Squeak Xbox port

Stephen Pair stephen at pairhome.net
Thu Apr 10 13:07:44 UTC 2003


Cees de Groot wrote:

>On Tue, 2003-04-08 at 18:39, Chris Reuter wrote:
>  
>
>>Personally, I find this whole goal sort of perplexing.  PVRs and game
>>consoles are appliances.  Yes, they have computers in them, but (most)
>>people buy them because they want to record TV shows or play video
>>games.  If they want to compute, they get computers.
>>
[snip]

>Slowly, without anyone noticing, game consoles *will* creep up into the
>market that is currently filled by PC's, at least as far as home use is
>concerned. 
>
Probably true, but I think you might be overlooking the possibility that 
PCs evolve in into things which are every bit as easy to use as game 
consoles...when that happens, and when free stuff is plentiful, Joe A. 
User will be compelled to switch for simple economic reasons.

>For 90% of the home users out
>there, the PC is the wrong idea, and a 'computing appliance' is the
>right idea.
>  
>
Sure...but I think that appliance needs to have Dynapad capabilities. 
;)  I don't think it's written anywhere that a PC has to be so 
non-intuitive and hard for Joe A. User to use.

>So, I find it *extremely* worrying that these things are closed
>platforms. And *extremely* worrying that people who sell mod chips in
>the USA are indeed being fined and jailed. 
>
It is worrying, but the legal aspects will eventually shake themselves 
out in a compromise that takes all concerns into account.  But it might 
be painful getting there.

>Because I predict that in
>5-10 years, PC's are things for hobbyists, and game consoles will
>dominate home use (these, and other specialized appliances - I believe
>very much in the 'bluetooth' model where lots of relatively specialized
>appliances all connect together, rather than to the 'Nokia 9210' model
>which is a one-thing-does-all-badly appliance).
>  
>
I doubt that (but maybe your definition of a PC is more narrow than 
mine)...first, many people are going to need PCs for work.  Second, 
children love computers, and not just for their superficial uses like 
you describe...I doubt you'll be able take general purpose computers 
away from them.  I believe in 5-10 years, you're going to have lot's of 
specialized appliances and computers (and btw, most of them will be open 
and programmable)...probably at least one computer for each person in 
the household and a server.  Matter of fact, that's the situation right 
now with many of the people I know.

Take the PVR for example, it's a specialized device and in many cases 
they are closed, or semi-closed.  But, I think things are definitely 
trending towards more openness.  PCs are starting to get the features of 
PVRs, and there are lot's of open source efforts underway to build that 
functionality.  One day, some company is going to figure out that they 
can sell a box with this open/free software pre-installed, do it for a 
fraction of the cost of more closed systems, and make a bundle of money 
because everyone's going to want it because there are tons of little 
free (or really cheap) features available for it right off the internet 
that people are writing for it.

- Stephen




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