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That's a good argument; one that I've seen raised in favor of web apps in the ChromeOS context multiple times. I have no doubt that Nerd Apocalypse in your sense is not on the radar. The question I'm trying to raise (and I'm really trying to raise a question; not defending one model or the other, at least not yet) is not essentially about the economics, though. I'm wondering how likely it is for a child to get curious about what this "computing" thing is, discover the basic distinction between hardware and software, wonder how one goes beyond the software that ships as default with the device, how one makes a computer do something vaguely defined, random, outside the intended use scenarios, fun, or extremely specific, with an iPad, Chrome OS device, or similar future sandboxed information appliance. How much more or less likely it is compared to a 386DX with a bulky CRT, that runs DOS and expects the user to type a word by default, or an Amiga 500 that expects the user to insert a floppy by default. Getting curious in the first place is a prerequisite; it comes before one can consider paying Apple $99 a year to get the tools with which to satisfy that curiosity. My line of thinking is that we're witnessing not a huge shift in what personal computing is defined as, but the gradual total disappearance of what we've come to know as computing from the retail market in favour of narrowly targeted information appliances with intentional limitations that aim to make "computing" invisible in the whole experience. It's true that these devices will not saturate or dominate the market any time soon. But the number of pockets that vote for them will definitely bias the industry towards a specific direction, and the culture they create in this decade will set the tone for the culture of the next era, just like how our past experiences with Pascal, Windows 3.1, DOS, what have you, influence the way we evaluate today's technology. |