Could you picture doing all of your work — at home or at the office — on an iPad?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn't think that world will come true. While he does think the shape of computing will change, he maintains "I think people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come."
Ballmer said as much during an interview at D8, the same conference where Apple's Steve Jobs revealed that the iPad came before the iPhone, and that he still hates Flash.
"The PC as we know it will continue to morph. The real question is what are you going to push," Ballmer said. "To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail; we have a hammer."
One direction computing could take: a move toward the cloud, rather than keeping content local. While this could seen as a threat to Microsoft products such as Word — one of the company's most valuable products — Microsoft has been pouring money into its online sectors.
"There is nothing bad for us in the trend," Ballmer said of cloud computing. "But it is a transition. Transitions are times of potential tumult. We need to work smarter, work harder and be more vigilant. Absolutely."
Microsoft scored something of a home run with the critically positive reception of Windows 7. Only time will tell if we're seeing a massive corporation on the upswing, or if Microsoft has peaked.
