Financial Times on a new computer era
This is not about preferences for open source or this or that vendor, but about a huge shift caused by a monopolist's lack of concern about their customer's needs. It has happened to quite a few companies throughout history.
I predict we'll see a surprisingly rapid ramp-up of large companies jumping ship for the same reason as the 10,000 employee global company in the article, because CIOs will say they can't be so exposed anymore.
Simultaneously, especially non-geek consumers have already started the march towards locked-down computers that just plain work, such as the new generation of tablets (2M iPads sold in the first 60 days, a multitude of cheap Android tablets coming before the year is over, and one or more WebOS tablets from HP).
This will also spread to more and more consumer desktops (increasingly integrated á la iMac and some recent Gateway and HP computers), as well as specific categories of professional tools.
This is nothing less than a revolution, and it will be very important even for SCS to start thinking about this immediately.
It of course presents a good personal opportunity for making money by shorting "the railroad company" that didn't realize its customers were more interested in reliable transportation than in just paying for anything that moved on two tracks with the same track width as Roman army chariots (our railroad standard, no kidding).
Of course our existing machines will continue to do their thing for years to come, but they'll all end up at the computer museum a bit sooner than perhaps expected.
And there will be holdouts. "They can have my white box when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands."
As well as enthusiasts who do 100% of their own software and hardware maintenance and write their own applications like in the olden days.
Well, it was all getting to be a bit too predictable, wasn't it?
This is not about preferences for open source or this or that vendor, but about a huge shift caused by a monopolist's lack of concern about their customer's needs. It has happened to quite a few companies throughout history.
I predict we'll see a surprisingly rapid ramp-up of large companies jumping ship for the same reason as the 10,000 employee global company in the article, because CIOs will say they can't be so exposed anymore.
Simultaneously, especially non-geek consumers have already started the march towards locked-down computers that just plain work, such as the new generation of tablets (2M iPads sold in the first 60 days, a multitude of cheap Android tablets coming before the year is over, and one or more WebOS tablets from HP).
This will also spread to more and more consumer desktops (increasingly integrated á la iMac and some recent Gateway and HP computers), as well as specific categories of professional tools.
This is nothing less than a revolution, and it will be very important even for SCS to start thinking about this immediately.
It of course presents a good personal opportunity for making money by shorting "the railroad company" that didn't realize its customers were more interested in reliable transportation than in just paying for anything that moved on two tracks with the same track width as Roman army chariots (our railroad standard, no kidding).
Of course our existing machines will continue to do their thing for years to come, but they'll all end up at the computer museum a bit sooner than perhaps expected.
And there will be holdouts. "They can have my white box when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands."
As well as enthusiasts who do 100% of their own software and hardware maintenance and write their own applications like in the olden days.
Well, it was all getting to be a bit too predictable, wasn't it?