First of, I’m coming from a background of mostly PC background (hardware, software, development, support and admin). I’ve been in ‘this’ business for more than 15 years (more actually) and have seen and lived through multiple waves of changes in the IT world – heck I still remember the days we were worried everything is going to stop working moving from DOS 6.22 to that ‘awful’ Windows 95 with the default graphical interface… hehe Anyway, I think we are the doorstep of such another major jump… well actually it is already busy, it’s just a matter of getting use to the new direction of the ‘flow’!

Second of, I don’t think the classic PC is going to disappear soon. No matter what the fruit company is telling everyone. But things are changing for the PC world and we can all (each one of us) choose whether we wanna go along for the ride or hang on to the side until the wave takes us in. Lately the trend is everything is going ‘mobile’ – or ‘without wires’ at least. It is ironic that Microsoft is one of those that actually had a finger in the pie starting all of this and each time something interesting started showing up they stayed behind. Now – no matter what they claim, they are playing catch-up. But it may not be a bad thing – then again it  could be…

Windows 8 and Microsoft

Personally I’m not a fan of Metro – but only if I’m viewing it from the traditional ‘PC side’. As an OS for touch devices like tablets it is really good! The issue is just that it doesn’t play nice with older stuff – like older hardware, software, users…. Hardware will eventually be replaced with newer stuff, software as well even though it might take a bit longer (some application vendors might take longer to adjust if they still exist…) and then users… that is where the ‘something brown’ hits the fan…. People get upset with change. Everyone does, its part of life. The older you are the more full of ‘brown stuff’ you become 🙂 However, even  users will adapt… eventually… hopefully. The question is how much will have changed in the interim until Microsoft can reclaim their old market share in terms of users, applications etc. Are they gona survive this transition? They might be big but even they can only survive ‘so long’ on ‘old cash’. Time will tell… They might end up with two sets of ‘user bases’, the old PC world and the new hip mobile world. They are big enough (now) to support it but like explained just above, things will change. All I can say is good luck and hold on tight!

Us developers

If you are in the world of application and system development then you should already know things have been changing (unless you are living on a tropical island isolated from the rest of the world – hey I’d like to be with ya!). The changes will require some rewriting of stuff, scrapping of others and creating some new ones as well. It could be interesting. Some old applications could be ported to the newer ‘world’. Others can’t be because they fundamentally work differently and require things that the mobile world can’t or not yet support. Take something like software development itself. It is kind of hard to do writing code on a tablet for several reasons – like screen size, multi tasking (running and debugging at the same time). Compiling code also takes up some real heavy resources – when dealing with ‘real’ systems being coded/developed. Mobiles just don’t have what it takes… yet.

Then, the current generation of touch devices mostly focus on touch (ok fruit company has a voice thing as well but it is really just a toy now). Perhaps with things like Kinect things will change if there are more ways to interact with devices. Again, only time will tell.

The future of the PC

To summarize the summary of a summary: The death of the PC has been greatly exaggerated. The ol grrl still has som kick in er… Shis juss putten some new dress on…

And remember’, Panic IS an option’. Perhaps not the best one but…