Sorry Apple, Windows 8 ushers in the post-post-PC era

By on Sep 13, 2011 at 3:25 PM
Featured September 13, 2011

Microsoft executives took to the stage at the annual BUILD developer conference on Tuesday to give the world its first real look at the future of the Windows operating system. The reception, as you’ve likely read by now, has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, Apple bloggers were apparently so flustered by the platform that they resorted to bombarding Twitter with jokes about cooling fans and Silverlight instead of stopping for a moment to realize that Microsoft is showing us the future of computing. The PC was the future, and it let people perform functions they never thought possible. Then the tablet was the future, and it let people interact with content in ways they never thought possible. Now, the future means all things to all people. Read on for more.

I’ve mentioned it before on several occasions, but the point is much easier to make now that Microsoft has given the world a better look at its vision of the near-term future of computing. PCs are not going away. They will continue to be the primary means of computing for business and consumers alike. Tablets are not going away, either. They will continue to provide a much more intuitive way to interact with a consumer electronics device. Microsoft’s vision, however, unifies these devices.

One platform to rule them all. The technology exists to enable users to carry a single device that is as portable and usable as a tablet, but also as powerful and capable as a PC. It has a battery that can last all day, but it can also run Photoshop, Excel and Outlook. It can weigh next to nothing and slip into a slim case, but it can also power two monitors and run proprietary enterprise software.

When Windows 8 is finally bestowed upon the masses, each and every user will have Apple to thank. Windows 8 as we’re seeing it today would never have existed if competition from the iPad — and the iPhone before it — had not illuminated a giant light bulb over all of our heads: platforms can be both capable and intuitive. Apple’s iOS is the most fluid, logical, user friendly mass-market platform in the world, and it has forced the competition to look at products in a new light. Companies have been incredibly slow to adapt, however, and that is why Apple is currently the biggest tech company in the world.

But the iPad was only the beginning.

Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8. A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop. A tablet that can boot in under 10 seconds and fire up a full-scale version of Adobe Dreamweaver a few moments later. A tablet that can be slipped into a dock to instantly become a fully capable touch-enabled laptop computer. This is Microsoft’s vision with Windows 8, and this is what it will deliver.

People debate it all the time, but the simple fact is that “real work” is significantly more difficult to do on the iPad or on an Android tablet than it is on a Windows or Mac PC. Debate all you want. Android and iOS apps are dumbed down and infinitely less capable, typing is on a tablet is a pain in the ass unless you carry a Bluetooth keyboard, and the experience as a whole is severely limited.

We are not living in a “post-PC” era today any more than we were on January 26th, 2010, the day before Apple unveiled the magical iPad. Apple would love a post-PC era, of course, since personal computers no longer represent the bulk of the company’s revenue, but Microsoft is showing us that there is a better way. And that better way, as it turns out, is a PC.

Down the road, Mac OS and iOS will merge into a single platform or OS X will adopt enough iOS-like characteristics that Apple will finally be comfortable with slapping it on a touch-enabled device. Lion is the beginning of this process, though I sincerely hope future iterations offer less resistance. At that point in time, Apple will be able to offer a computing solution that is infinitely more versatile and capable than the company’s current solutions. A solution like Windows 8.

If the iPad ushered in the post-PC era, then welcome to the post-post-PC era.

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  • NoName

    As the Macalope once said, «it’s uncanny how future Microsoft products beat current Apple products time and time again, isn’t it?»

  • ILL TROOPER

    I guess you forgot to notice that the Windows 8 tablets that compete with the iPad WON’T be running full Windows applications, and certainly not Windows 7/Vista/95 applications.

    If anything, I think it might be confusing for the consumer at first to be told that ‘Windows 8 runs it all on your tablet” but not really. At least until processor speeds allow EVERY application to run on EVERY device.

    And you know what? Apple will be using those new processors too, allowing more powerful applications on iOS devices. Did you not know this game was going into multiple overtimes?

  • Jack Holland

    Dear Mr Epstein

    Do you honestly believe that Microsoft will take this horrible kludge of two interfaces, each with different operating paradigms, shoehorn it into a tablet form factor, give it the reliability of either OSX or iOS, find processors that will run ‘full’ applications, powered by a battery that will last more than a few hours (simultaneously ‘powering two monitors’) and sell it at a price point between that of an iPad and a MacBook Air ?

    Even if this were a sensible target for what you label ‘the post-post-PC’, do you seriously consider that Microsoft have the ability to create software that will run on lowest common denominator hardware, that achilles heel that has crippled the reliability and security of every iteration of Windows ?

    This looks like a desperate attempt to come up with a road map that distinguishes MS from Apple. Let’s agree to come back in a year’s time (by when we will have the next iPad and even faster Mac Airs, each running OS’s that are getting ever closer to convergence) and see how well Windows 8 is doing, how swiftly it has been adopted by users, and how many people have thrown away their iPads in favour of the latest Windows experience.

    Microsoft cannot innovate: it is not in their corporate philosophy or business strategy. Windows 8 is an attempt to take a pallid copy of OSX and bolt it on to a pretty, but third rate mobile OS. This is not the PC reborn, and MS were very foolish for showing something so far off a finished product and then being surprised at the ridicule. 

    At least the Courier had some cool factor. What happened to that, by the way ?

    • Hozo1

      thank you for sanity … corporate culture well explained

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UTVUYEYHCGPBXMB2R3XBBNFMHY Mark

    how does it win It isn’t even out yet

  • Yazoo

    How do you spot a MS Waterboy? Someone who compares a non shipping, non existent product with something that is actually going to ship & has shipped & tells you that it is better. Isn’t this the same thing you Dickholes said about Vista, Windows 7 blah. blah, blah.

  • Brownstone706

    Geez Louise people, go out and get some fresh air. Do something outside. Talk to someone, face to face. Go to a Baseball or Football game. Do something to get yourself back in touch with your fellow human beings. If you can’t bring yourself to do any of those things, for Pete’s sake, do something productive. If you are into Tech, focus your time and efforts on developing a new technology or process. If not something new, figure out how to improve an older item or process. All this incessant dribble about Apple, Android, iOS and which OS is going to win out over all the others, on, and on, and on has gotten so tiresome. It is so unproductive. I would much rather be known for developing a new technology that assists Surgeons in delicate brain operations, than being the shlep who went on and on about how the iPhone 5 is going to just trounce the next Droid from Whoever. Wouldn’t you?youngest

  • Dlsguy7

    I think your article title wrongly assumes that the Bloggers represent Apple. The bloggers represent themselves, not Apple. The truth is Apple does what Apple does and Microsoft does what Microsoft does. Why do you guys always want to pit one against the other. In the real world, there is room for everyone. 

  • Anonymous

    The Author realizes that Windows 8 Apps on ARM won’t work on Windows 8 x86  and vice versa, right?

  • http://twitter.com/MacMyDay Jorg

    The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple doesn’t “predict” the future with promises, but demonstrates them.  I want to see Microsoft deliver their promises before I can believe them.

  • Anonymous

    Apple copied the tablet from Microsoft… so it’s not that surprising… winmo7 looks a lot nicer than the boring iOS interface.

  • Mark Evans

    So how much did Microsoft pay you for this plug?  Rubbish.

  • Hozo1

    truth is in the numbers … just take a look at each company’s valuation to see who is succeeding and who isn’t … Apple is now worth more than Google and MS together … ‘end of a morainic, emotional fanboy discussion

  • Anonymous

    “Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8.”

    That’s so true.  Apple probably won’t release anything called Windows 8 for years, if ever.  :-( | ) Doh!

  • Anonymous

    The author seems to be saying that full-blown Windows 8 will be the OS of choice for tablets, and that further implies that tablet users will be able to run full-blown Windows apps.  So why all the talk of Metro apps for tablets?  These will not be full-blown Windows apps; they will be lightweight apps designed to take advantage of the form factor and input method available on tablets, and they will not provide the full capabilities of a full-blown Windows business app.  So MSFT is really following AAPL’s lead vis a vie Lion on the Mac and iOS on the mobile devices.

  • Anonymous

    Spot on.

  • Anonymous

    Another great article, Zach! You are truly the best writer on this website!

  • Anonymous

    This keeps getting better with time. I’m going to revisit this article many, many times over the next couple of years as Windows continues to fade away.

  • Anonymous

    This article is a joke. Why don’t we take a look at how well Microsoft’s mobile OS is doing right now. The last time I checked, WP7 didn’t even have a double digit market share, and it too was supposedly THE answer to mobile computing. 

    Sorry Microsoft fanboys, but Windows is on the way out – and all I can say, is good riddance. 

  • http://www.dmobilephone.com/2011/09/5-offbeat-iphone-games-pics.html iphone5 games

    Does really like this can happen

  • Peter Sisson

    Don’t confuse today with the future.

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