IBM's Mark Dean, who helped design the first PC, has "moved beyond the PC," he said in a Wednesday blog post. Microsoft's Frank X. Shaw, however, argued in a separate post that we are now in the "PC Plus" era, which is evident in continued PC sales and all the devices that have PC components at their core. The IBM 5150 personal computer made its debut in New York City on August 12, 1981. Though other PCs had come before it, like the Apple II and Commodore PET, Shaw said "the introduction of the IBM PC was a defining moment for our industry [because] once IBM entered the market with a system running the Microsoft Disk Operating System, MS-DOS, our industry really began to realize the dream of a PC on every desk and in every home." Dean, now chief technology officer for IBM Middle East and Africa, said he is proud to be "one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first machine and was fortunate to have lead subsequent IBM PC designs through the 1980s." But these days, he uses a tablet rather than a PC. "When I helped design the PC, I didn’t think I’d live long enough to witness its decline. But, while PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they’re no longer at the leading edge of computing," Dean wrote. "They’re going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs." IBM left the personal PC business in 2005 when it sold its PC division to Lenovo, a move that Dean said put IBM " in the vanguard of the post-PC era." Microsoft, however, is still heavily invested in the PC. Shaw, Microsoft's vice president for corporate communications, acknowledged that Redmond's "vision for how technology can change the world has evolved," but said he prefers the term "PC plus" to "Post PC" given that "there will be 400 million PCs sold worldwide this coming year."
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