The PC is dead. Long live the PC.

I saw a couple of interesting articles this week on the rise of tablet computers and the pending death of the PC. The first was a news article on the new CEO of Apple talking about the "post-PC era." Apparently they sold more iPads in the past 3 months than any single PC manufacturer sold PCs. That's a pretty radical shift in technologies.

The other article I saw was on LinkedIn and focused mostly on smart phones but also talked about tablets. They projected the global use of smartphones and tablets increasing whilst PC use stayed flat. I suspect that their extrapolations for PC use may be shaky and I could envisage a decline rather than a plateau.

The times they are a-changing... again.

I started my career in the late 80s and early 90s in the UK at a time when businesses were starting to use PCs more widely and home use of PCs was pretty rare. Though it didn't seem like it then, that was a pretty revolutionary time. Think about handwriting memos or having the typing pool type one up for you, that you could then pop in the internal mail system to have it delivered next day. I'm sure I must have done that but I honestly don't recall it. For as long as I remember, email has been ubiquitous for business communication. Similarly, spreadsheets have been the mainstay of basic engineering calcs and data presentation, and PowerPoint has been the basic tool for presenting ideas.

The subsequent couple of decades (OK now I feel old using an expression like that!) saw home use of PCs increase dramatically especially as the Internet and information age took off.

About 18 months ago my lovely wife bought me an iPad (now that the iPad 3 is out I can legitimately claim to have an "original" iPad!) I've used it for plenty of fun stuff like Angry Birds (love the new one, by the way), Words with Friends, watching TV, reading books and mags, looking at maps, studying scriptures, viewing You Tube, looking up movies, checking Facebook,... For home use the iPad is ideal and I really can't think of why I'd need a home PC. I could see that home PCs could become a thing of the past within a few years or maybe just kept around for our kids to do their homework!

21st Century Office

So it's a no-brainer that the iPad is ideally suited for home use. Also a no-brainer that it's great for keeping kids young and old entertained when traveling. The thing I haven't figured out is how the iPad and other tablet devices could change the face of business. At the end of the 20th Century it was business use that drove PC development initially and then home use came second. In the 21st Century it's possible that home use of iPads will spill over into business use that will transform the office in the future.

I use my iPad at home but I've also used it some for work. Below I list out some ways I've used my iPad for work stuff with varying degrees of success versus using my laptop.

iPad works well for...

Reading e-mail: in this I find the iPad superior to my laptop. It's more natural to swipe through an email and tap on attachments. Very nice.

Reading PDFs: similar to e-mail, it's natural and easy to use the iPad. Annotating is pretty easy too with the right app. I'm using Notability and I like it a lot. Much better than using my laptop and the basic Acrobat reader.

Giving, editing or creating presentations: I really like Keynote and the couple of times I've given presentations using my iPad it was very slick. Once it was a formal presentation and the latter it was more informal sitting around a table. This was especially cool as it's more relaxed and natural to use the iPad than booting up your laptop and having it obtrusively on the table. I have even played with creating and editing presentations and think it's actually easier and more intuitive to use your finger than using a mouse. I just wish there was an AirPlay projector so I could cut the cord. Also, I'd love to use my Prezi app but unfortunately it only works with a projector for iPad 2 or 3 and not my "original."

Looking for reference material from the Internet or "Googling": the iPad excels in this, whether you're simply using Safari or one of the many apps specifically made for the iPad, it's very convenient to pick up the iPad and look something up. I love the Wolfram Alpha app.

Checking and updating my calendar: the mobility and inobtrusiveness of iPad make it ideal to take to a meeting where you can check and update your schedule. Arguably a smartphone is even more mobile and useful in this regard but here I'm just making the case for the iPad vs laptop.

Taking notes during a meeting: I probably should have listed this earlier as its such an obvious one, but I guess I don't do this as much as I could. Having an iPad in a meeting is as inobtrusive as having a notebook and yet you have access to your emails, and other info on your device plus the Internet. You can take notes and have them stored electronically. Very nice.

iPad works OK for...

Replying to e-mail: if it's a short reply of a couple of paragraphs you're OK, but if you want to type a long reply, poking on the keyboard on screen is tedious. I guess I could invest in a Bluetooth keyboard if I seriously wanted to generate more text. I guess I could also play with voice recognition.

Editing Word documents: similar to replying to email, the various apps for editing Word documents are OK but you wouldn't want to type too much. I've also run into problems with the graphics in Word documents being messed up. Maybe sticking to simpler Word documents and getting a keyboard would allow me to do more?

Using simple spreadsheets: as an engineer I use spreadsheets a lot. I've struggled to use the Apple "Numbers" app or other apps like QuickOffice that let you edit Excel spreadsheets. If the spreadsheet is simple, it is awesome to be able to have a spreadsheet "in the field" to enter data on site or to show operators or clients some simple calcs. I haven't done much with more complex spreadsheets but maybe that will come with time!

iPad really doesn't work well for...

Creating Text Documents: unless it's a short note, simple email or a blog! Maybe I need to get a keyboard after all!

Accessing Work Documents: in typing out this blog and thinking through the biggest impediment to me using my iPad more, I realize that I have a lot of files and information on my laptop hard drive. I also have information on severs in our office and on ProjectWise, none of which I can access from my iPad. This should be an easy fix for our IT folks if there's a will to do it but I suspect that it won't happen for a few years yet. For now I get by with shifting pertinent documents over to Dropbox but that has limited capacity, I'm way too disorganized to remember to transfer files and still it doesn't help me access internal company files.

Livemeeting: not sure why but my firm uses Livemeeting and you cannot access it from an iPad. Personally I would love for us to switch to WebEx which has a great iPad app that I use for a regular call set up by one of our clients, but alas, I'm guessing that won't happen anytime soon so I'm stuck having to allow 15 - 20 minutes before any web meeting to crank up my windows laptop and get Livemeeting running.

Windows-only software: in particular I use a couple of process modeling programs, GPS-X and BioWin that are windows-based. I keep hinting that they should shift to Cloud based applications that can be accessed through a web browser, but I'm not sure how seriously they take me! I can see that as more software suppliers shift to the Cloud, this will open more opportunities to leave the laptop at home.

Excel Spreadsheets with Graphs: not sure why, but the graphs don't come across into Numbers or most of the other apps I've tried. Some formulas don't work either I'd guess and I'm not sure about pivot tables as I've not tried transferring any.

Creating emails with attachments: OK now Apple, this one is just plain weird. Why have a device that's probably the best way to access email and not provide the ability to attach documents? Please fix this! You can send emails from within various apps with a file attached from that app, but say you want to send 1 email with, say, a Pages file and a Keynote presentation that goes with it, then you're out of luck. Unless there's a way and I've just not figured it out?

The future is bright and much lighter!

I travel a lot and I find using my iPad ideal for most of my needs whilst on the road. But still I have to lug my heavy laptop around for the few but vital things I cannot yet do without it. I'm hopeful that many of the impediments to wider iPad use I've noted here will be overcome in the not too distant future. Then I'll be happy to say "the old PC is dead, long live the new PC" (aka a tablet-style "Personal Computer"!)