Your TV does internet, XBOX, PlayStation, Wii do internet, phones do internet, tablets do internet, zeus knows what else will do internet.
Yes, an assload of devices can now "do Internet" (apparently we're borrowing phrasing from a seventy-year-old grandma, doing the Internet with the Bookface and the VideoTube and the whatsits?) None of them do it as
well as a PC or laptop; of those, only tablets even come close. A smartphone is definitely easier to carry in your pocket than a laptop, and it's a perfectly fine thing for keeping a grocery list or checking email on the road; for actual web browsing, it's heavily constrained by screen size, with the experience being anywhere from "tolerable but not great" on sites with "phone" versions to downright comically bad on sites designed for a full-sized screen.
The PC age, where the desktop was dominant is no more, devices other than PCs form the majority of smart devices. The market is proving it as we speak.
The market is proving nothing of the kind, unless you've got some figures on actual
usage you're not sharing. Once again:
sales figures only convey information about what people are buying, not what they are using and in which contexts they are using it. There is absolutely no reason to assume that everybody who buys an iPhone goes and throws out their desktop, unless you're desperately trying to make things sound like you
want them to sound using data that doesn't actually support that assertion.
Who needs a desktop? Those who do serious work such as developing apps for other smart devices. Who doesn't need them? Most everybody else.
Who needs a desktop or laptop? Anybody who does
any kind of meaningful work on a computer, anybody who enjoys creative pursuits using the
mass of good creative software for PCs, anybody who doesn't like touchscreens or shıtty rubber Bluetooth keyboards in floppy fold-out "poor man's laptop" cases, anybody who enjoys games that aren't the
Bejeweled crap flooding the iOS or Android markets or watered-down console garbage, anybody who wants cost-effective mass storage, etcetera, etcetera.
Who doesn't need them? Slackjaws for whom the computer is a glorified TV, who spend their entire free time watching Jenna farkin' Marbles and desperately trying to get her to "like" them on Facebook, and for whom the closest they ever get to any kind of creative pursuit is spinning wild tales about the "post-PC era" at the slightest provocation. Yeah, those people probably don't need a real computer; they might hurt themselves on its non-patented square corners. They should be much safer with a smooth, featureless 6oz. slab.
The PC is just one device amongst a host of devices. This is what Apple and others have meant by post-pc. Apple continues to develop desktops too, so if they meant what you believed them to mean they'd be kicking a dead horse.
The fact that Apple's business arm has a great deal more sense than its marketing arm (which is probably just repeating "post-PC" in an attempt to get people to believe it, and buy more iPads) does not change the meaning of the words "post-PC era," because those words actually mean set things and combine in regular ways, and insisting that they mean something different
together is poor communication. If they really are only trying to say that people use other things than PCs for some tasks, I have news for you:
people have always used things other than PCs for some tasks. Did the microwave bring about the "post-oven era?"
Speaking of horses, no one would argue that we are in the post-horse transport era, yet I can still ride a horse if I want to.
This would be a meaningful analogy if horses were actually better at a wide variety of tasks than cars and more comfortable for long-term use. It's actually the opposite, so working from your logic, I look forward to the upcoming post-tablet era.
