[JonnieCache]

I think we can all envisage a future where we are exclusively using web-based office suites on post-PC devices. A lot of people are already doing this.

What I can't imagine is a world where we are developing those web-based office suites on the same post-PC devices that they are deployed to.

Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it? Or autocad, or solidworks or arcGIS, or any number of other industrial applications.

For the PC to disappear, somebody is going to need to define a whole new category of much more powerful post-PC devices. I can envisage a superpowered tablet with a bluetooth keyboard that wirelessly links to any nearby display, but that doesn't sound very post-PC to me. And it doesn't answer the question of how to develop UIs for tasks of irreducible complexity without violating iOS's mandatory UX simplicity.

[stcredzero]

Try and imagine using XCode on a tablet under iOS all day. Doesn't sound very appealing does it?

No one needs to supplant the workstation form-factor. What we're in the process of is realizing that there are tons of other opportunities in mobile form factors. Try to think of all the workplace activities that involve taking down data on pieces of paper and taking them over to a computer where they get entered. Try to think of all the times when people read off information from a specialized instrument and enter it into a computer. All of these are opportunities for mobile computing.

[JonnieCache]

Totally agreed, one of the biggest industrial users of tablets is in hospitals, which is exactly what you're talking about.

Lots of people do seem to think that workstations will be supplanted though. So much hype about the "death of the PC," the "post-PC era," although I accept that "post" doesnt necessarily imply a world where that thing is totally gone.