"Tim, I couldn't help but want to offer my $0.02 on the issue."
Good comments.
"One thing that I haven't heard anyone mention is the cause and effect relationship that has kept the computer industry on track for the past couple decades. The pundits (not you) always ask when they will ever need any more computing power, and the same applies to Internet bandwidth as well."
Well, two things have generally caused home users and small businesses to upgrade their computers (I am excluding enterprise and scientific/data center customers, as they have specific tasks...we could include them, but it would complicate the discussion with a lot of industry-specific stuff.). The two factors are:
1. Significant news applications, aka killer apps. Or significant new OSes that require more processing power. More on this in a bit.
2. Dramatic price reductions that make purchase of new computers an easy choice.
Let me address this second point first. Remember the "sub-$1000 computer"? Because of dramatically high yields on large wafers, and because of cut-throat pricing on components like disk drives, memory, CD-RW drives, etc., the sub-$1000 PC is the norm, and it runs at 1.7 GHz or faster. Whew.
Lots of people see that they order a Dell or Gateway for $799 PC which runs three times faster than their old machines and which has "new features" like CD-RW and USB 2/Firewire that make it possible for them to do new things (like video editing).
The other factor is killer apps, about which much has been written. I saw people buying Apple IIs to run VisiCalc. Then IBM PCs to run Lotus 1-2-3. Then when the Mac came out, people were buying it to desktop publishing with PageMaker. Then Windows 3.0/3.1 came out just about the time a new generation of 496-based machines were being released. A lot of Mac apps hit the Windows world (Excel, PageMaker, PowerPoint, etc.) and this unleashed a wave of upgrades. And so on.
The last big wave of upgrades was, most would agree, the replacing of older 386- and 486-based machines, and early sub-300 MHz Pentiums, with machines "ready for Y2K." Whether Y2K was hype or not, a lot of corporate America used 1999 to clear out old machines and upgrade systems and apps.
I argue that a lot of these 400-800 MHz Pentium III-based machines (don't quote me on the exact speeds...I'd have to check what was out when, but this was the general range of speeds a few years ago) are doing perfectly well in their intended applications. If it ain't broke, why fix it?
For those doing video editing, Photoshop, etc., they either are using the latest and fastes Macs or the latest and fastest Pentium 4s and Athlons. But most people aren't doing this.
And so the prices keep falling.
"In the computer industry, I notice that developers are more willing and eager to develop something with larger requirements, as long as there is a sufficient installed base that can already support the new features being implemented. With Internet content creation, many developers are still designing their web pages for the lowest common denominator. And this is in spite of many tools available that could enable much richer Internet experiences."
Pardon my French, but _screw_ "much richer Internet experiences."
I go to sites for content, for reading about movies or books, and so on. I don't get impressed with Flash animations, and not just because of my 49K dial-up line. The richness of the Web is in the actual content being served, not the Madison Avenue "sizzle" of some site designer thinking he can entice me with dancing Java applets and Shockwave crud.
It's interesting that two of the most visited Web sites ("portals") are Yahoo and Google, both with a relatively light hand in terms of "rich Internet experience" (!!) cruft. Yahoo has more advertising, but it's mostly ignorable. Google periodically gets cute with their logo, but is otherwise admirable in terms of its spartan simplicity. It's the site I go to many, many times a day.
"With the majority of the country still using analog modems, you can't really design anything for your business without the requirements of those users in mind. On the other hand, the more potential customers in your market that have broadband connections, the more willing you will be to upgrade the content of your site to attract those viewers."
I disagree, but maybe you are right. A site which is too cluttered with cruft will drive away visitors. The lowest common denominator matters, for multiple reasons.
"But now you have a chicken and egg syndrome. Unless businesses continue to upgrade Internet infrastructure in anticipation of the need for greater bandwidth, then developers will not feel the need to generate content that takes up that bandwidth."
Well, several of my friends can attest to the fact that I was convinced several years ago that Internet advertising was not going to work. And it hasn't. Much of the dot com buildup was about b.s. about "clickthroughs"...which never came to pass. And the exotic graphics of "boo.com" and "pets.com" sites certainly did not save them.
"I think that, like any new technology, there will be early adopters that make use of it before there is an actual "need". There will also be the niche uses that will drive the desire towards more instant gratification. For example, if I only need the bandwidth of my Internet connection 2% of the time, I would be very upset if I didn't have it during that 2% period. Not everybody has the good timing to go ahead and make lunch when they know they are about to download a significant file to their computer. Most of the time, people just browse the Internet haphazardly, and when they find something that looks interesting, say a video of the winning field goal to yesterday's football game, then they will want to download and watch it on the spot. They will want instant gratification, like I explained earlier."
But that's what I call media delivery. And for those with broadband, I agree that they will idly click on clips of movies, download songs, etc. They certainly did it with Napster. And they did it with AdCritic, before it went belly up. (I laboriously downloaded several of my favorite t.v. commercials over my modem, just so I'd have them 10 years from now. And I showed the site to Paul Engel...we could download the same commercials in seconds with his cablemodem. Interestingly, and tellingly, the site AdCritic failed for lack of money...nobody was bothering to buy the advertised items. They wanted the "free stuff," as always.)
So, those who have paid for broadband will use it in new sorts of ways. Whether there's money in it is a different topic to debate. But being able to idly download a field goal video clip is not yet a compelling reason for Joe Sixpack to demand broadband...odds are he barely knows such a thing is possible.
"My point, though, is that today's "media delivery" will not be anything like the "xxx delivery" of tomorrow. Cause and effect will compel developers to come up with new kinds of content, as their audience become more advanced users. The ground being broken by the enthusiast crowd will make way for the late-comers. It's hard to predict what will require the faster bandwidths of a broadband connection, but my belief is that everyone will eventually need them. The same applies to new computers as well."
You are probably right...I have never argued otherwise, that the future will not bring new kinds of content, some very well-suited for broadband.
But this is now.
And I don't see broadband as a compelling reason for people to upgrade their computers. Possibly quite the opposite, in that broadband and other signal sources (DVD, video games, satellite) tend to make content generation on PCs less important to some people.
FWIW, I don't see any compelling killer apps on the horizon. Digital video editing is gaining, and is amply advertised in Apple's series of ads for its new Macs, but most households don't have DV camcorders and they certainly aren't into polishing whatever they _do_ tape with edits on their computers. (In fact, camcorder usage is in one of its periodic lulls...I see fewer camcorders at public events than I saw 10 years ago...these things go in waves.)
And even with digital video editing, older machines are powerful enough to handle nearly most needs. As I said, I am editing on my 400 MHz G4 Tower and on my 550 MHz Titanium Powerbook.
Meanwhile, Intel is building more fabs, wafers are getting bigger, and CPU speeds are increasing.
Not a disaster...I'm not a gloomster. But certainly a cause for a _lot_ of price pressure by consumers and small businesses, who see little reason to replace their perfectly adequate machines with the latest and greatest.
(Some people choose, in fact, to buy a slower CPU machine and put more money into a high-quality display, e.g. Dave Budde's decision he mentioned here a while back that he chose to buy an older and slower Macintosh "Cube" and put more money into his display, a gorgeous 22-inch Apple Cinema Display.)
--Tim May |
