Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs recently introduced a service named iCloud that allows customers to shares files across different internet-linked devices. This means Steve Jobs takes another step toward sidelining the personal-computer industry he pioneered, and also, it means that Apple would make Apple the centre of consumers' digital lives, further decreasing dependence on Microsoft's once-dominant Windows software and Hewlett-Packard's market-leading PCs.
It was always Microsofts world since PC comes into being. And now since
android tablet PCs come into the digital world and become more and more popular, which by the way is dominated by Apple ios and Google Android, PCs are pushed aside and so was Microsofts domination.
"We're going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device - just like an iPad, an iPhone or an iPod Touch," Jobs, dressed in a black sweater and jeans, said yesterday. "We're going to move the hub of your digital life to the cloud."
Jobs, who helped popularise home computers with the Apple II and the Mac in the 1970s and '80s, is counting on the new iCloud product to let users synchronise and access data on Apple devices and Windows PCs running iTunes. With iCloud, files will be stored by Apple in remote data centres - known as the "cloud" in technology parlance - and automatically synchronise. That means the same content is available from any Apple gadget, without it cluttering up users' hard drives.
"The PC will be the most visible casualty of the cloud revolution," said Steve Perlman, a former Apple engineer and the CEO of online game company OnLive. "Apple knows it."
Apple is trying to parlay the success of the iPhone and iPad into the leading role in the "post-PC" era. Already, customers have bought 25 million iPad tablets, eating into PC sales. Both Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard disappointed investors with their earnings last quarter, hurt in part by tablets weighing on the industry.
So, would Apple put Microsoft aside and build its own iOS centered post-pc system?
Apple accessories are already in thousands and millions all over the world now, can you imagine what would like if apple does dominate the post pc world?
