They're Killing The PC

Summary: Who? Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft to name four. Do you even care? You should.

First things first. Yes, PC sales are dismal. They're not coming back. It's not just because we love our tablets and smartphones. It's also because almost all the vendors are pushing us away from the PC model to sealed, cloud-based appliances as fast as they can.

When I first start working with computers in the late 70s and early 80s, we were in a revolution. I was one of the people with a foot in both camps. I cut my programming teeth on mainframes and polished my administrative skills on Unix minis, but I also loved those first CP/M PCs. I knew that while "big iron" would always be important, the freedom that came first with CP/M- and  DOS-powered PCs was going to change the world.

Indeed, I can even fix on a date when the world changed: August 12, 1981. That was the day IBM introduced the IBM PC. With this, power shifted from IT to individual users.