Casting its new technology as the cusp of a revolution seems to be standard operating procedure at Apple. In announcing the iPhone in 2007, CEO Steve Jobs said it was “a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone.”
And, true to form, Jobs is depicting Apple’s fast-selling iPad — now at two million devices and counting — as the harbinger of doom for the personal computer — or at least its centrality in our digital lives.
At Tuesday’s All Things Digital Conference, sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, Jobs, in response to a question by the Journal’s Steve Mossberg, said it’s only a matter of time before tablets like the iPad replace laptops.
“The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways,” said Jobs, as quoted in media reports. “The PC is brilliant … and we like to talk about the post-PC era, but it’s uncomfortable.”
Referring to the time when we were an “agrarian nation,” Jobs said trucks used by farmers were more common than cars until urban driving fueled the demand for more cars.
“PCs are going to be like trucks,” he said, less common but still important, while tablets like the iPad, which he said Apple is selling at a rate of one every three seconds, will increasingly catch on as they pick up more features.
“He’s certainly being provocative,” said Avi Greengart of Current Analysis. “It’s a bit too early to tell whether tablets will displace PCs for most users. However, it is clear that relatively low-powered PCs, netbooks, are providing much of the growth in the PC industry, that mobility is crucial, and that Apple has produced the first…