Microsoft has a large suite of apps for Android and even dabbles with the occasional Android phone. The company even partnered with Amazon to secure a relatively well-stocked app store. These days Microsoft is approaching from the other side – Windows 11 has native support for Android apps.
However, by the time Windows 10 arrived, it was too late for the Lumias and Continuum lost its staging ground.
Windows 10 is much better in that respect as it can run x86 software on ARM hardware – the lack of compatible software really hampered RT adoption (most software ever written for Windows was x86 based). Windows RT was an attempt to bring the Windows 8 platform to ARM, but it proved to be a dud. While Apple executed its platform transitions flawlessly, Microsoft struggled quite a bit. Add a keyboard and mouse and you edit an Excel spreadsheet like the best of them. Microsoft did just that with Windows Continuum, a feature on Lumia phones that ran a standard Windows 10 desktop environment when connected to an external display. Other companies had a different approach to the Post-PC era – smartphones would replace PCs by becoming PCs. So, the PC – as in a desktop or laptop computer – is still ahead of the curve over tablets. Ironically, macOS can run iOS/iPadOS apps, but the opposite is not true. The most recent iPad Pros are powered by the same Apple M1 chip as found in some Macs, but iPadOS is holding that platform back. In that way the Macs – and some iPads – have entered a Post-PC era of sorts.Īpple is still quite reluctant to allow iPads to behave like desktop computers, though. Recently the company went through what might be its last platform switch as it replaced almost its entire Mac lineup with computers powered by Apple silicon. Then history repeated itself and Intels outperformed the best PowerPC chips, leading Apple to another platform switch, to Intel this time. Apple would switch from Motorola to PowerPC processors. Competing companies reverse engineered the design, creating “PC compatibles”, which is what led to the world domination of the x86 platform.Īt the time Apple were using Motorola 68000 processors, which were considered fast until Intel came out with the Pentium. It didn’t have the graphical skills of an Amiga or a Macintosh, but became quite popular. “PC” is a generic term now, but it comes from the IBM PC – a microcomputer based on the Intel 8086. Speaking of, the Macs did enter a post-PC era of a sort. Also, despite an ever-growing list of capabilities, the iPad still can’t do everything that Macs can. The iPad is a highly successful product for Apple no doubt, but few manage to get serious work done on one. Over a decade later it is clear that the PC isn’t going away. Most people will be using tablets as their primary computing device. A few months later at the D8 conference, Jobs expanded on that, saying that PCs will stick around but in a much diminished capacity, saying that “they’re going to be used by like one out of X people”. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in 2010, he declared that the Post-PC era is upon us.