Newsweek Sees Google and Apple Inventing the Future of Computing

Elliot: We made the cover of the Rolling Stone!
Cathie: How could I have missed that – our pictures are on the cover of the Rolling Stone?
Elliot: Not exactly...
Cathie: Hmmm... Did our pictures make it to the cover of a magazine?
Elliot: Not exactly…
Cathie: Is the magazine that our pictures are not on, the Rolling Stone?
Elliot: Not exactly...
Cathie: Ok, so, what are you talking about... you rented an off brand car?
Elliot (genuinely laughing): Ha ha, ho, ho… but, hey, that was pretty funny … No, the cover of Newsweek is about mobile computing!!! Metaphorically we made the cover of the Rolling Stone.
Cathie (rolls her eyes): Ahhh, metaphorically, eh... who talks like that?
Elliot: I am a professor; I like to use big words…
Cathie:… that you need me to define for you..
Elliot: … one of these days, Alice…
Cathie: It is cool, now that I see Newsweek’s cover...
Elliot: The cover talks about the Future of Computing..
Cathie: ... and only mentions Google and Apple. What about that little software company in Redmond?
Elliot: And the largest seller of computers that hires and fires CEO’s like no tomorrow?
Cathie: The Newsweek cover speaks more to who isn’t included than to who is!
Elliot: That’s a great twitter feed – I will use it. Thank you!
Cathie: A quote from your buddy, Alan Kay, comes to mind: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Elliot: Great quote! YUP! And Apple and Google aren’t sitting around waiting for mobile to happen – they are making mobile happen.
Cathie: While Microsoft just announced their Windows Phone 7 operating system on October 11, 2010...
Elliot: …  and the actual Windows Phone 7 won’t be available until November. How could Microsoft have missed the boat on mobile so badly? Microsoft is a great company.
Cathie: Remember, Bill Gates said that Microsoft missed the Internet…
Elliot: Yes, yes… and on December 7, 1995…
Cathie: ….Pearl Harbor Day, just in case everyone doesn’t recognize the date…
Elliot: …. They announced publically that Microsoft missed the Internet but effective immediately, they are now an Internet company. And son-of-a-gun, Gates turned 17,000 Microsoft employees around and Microsoft did indeed become an Internet company.  History will note that Gates is truly an amazing individual, for many reasons.
Cathie: Wow – that is quite high praise!
Elliot: Gates deserves it – even though I think the Gates Foundation’s focus on merit pay for teachers is totally wrong-headed and…
Cathie: … Stay focused, Elliot, stay focused….
Elliot: I was ramping up there for a tirade…
Cathie (smiles knowingly): … I saw the signs, loud and clear!
Elliot: So now the question is this: can Microsoft re-insert itself as a meaningful player in the mobile space.
Cathie: … but Newsweek talked about the “Future of Computing” – not just about the “mobile space.”
Elliot: Typical, muckraking hyperbole…
Cathie: … maybe, but maybe not…. Maybe mobile IS the future of computing?
Elliot: Ahhh, a lovely point!!
Cathie: Blog readers… what do YOU think? Is mobile the Future of Computing?