The post-PC future: Where Microsoft and Apple are driving us

In just a few days, we’ll see the public beta of Windows 8, the next generation of Microsoft’s PC OS that developers and writers like me have had in prebeta form since September. Last week, we saw Apple’s forthcoming Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion enter developer beta and have all its finer details pored over at Macworld.com and a few other sites given early access; I’ve also been working with that developer beta for the last week, though I can’t reveal what those Apple-favored websites haven’t already revealed.

But I can show how both Windows 8 and OS X Mountain Lion presage the dramatic change now under way in personal computing, and why that means the PC as we know it is coming to an end in the next few years. What’s amazing about Windows 8 and OS X Mountain Lion is that, despite some radical implementation differences, their fundamental strategic directions share several similarities.

Apple set this course when it developed iOS as an offshoot of Mac OS X sometime before the iPhone’s 2007 debut, and then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs made the OS X/iOS convergence strategy (which I dubbed “MiOS”) official 16 months ago. Current CEO Tim Cook reconfirmed this approach last week.

After a lengthy fling with a smartphone strategy aimed at 20-something social networkers (the Kin, then Windows Phone 7) that had no relationship to its PC strategy, Microsoft recently adopted the same basic strategy as Apple; Windows 8 will include a tweaked version of the “legacy” Windows 7 (which needs a better name; maybe “BigWin”?) and the Windows Phone 7-derived Metro, running both operating environments simultaneously on x86-based systems but Metro only on ARM-based systems. It’s an open secret that Windows Phone is being reworked as part of the Windows 8 ecosystem, with analysts expecting the first serious Windows Phone competition to iOS and Android in 2013.

The fact that Microsoft, the traditional PC powerhouse, and Apple, the reborn-and-rising power in personal computing, are driving to the same destination means it will happen, for both individuals and businesses. As always, individuals will adopt before businesses do and before IT organizations accept that the change is inevitable and further resistance is futile. However, that’s a timing issue, not a split in where they’ll end up.

A note on Google: Its Android and Chome strategies share some of the same notions as Apple’s and Microsoft’s strategies, but Google’s vision assumes ultimately that traditional PC apps go away, to be replaced by cloud-hosted HTML5 apps. (Android apps don’t appear to have a future as desktop replacements, as they are for iOS.) That’s a huge chasm to leap, which is why Apple and Microsoft instead are building bridges from the present to the future. Maybe when Apple and Microsoft have shepherded many of us over that bridge, some will move fully to Google’s world. Until then, Google is an alien entity interacting with the Apple and Microsoft fabrics.

Here are the strategies Apple and Microsoft have in common and where they differ in execution.

The endpoint is beside the point
At the core, the strategy takes the view that endpoints aren’t the point. Instead, flexible computing fabrics are the goal. Users are the new endpoint, accessing a variety of devices in different circumstances — sometimes simultaneously. With the user as the new endpoint, information, services, and applications will traverse a fabric of devices via cloud services such as Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s Windows Live, as well as through third-party clouds such as Google Docs, Box.net, and Dropbox.

For IT, security and management strategies focused on devices will break down; they’ll need to move to policy-based security and management, likely combining user identity and information rights management. Apps will need to handle this rights information, as it will become increasingly difficult to manage what apps people use on devices or via the cloud. IT will need to move beyond the notion of apps as firewalled endpoints, as it’s now starting to do with devices. But OS developers and app developers need to create the hooks for such information management for IT to be able to carry it out.

In other words, there is no perimeter to defend; information needs to carry its own permission policies, and management tools then need to compare the user permissions to the content permissions and apply appropriate policies for that combination. The major mobile management vendors — Good Technology, MobileIron, and SAP Sybase — are moving in that direction, as are smaller vendors such as AppCentral and Nukona, not to mention Symantec (via Altiris) and Centrify on the systems management front. To a lesser extent, so are Microsoft (via System Center) and Apple (via OS X Server). Several vendors offer information management APIs for mobile developers, but they’re all tied to specific management tools, so no scalable, standards-oriented approach is in place.

This is an area where Microsoft and Apple should get together and jointly define a standard, as they have both the market power and stand much to gain from a standard. We’ve seen it work before: When Apple and then Google adopted Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol for basic device management, they created the opportunity for IT to accept non-BlackBerry devices. In doing so, they also made the BYOD phenomenon viable for messaging by creating a core set of assurance that software vendors could augment for more specialty needs. We now need an EAS equivalent for information management to bring the same benefit.

The end of siloed data
This fluidity of information, state, and credentials is fundamental to the architecture of Windows 8 and to the iCloud-mediated OS X/iOS duopoly. I’ll call it “iOS X” now rather than “MiOS,” as Apple has dropped “Mac” from its PC OS name, when referring to common capabilities in iOS and OS X.

For example, both Windows 8 and OS X distinguish between local storage and cloud storage in their developer APIs and, with Mountain Lion, in its user file-access UI. (iOS doesn’t differentiate; instead, everything can be synced to the cloud even if stored locally.) For developers, the key is that some data has to be assumed to be synced at any time with the rest of the user’s devices — it’s no longer in its own silo. Rather than caching work in memory and writing the file explicitly to disk on each save (the long-standing PC approach), changes are saved in real time and synced nearly as fast via Windows Live or iCloud.

iOS has never had explicit save; files are saved as you work. OS X Lion introduced this concept to PCs last summer; Lion-savvy apps also save as you go, and the old save operation has been redefined to mean save a version in the file so that the user can go back to specific breakpoints he or she defined in each save. Windows 8 takes the same approach.

This will sound like technobabble to many users, but it’s a fundamental change that points to the separation of device from the data it is working on. After all, that’s why Apple introduced iCloud — first as an app-specific document-syncing service but now growing into a more flexible cloud storage service — and why Microsoft is reworking its Windows Live service to do the same with Windows 8.

Of course, they sync much more than data; Windows 8 also allows syncing of application state, so you can pick up your work on, say, a tablet, where you left off on a PC. By contrast, iCloud ensures the file state is consistent but not the active tools.

Converged apps and UIs
This approach of divorcing the endpoint from the user’s data and services goes beyond file state, as Mountain Lion so clearly shows. There are three fundamental advances in Mountain Lion, which when all is said and done is just an incremental update to 2011’s OS X Lion. One is the deepening of the cloud storage architecture. Another is the deeper integration of social network (more on that later). The third is the convergence of users’ “personal” apps between iOS and OS X.

Apple has ported its iOS-only Reminders (task list), Notes (note taking), and Messages (instant messaging) apps, as well as its iOS-only notification engine to OS X Mountain Lion. It’s also renamed the Mac’s Address Book to use iOS’s Contacts and renamed the Mac’s iCal to use iOS’s Calendar. Changes to these apps in Mountain Lion suggest richer capabilities to come to iOS later this year — Apple cross-pollinates OS X and iOS regularly.

At a technology level, these are minor changes, to be sure, but they make the user experience across smartphones, tablets, and Macs even more similar. In Lion, Apple’s done an amazing job of bringing iOS’s touch interface to the Mac, and Mountain Lion extends that. As someone who works mainly on a Mac and iOS devices, I can tell you that the “switching” cost as I go from device to device diminishes with each OS X and iOS rev. It’s becoming a single operating environment that adapts to its specific devices — that’s exactly the point.

Microsoft has the same approach as Apple, even if it’s earlier in that journey. Metro runs on all Windows 8 devices, so it’ll be on desktop PCs, laptops, and tablets. It’s already on Windows Phone 7 devices. It’s the “BigWin” Windows 7 operating environment that is not universal in Microsoft’s path: x86-based PCs, laptops, and perhaps tablets can run it, but that’s all.

This split goes beyond UI; because Metro can’t run the kinds of apps Windows users expect, applications on x86 environments differ significantly than the widgetlike Metro apps seen so far. Microsoft promises a redesigned, “full feature” version of Office for at least ARM-based Metro devices, and its WinRT development tools may help developers deliver “real” apps to Metro.

Contrast that to the increasingly desktoplike apps available on iOS, in addition to the thousands of widgets in the App Store. Let’s hope Microsoft gets “real” apps on Metro; if Metro stays stuck in widget land, Microsoft will have defined its mobile devices as weak, and that will keeps its mobile market share extremely low as users continue to choose iOS or Android “strong” mobile devices as companions to their Macs or Windows PCs.

It’s clear that Windows 8 is nowhere near as integrated across devices in terms of UI and apps as iOS X is. Instead, what you have right now are two parallel operating environments that have very little in common. I can vouch that switching between them is a huge psychological adjustment. That’ll make the initial Windows 8 experience difficult for most users, but I suspect Microsoft sees Windows 8 as the pivot point in its OS development, and the Metro UI will start to absorb the traditional Windows interface in future versions. Microsoft has to move fast: Apple has been plotting its convergence and executing it step by step for five years, whereas Microsoft started in a serious way only last year.

Social federation, not just device federation
iOS 5 integrated Twitter, and Mountain Lion adds that, along with several other social services to its standard supported accounts. Microsoft has been far ahead of Apple in social networking integration, of course, on the smartphone side and is bringing that integration to Windows 8.

This integration doesn’t just mean loading client apps to access these services. It means understanding that user communications happens over multiple channels today, often for different “aspects” of the person, and both apps and the OS itself need to allow communication through any and all of these. In the Android, Linux, and Windows Phone 7 worlds today, you see “social hub” apps that integrate the streams from these various services in one place. Most are awkward because they don’t honor the distinct capabilities of each service but instead present a common denominator (an RSS-like dump).

Maybe someone can design a hub that doesn’t have this flaw, but until then I think the better approach is to consider the social networking services more like communications APIs that you enable in apps. From there, let the user call up the service’s specific app when he or she wants to engage in that specific social network’s full context. That seems to be the philosophy so far in iOS X, though done in a limited way. (A better model is how the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook integrates social context in its Contacts app.) By contrast, Windows 8 seems to be taking the Windows Phone path and providing a hub app, in addition to broader social integration for any communications-capable apps. It’s fine to offer a social hub and take the API approach; the mistake would be to focus on just the hub.

With social APIs increasingly native to the OSes, the fabric of communication will grow more complicated, as keeping the various communities in mind for what users share gets harder. That’s also an IT nightmare, and the notion of banning Twitter or Facebook will become impossible as such services are embedded into the OS’s core services — another reason for information management approach and an EAS-like standard to make it viable.

The other aspect of this is user privacy — from hackers, websites, vendors, employers, and other people. We’ve seen multiple scandals involving companies secretly gathering user information; Facebook is the poster child for such underhanded activities, which is why it is now under a federal consent order, but Google (which has sadly morphed from “don’t be evil” to “get mercenary”) and Path were both recently caught as well. Several states, such as California, have finally begun to act, and even the feds are now looking at the issue — after years of complaining that the Europeans were overly concerned on user privacy. The truth is that the U.S. has not been concerned enough, and we now have routine tapping of our private data built into modern services, websites, apps, and operating systems.

It’s not clear yet how Microsoft 8 will address such privacy management. Apple already prohibits developers from taking such information without user permission, but after several iOS apps were caught doing so anyhow, Apple now says it will have iOS X seek that permission rather than trust the apps to do it, much as it does with location information. OS X Mountain Lion adds explicit sharing controls to the user’s personal information in the updated Contacts app. Let’s hope that Microsoft follows suit, and with Apple creates a technology barrier against the likes of Google and Facebook — rather than restrict the personal information mining to just themselves.

A safer, easier, but more closed environment
An ironic consequence of this move to federated, multichannel, multidevice, fluid-data computing is the increasing centralization of the environments and the control taken by Apple and Microsoft.

When you go iOS X, you put yourself in Apple’s walled garden. For iOS, you get your apps only via the App Store, and there are powerful usability reasons to get your media and other content from iTunes. Apple’s taken a lot of heat for that gatekeeper approach in iOS, but can point to the fact iOS devices aren’t hacked to pieces like the open Windows PCs and Android devices are. For apps, Apple’s iCloud syncing works just with iOS X apps, whereas Windows iCloud users can sync only a subset of information: email, bookmarks, contacts, photos, and calendars.

Microsoft’s emerging garden is just as walled. For Windows 8 (and Windows Phone 7), as for its Office 365 and SharePoint collaboration services, file syncing and access are essentially limited to Windows devices. Metro apps can be bought only from the Microsoft Windows Store — the same approach Apple uses. As seen in its Zune campaign, Microsoft has failed to develop a competitor to iTunes, so the path of least resistance for getting media and content isn’t (yet) a Microsoft venue. But it may be one day.

OS X Mountain Lion introduces a new capability that disables apps from installing unless they come from the Mac App Store or the app includes an Apple-issued digital certificate proving the developer’s identity. This will make it harder for malware to install itself on a Mac and puts a stop to the hopeless game that antimalware programs play in trying to figure out which apps to block. Instead, with Mountain Lion, apps are whitelisted, and only whitelisted apps (more precisely, apps associated to their whitelisted developers) can be installed. Similar to Android, Mountain Lion lets users turn off that protection, which will be necessary for installing legitimate apps created before Apple’s developer IDs become available. It’s clear that Apple is moving OS X to the same gatekeeper model as iOS. I suspect Microsoft will follow this trajectory at some point.

This whitelist approach works when you have a single authority such as Apple or Microsoft as the gatekeeper. But it also tends to drive the distribution business to those gatekeepers. Developers grumble, but the truth is they make more money percentagewise from each sale in the App Store than they do when selling a physical copy via Amazon.com or Best Buy. The real economic issue for developers is not Apple’s (or Microsoft’s) cut but the fact that mobile apps sell for less than PC apps; as mobile devices and PCs converge, that lower price point may become universal.

Developers also dislike that Apple can block their apps entirely from distribution; there is no alternative route to the user but the App Store for iOS, and that could become the case over time for OS X. Microsoft is doing the same for Metro in Windows 8, and I’d be surprised if it didn’t consider the signed-ID approach for all Windows 8 apps at some point.

The real issue here is not the walled garden, but Apple’s and Microsoft’s stewardship of their gardens. Apple’s history is to create a planned community people want to live in, so they feel empowered by joining, not imprisoned. Thanks to overreach that led to antitrust consent decrees, Microsoft has avoided the appearance of controlling the environment that runs on its Windows, but now that those consent decrees are over, Microsoft has been moving to assert more control à la Apple. Only time will tell if it builds communities where people line up around the block, just to move in.

Both companies could still follow the path of AOL, whose early Web service was a pleasant gated community in the wilds of the newly discovered medium. But AOL started to lock the gates and exploit its prisoners — er, users — and people fled as fast as they could, leaving AOL a massive failure. That lesson gives some hope that Apple and Microsoft won’t succumb to such behavior. But if either or both does, it will be much, much harder to get out of their planned communities — really, planned ecosystems — than it was to dump AOL.

The future is already here
Windows 8 and OS X Mountain Lion may not yet be released, but the future they represent is already here. We live some of it today when we use an iPhone, iPad, or OS X Lion-based Mac. We live some of it today when we use Windows Phone 7, Android, and Google Docs. We’ll live more of it when OS X Mountain Lion and Windows 8 are released.

The walled garden concerns notwithstanding, that future is very appealing. It frees users from managing a set of silos and all the duplication that results from moving among them. It frees users to work, share, play, and learn anywhere. When you consider the mass positive disruption unleashed by the iPhone in five years and the iPad in just two, it’s hard to not be excited as to what we’ll gain as Apple and Microsoft prepare to step it up big time this year.