Steve Ballmer - the iPad is really a PC – I am not sure about that

How fascinating to hear both Jobs and Ballmer talk about the future of “personal computing”.

If you strip away they sarcasm and ‘friendly’ rivalry, what is the thing that separates their vision of the future?

From these two short videos there is one thing above all that shouts out at me.

In the Ballmer world there are personal portable devices and PCs. Both of these will come in increasingly different configurations, but there are only two types of devices. In the world of Mr Jobs there will be devices we use when working with computers, for tasks that require a high level of interface (currently we are talking about keyboard and mouse); devices we use in our pocket and devices we use for other parts of our life – like sitting on the sofa reading a book, sharing photos with friends etc – like sitting on the sofa, absorbing what we currently call TV. All of these devices stuck together by wireless glue. Maybe I am reading a bit too much into his comments but I think that is what he means.

Ballmer sees the world through the functionality of the devices. Jobs sees the world through the mindset we are in when we use the devices. It will be interesting to see who is right. I bet you can guess where my money is bet. Dick Stroud