Microsoft Is Already In The “Post-PC” Era

I’ve been writing about how we’re in the post-desktop era and not so much in the post-PC. The iPad is as much a personal computer as a MacBook Air. Those sucked into Apple’s Reality Distortion Field continue to call iOS as the post-PC OS and Microsoft’s Windows still stuck in the stone-age with a new skin for Windows 8 that makes for a poor post-PC OS since it has the traditional desktop interface. Fair enough. If it weren’t for their amusing commentary my life would be very boring.

When I wrote about Apple stealing Zune’s tagline, I realized that it has been a while since any Microsoft promotion material had a desktop in it. Microsoft’s 3-screen vision shows a laptop, television and a mobile phone. In one of my post-PC columns, I said the TV is the PC in the post-PC era. Apple’s Apple TV, Google TV and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 bringing more services to the television, the family desktop is now moving to the TV. Stream movies and music to the television and play games—that’s a huge chunk of PC (desktop) use. The other is browsing the web, which can be done on some television but I believe the phone and the laptop are now becoming the primary devices.

This brings me to Microsoft’s 3-screen artwork in their campaigns. It’s primarily been a laptop, TV and mobile; with Windows 8, they’re displaying tablets too. This is Microsoft very subtly conveying the point that they’re in this so-called “post-PC” era. All Microsoft needs to do is put in a line claiming this. I took an image shared on Facebook by one of Microsoft’s several accounts and added a line to it and suddenly Microsoft seemed to be well positioned in this post-PC era.