Apple, and the media, bury the PC

Phil Schiller talks iPhone 5 at Wednesday's Apple event.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

You would think the PC was six feet under by reading tech coverage this week.

With every aspect of the iPhone 5 dissected ad nauseam by legions of tech journalists worldwide, coverage of the ultrabook at the concurrent Intel event didn't stand a chance.

Problem is, there's just too much cool tech that Apple -- and the Android guys too, by the way -- pack into a handheld device. PCs, as they stand now, are a bit boring by comparison.

Here are a few of the most prominent technologies that ultrabooks -- the standard for cutting-edge PC design -- either lack or can't incorporate effectively:

• 4G: The vast majority of ultrabooks don't come with Internet-access-anywhere capability. (In my opinion, a big mistake. At the very least it should be an option.) The iPhone, on the other hand, has the fastest thing going, LTE.


• Ultra high-resolution displays: There is no Windows laptop out there with anything close to the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro's 220 pixel-per-inch (PPI) density Retina display, let alone the iPhone's 326 PPI screen. And PC makers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard still insist on selling mainstream ultrabooks with sub-120 PPI displays. Result: ultra boring.... [Read more]