Wow, it must be the most clueless article this year...
...with gems like these:
"When even senior sysadmins work on an iPhone connected to an Apple TV"
(Priceless. Senior... what? :D)
"Something has happened, right under our noses, so close we still can’t quite see it. It’s only when we get to the long shot, like my friend in New York, that the arrow of time reveals itself, arcing in a path from 10 kilo boat anchor to 129 gram super-thin super-smartphone."
(Right, because they serve the same purpose, right? I mean in your world only, of course. :D)
"“When I’m in the office I’ll AirPlay it over to an Apple TV connected to a monitor. What’s the difference between that and a desktop?”
My friend has worked in IT for a quarter of a century, and likes all the new toys, but when it comes to work, he’s incredibly conservative in his choices - that’s why he gets hired to keep infrastructure ticking over."
(Ahahahaha, this is soooo great it is self-explanatory. Sometimes I wonder if clowns like him ever read their stuff before they hit the publish button or they do but they just simply lost their ability to recognize the sheer nonsense in their own little precious pieces...?:D )
"Laptops keep getting smaller and more powerful, but we’ve now reached a moment when they’re less useful than our smartphones."
(Suuure. Like your - probably imaginery - friend who runs some giant retail sales network architecture but also gets involved on daily server administration yet he is much more productive on a low-res 6" smartphone that only runs its own, non-x86 apps, with very limited CPU and memory etc than a laptop with, say, 13"-15" QHD or UHD resolution, full-fledged remote desktop, unlimited multitasking, can make calls while doing something else etcetc...? :D)
"powerful devices that can cast to any nearby screen (Chromecast & AirPlay), browse any website, and run all the important apps."
(Except any website that requires Flash, SIlverlight or any commonly used plugin and has no fully-equivalent mobile version eg a giant retailer's sales intranet comes into mind... all important apps? You mean all that *exist* except the inifinite number of x86 ones that won't run? :D)
"Plus ça change."
(Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses, as my latin teacher used to say decades ago when someone gave some detailed, lengthy but completely wrong explanation to a question... please, do yourself a favor and drop the "futurist" attempts and go back reading Gibson and keep teaching - students certainly need input and ideas. Even if it's completely wrong like this. :D)