The Entertainment Center handled multimedia playback and there was a native file browser. It offered a mini HDMI port to connect to an external monitor, three USB ports and an IR remote control. There was also the HD Multimedia Dock, which was intended for desktop use.
You were instead limited to running Android apps on a mirrored version of the phone’s screen or web apps.
Add-ons were supported too, so you could extend the functionality of the browser, but you couldn’t install other desktop apps. You could browse the modern web – well, as modern as it was in 2011. When docked, the phone ran a desktop version of Firefox, complete with Adobe Flash support. One was the Laptop Dock, a hollowed out 11.6” laptop shell that offered a keyboard, touchpad, speakers and a 36 WHr battery, along with some expanded connectivity (two full-size USB-A ports). Two docks promised to turn the ATRIX into a computer. The phone ran Android 2.2 Froyo out of the box, skinned with Motoblur UI. It had two Cortex-A9 cores (1.0 GHz), 1 GB of RAM and a GeForce GPU. The Motorola ATRIX came out in early 2011 and was powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset. Let’s start with Motorola and the Atrix phones.
Several other companies have dabbled with the desktop in a pocket concept. It was a dual-screen device like the Duo, but it was going to run the now-canceled Windows 10X instead of Android. We say that because no one has heard of the Surface Neo in a couple of years. But it’s clear that Windows in a pocketable format will stay dead for now. Not that the Microsoft Surface Duo was particularly successful, nor its sequel.
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.