The post-pc era

Earlier this year when Apple introduced the second generation iPad, it trumpeted itself as the leaders in the push for this so called "post-PC era". It was the transition of our computing digital life away from the personal computer to portable mobile devices like mobile phones and tablets. No longer will you be tied to the big hunk of PC tower and monitor setup at home to process word documents or surf the web. Everything digital will be assessable everywhere you go.

WHY POST-PC

The post-PC era is clearly the next logical big leap in our computing lives. The majority of of things we use the computer for are content enjoyment and social networking. Surfing the web, reading books, watching videos, listening to music, and viewing photos are examples of the kind of mass media content that consumes the most of our computing time. Social networking of course is the other big part, with websites such as Facebook, and the myriad of instant messaging apps. For the majority of people, the PC in essence is only a place to peruse the Internet, store/view digital media, and network with friends.

Nowadays, people want to do all of that anytime, anywhere. Not because it is an indulgence (that teenage with paid mobile broadband might be), but it is to save people time, and enrich their lives. Think of the first smartphone you have ever owned. Before that you not ever think you need mobile internet or emailing capabilities on phone, but once you have used the smartphone for a period you wonder how the heck did you ever lived without it. Another example: for people saddled with the indemnity of a torturous work commute, how much better would it make if they can have access to their music collection on their mobile devices (as opposed to 1000 CDs).  

HIGHLY MOBILE DEVICES

Certainly, the big hunk of steel that traditionally house the guts of PCs are not at all portable (even all-in-one PCs like the iMac are not at that portable - easier to carry, yes). But you say the majority of people have laptops, are they not mobile? That may be true, but once you have used a tablet device, you are going to find that even the average laptops are quite heavy. Or let's put it his way: you are on the road, and need to check email quickly. What would you rather use - A mobile phone or a laptop? Laptops can be seen as the first wave in the transition of the post-PC era, but with today's available technology, even it is categorized in the same camp as traditional PCs.

The computing future for the majority will lie in mobile phones, tablets, and ultra portable laptops. Mobile phones has had the most advance stage of transition in that smart phones with browsers, email, and thousands of apps are already outselling "dumb phones". It has taken over our digital lives, as evident in all the people walking around staring into their phones, invariably running into objects. Tablets such as the iPad offers the same function of smart phones but with a larger canvas that primarily aids in a better enjoyment of digital content and web (I am certainly not watching a movie on my phone). 

Ultra portable laptops are the most interesting. As proposed by chipmaker Intel earlier this year, they are a new breed of laptops that undercuts the weight of the average laptop by half (2.5 pounds and under). These are not just underpowered net books however, because ultra portable laptops have low wattage mobile versions of full featured, consumer class processors. They don't skimp on screen size either, as it varies between 11"-13". What this class of mobile device aim to do is replicate the lightweight and batter life of tablets, but offer some things tablet could not - TRUE multitasking, and an actual keyboard for better long form word processing. An example of ultra portable laptops out in the market right now is the Apple Macbook Air.

LIVING WITHOUT THE PC

No matter device, the aim of the post-PC era movement is to rid the majority of consumers of their PCs at home. The devices aforementioned have made the abilities of the PC redundant. Having both a PC and mobile devices is simply a waste (electricity!), when the latter can perform the tasks of the former equality well.

There is one thing that mobiles devices lack - massive amounts of storage. Just when we are starting to talk in the realm of terabytes, mobiles devices have knocked us back down to gigabytes (of course, this simply due to space and cost constraints). So if where will consumers store all their digital content? The answer involve networking on the intra and inter levels. The krux of the problem is the lack of storage space correct? The easiest way to solve the problem is to off shore the storage off the device, either by an external hard/flash drive (either plugging it in directly to the device or accessed via wifi by plugging it to a router), or storing it on the internet cloud (where the content can be accessed anywhere). 

Being mobile is great, but what about the home? Indeed, people don't really want to stare at tiny screens the whole day (though a 10 in tablet is surprising comfortable to use). The solution is simple - docking stations. Have a way to "plug in" your mobile device and the use it off an external monitor and wireless connected keyboard and mouse. This will please the people that simply prefer a larger screen (like a traditional PC) and actual keyboard do computing at their home. 

Another solution is connected TVs. If you want to show or enjoy your digital content on a larger canvas, one should be able to simply and wireless beam the signal over from their mobile device to the TV (a la Apple Airplay technology). Television is just about the last major tech appliance to still not be connected to the web, and that is rapidly changing. Soon TVs will have small computers in them to allow them to connect to devices, the web, and run computer apps. 

THE POST-PC ERA

In the post-PC era, traditional PCs will only be sold to people that requires it, namely content creators, digital art professionals, and hardcore PC gamers. Even then, it will only be for the serious ones that really need the horsepower of traditional PCs. Apps for mobile devices are plenty varied and plenty robust that even photographers can edit photos on tablets. Those apps will only get better and more technical when the technology behind mobile devices grow powerful (there is no reason to not assume that mobiles devices will someday be just as powerful as PCs). 

Clearly, the technological foundation is clearly set for the transition to the post-PC era, and it is nice to see tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft (Windows 8 is completely mobile device focused), and Intel be the innovators and pushers of the movement. 

To the cloud!

I bet a bunch of you use the great Pandora app to listen to music. Now imagine instead of playing internet radio, it plays the music you have (I am being told right now that Last.fm does this). Imagine all the music you own, available on the internet for you to access anywhere by any device. No more worrying about whether that iPod will have enough hard drive space to carry all the music. Because everything will be in the "cloud"

Having music online is just part of the big picture of cloud computing. The gist of cloud computing is that instead of using a computer to do work and entertain, all you need is a portal or device to connect to the world wide web. Once there you can perform all the normal task one does with a computer such as listening to music, watch movies, word process, do projects, play games, etc. The single biggest benefit is that all your content and things will be available anywhere there is an internet connection. No more having to put things into thumb drives and having multiple devices to do different things. 

Some say it is the future of computing. In a ever connected world (if only US will catch up to Asia in terms of Internet speed) where people are as mobile as ever (cue the lady that fell into a fountain while texting), it makes sense to have the computer be on the internet, while only needing a device to connect to it for access and use. This all sounds absolutely awesome and great, but there comes the big question: do you want all your media and documents uploaded online? 

It is not hard to tell that people like to own tangible things. The digital revolution sort of blurred that line in that instead of things we can touch like physical discs, our movies nowadays are streamed to us, or in a computer file if you purchased it digitally. Cloud computing will fulfill the prophecy in that a person technically won't own any of his or her media at all! They will only have access to it since it is all stored online.

Are you going to be comfortable will only having "access" to your files? Now in the grand scheme of things it makes no difference since that same piece of music will still be able to be heard by you whether you have it on your computer of you are accessing it through the internet. But as the cliche goes, shit happens. The internet is manmade after all, and manmade things sort of not work perfectly from time to time. Anything and everything digital in essence is just ones and zeros. If a "1" suddenly gets misplaced then boom that movie file stored online no longer works. Bottom line, I am not sure if people are comfortable enough to allow the internet to keep their files and keep is SAFE.

There comes the question of accessibility as well. Not at the user end, as people are as connected as ever. People in metropolitan cities have high speed internet at home, mobile broadband on the road, and many establishments carry free wifi. Connection from the user is not the problem. The problem is the hosting end. As we all with a cell phone know that data cost money. Thus having media and things on the cloud takes up a lot of space. Having to transfer everything you connect also takes up space. Who is going to pay for the bandwidth? Everybody's favorite cloud syncing software Dropbox starts charging once a user uploads more than 2gb.

Not to mention all the computer serving power to host everything on the cloud (Watson?). Remember, just because it is off your computer and on the internet does not mean it does not have to be stored at least somewhere.

So it is still quite cost prohibitive for cloud computing to happen for anything other than documents (Google Docs), pictures (Picasa), music, books, etc. Things that are relatively small in terms of file size. Definitely won't be seeing movies anytime soon (movie editing and sharing right on the cloud? can only dream for now), much less high definition.

I don't need to mention how absurdly easy would be to SHARE stuff if things were on the cloud. Want to borrow this movie I have? Oh here is the download link. It's that easy.  

Perhaps it is the minimalist in me, but I for one welcomes cloud computing and the future it brings. The convenient and accessibility is just too damn good to not utilize. Ever have that one paper you've spent all night on but forgot to print and brine to class? Had you have done it on the cloud, then all you need to do is find a computer at school and print it out! No need for USB thumb drives or emailing it to yourself (which by the way is the one the first and primitive forms of cloud computing: it replaced physical mail).

I would love to have all my music and pictures and movies online to be accessed anywhere. Do I trust the cloud to keep my files safe from sudden acts of god? HELL NO. As with anything digital, you should always have a backup plan. Anything valuable and irreplaceable should have a second copy somewhere safe anyways. Even if things were not on the cloud, valuable files should be backed up regularly. For example my entire music collection has mirroring copies on two computers, one iPod, one backup hard drive, and another hard drive that is somewhere that is not my house (in case acts of god happens to the house, knocks wood). If that is does not guarantee the safety of my music then I deserve to lose it (and then cry).

True cloud computing for all facets of actual computing has ways to go, but I am liking the way it is headed (I dropbox all my documents and projects). People should embrace it too, and not just because Microsoft decided to use "to the cloud!" as a marketing gimmick. It has real and substantial value to the end user.