OS X Lion and the Post-PC Era: Yay or No Way?

Low End Mac’s Dan Bashur notes that Microsoft is copying Apple yet again with the forthcoming Windows 8 update, noting that Apple’s upcoming OS X 10.7 Lion will feature an interface that looks and feels similar to iOS, while Windows 8 will look and feel very similar to the user interface found in the current generation of Windows mobile phones.

Dan muses that it’s certainly a strange time for both Mac and PC purists, referencing my recent article, “Of Cars and Trucks, iPads and Macs” that clearly explains the paradox we are currently experiencing with the changing climate of Mac OS X (now simply OS X) and the waves it is making with personal computing.

“The best way I can put this into layman’s terms,” Dan says, “is that Apple is extending the trend of making the interface ‘light and fluffy’ with OS X Lion, as it has with iOS, giving newer Mac consumers a presentation similar to what is found on their high-end mobile devices,” and whatever we might personally think of this development, from a business standpoint, Lion is going to make a lot of sense, with Apple ihaving chosen to place its primary focus the arena of light consumption mobile (car, to borrow Moore’s analogy) computing, inevitably at the expense of traditional heavy creation (truck) computing.

However, Dan notes that Steve Jobs contention that we are in a post-PC era and his calling the Mac ” just another device” begs the question for current and prospective Mac and PC owners as potential users of the next generation of computers and operating systems: “Do we really want our mobile OS taking over our desktops and laptops (i.e., should car computing greatly displace truck computing)?”

For the full commentary (to be continued) visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/ed/bashur/11db/post-pc-lion-part-1.html