2014 Are we living in a post PC era?

With all the talk about smartphones and tablets I keep seeing references to how we "are living in a post PC era" but, really, are we? Will 2014 be the year we officially switch from desktop PCs to another platform and transition into the "post PC era"? In short the answer is NO, see below for further discussion about what the post-PC options are and why they are still just "PC enhancers" and not really ready to handle all of our personal computing needs without a desktop PC.

Wikipedia reference to "Post-PC era": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-PC_era

Ok, so what are the options that we humans could use in place of a desktop or laptop PC? I think it breaks down into Smartphones and Tablets with the latest round of game consoles as a close runner up.

The gaming console market is currently split between Sony Playstation and Microsoft XBox with poor Nintendo trying to keep up with the Wii.The PS4 and XBox One come pretty close to being PC replacements but are still very focussed on the living room with some social networking features added. To be real contender they would have to be something you would consider putting in a cubicle. They are at least two generations away from that and with the gaming console generation lasting about 10 years that is a good bit away.

Ok, so in both the smartphone and tablet market there are options available from Apple (iOS), Google (Android), and Microsoft (Windows). Each has pros and cons but none really can yet stand alone without a full sized personal computer.

The Apple smartphone aka iPhone was a trend setter when it was released in 2007 by releasing a device with the touchscreen as the only form of input supported; no keyboard and no stylus. The iPhone was closely followed by the iPad in 2010. Even today iOS has the best all around and most intuitive user interface. My five year old had no trouble picking up the iPad and figuring out how to use it. In fact he gets yelled at a lot for having the volume up too loud and has trouble finding the physical volume controls on one corner of the device but was able to more easily figure out how to double click the home button, scroll through open app icons to get to the music controls, and turn down the volume there on the touch screen rather then figure out which end of the device is up that has the physical volume controls. Microsoft and Google were years behind Apple copying their multi-touch controls. The other outstanding feature of iOS is the walled garden. The iTunes store is the single source for legally purchasing music, movies, applications and books. The advantage of this walled garden is that you know you will get a good product and you know you can trust the reviews because Apple censors everything that comes through the iTunes store. The disadvantage of the walled garden is that Apple censors everything that comes through the iTunes store so there are things you might want that you cannot get. Strangely enough the other really outstanding selling point for iOS is as an eBook reader. Out of the box iOS supports ePub, PDF, iBooks, Kindle, and Nook books which covers all of the available formats and it is so easy you can show Grandma how to do it. There is also the Overdrive app for free eBooks and audio books from the library.

Will an iPhone or iPad provide you with all of your personal computing needs? No, it won't. The iPhone is the perfect size to work one handed while walking, standing in line somewhere, on the toilet, or wherever else you need some instant electronic gratification. The iPad has a much bigger screen for viewing presentations, watching movies, reading books and documents, checking on your social networking sites, and catching up on emails. The lack of a physical keyboard may seem like an impediment but it really is not once you get used to it. I can type just as fast on my iPad mini touch screen keyboard as I can on my desktop computer keyboard. Where iOS falls apart is in content creation. There are some specialized kinds of things you can create on an iOS device like touch screen art, music, movies, and time lapse photography sequences but to monetize them you have to get them out of the device and that requires a desktop or laptop computer to sync with your iTunes. The other thing the iOS devices lack is a file system. Yes, iOS has a filesystem under the hood based on a Unix core but it is entirely hidden behind the UI and each app is put into its own little walled garden that limits access to data from other applications. You have to supplement your iOS device with cloud based storage solutions like DropBox, Google Drive, and iCloud (with iCloud being the most limited). Lacking the ability to create or edit documents makes iOS useless for any business application. Just try to take a document attached to an email, make edits, and send it back out for review via email; you need a desktop computer in the middle to make that happen.

Google has its Android operating system that it has made available on both smartphones and tablets. Android was a bit behind the iPhone launching it's first smartphone in 2008 and the Nexus 7 tablet in 2012. There were Android tablets before 2012 but it is best not to speak of them because they were truly terrible. Android stole most of the nice touchscreen interface features from iOS but also made its own contributions to the mobile operating system market. The pull down notification menu on Android was a huge improvement over how iOS plastered notifications in the middle of the screen interrupting whatever you may have been doing at the time. Apple was quick to copy the Android style notifications in iOS5 with the iPhone 4s release but still is not as good at it. The big advantage of Android is that it is so open where iOS is so locked down. This means practically any manufacturer of any device can run Android as its core platform and add their own special sauce to it. This makes for a much wider selection of devices more suited to your personal tastes that are not offered by Apple in its limited iPhone and iPad model lineups. The Google Play store is like the anti-iTunes store. You can buy practically any app you want there even stuff that straddles the lines of legality like apps to crack WiFi passwords or mobile hotspot apps you can run after rooting your device that you don't have to pay the extra fees to your mobile provider for the luxury of using. The big disadvantage of Android is that it is so open so means practically any manufacturer of any device can run Android as its core platform and add their own special sauce to it. This means there is not a lot of consistency in Android devices. Moving from one Android device to another means re-learning where a lot of the widgets you are accustomed to have moved. It also becomes harder to select the best app to do what you need since you have to filter through several apps until you find one that works like you want and the reviews are useless as they are all 5 star reviews bought by the manufacturer of the app. You also have to keep in mind that where Apple started selling low cost devices to push it iTunes sales, Google started selling low cost devices to get in the hands of consumers where they can collect data about the users that they use to sell advertising. Big data is big business. If you have concerns about personal privacy then do not use Android devices. Android comes a lot closer to having a file system. If you know what you are doing you can navigate the core file system, copy files and and out of there at will, and even get into the core operating system files and run custom shell scripts once you root the device. You can also find a device with an SD card slot you can use to move files in and out of the device and share with other devices. So you can copy your docs down to an SD card, work on them on a long plane flight on your Android tablet, then attach them to an email and send them out to your colleagues a lot easier on Android. Another area where Android lacks is in eBooks. Where iOS supports all of the eBook formats right out of the box it becomes a science experiment with Android where you end up choosing the right app that works with the book formats you have chosen to purchase. I also want to personally want advise anyone in the market for a tablet device to avoid at all costs the Amazon Kindle Fire, even the new HDX one. Where Android is the not-Apple device Amazon has taken a step back and put the Kindle Fire into its own Amazon branded garden so you can only get your music, movies, books, and even apps from Amazon. If you want to live in a walled garden get an iPad instead and live in a much more luxurious and larger garden.

Will an Android device provide you with all of your personal computing needs? No, it won't. At best it can be used as a companion device to allow you to take your content with you and even work on it in a limited fashion. What Android is still lacking as well as iOS is true multi-tasking. Both iOS and Android are full screen devices. You can have multiple applications running but you have to switch between them and even with Android it is not easy to use different apps to work on the same files; some apps will support that and some will not; some apps will work with dropbox or google drive and some will not; some apps can access the SD card storage and some cannot. When you really want to be production you still need a desktop computer from which you can have multiple applications running in multiple windows at the same time, operating on the same files and complementing each other. This is something that desktop computers have been doing since the days of Windows 3.1 in 1992. Touchscreen devices have still not quite figured out how to multi-task effectively.

Last and least in this space where they should have and should be dominating is Microsoft. With Microsoft Window and Microsoft Office as their core business Microsoft stands to lose the most in the transition to the Post-PC era. Unfortunately Microsoft was really stumbled through this. The first version of Windows CE was released in 1996, more then 10 years ahead of the iPhone. I owned a Philips Velo 1 running Windows CE  in 1997 (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/7122/Philips-Velo-1/). Windows CE v3.0 was the basis for the Pocket PC operating system in 2000. Pocket PC powered the first generation of PDA devices like the Compaq iPaq. Pocket PC led to Windows Mobile running on the first real smartphones in 2002 which was fully 5 years ahead of the iPhone. I had two different Windows Mobile based smarthpones, one with a stylus and one with a slide out keyboard. So, what happened? Microsoft kind of dropped the ball and went from leading the smartphone market to following it. The iPhone and Android blew Microsoft right out of the market while they kept trying to improve Windows Mobile to compete but it just felt like they weren't trying very hard. Where windows mobile smartphones used to be the cool device for which you could get any app they were completely replace by Android which is now the cool device for which you can get any app and Apple which maintains a level of system stability Microsoft devices have never had and even Android does not have now. Microsoft has attempted to re-enter the market with the Windows Phone operating system released in 2010 but by then they were late to the game.

As sad as the Microsoft story sounds they are actually now taking an interesting path that has the potential to leapfrog Apple and Google. With the Surface tablet and Windows 8 Microsoft has started to unify the mobile and desktop interfaces into the same look and feel. What they have out now is atrocious. The Windows 8 touchscreen interface (Metro) is terrible and the first thing you want to do with a new Windows 8 PC is get into desktop mode and get your start menu back. The Surface RT and Surface 2 tablets have a desktop mode but it won't run the same desktop apps you can run on your PC so it is just annoying. The Surface 2 Pro comes the closest to a device with the potential to be called a truly usefull Post-PC era device but compared to any other tablet it is huge, heavy, and clunky and compared to a laptop it is tiny with a crappy keyboard.

Will any Microsoft phone or tablet do replace your desktop PC. Well, yes, actually, the Surface Pro 2 could as well as the third party variants of the same style like the Dell Venue 11, Sony Vaio Tap 11, and Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11s. What all of these devices share is that they are too big and heavy to compete with iPad or Android and the Windows 8 interface is just too clunky as it is now.

2014 is not the year of the Post-PC era. What my generation grew up on (the PC era) and is accustomed to for multi-tasking is WIMP - Windows, Icons, Mouse, and Pointers. The full screen multi-touch interface has icons (aka apps) and can get by through the use of a finger to replace the mouse and pointer. The technology is missing a revelation that can replace Windows as a mechanism for working on multiple applications at the same time. With the release of Windows 9 in 2015 we might be there. That also gives Apple another year to surprise us by merging the Max OSX and iOS experience into the same operating system and releasing touchscreen iMacs, MacBook, iPhone, and iPad lines to take advantage of it. Strangely enough without the vision of Steve Jobs at the helm I think Microsoft may have a chance to get back in the game here. Android is almost always a follower in the phone and tablet market so I don't see Google surprising us unless Google glass or robots become viable  in the next 2 years. Google could *really* surprise everone if they managed to come up with an affordable and reliable personal assistant robot with 12 hours of battery life running an Android operating system powered by voice commands and locomotive enough to follow you around in your daily activities and present you with information when you need it. I don;t see that happening until Microsoft or Apple come up with a more clever way to enable multi-tasking in the multi-touch interface and thus unleash us from our desktop computers.

Why no iWatch in 2013?

Before the iPhone 5s announcement some were speculating that there would be an iWatch announced similar to the LAME Samsung Galaxy Gear watch. Luckily for Apple, they did not go down this route of releasing such a useless device that only uber geeks would ever purchase.

Apple no longer has the product visionary that was Steve Jobs to keep them from doing stupid stuff like releasing a tablet to the market or integrating 4G LTE to the iPhone before the technology was ready so there was at least some risk that they would "jump on board" with the iWatch craze but they did not. The fact is that the technology is not quite there yet. The technology was not quite there yet for smartphones either until Apple put all the right bits together when they launched the iPhone. Apple needs to do the same for the wrist based mobile computing market as well.

If I were the product visionary at Apple, here is what I would be telling the product design teams are the required elements before Apple can launch such a device.

First and foremost the iWatch must be a full featured phone with all of the things we have come to expect from a phone like video chat, 4G LTE connectivity, and mobile hotspot and it should be designed to support 48 hours of battery life under normal usage to ensure that even under heavy usage you never have to charge the thing more then once a day when you sleep. It also needs to be waterproof so you can feel safe about wearing it while jogging (eww sweat!) or swimming.

Hardware in such a tiny device needs to be simplified and somewhat modular to more easily support growth in the product line as technology increases. I see this device as having three primary components: Storage, CPU, and I/O.

The wrist band, screen, and sensor package would be considered the I/O to make upgrades in new product and maybe even third party designs possible. The sensors should include a front facing camera for video conferencing as well as health monitoring devices like heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure sensors. As far as the screen goes 4x3 is the right aspect ratio for such a device as no one is going to be watching HD movies on their wrist. An initial launch with a 640x480 resolution would be sufficient although a retina display at 1280x1024 would be better. There should be a single waterproof connector joining the I/O casing to the CPU.

The CPU is, of course, the heart of the device. This will require an entirely new System On a Chip design incorporating a smaller GPU (less screen real estate and nobody is going to be playing 3D accelerated games on their wrist) but including the basic Flash memory in the chip. 8GB of integrated Flash memory should be sufficient to hold apps and music and maybe a couple SD video files. Inside the SOC should also be a couple dedicated co-processors to deal with listening for voice commands, handling input from the sensors, and providing a low power limited display of date-time and notifications without bringing the main processor online. The circuit board should only need some power circuitry, the SOC, and a radio chip (for 4G LTE, WiFi, GPS, etc), The Lightning connector for power and data should come right through the casing and directly into the CPU unit. It would be even more innovative if Apple could make this work with a magnetic connector for both the power and the data. Having the power handled in the CPU is important for reasons I will get into lower down.

The "Storage" device would encompass the storage of power and data. That is, additional Flash memory would be grafted onto the battery allowing different options like 8 and 24GB of additional memory so there would be options of 16GB and 32GB storage at different price ranges.Like the I/O component a single waterproof connector would join the storage to the CPU

What the hardware design gets Apple is the ability to have the three different components manufactured in secret by three different factories that have no knowledge of what they are building. This thing would need to be top secret so Apple will initially probably want the final assembly to be done domestically for that first launch. Maybe even the I/O component should be done in the states initially.

Now the device itself alone is not compelling because not that many folks are going to want to talk into their wrist like a speakerphone Dick Tracy style. What that means is that Apple needs to launch this thing with their own custom designed Bluetooth accessories. The innovation here needs to be in how these devices are charged because the thing that sucks the most about bluetooth headsets is remembering to charge them. To that end, the CPU should be responsible for charging the bluetooth wirelessly and balance power usage such that the battery on the wrist will last exactly as long as the bluetooth. There is no need to have a full charged bluetooth when the phone battery gives out and vice versa.

The base model bluetooth device Apple should include for free should be stereo bluetooth voice only. That would be two devices so that you can wear just the one for phone conversations or put in both for stereo music while working out.

The next level of bluetooth device would include a camera that pokes out from under your ear and includes an LED flash. Because, seriously, no one is going to take photos by pointing their wrist at things and then reaching out with their other hand to click the shutter. Instead they can look at what they want to take a picture of Google Glass style. Once people get used to it they won't even look at their phone as a viewfinder trusting that the camera will capture what they are looking at.

The third level of bluetooth device would be a small tv looking unit you stick on your desk for stereo music and video on a bigger screen and would include its own front facing camera for video conferencing.

IMHO launching the device I describe here with the accessories available at launch would be the game changer that would put wrist based mobile computing into the general public.