I have seen the future, and it is going to absolutely rule. No more will you lug around a phone, a tablet, and a laptop. No, you’re life is going to be much simpler than that. And less expensive.
Laptop have steadily been getting smaller, lighter, and more cloud-based with every passing year. Sooner rather than later, their size will be dictated only by the screen and demissions of the human hand for the keyboard. With that kind of slimness, you’d be better off with some futuristic combination of just a screen and a detachable soft keyboard. Oh wait… Something something Surface Pro…
On the other end of the spectrum, phones are getting more powerful, and the operating systems more capable. Once internet speeds catch up to laptops, they will have effectively reached parity. Of course, the physical size of a laptop will always be able to pack in more processing power and memory, but we are already reaching declining returns on laptop processing power. At this point, entry level on many lines is more than adequate to accomplish work for 80% of the population. Once we get mobile at that level and speed, laptops no longer become necessary.
With this lense of the future in place, it is clear to see what Apple has been doing with it’s operating systems across devices, and how Microsoft is following suit. The Surface Pro is the obvious example (this is why I used it earlier) of the already-bridged gap between tablet and laptop. But recently, Microsoft debuted a the very idea of a phone-based laptop, and there have been rumblings of the same from Android for years now (although nothing produced yet).
Who needs a tablet when your phone does the same thing? All you really need is a bigger output (screen) and easier input keyboard and mouse). Screens in-of-themselves are relatively cheap to make, as are peripherals. If we’re going to keep carrying around our phones everywhere (we will, because Google Glass is stupid), then it becomes a simple matter of course to litter our lives and works with screens that are easy to plug into as we need. This wouldn’t even be a security issue, it’s just a screen. Install them on busses and in Ubers, in planes and at the laundromat. Screens everywhere, but all our data, work, and life securely in our pockets.
The point is, we have one, maybe two generations of laptops left, then this migration will happen. The Surface Pro users of the world are the early adopters on this, but mark my words you’ll be using your phone for all your computing needs before too long.