What if our tech is good enough?

13. For Technology to drive consumers it has to continue to fill their needs and be positively exciting. Technology providers, except in rare cases, haven't been giving the consumer that. Apple's iPhone and iPod are a couple of the exceptions. For example, how long has it been since Microsoft, or anyone else, introduced a piece of software that changed our way of thinking like Excel? Unless you are a gamer or SW Developer who really the increased power of today's entry PC's just to read mail and surf the web?

Technology companies need to focus more on innovating and less on marketing hype.

12. #12: If you were saying this in 2000 you were dead wrong. Advances in areas like data storage and consumer products (iPods, digital cameras, etc.) have been huge since then. To suggest that people would be satisfied with products from that era is laughable.

11. First, I have been actively saying this about computer hardware and operating systems since 2000. In fact my wife said "So they have finally figured it out too" when I sent her the story link.

This is also closely linked to OS and software bloat. Unfortunately the world has been held hostage to unnecessary bloat requiring regular upgrades. There is nothing I can do today on OSX and Windows XP that I could not do in 1994 on an Amiga. There is little I can do today on OSX and XP that I could not do in 1998 on the Amiga. I am including art software, multimedia distribution systems (including touch screen kiosks), video non linear editing, and many other advanced areas that Apple seems to have "Invented" in the decade and a half following the Amigas downfall. Most of what I could do back then cold be done in 2 MB of RAM. Everything else could be achieved in a maximum of 96 MB RAM (Rendering Babylon 5 footage needed that amount because the Babylon 5 model was close to 90MB in memory). The advanced (almost OSX in form and function) multitasking

OS on the Amiga took less than 256KB, and later 800KB RAM.

If software and Operating Systems were programmed and hand optimized by the programmers as they were back then, we would have had "Good Enough" systems in 1998. "Good Enough" would be enough for professional graphics and movie footage production. Good Enough for average home users (assuming tight optimized code) was reached in 1996.

The good news is that the new netbook hardware has forced Microsoft (the inventor of Bloatware) to reconsider the assumption that there will always be more memory and more CPU cycles, and Windows 7 is tighter code. 500MB is still a ridiculous memory footprint for an OS, but at least they are headed in the correct direction. Unfortunately Apple is going in the opposite direction and their baubles are adding massive stress on hardware.

To put this al in perspective. As an Amiga user of the late 80's to late 90's, most people I knew fully expected facial recognition of the users emotions, 100% accurate speech recognition, and an emulated intelligence that would allow a computer interface akin to having a simple discussion with a friend. We expected this to happen by the time we all got to 1GHZ CPUs sometime around 2000. That did not happen, because lazy companies, and lazy programmers ate up all the gains in speed and space with more and more bloat.

On a slightly different tack. Apple have not really been inventing anything at all since the release of the original OSX. Every major advance "bauble" has been ripped from the corpse of the Amiga. Features that Mac users used to laugh about as useless gimmicks, are now "Apple inventions". Sometimes, as with the "Automator" program, these are done so poorly that they are barely capable of the most simple tasks compared to what could be achieved on the Amigas OS in 2 MB of RAM while multitasking more than one program (BTW, the standard Mac fanatic mantra back then was "Multitasking is a gimmick, a computer operator can only do one thing at a time"... Apple and the average Mac user have never been very forward looking). There are still advanced Amiga features there to be stolen by Apple to keep them busy for the next five years.

10. All true, though if you had a choice of Vista or windows 95, you'd pick Vista wouldn't you? Simply because it looks a lot prettier, or at the very least you'd pick XP because even XP makes 95 look not very good, and plus, hardware these days support Vista and XP and not 95!!! It's not an unnecessary upgrade, it's necessary. However, I agree with blu-ray not really looking much better than DVD, though I suppose if you had a massive TV then it would look better. And finally, the i7 stuff and 16GB of RAM and incredi-powerful graphics cards are for those few that play Crysis at Max settings :D

9. Bluray is failing b/c it's a bad technology that was doomed from the start thanks to the advent of HD digital download services. Trust me I work at a major computer vendor as a Premium tech for end users and BD fails a lot thanks to all the copy protection that's on it.

8. Spot on article, spot on.

Most tech is more than good enough for a vast number of users. hawkinson quoting Gates from 1981 is using an analogy that doesn't fit - the hardware advances since 1981 until 2000 were quite extraordinary, however, as the author of this article noted, its been incremental increases in processing power for a long time.

Most people in the New Economy just aren't going to fork over hundreds to thousands of dollars anymore just to say they have the newest or fastest, they're saying they have 'good enough'.

I, for one, can't applaud this new movement enough. I always thought it pure folly for people to snap up, for example, the highest end video cards for a PC when a midrange one would do just fine. Or the person buying a 1080p TV when a 720p would have been more than adequate.

Its why BluRay is failing big time (and no, don't let anyone tell you differently - it's a disaster). People aren't going to fork over $300+ for a BluRay player plus more than double the price for software (and good for them!)

Great article, great points, and to those who disagree - stop overspending on your tech!

7. IT's a decent article but still flawed. Yes in the HDTV market it has become hard to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p and all the stats and numbers the companies throw at you mean little to the average consumer, but what about the next leap in display tech? 3-D is starting to come into it's own and even if that isn't the next big advance there's always room for innovation in ways that we haven't even thought of yet but that's not to say someone else won't think of it.

As far as the comment on computers yeah netbooks are good enough for most people for getting online but what about the base that the services like facebook and twitter are using? As things continue to move to the cloud I don't doubt that we will see a decline in the traditional desktop and laptop area (those fields will probably never go away as some people will always crave the highest end components) more people are going to look for online apps to do things like store their info and streaming apps to edit their pictures and movies which will force innovation on the server end and internet infrastructure to allow things like this to happen.

So while you may say tech is slowing down in all actuality we are probably just seeing a shift in the way technology and services are implimented that cannot be generalized on the industry as a whole.

6. although I love the article, I'm going to have to agree with ahawkinson here.

Yes it is true that many of our technical advances could be reaching the end of their development... this does not take into account technologies that seem impossible to us today or advancements that we cannot even fathom yet. Ideas like interfacing technology with our brains (a scary thought)are not considered. However, as far as multimedia and visual quality are concerned...I would say this article is spot on, but only because there is a limit to how much the human brain can process... the next step in my opinion is improving ourselves with technology, as I stated above.

5. "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981

I hear what you're saying, but think the logic is flawed and chronocentric. Your view on things being "good enough" may hold true for products that have reached maturity like Microsoft Office, the mouse, and many more things. But there will be many, many continued breakthroughs and shifts both in technology and in our use and buying behaviors around it.

Facebook growing at >500K users PER DAY in 2009 and Twitter accelerating it's month over month growth (grew by over 100% in March) are good indicators that the rate of change is not slowing.

4. Well done, for what is a fantastic article, the only problem is that you'll never have to write another, 'cos that was GOOD ENOUGH ;)

3. Great article. Absolutely spot on. What we have is good enough. At least until someone invents Matrix-style plug in neural interfaces for life like virtual reality.

2. I have been a regular reader at Techradar and have never had the patience to register an account.

That's how good this article was. =)

1. great article