PC “Going The Way Of The Vacuum Tube, Typewriter, Vinyl Records, CRT And Incandescent Light Bulbs” – Original IBM PC Design Engineer
It was 30 years ago today that IBM created the first personal computer running Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system, but Mark Dean, an engineer and Chief Technology Officer of IBM’s Middle East and Africa division, who was part of the design team for the first IBM PC that was unveiled at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City on Aug. 12, 1981, and who lead subsequent IBM PC design projects through the 1980s, now says that PCs are “going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs.”
Of course, IBM doesn’t really have a dog in this fight any more, having sold off its PC division to China’s Lenovo in 2005, a decision of which Dean says he is “proud.”
Writing in a Smarter Planet blog, Mark Dean appears to be singing from Steve Jobs’s hymn-book, claiming that IBM is in the vanguard of the post-PC era and allowing that “PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device — though there’s plenty of excitement about smartphones and tablets — but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress.” He says that personally, he’s just recently switched to a tablet from a PC as his primary computer, and although he concedes that “PCs will continue to be much-used devices,” but asserts that they’re no longer at the leading edge of computing.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications Frank X. Shaw vigorously disagrees, declaring in the Official Microsoft Blog that “I prefer to think of it as the PC-plus era,” noting that some 400 million PCs will be sold worldwide this coming year, and additionally “Our software lights up Windows PCs, Windows Phones and Xbox-connected entertainment systems, and a whole raft of other devices with embedded processors from gasoline pumps to ATMs to the latest soda vending machines, to name just a few,” but affirming that after 30 years, the PC is “just getting started.”
You can read Mark Dean’s blog here:
http://bit.ly/obhp76
You can read Frank X. Shaw’s blog here:
http://bit.ly/n7RmMm