Current Event solo presentation - an analysis

This past week, I was up to speak in front of the class for my solo current event presentation. Mine was on Ross Rubin of Engadget’s editiorial “Switched On: Why the digital hub died”. (http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/11/switched-on-why-the-digital-hub-died/) In a nutshell, it takes an look back on the 2000 Macworld Expo, where Steve Jobs gave a presentation about his vision for the future of Apple Computers. During this speech, he mentions important partners like the Rio MP3 player and Palm V, which, ironically, were eventually beaten in the market by Apple’s iPod and iPhone, respectively. He also spoke of the PC as a “digital hub”, or as a main storage space for your mobile devices to connect. This is an interesting speech because it is not the way the market has gone, instead flocking to the cloud as a “hub” for your information. Apple has become a mobile devices company, with more of their revenue coming from iPods, iPads and iPhones than Macintosh devices. One of the lines from this article that express its arguments best follows: “The recent Apple TV reboot clearly demonstrates the shift away from PC-centricity to cloud-centricity. At its introduction, Apple TV was an iTunes peripheral, much like the iPod. It synced with a computer (albeit over a network connection as opposed to a USB cable), which was responsible for procuring or managing the media. In its latest iteration, though, AppleTV has moved from the iTunes ecosystem to the iOS ecosystem of mobile devices. While it can still stream media from a PC, it doesn't require one, and its video acquisition model is based on rental so as to be free from the rigors of managing storage.” (Rubin). I brought these facts up to the class, along with one from the Did You Know series of videos, saying that the mobile device will be the primary Internet connection for the world by 2020. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8&feature=player_embedded) I asked the class - is the PC dead? Only three or four students expressed that they still owned a desktop computer, with many using laptops. Of the ones who did, they said it was business supplied; another mentioned their next computer wouldn’t be tied to a desktop. I then asked, what comes after the laptop? Is the smartphone the new laptop, if the laptop is the new desktop? Will we one day see the death of the laptop and the move to iPads and phones as our main computers and all of our information in the cloud? Google’s Chrome OS is counting on such a future. It only remains to be seen when that will happen.