need to be sync-ed up to a
minicomputer via iTunes before you could turn the thing on.

~~~
recoiledsnake
The real reason is that Apple wants to nudge new iUsers towards providing a
credit card when being forced to create a iTunes account for activating a
iDevice, so that it can have it on file.

That's why the process to create an account without providing payment info is
made intentionally difficult without jumping through hoops. It is as simple as
that.

------
vdm
Post-PC means Wifi/OTA system updates work without tethering. Android, Nokia
S60: check. iOS: fail. I have gone for months without an iOS update because my
Mac was broken.

Also, I wish to get out of the music sysadmin business and will cut iTunes
loose at the earliest opportunity.

------
recoiledsnake
>...allow a new population of non-expert users to use the product more cheaply
and simply.

More cheaply? I would say you can get more powerful laptops/netbooks and
desktops with more storage for less than $500.

There is so much hot air expended on essential meaningless PR terms such as
this, especially when it comes to Apple.

All of this is just posturing for the media and general public and does not
hold up to technical scrutiny more than the previous claim about the iPhone
running the 'full OS X'.

I am more worried about the 30% tax on services that seems to tag along with
the so called Post-PC devices.

~~~
hasenj
> I would say you can get more powerful laptops/netbooks and desktops with
> more storage for less than $500.

Come on, don't compare crappy netbooks running windows 7 on a tiny screen to
the iPad. The iPad is a completely different kind of device. While its specs
might be (hypothetically speaking (for the sake of the argument)) crappier
than some netbook out there, that's not the point.

You ignored the whole sentence and picked on "cheaply". You forgot "non-expert
users" and "simply".

Also, coming back to the price. Think of the _value_ the iPad is offering; not
just the specs. Easy to hold, looks gorgeous, plenty of apps, fun to use,
fluid experience .. etc.

~~~
sorbus
If one part of a sentence is factually incorrect or an outright lie[1], it is
entirely appropriate to point out that it is so, ignoring the other portions
of it.

> crappy netbooks running windows 7 on a tiny screen

The iPad has a 9.7in screen, with a 1024 x 768 resolution. By comparison, many
netbooks have 10.1in screens with 1024 x 600 resolutions. I wouldn't call that
enough of a difference to say that netbook screens are tiny while iPad screens
aren't.

> its specs might be (hypothetically speaking (for the sake of the argument))
> crappier than some netbook out there

Your bias is showing, as is your ignorance of the current specs of iPads and
netbooks. The first generation of iPads had specs which were inferior to many
netbooks at the time, especially when considering RAM; the current generation
(which isn't shipping yet) has comparably fast processors, but much less
storage and probably less RAM.

But yes, Apple is trying to position themselves as not a part of the herd,
removing the need to compete on specs. They are definitely succeeding[2],
which allows them both to focus on the interface and appearance and to make
their products into appliances, where it doesn't necessarily make sense to
compare them to anything else. How do you compare UI, after all? If Apple is
able to avoid objective measurements, that's a huge success for them, since
they'll be able to sell hardware that's slower or older without anyone
noticing.

[1] In this case, it is factually incorrect, and perhaps an outright lie, to
claim that iPads are cheaper than netbooks. $379.99 for a netbook is less than
$499 for an iPad.

[2] As your comment makes abundantly clear, Apple does not lack fans, nor will
these fans stand quietly by while objectively true statements are made that
disparage Apple.

~~~
hasenj
I'm not a huge apple fan as you try to imply. I don't own an iPad, I don't
even use Mac OS X (I use Ubuntu). But I find Apple's products appealing and I
like their approach.

Your mentality is exactly why Google and Microsoft (and others) don't get
Apple at all. You think in "data". If something can't be put in a spreadsheet,
it's not real for you.

Your comparisons between netbooks and iPads are ridiculous. You're comparing
the price, specs, and screen size. You just don't get it.

11" is tiny for windows 7, because it wasn't designed for netbooks. The
taskbar takes a huge part of the screen, as do the title bars and menu bars
and tool bars and tab bars.

The iPad screen size might be the same or smaller or whatever, but because
applications are designed specifically for it, they use the screen space much
more efficiently.

By the way, Apple has its own netbook. It's called Air and it has a 11"
variant. It's much more expensive than typical netbooks though, and I guess
you could argue that it's not really a netbook.

> Apple does not lack fans, nor will these fans stand quietly by while
> objectively true statements are made that disparage Apple.

Your sense of "objectivity" is ridiculous.

It's like your counting the number of character in a logical argument as a
measure of its validity. "I wrote more characters than you, therefore I win
the argument". This is just an analogy of course, and this is not what you're
saying. But, you're using the wrong measure for determining the value of the
iPad.

> If one part of a sentence is factually incorrect or an outright lie[1], it
> is entirely appropriate to point out that it is so, ignoring the other
> portions of it.

It's only a lie when you take it out of context. It's talking about non-expert
users. Only geeks like us would shop around for the best laptop deals. Most
people don't even know how to evaluate the specs. "What does dual core mean
and why should I care? What type of memory is best?".

non-expert users _cannot_ get a product that's cheaper than the iPad and
provides the same or similar experience. There just isn't such a product.

Not to mention the iPad uses SSD instead of magnetic discs. A typical non-
expert user wouldn't even know what SSD means and if he had to pick a laptop
he would most likely choose one with a magnetic disk because it tends to be
cheaper (it's not like he would read all the specs anyway).

~~~
recoiledsnake
Your post has nothing to do with the argument at hand. The article effectively
claimed that the post-PC devices are "cheaper". I refuted that in my original
post above.

Your argument that they are of more value because of the software is
subjective, not objective and the parent post acknowledged that. And no one is
talking about 11" netbooks here which you introduced as a strawman to beat
down PCs. There are a lot of 15" and 14" LAPTOPS (not netbooks, geez, are you
stuck in 2008?) that can be obtained below $500(the Air is much more
expensive).

At this point, the subjective comparison is between a $500 basic 10" iPad vs.
a 14" or 15" laptop for $500 or cheaper and your claim is the iPad beats the
laptop in value for the general public which is a highly debatable claim given
the iPads lack of physical keyboard and small screen.

