The Post PC Era?

During the “All Things Digital” conference, Steve Jobs talks about how the PC (Mac and Windows included) as we know it will not be as prevalent as it was in the past.

He makes this somewhat grand statement that devices like the iPad will soon take the place of full fledged PCs. And as I listened to this interview, the first reaction was to say that this notion is ridiculous; but then you have to think about the rather controversial moves that Apple has made in the past that was before its time and they were right on:

• 1988: Apple IIc Plus removes 5.25 inch floppy disc in favor for 3.5 inch floppy drive
• 1998: Apple iMac G3 removes floppy disc in favor for a sole CD-ROM drive and the introduction of the USB port
• 2005: Apple scraps native support for its Mac OS 9 operating system with the move to Intel chips, which forced many software developers to rewrite their applications

And all of these moves proved to be pivotal for the company. But I digress: the reason why I think I agree with Steve Jobs right now is that I believe that user experience is the most important thing right now in computing. Users want to be able to use their computer and have it perform the way they want to. Processing speeds and specs matter up to the point of ensuring that quality user experience. And hardware technology has gotten to a point where you don’t need the fastest processor to get that level of user experience for the tasks most people do day by day. There are many people today whose computing needs are satisfied by mobile phones right now, arguably revealing the beginning of this Post-PC era. There will always need to be application developers and content providers that will need full fledged PC’s to do their work, but what about everyone else? What do you think?