Self Same computers

From: McManis, Charles <Charles.McManis_at_netapp.com>
Date: Thu Sep 6 15:43:23 2001

In response to my comment of:
>No doubt the auto industry had a very similar time of it and today
>cars are largely identical except for things like body styling and
>number of cup holders. So what used to be special and unique, is now
>common and mundane.

At 04:19 PM 9/6/2001 -0400, Jeff Hellige wrote:
> My only problem with that analogy is that automobiles are
>fairly fixed as to what you can use them for, while computers on the
>other hand are bounded only by the imagination and talent of the
>programmers.

Except that over 95% of "end user" computers purchased today are _not_ bought by programmers. And what non-programmers do with computers _is_ fixed, and as many on this list have complained it gets harder and harder every year to find enough information to actually program these things at a level deeper than Visual Basic script.

So what I predict, is that in the near future (probably 1 to 2 but certainly less than 5 years) you will only see "computers" sold as either big-bad-ass servers, or small embeddedable controllers. The middle ground, the so called "Personal Computer" will cease to exist as a general purpose machine. And only the programmers will notice.

--Chuck
Received on Thu Sep 06 2001 - 15:43:23 BST