technobang

…at GPC right now. This really sucks, i mean yeah I’m still sitting here getting paid, and I suppose I could complain about worse but it just makes me concerned about this whole industry. For a while, we all kind of blamed it on the fact that Grand Rapid’s economy sucked and everyone around here is a cheep-ass. Don’t get me wrong, that is still a huge factor, but nothing compared to the abundance of TV and radio advertisements that constantly either poke fun at computers, making them seem nerdy and unattractive let alone the Dell ad’s that make people think computers really cost $299. I realize that most people will never actually care about computers, let alone bother to gauge their usage of them to justify the price of a PC that will actually do what they want it to, but it’s just really weird how the appeal of personalization, which has helped numerous industries, has only alienated this field. Because people don’t understand, or don’t give themselves enough credit in their understanding, everyone’s looking for “the name brand” or one size fits all. I have to admit that Apple is doing a pretty good job of this with their “I” everything marketing and technology that actually backs the ad’s, which in my opinion are not too bad either. At least they’ve got some decent endorsement…right?

So where’s this all going? I’ve come to the conclusion that, even if I wanted to, I won’t be building computers much in a couple years unless of course it’s a specialty system or a server. I can somewhat see an end to the desktop PC, going instead in favor of notebooks and home media centers. It just seems more feasible, and ultimately I see the “open architecture” marvel that we’ve been enjoying for years going down the shitter as companies realize that creating new innovative designs that stay within the “open architecture” is both technologically impossible and stupid business wise as they may hand over their designs and concepts to competitors which we’ve all seen so much of. I think Apple’s designs like the Mac Mini are going to get far more popular. They’re like a damn game console with internet access and an OS for dumbasses, yet are still powerful enough and the OS actually is just as, if not more, intelligent than Windows to be appealing to enthusiasts…well just short of gamers. Gamers, although I’m not really one myself, I have to give a lot of credit to, as we all should, due to their motivation of the industry to continue producing faster, hotter, more expensive, yet always exciting hardware. Problem is getting the damn software industry off their ass to be able to use the new hardware! Oh well…I guess when you’re this bored on the clock…you just have to wonder how much longer this position will even exist….

Posted on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 3:15 pm in Blood, Sweat and Technology, Whatever | rss feed for comments| Leave a response, or trackback