[deeblering4]

Not disagreeing with you, but I do think there is something to be said about the platform provided by mobile tech. Artists can live stream themselves to massive audiences from their bedrooms.

And in the professional field iOS has become quite useful for music. As a couple examples, there are numerous iOS instruments (often with external midi control) made by well known companies like moog and korg, and live sound engineers are now remotely controlling mixers with iOS devices. It’s possible the next concert you go to will be sound checked/mixed via an iPad.

Also worth considering is that mobile accessibility doesn't necessarily produce the next mass-appeal mega star. I think in many cases it instead allows smaller subcultures to connect and form which makes for stars on a smaller scale. Popular streamers are a good example, well know by their fans but not a household name.

[guenthert]

This reminds me of the disdain with which some of those who used mainframes and minis looked upon the early microcomputers. That was clearly a step back in some ways (you couldn't even run a LISP compiler on those), yet micros made computing ultimately more accessible to a much wider share of the populace and eventually displaced minis (and threatened mainframes and confined them to a niche market).

The CPU in pricier smartphones outperforms the one in yesteryear's desktop for a while already. It's just that the UI and (usually missing) periphery isn't necessarily best suited for traditional computer applications like software development.