I doubt that it is the end of Windows. Are corporations really going to throw out billions of dollars of infrastructure, not to mention date, to go with Apple?
I’m sure Wang and Honeywell reassured rhemselves similarly back in the late eighties.
No, they’re going to go whereever they can minimize their expenses and costs to run their computing needs.
If someone can come up with a “cloud” solution that really has the stats for uptime to show that they can exceed the availability of locally managed computers... I think you’ll see some companies shift away from desktop platforms and go to networked devices for those users who don’t need the resources of a desktop machine.
I’ve seen this happen in several waves now: First it was mainframes. Everyone said that mainframes would be the only way companies ran their computing forever. Then PC’s and the Unix mafia came in through the side door, and mainframe computing became a fairly specialized resource for specialized applications, many with legacy behind them.
Then PC’s exceeded the capabilities of a lot of engineering workstations, and workstations died.
Then companies started seeing that using laptops gave many of their employees mobility - as long as data was kept on corporate servers for backup.
Now I think the next jump is to mobile devices for a lot of users. Tablets, pads and ultra-light notebooks with SSD’s appears to be the future direction. Not all PC’s will disappear off desks, of course, but the growth of the PC industry will hit a wall, just as the mainframe/super-mini/mini/workstation markets hit their walls. They’re still around, but they’re not where the growth is.
In the home market, this guy might be correct, but in the business market, NO WAY! The PC may be going away though... For instance, at my company we're currently moving away from "real" PCs at the desktop, replacing them with "Zero Client" devices. Basicly, this is a network device that allows you to run remote sessions, just a box with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor(s) attached, connected to your network. The beauty of this sort of system is that the actual computer session is running on a heavy duty server in the data center, so if the power is lost in your location, when it comes back on, you're right where you were when you lost your connection. It's also completely device independant. For instance, you have full access to all your data and applications from anywhere there's Internet access, and it can be from an iPad, iPhone, PC, MacBook, or iMac. You run the VMware View client, and all of a sudden you have your Windows workstation on whatever hardware you're actually using. The technology is known as "Virtualization."
Mark