Perhaps Blu-ray is the canary in the coalmine. To its makers, it's a fantastic new format, the pinnacle of home entertainment technology.
To the public, it's DVD with a slightly better picture and double the price tag – and most people have decided to stick with what they already have.
Blu-ray isn't the only recent example of this malaise. While the launch of Windows 95 saw midnight queues, Vista's release saw nothing but tumbleweed.
What if this continues and Windows 7 is met with apathy, not excitement? What if iPods stay on the shelves, PC firms can't shift their stock and ISPs investing in ever-faster broadband go to the wall?
It all sounds extreme, but Blu-ray's problems should send the industry a message. "Thanks, but no thanks," we're saying. "What we've got is good enough."
Slowing improvements
The evolution of technology over the past few decades has been incredible. In a short space of time we've advanced from blurry black-and-white television broadcasts to crisp HD programming, from unreliable mobile phones to speedy smartphones, and from computers the size of rooms to intuitive mobile devices that can it into the palm of your hand.
Yet now we find ourselves in an impossible position. In almost every sphere, the technology we have is so good that any improvements can only be incremental. The gap between the first digital cameras – which struggled to produce even grainy VGA images – and today's 10-megapixel models is immense, but once your megapixels hit double digits, any further improvement is hardly noticeable.
Moving from video to DVD-quality camcorders was another giant leap, but the difference between 720p HD and 1080p HD is only apparent if your TV is the size of a bus.
The same applies to our connections; moving from dial-up to broadband was a revelation, but upgrading from 2Mbps to 8Mbps, or from 8Mbps to 20Mbps, is a mere speed bump.
And moving from CD to MP3 was extraordinary, but upgrading from an iPod that stores your entire music collection to one that can store your collection twice is nowhere near as exciting.
The problem is particularly apparent in the world of PCs. Processors and operating systems evolved dramatically in the 1990s, but innovation has slowed – so while the transition from x86s to dual-core processing brought phenomenal changes, the move from fast multicore processing to slightly faster multicore processing didn't.
Similarly, while Windows 95 and the first version of OS X were revolutionary, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard aren't. The big stuff happened years ago, leaving Microsoft and Apple with no option but to polish what they've got and add a few shiny baubles.
That way, we might believe they've got amazing new operating systems instead of expensive and unnecessary upgrades.
'Good enough'
The problem of 'good enough' is a huge headache for the tech industry. When your computer isn't good enough – when a slow processor, meagre memory and tiny hard disk struggle with even everyday tasks – you'll buy a better model as soon as it becomes available.
Now, though, the weakest link isn't your PC: it's you.
Will a 200-core processor make you type an email more quickly, make you work more productively or make your Facebook status updates any more amusing?
It's no coincidence that the biggest tech success story in these credit-crunched times is the netbook, a poverty-spec laptop with a tiny screen, sod-all storage and the ability to browse the web, produce the odd Word document and little else.
Netbooks aren't particularly good, but they're good enough. The tech industry can't do much about 'good enough' – but what it can do is invent entirely new kinds of kit in an attempt to part us from our cash.
We've already seen the rise of the netbook, but that's not the only new category that tech firms are inventing. Memory cards that can deliver a mighty 2TB of storage will make hard disks obsolete and usher in new PC designs; dull network storage systems are being frantically redesigned as home entertainment hubs; and Windows 7 gives hardware firms an excuse to stuff touchscreens into absolutely everything.
More whimsical developments are also on the cards: OLED displays mean that digital photo frames will become miniature HDTVs, HDTVs are evolving new features from internet-connected widgets to full 3D displays and manufacturers are cramming entire mobile phones into the humble digital watch.
These ideas may use hardware rather than hearts and solder rather than stitches, but we can't help thinking of Victor Frankenstein toiling away in his lab.
Like Frankenstein, the tech industry is creating strange hybrids by cobbling together whatever is to hand – and just like Frankenstein, its ultimate aim is to find a way to live forever.
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First published in PC Plus Issue 280
Like this article? Then check out Windows 7 to usher in the $200 netbook age
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Your comments (14) Click to add a new comment
davidwsnow
June 6th
14. 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.
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bigyaz
May 1st
13. #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.
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boybunny
April 21st
12. 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.
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louis058
April 21st
11. 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
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diffydoo89
April 21st
10. You have to admit the guy makes pretty good sense!
RT
www.privacy.pro.tc
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darkproteus66
April 21st
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.
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