Studio Blog - Articles on the Website Design & Development Industry

also known as "Ian waxes on in a Blog post, leaving Sarah vainly trying not to edit out ALL the funny parts while somehow still giving the post a point"

Man. I just don’t feel it today.

I’m not sure whether it’s the weather (which is awesome by the way) or just the fact that I slacked off last Monday, and feel a deep pervasive need to continue that trend. It’s something like that. Maybe it’s just the planets, or perhaps I got lost in a double rainbow, and am too busy pondering "what does it mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?..."

Regardless, the task set before me is to come up with something that is actually useful. Something that Professor Monkey would approve of… and self-indulgent rambling is something I can assure you he definitely approves of.

So today, I figured I’d break away a bit from Misconception Mondays (which is usually when I ramble about public misconceptions regarding the web industry) and jump on the Pointless Punditry bandwagon. I mean, we have a blog, and we’re experts, it seems like a bit of pretentious wankery is in order. (Am I allowed to say wankery? Oh wait, this is the internet, not only am I allowed to say it, it’s nearly required.)

Something I often waste time doing is waxing philosophically about the future of tech stuff. If we spend a minute and reflect I think we can all agree that fifteen years ago nobody really saw any of this coming.


Let's All Jump in Our Time Machines...
The year is 1995, Coolio just blew our minds with Gangsta’s Paradise and his sweat dreads. Rage against the machine was still raging, and Grunge was, well, grungy… Generation ‘X’ actually sounded vaguely relevant and threatening all at the same time, and Wolfman Jack died, which totally sucked, ‘cause baby, if you got the curves then he’s got the angles’

Point being, 1995 was fairly uneventful, and like most years mid-decade, somewhat embarrassing when we reflect on it.

Technology though, I mean, that’s where things were really happening. I mean, dude, holy, we got Windows 95. You see what they did there? This is such a massive event it can’t be contained by a version baby! This ain’t no 4.1, this needs an entire year dedicated to it!

Wait? Why does it feel like Bill Gates is kicking me between the legs every time I turn my computer on? Oh no, please make it stop…

And the internet. I mean, we had WEB PAGES, not "website". Massive single pages stuffed full of target links and nauseating animated gifs, that scrolled down forever and highlighted our love for things unloved in glorious kingdoms such as Angelfire and Geocitities.

Seriously. We’ve gone from that to iPhone, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter and Gmail? How?? When?!

We could talk about how it all happened, how it came to pass, the fact that some visionaries in 1995 were indeed clairvoyant (Netscape became a billion dollar company overnight, to soon be crushed by Microsoft a few years later, and EBay as a company was created), or we could have more fun and talk about where it’s going.


Part 2: Ian Becomes Omnipotent
Let’s all agree that if 2010 is no different than 1995 (really, how is anybody going to defend themselves when they reflect back on Lady Gaga, or pretty much anything else that has happened this year), and let us assume that we can’t possibly comprehend where technology will be in fifteen years. This means lots of guesswork, something I'm REALLY GOOD AT.

I’m going to do this one prediction at a time. Let’s begin.

The Death of the PC:
First off, this is a bit of a cheat because it actually happened three years ago, except nobody has really understood it yet, allowing us 'omnipotent types' to confirm that it will continue to happen in the future, even though we’re pretty sure the corpse is decaying as we speak.

Note: You may also argue that the Personal Computer isn’t actually dying, hell, if anything it is more applicable to our phones than it’s ever been before. But then I'm not talking about PC's in a generic sense...so let's just skip this point.

When we make an argument about the death of the PC, it's important to note that we don't mean "PERSONAL COMPUTER". It’s not Mac vs ‘Personal Computer’, no it’s Mac vs PC. The PC was not a personal computer. It was a computer that had an entire world supported on its shoulders by a Greek Titan otherwise known as Microsoft. That is the PC we know and love. A Mac? A Mac isn’t a PC, it’s a freaking Mac.

While Microsoft still makes money and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future, the legs on which it stands are brittle and crumbling. Sure, they’ll build themselves new fancier cybernetic Robocop legs, but it’s going to be a different playing field by that time and they won’t be the standing king.

Why not?

Because operating systems don’t matter. The browser slipped up and by surprise, stole developers hearts with its pure awesomeness. Where developers used to spend years learning the inner workings of Microsoft Foundation Classes, and resource management, a nine year old can program a web app in an hour or two. The Browser is going to become far more important than the operating system.

This is in turn leading to a massive shift in the minds of consumers, and we still won’t see the real effects of it for another six years (approximately 2 operating system versions away, Windows 8 and 9).

We CAN see the first real manifestation of it in the iPad though.

It lets you do all of your webstuff and it’s a hell of a lot more convenient than a laptop or netbook. Sure you won’t be playing XBox games on it, and there are probably better options available for productivity, but for managing your calendar, checking your email, and wasting time online, is there anything better? Okay yeah it has some sort of "Operating System" on it, but who really cares? Who even knows what the Operating System is called? It lets you go on the internet, and that's all the average consumer really needs to know.

The PC as we knew it is dead, and I predict in the next six years we won’t even be discussing Operating Systems anymore because it won’t matter. One company’s offering will be close enough to another company’s, and it will be how they integrate with offerings online that will make the difference (Microsoft knows this, which is why office is going online and there is such a push to integrate Windows Live Essentials into people’s daily use).

Yeah, that’s right, Array Studios, last to predict stuff that’s already been predicted thousands of times before. Professor Monkey approves.

Two weeks from now my next prediction: ‘The Rise of the PC’. (pssst, think Skynet but with less time traveling)