The IBM PC Turns 30

The IBM Personal Computer turns 30 today. However, even as the company celebrates 30 years of the IBM PC, Mark Dean, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Middle East and Africa, says that PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device... but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress. The IBM PC first entered the main scene on August 12, 1981, and Dean was one of the dozen engineers who designed it.

You shall be missed..  (Image credit: jam3sh.wordpress.com)

Today as we look around we can't help but notice that the humble desktop is losing out to laptops, tablets, and probably something sleeker in future. Dean on his blog post revealed that while he did play his part in the designing of the personal computer, he didn't think he’d "live long enough to witness its decline". He says, "While PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they’re no longer at the leading edge of computing. They’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs."

Dean also goes on to add that as much as he's proud of the laurels the personal computer has brought to the company, and to the engineers who worked on it, he feels happy that IBM quit the personal computer space, and subsequently sold off the PC division to Lenovo in 2005. 

So, even while we live with the comforts of personal computing that tablets, laptops, or even smartphones offer, the PC did pave the way for all of them.