End of Desktops ?

A long time ago,in a galaxy far far away .. 

It was a period of files and folders.The OS developed were file oriented.Data were neatly organized in folders or just lying around in a hierarchy of folders.Either way,the file manager was used to manage them. 

Now .. 

It is a period of applications.There is an application developed for everything,right from managing your meetings,to driving your hot wheels.The app-centric OS were restricted to mobile devices,but slowly,the same is being adopted for desktop OSes as well. 

A few months back Windows previewed its next iteration of OS,Windows 8.The look and feel was more like the Windows Phone 7 OS,the Metro UI.Sure,its awesome,but that thing on a desktop ? Navigating through screen meant for swipes through a mouse click,err ! 

Apple announced its transition of Mac OS towards iOS,with Mac OS X Lion,with the App Store and the works.And yesterday,with the developer preview release of Mountain Lion OS X,we see how close they are to replacing the Mac with iOS.Infact,they even dropped the Mac from its name.Notification Center,iMessage,Notes,all the latest additions of the iOS 5 have made its way onto the Mac. 

        

With the increasing use of mobile devices,the cloud storage is gaining a lot of popularity.A central storage makes more sense than individual physical storage,as people are mostly on the go.Also one of its advantages is the synchronization of data across the devices.Redundancy also decreases drastically.All your device needs is the minimal storage to install the OS,an voila,you are done.The rest of your data is sitting somewhere on the cloud,which you can access right away.Streaming will be the way to access the data.(Samsung even dropped their 32 gig Galaxy Nexus with this assumption).And this will lead to an app-centric OS. 

Eyeing the trend,the day ain't too far away when SSDs will completely replace Hard Drives,owing to its size. 

So,where do the desktops fit in this picture? 

No where.The key to the future will be mobility and with desktops,you have nada. 

Atleast on personal computing segment,mobile devices are bound to replace desktops.If that is the scenario,will that mean the end of computer gaming industry as well ?