Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Joshua Topolsky said that Steve Jobs’ famous “the post-PC era” comment was partly a marketing strategy, not just about a technological shift: “In this new world, Apple no longer has to compete on specs and features, nor does it want to…In a post-PC world, the experience of the product is central and significant above all else. It's not the RAM or CPU speed, screen resolution or number of ports which dictate whether a product is valuable; it becomes purely about the experience of using the device.” And so, said Topolsky : “Apple need only delight consumers and tell them that specs and speed are the domain of a dinosaur called the PC…Apple isn't claiming victory in the Space Race -- it's ceding space to the competition…But guess who gets Earth all to itself?” And Jobs was proven right. While PC sales flattened and even fell, tablet sales soared. As MG Siegler wrote this year: “As a standalone business, just based on the last 12 months of revenue, the iPad woul...

When one of my friends bought the Kindle, I was very impressed with the screen without a backlight and also by the much vaunted E Ink technology. The Kindle felt just like a book, you know, without any of the brightness (or irritation) associated with a PC/laptop screen. In fact, Amazon made it a point to highlight the device’s “paper-like” screen. And Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos wasn’t exaggerating when he declared, “Amazon Kindle is for reading”. So why didn’t the e-reader sweep the reading world off its feet? Why didn’t people switch from the world of atoms (books) to the world of bits (e-books)? Because of Steve Jobs. When he announced the iPad, people had to make a choice: did they want a single purpose device or a multi-purpose device? Something specialized for one use or something generalized for most things? Did they want to go back to uni-tasking or continue with multitasking? The world voted overwhelming for the tablet. But here’s an unintended consequence ...