Mark Cuban wrote another opus on the Future of Personal Computing. It is a fascinating review of the impact of games consoles, Google, applications in the cloud, and broadband. 
Game consoles are becoming the multi-media center of the home for games, video, music, and photos. I agree with Mark Cuban on this. All of these were traditionally on the PC. No more. The game console is connected to the much bigger TV screen with a better sound system. It is located in the living room where everyone can enjoy it. It makes sense that most of the multi-media stuff that was on the PC will move to the game console. Xbox is in a great position to handle all of these with more local storage.
New releases of hardware or operating systems don't get much attention anymore. Again, I agree with Mark, and I think the reason is because gaming has moved off the PC and onto game consoles. Games have always been the driving force for bigger disks, faster processors, and better operating systems. It was the gamers who stood in line at midnight for the new hardware and software releases.
I disagree with Mark on the non-media trends. I don't see the game console becoming the center for non-media uses like email, web browsing, or Office like applications. It is more likely that mobile phones and PDAs will take a bigger share of market for those uses. The TV screen is not ideal for web browsing, email, or working with documents or spreadsheets. The problem is the screen...both the size and location. The living room is not a good place to get work done, and the TV screen doesn't have the resolution to support small text from 15 feet away.
Where does this leave the PC? I agree that all this horsepower (CPU, Disk, Memory) is unnecessary for simple web browsing, email, and office apps. But, the keyboard, screen, and location (desk or office versus sofa in the living room) make it the best choice for doing real work. This will continue to be the case for a very long time.
Does this leave an opening for a thin client or a resurgence of Larry Ellison's "Network Computer" idea? Yes, I think it does for certain market segments and single application users. Both Google and Microsoft are racing to build huge data centers to host these applications online. Google is assembling their Gmail, Docs and Spreadsheets, etc. to be a player for the applications. Microsoft Live is doing the same thing.
The PC is still the best platform to get work done. Meaning, things like email, spreadsheets, word documents, presentations, web browsing, and of course all the enterprise business applications we use everyday at work.
The question is will these applications be stored on the local hard disk or will they be hosted in the cloud?
These are huge trends that will disrupt the current market. It is already happening is quiet and subtle ways. The market will continue to shift in the next 5 years. Will we notice?
The move to game consoles has already changed the market. It has happened so quietly over the past 5 years that we have hardly noticed. I maintain this is why there were not many people standing in line to buy Vista. They will get it when they buy their next new computer.
The move to applications hosted online has already started too. Hosted email, calendars, and contacts happened 10 years ago. The difference today is that businesses can have their own domain name and host their email with Microsoft or Google. Applications like spreadsheets, word processors, and presentations are already moving online too. Salesforce.com and others are moving business applications online as well.
What do you think? Do we really need more powerful desktop PCs? Will all applications be hosted in the cloud? Will game consoles become the multi-media home entertainment center?
Join the conversation. Let me know what you think.
