Tim Bajarin, writing for PC Magazine:
Windows and Mac OS X have been my operating systems of choice for years, while iOS and Android have been supplemental OSes for smartphones and tablets. But I believe there is a changing of the “OS” guard happening as younger tech users move into the business world.
Some of this younger generation use PCs, even though most use Macs. However, much of their time is spent on phones and tablets for personal and productivity projects, particularly iPhones. I believe Apple understands this better than anyone, and the introduction of the iPad Pro is a nod to this generational trend. More importantly, I see Apple using this to drive millennials towards making iOS their OS of choice, even at work. In fact, within three to five years, I suspect Windows will be an afterthought.
Interesting analysis. Is the death of Windows imminent? Inevitable? Will iOS become the OS of choice? Will iOS replace OS X for millennials? All interesting questions.
The key point, although it wasn’t explicit in the article, may be the people are tired of using multiple OSes. Handoff is never perfect. Not everything can be accessed from the cloud seamlessly using different client OSes.
But iOS continues to have one key thing missing: an explicit file system. Not sure even millenials are prepared to forego that.
Wow, that’s wildly off the wall. There’s no way Windows will be an afterthought in five years, unless Microsoft builds in a back door for the NSA and law enforcement. That would lead to a mass migration, even amongst the most 2×4 up the butt IT Mac haters around.
Sure they are. I’m ready to give it up. Once a new metaphor for handling files arrives that replaces it.
Sure they are, and I am too. The minute they come up with a better file management metaphor, I’m ready to go.
PC Magazine decided to give me 3 pop ups in under a minute. Lost interest in the article. If they don’t care enough about the article to actually let me read it in peace then it’s probably an article of little value.
It’s your internet.
Mr. Bajarin is a stock analyst whose principle goalie to entice people to buy a particular stock, in this case Apple. Mr. Bajarin is not specifically more qualified than you to make this judgment for you. He offers no special insight into why this would be the case.
The analyst is liked around here because he says nice things about your favorite tech company.
But, he backs this up with no research, relying instead on anecdotal evidence. All analysts work this way.
the effect on Apple’s stock? Hard to say. The market is rigged, and it has always been the case. Mr. Bajarin’s job is to convince you that his special knowledge will make you wiser. Mr. Bajarin knows was much about this topic as you do.
He does strategy analysis and research. His customers are mainly tech companies working on consumer products. He isn’t a stock or investment analyst.
He leads Creative Strategies behavioral analysis and research which actually makes him very well qualified to write about the subject.
Isn’t that what “cloud computing” (aka “internet storage”) is all about?
And he’s been doing research for so long that he now has a grown son who also does tech research – Ben Bajarin.
“Will iOS replace OS X for millennials?”
Probably. But just wait until Gen Z. The aren’t just post-millennium. They’re post-iPhone. They will have been using iOS since before they could even walk.
You’re right. I got the two Bajarins mixed up there. Thanks.
Students entering college this fall will:
– Always have been on the internet and never seen dialup
– Music has always been downloadable
– The Sears catalogue has always been a website
– Saw their first iPod before kindergarten
– Saw their first iPhone in Grade 4
You’re right. For young people PC’s are for gamers, Macs are for school, but they really could care less about either one. Smart Phones are their primary computer.
I don’t think iOS & the iPad Pro are going to replace everything tomorrow (nothing happens overnight) but we are at an inflection point.
By far, the most popular PC every year for the past 5 years has been ARM-based iPad. So iPad Pro is not the first iOS-based PC, it is just the first time that an iPad has gone head-to-head at the same screen size as a traditional PC.
Previously, Apple was only making netbook PC replacements, but they replaced that whole market, so it is not surprising to see iPad grow to where it now has a notebook PC replacement.
One thing that is under-appreciated as yet with iPad Pro is how light and thin it is, and how small, even though it has a 13-inch screen. The iPad Pro is the same weight (about 700 grams) as the original 10-inch iPad from 2010. So iPad Pro is going to generally give you half the weight and half the volume of any competing PC. Even though the iPad Pro SoC benchmarks with Intel systems.
You can literally swap a Surface Pro 4 for 2 iPad Pros and it is the same size and weight, and the price is even comparable. You are going to get a lot more work done on 2 iPad Pros.
The monolithic, gigantic, all-consuming “Windows” as-we-knew-it is already dead:
• 2006 — Windows is on 92% of Internet clients
• 2016 — Windows is on 16% of Internet clients.
Today, Windows is as “niche” as the Mac ever was. And Intel-based systems are also a niche. One really obvious symptom of that is Microsoft killing Internet Explorer and replacing it with a Webkit/mobile-based browser clone that displays Web pages more like an iOS device than a PC.
The giant, monolithic, all-consuming thing today is iOS specifically, and mobile in general. If you go up and down the categories, the best-selling devices with the most-engaged users are the devices that are running iOS, and the best-selling categories are the mobile categories. So you have to make sure that all the accessories and workflows and websites and music and movies are all mobile-ready and also all work with iOS. That is a big feature for iPad because if you already have an iPhone and you get your first iPad, it pretty much sets itself up for you and is ready to work right away, with all your data on it and many of the apps you own will just work on there at full size. And of course, iPad is very mobile.
But you can ignore all of that, and just understand that the mechanical keyboard is only important to about 10% of users like writers and coders, and then you realize the PC market of the next few years is really just iPhone versus Blackberry, Round 2. The notebook PC’s are going away. The accessory mechanical keyboard market is entering a golden age.
The file system is irrelevant. Almost nobody knows how to use it. Congratulations if you do, you are one of about 10% of humans who can do that. And you can do that from an iPad with any one of thousands of 3rd party apps. Look at Documents to get a Finder, look at Coda to get SSH, look at Transmit to get SFTP.
Millenials, especially, expect to be able to just search for something. And they expect to login to stuff and see a saved state, i.e. they don’t have to restore the state by going into a file system and opening files.
One of the biggest myths in modern society is that people know how to use PC’s. They don’t. They know how to navigate through 3–5 steps that somebody showed them in order to accomplish task X that they have to do with a PC now instead of a typewriter in the past. When something on the PC changed, they were left entirely helpless again until somebody gave them another 3–5 step recipe for task X. That is why Windows upgrades were such a huge, huge I-T issue. They would cripple a company’s productivity for a year or more.
So there is not really anything holding people to Mac and PC’s but antique expectations. I use a MacBook Pro and 2 iPads for my daily work, and I can make a list right now of 20 reasons why an iPad Pro can’t replace my MacBook Pro yet, and none of them are the keyboard or file system. It is really just down to the fact that iPad Pro is early in its development, and it sort of replaces a Mac running iMovie but not yet a Mac running Final Cut Pro. But it is easy to imagine that dramatically changing over the next 5 years.
Windows is already an afterthought for most people today. There is almost no Windows on ARM-based systems, which make up the vast majority of Internet clients. Windows makes up only 16% Internet clients, and that is fragmented between various versions of Windows.
The iPad already replaced an entire PC category: netbook PC’s. The way Apple did it was to make devices with the same screen size, better reliability, much less maintenance, much lower software costs, more ease of use, and as a bonus, they were also really well made and were also half the size and weight.
Now Apple is just moving up to the larger screen sizes. There is on reason to believe it goes any differently. It’s like can you give up the keyboard if you get a device that is half the size and weight? For most people, the sales pitch is over right there.
Also, there is a whole class of PC user that never really could use traditional PC’s and now are rabid iPad users. For example: doctors, truck drivers, real estate agents. They had PC’s, but they would be desktops that they had to check in with once in a while because they were not in an office setting most of the time. Now, they have an iPad next to them in the car or truck or are holding an iPad as a clipboard and it is everything they need. And for every office PC user, there are a number of these non-office PC users. So iPad Pro is not just about replacing Macs and PC’s. It will go into places that haven’t had a PC before.
It’s fun to watch IT traditionalists continue to ramp up their misunderstanding of consumer needs. I can’t imagine how angry the comments on that PC Mag post must be.