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Technology Stocks : PC Sector Round Table -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (269)	4/17/1998 4:45:00 AM
From: Pierre-X	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2025

Here's an article that addresses the issue that I've been putting forward recently. Pentium II lacks killer software news.com I like the term "threshold application", referring to software "that requires a new threshold of performance to run." As part of his [WinHEC] demonstration, Otellini exhibited a 3D spreadsheet and a panoramic video application. This illustrates the PC problem very well. 3D spreadsheets and panoramic videos are lame technologies that nobody wants. I recently debated the merits of panoramic technologies with a business associate. These types of applications are like inventing a door for a world without walls. People invented the phone because the benefits of real time voice communication were obvious. People did NOT invent the phone and THEN say "what can we use this for?" Be very wary of technologies that are developed first and purposed second. 3D is such a technology. So is videoconferencing. "From a software developer or Web site developer point of view, your market is the installed base, so you tend not to address your projects just at the high end," [said Kevin Hause, IDC]. Well, Kevin isn't a developer or hasn't thought it through. Developers write to a wide variety of target user bases. Nor are the audiences for software similar to those for web sites. My personal experience and perspective as both a software and web site developer contradicts Kevin's silly remark. Microsoft has touted voice recognition* for years, and will come out with its first voice-recognition product when the Auto PC platform makes its debut this summer.* This is the only real interesting, paradigm-busting-potential application in the pipeline, in my opinion. God bless, PX