It's often hard to remember that the personal computing era is still quite young. It only dates from 1977, with the arrival of the first mass-market PCs.
If you look back over the history of computing, it started as mainframes or terminals. As PCs or work stations became prevalent, computing moved to the edge, and we had applications that took advantage of edge computing and the CPU and processing power at the edge. Cloud computing brought things back to the center.
I would like to emphasize strongly my belief that the era of computing chemists, when hundreds if not thousands of chemists will go to the computing machine instead of the laboratory for increasingly many facets of chemical information, is already at hand. There is only one obstacle, namely that someone must pay for the computing time.
There's been a big evolution since the days of personal computing. People had a concept of one computing device per family or maybe per person. We've clearly evolved to computing devices becoming more personal.
There is no doubt that, since 1977 and the launch of Apple II - the first computer it produced for the mass market - many things which used to be done on paper, or on the telephone, have been done easier and faster on a screen.
Nintendo looks at every technology. Often times, we look at technology before it really is considered mass-market ready. The original DS had touch screen on a device. First time that a mass market product had touch screen built in.
Computing shows up in many different ways. You have computing that you wear, computing that you carry. What you think of as the traditional PC market has a long tail of usage, particularly in the commercial world, but also in consumer.
Productivity is grounded in the PC. Where does the computing power come from? How would you run 'USA Today' without PCs? Run a hospital without PCs? People don't want products, they want solutions.
Among the reasons for this was the fact that the U.S.A. is one mass market. It is only when you have a mass market that large-scale manufacturing which involves very substantial expenditures can be justified.
India for sure is a mobile-first country. But I don't think it will be a mobile-only country for all time. An emerging market will have more computing in their lives, not less computing, as there is more GDP and there is more need. As they grow, they will also want computers that grow from their phone.
Personal computing today is a rich ecosystem encompassing massive PC-based data centers, notebook and Tablet PCs, handheld devices, and smart cell phones. It has expanded from the desktop and the data center to wherever people need it - at their desks, in a meeting, on the road or even in the air.
Middle-class white children, children of privilege, are afforded the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes and still go on to college, still dream big dreams. But for kids who are born in the ghetto in the era of mass incarceration, the system is designed in such a way that it traps them, often for life.
Computing is a big segment. It's more than just mobile devices or PCs and laptops.
I started with Apple, in a pre-Windows era when PCs seemed to involve more of a learning curve. But the fact that I'm yet to acquire so much as a single virus still seems a very good thing.
I want you to try and remember what it was like to have been very young. And particularly the days when you were first in love; when you were like a person sleepwalking, and you didn’t quite see the street you were in, and didn’t quite hear everything that was said to you. You’re just a little bit crazy. Will you remember that, please?
Marriage. It's a hard term to define. Especially for me--I've ducked it like root canal. Still there's no denying the fact that marriage ranks right up there with birth and death as one of the three biggies in the human safari. It's the only one though that we'll celebrate with a conscious awareness. Very few of you remember your arrival and even fewer of you will attend your own funeral.
There are many different kinds of PCs. You have fixed, virtual, tablets, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops, workstations. What you find in commercial PCs, business PCs, is that there's a really long tail of usage on client devices.