A World without PC ?

Well, not so fast but it’s a start. On Monday 6/6/11, Apple’s Steve Jobs unveiled its latest iOS 5 operating system at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. One of the more interesting features is what Apple calls “PC Free”.
This feature allows you to set up your iPhone without a PC. Updates will be delivered using WiFi, no cables needed. The user sees a welcome screen, enters the ID, configures cloud services including Find my iPhone and that’s it.
Here’s a video of this setup courtesy of XcodeDev:

It’s just a simple setup done over WiFi, so what’s the big deal? Indeed, doesn’t look too dramatic but it changes user perspectives, PC is not needed if you want to stay mobile. Setup, backup and restore can all be done without PC. All services can be accessed from your mobile. Reducing the reasons to have a PC helps mobile platforms become mainstream and potentially replace PCs.
Lets admit, these mobile devices (tablets and even smartphones) are actually computing platforms dressed differently: More user friendly, portable and enjoyable to use mainly for content consumption.
Mobile devices can’t replace PC’s at the moment as content generation and productivity tool but vendors like Apple (unlike Intel that we covered in previous post Ultrabooks, tablets and what’s under the hood) make their living from mobile and will continue to push this agenda and challenge the traditional PC market.

Steve Jobs was quoted saying at the WWDC keynote “Perhaps iOS 5’s paramount feature is that it is built to seamlessly work with iCloud in the Post PC revolution that Apple is leading“.

I’m at the MIPI alliance meeting this week and it truly feels like everything is mobile.

If you like to read this or other previous posts, send this URL to your friends and tell them to Subscribe to this Blog.
To SUBSCRIBE
One option to subscribe is as follows:
• Go into Outlook
• Right click on “RSS Feeds”
• Click on “Add a new RSS Feed”
• Paste in the following “http://feeds.feedburner.com/synopsysoc/sqLy?format=xml”
• Click on “Accept” or “Yes” or whatever the dialogue box says.

Legal

Follow