The supremacy of the iPad (and of I may generaliize and put it as tablets) for content consumption is complete. The netbooks have being buried long time back and the chromebooks are slowly following them unless Google has some disruptive ideas. The big question is whether PCs and Laptops will follow them as their sales have also started to decline YoY. Sometimes I wonder how S.P. Road Computer Market in Bangalore will look like 10 years down the line !!!
As of now there is a unique niche that PCs and Laptops still occupy. That is Content creation. Whether you are carrying out image processing, video editing, programming (that's also one type of content), word processing, excel sheets, Powerpoint slide creation, etc the desktop/workstation apps reign supreme. Part of this dominance is the precision mouse and the keyboard. But will it always stay this way in future.
As a user I care less about the OS but more about the apps and user experience. The desktop content creation apps have their nose ahead today, but their evolution has slowed down in my observation. And Tablet apps (particulatly on the iPad) are fast catching up. I see the following early signs of upheaval:
(1) Physical Keyboards are starting to appear fot tablets. They do almost as fine as the desktop variants. I am myself typing this post, using am iPad keyboard. Their are no precision mouse available but connecting one with some software support (pointer, click) does not look to be a big deal. You also have pen inputs (Galaxy Note series, Adonit Jotscript etc) and ofcourse the muti-touch based finger inputs and gestures. And you suddenly have more options than a PC for human-computer interaction. The key point is that availability of "precision" input device on tablets, will make them more useful in short-term for content creation.
(2) The user experience and readability of 10" screens is starting to approach that on a PC. You have massive resolution (Retina, 400+ PPI, etc) supporting this. In my opinion, the portability of a 10" tablet is less, but its user experience is better compared to 7" tablets. The iPads are held at closer distance to the eyes than a PC monitor. And therefore you really do not need a 14" or 20" or 27" tablet ;-))
(3) I recently played around with "Parallel access" on iPad which takes an app centric view Of Apps on your PC. No desktop back ground, no taskbar, no start button, no taskbar menu. Its lightweight & quite neat, but needs a strong broadband (I had responsiveness issues on my 2Gbps Mobile broadband, but it did quite fine on a WiFi fronted Fixed Broadband network). While this does not seem to decapitate the PC but consider if we could access VMs in the IaaS Cloud using this kind of software. These VMs can be fired on a pay-per-use basis as is the trend for Microsoft Azure and AWS, with your data stored on a Cloud storage. This is defintely a game changer for enterprise, but I feel one day it may start influnecing the consumer side of the market also. However given the choice between hosted VMs and Hosted App functionality, I would choose the latter anyday as it is more granular. OS and hardware is just an environment. What sells it are Apps because that's what I use the computer for. Hardly hurts me if I can get the app without needing to invest in the hardware and OS.
(4) The browser on tablets are getting better by the day. Whether its safari or Chrome and they are slowly becoming as functional as that on a desktop. Usually a native app for IOS or Android exposes a very small, frequently used and core set of features of Internet Services that are sufficient in most cases, but sometimes we need to use the full featured interface seen by the the desktop web browser. It really helps if the tablet browser can see and do what the desktop can.
(5) A lot of applications like Microsoft Office are being hosted on the web and their functionality is more complete than what a native tablet app can support. Perhaps shortly it will reach what a native desktop app can do and then all of that would be accessible using the Web or a smart cloud centric tablet app. It is good beacuse it will end the rampant software piracy in the consumer space. Hopefully the price should be democratic so that billions could use these on demand.
(6) On the overall hardware front, RAM sizes are approaching 3/4 GB with a good bump in speed withevery iteration, CPU speed exceeding 2 GHz, CPU Cores reaching 8, multi-core GPUs, and Device storage reaching 128 GB in some cases with scope of an expanison using SD card or even external portable Wifi Storage. They are reaching or even exeeding what a PC/Laptop sports and one wonders why can't such a device.
(7) The iterative continuous delivery model of Mobile Apps are a game changer as far as agility is concerned. You can bet that a mobile app 1 year down the line would be much much advanced than what it is today. Things are moving that fast.
(8) And lastly Fixed and Mobile broadband infrastructure is improving in most places which is the key enabler of cloud computing. Without a low latency high bandwidth network, cloud computing will remain "taking a computer is the cloud and working there" joke. Operators should be happy that even if their Voice and SMS revenues are getting canibalized by OTT applications, newe types of cloud applications are giving them more business on the data front.
I already stopped browsing and watching videos on the PC. its tablet all the way. I read and wrirte mails, blogs on the tablet or mobile almost 100%. I read books entirely on the iPad and on my kindle. I log in (ssh/telnet) to my linux PC from my IPAD and program. I could easily do that on AWS or something like that if my PC conks out. And I could read code on a remote VM running source insight. This year my wife preferred to leave her PC and Digital Camera @ home on her hometown vacation and instead is just carrying her Galaxy Note 2. She is ussing the Note device for her social networking (that includes taking pictures, processing them and sharing them). She needs a PC only for some software which is not available on Android (like some astrology stuff).
I think we are already in the middle of a transition towards mobile centric computing. The age of the PC and with it the Windows/Mac/Linux desktops is coming to an end. And fortunately no single( or small-group of) company holds a monopoly on this environment like Microsoft/Intel did on the PC. The enterprise is already moving to the cloud and mobile. The consumer market will also. And in the very near term. It may not be time as yet to get rid of your PC, but you must retrospect if you are thinking of buying a new one. I am not even going to upgrading my desktop PC unless its hardware becomes faultly.
Tablets might become as commoditized as PCs are today. Maybe 5-10 years down the line, you could go to an S.P. Road shop, and specify what Screen size you want, which mobile CPU, which motherboard, etc and have a custom assembled tablet done by them running an open-source Mobile OS. Perhaps the last berlin wall of proprietary Mobile/Tablet hardware will also be pulled down some day. Apple, Google and Amazon have turned the mobile and computing industry upside down !!!
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