[pnathan]

You are absolutely right. But I'm pretty sure (crystal ball time) the post-PC device looks a good deal closer to a Surface Pro than an iPad.

That concept of keyboard + mouse + touch screen is really good; you need a way to have custom line of business apps developed for it. Apps need to be easily installable on it. It needs to have integration capabilities with oddish hardware. App state needs to be 'sane' and persist extant data without wrecking it due to swapping out of memory.

IOW, the capability lineup looks a lot like a PC on someone's desk, even though the form factor might reflow to be a tablet placed in a dock with attached bluetooth keyboard/mouse.

[mikeash]

You could be totally right about that. It's a bit of a tough sell to me to say that Surface will keep them relevant, but it's definitely far more possible and reasonable than them staying relevant sticking to the PC.