With CES over, and some Apple announcement’s ahead, I totally missed the big picture as remarked upon by market analyst Horace Dediu.
At this year’s CES two unthinkable things happened:
- The abandonment of Windows exclusivity by practically all of Microsoft’s OEM customers.
- The abandonment of Intel exclusivity by Microsoft for the next generation of Windows.
…
These actions confirm the end of the PC era.
Heavy stuff, but: yep, check:  Apple made substancial gains in the enterprise, especially in mobile. And Microsoft is gonna support ARM on ‘Windows’, ending a seemingly eternal commitment to x86.
One More Thing: App Store and Touch Interface
I’ll argue that the dual developments of the Mac App Store announcement AND the emergence of the tablet further supports such a position on the end of an era as such:
- The centralized application distribution center – even mirrored as it is by the repositories of Linux –  is a sign of the maturation of the personal computer as a device, further away from specialized machine and more towards general-human appliance.
- The emergence of touch-interface tablets in appliance-like devices is a sign, of well, the exact same fissure. Doubly so given that the generative competition is between Apple and Google, with Windows nowhere in sight despite a decade of generalized vision of tablets as the future of the market.
Well hey. THE END OF THE PC ERA. I buy it figuratively, and literally still really rather want a 2nd Gen iPad.
Dediu via Daring Fireball.
