❧ Eric Portelance

This week, Apple will be hosting its Back to the Mac event, where they are rumoured to unveil Mac OS X 10.7, a new MacBook Air, iLife and iWork ‘11. As Apple concedes in the event’s media invitation, many people had begun to wonder if the Mac was being unfairly neglected in favour of the shinier and now more popular iOS-based devices (iPhones, iPads, iPods).

Yet we shouldn’t blame Apple for having shifted huge amounts of resources into this emerging platform over the past few years. The mobile space (including tablets) has exploded, and they’re clearly in it to win it. At WWDC last June, there weren’t even any Mac sessions — it was all about iOS. What’s a Mac developer to do?

Personal computers as we know them, including the Mac, will be relegated to a niche product within the next few years. Tablets are the future. There will no doubt continue to be a need among many of us for a high-performance, multitasking, windowed operating system, but that need won’t and shouldn’t extend to the average consumer.

Most people perform a few simple tasks on their computer: email, web browsing, consuming content (video, audio, photos, reading), and basic content creation (documents and spreadsheets). All of these things can be done today on a tablet — in some cases even better than with desktop computers. And it will only continue to improve as the form factor matures in the coming years.

The success of the iPad, with 7.5M units sold since its launch less than 6 months ago, seems to prove that Apple is on to something. The first million iPads were sold twice as fast as the original iPhone. And it’s not just techies who are buying these, but regular people as well. If you consider the iPad a PC, Apple is now the number one computer maker in the United States, with 25% marketshare.

Most people have had an antagonistic relationship with computers for years. They have mastered a few simple tasks that they need to accomplish on a daily basis, and yet the experience of using a computer is still incredibly frustrating for the average person. As a self-professed techie, I get questions on a daily basis from friends and family about their computer woes. How do I install this webcam? Why is it beeping? Where did my contacts go? Why won’t it print? How do I resize this photo? It’s enlightening to sit and watch an average person tackle problems on a PC. Their behaviours are rarely as we (the techies) expect them to be.

And yet, for many of these users who struggle with machines on a daily basis, the iPad immediately makes sense to them. I’ve watched as people use an iPad for the first time. It’s completely intuitive and satisfying to them, and they know that they need to own one. Even two-year-olds get it. Tablets are the future of computing. 

I love Mac OS X as much as anyone but, for the average user, the added complexities of window management alone make it unnecessary for most tasks. With the tablet, our antagonistic relationship with computers may soon be over — and personal computers as we know them will become a niche product.

✳ opinion ✳ apple ✳ computers ✳ technology ✳ tablet ✳ iPad