The need for "Modern PCs"

[commodorejohn]

Basically everything I do except VST-based music production could be done on my 1GHz TiBook without any real trouble; the only real reason it's not is because I prefer Windows XP to Mac OS X. YouTube is balky on anything above 240p, but eh, it's not that essential. Haven't made any real attempts at MorphOS yet, but who knows, that might fit the bill.

[commodorejohn]

You answered your own question buddy. The "But people that need to do..." bit says it all. Most people are light users and just don't need to do more than an FB update or collect email. They play games on console/ pad/ phone and they communicate via phone/ pad/ console too....
..yup, love it or hate it, you can't deny it.

What's sad about it is that in the glory days of personal computing, instead of computers dropping capability to fit with lowest-common-denominator use patterns, as tablets do, you had people who would ordinarily have been "light users" branching out into new areas that they might otherwise never have tried, because hey, the capability was there. Now everybody just settles for mediocre...

[commodorejohn]

In general, that feature probably limited access.  Most people just want computer functionality without any computer-y issues (think your hatred of configuring linux) these days.  Press button - get Facebook, or Charlie the Unicorn.

That's a load of crap. People didn't "just want" those things, because they didn't even exist until a few years ago. They wanted to avoid technical nitty-gritty, sure, but the Mac let them do that - but now Apple's the one leading the push towards the new "bovine content consumption" paradigm. Back in the day, even ordinary users were exploring the creative potential of the PC - then somewhere along the way some people started telling them that what they really wanted was to do nothing but consume content on company-controlled services and use company-controlled communications channels to conduct exchanges that the existing uncontrolled channels were entirely sufficient for. And, for some reason, they decided that those people must know what they were talking about and they'd better start accustoming themselves to this new model and give up everything they were learning how to do...

Time was that the personal computer was supposed be the thing that freed the minds of the ordinary people - now it's becoming the thing that cages them in.

[commodorejohn]

I disagree. If you need to create digital content,  you want a desktop. It enables you to create digital art, music, video, 3d, and more...

It does, still, at present. What worries me is the push (and it is a push) towards making the "unthinking consumer of content" model the norm on desktops as well as tablets. Somebody in the industry wants this to happen, and a disturbing number of people seem to be pretty much willing to go along with it. They started by clipping the wings of the people who were, hitherto, just branching out into new areas, and now they're trying to push this on everyone...

[commodorejohn]

Your optimism for the creative potential of humanity is refreshing, but I think a little too overarching.  Look at television, or radio, or video games, or even books.  Mass market and profit = lowest common denominator.  The people who want to create still can, and joe six-pack can twitter about his huge BM.  There's room in there for everyone in their hierarchy.

See, frankly, I just don't accept this classist bullcrap. A lot of people in the tech world like to think of themselves as some sort of higher order apart from the Masses, as if the ability to think and work in a creative capacity is a difference in kind between themselves and the "Joe Sixpack" cattle. It's not. It's a fundamental human capacity, and the only reason it's languishing in a lot of the masses is because it hasn't been given any encouragement to grow, thanks to an increasingly consumption-oriented economy that only needs creators as a source for content (and they replace creative individuals with formula processes at every opportunity, because formula processes are much more predictable and they've been steadily training the masses not to know the difference, anyway.)

The idea that "Joe Sixpack" is fundamentally lacking in a capacity that the creative elite possess, and therefore he can't make use of complex creative facilities, shouldn't be encouraged to try or given the tools to do so because his simple peasant brain wouldn't understand them, and wouldn't be happy doing any of that anyway, is false. Completely false. It is a lie; it started as a lie that creative people told themselves to make themselves feel special, and it's a lie that's been increasingly propagated by companies and organizations that like to use it as a rationalization for stifling the nascent creative urges of the masses to make them into good little consumers.

Is it harder and riskier to make good movies than crap movies? Well, train moviegoers to not expect good movies, and that's not a problem anymore! Want to cripple a computer into a glorified content-consumption device? Just tell people that that's all they ever wanted anyway, over and over, until they start believing it! And all the tech journalists and all the futurist writers will gladly help you spread this lie, because it feeds their ego.

But you know what? Repetition can make a lie seem true; it can never make it true. People still have the capability to be more than passive consumers, even if it's never been given any nurture; they still have creative urges, even if they're deeply sublimated. All the mantra repetition of "ordinary users don't want or need this" in the world will not change that. The question isn't whether these people can be more than the lowest common denominator; the question is whether anybody will come along and help them wake up from dead-eyed consumer slumber.

[commodorejohn]

You can't compare computer users of the '80s with users of today.  Back in the '80s computer users were a self selected minority, maybe 10% of the population of Australia or the US.  Out of those a minority, maybe 10% of those, were doing creative things, but even if you say half of them that's still only 5% of the total populace.  Creative use of computers was never the norm and never will be the norm.

I'm not talking about the '80s; I'm talking about the mid-'90s, when the Internet was exploding, computers were more accessible than ever, and even ordinary people were getting in on this. I watched it happen; I watched my parents, who have never been technical people, take up playing around with MIDI sequencing and other such stuff on our old Mac. I saw people I knew dabble with programming at the same time I was. And I was the only techie I knew anywhere except on the Internet. People were branching out and trying new things, and the software to do it was becoming increasingly varied and more available. This continued for quite a while; it wasn't until the not-at-all-coincidental rise of "social networking" in the mid-2000s that it began to collapse.

Add to that the fact that you can do creative video, pictures and music on a mobile phone or tablet.  Creativity is an innate ability, I've seen gorgeous photos taken and edited only on an iPhone and I've seen absolute cr@p photos taken with a USD 1000 DSLR and photoshopped.  There are professional photographers out there who only use an iPhone.  The tool is less important than the person wielding the tool.

You can, yes, but it's not designed for it (as tablet advocates will loudly proclaim any time you criticize the tablet's poor suitability for productivity applications.) It's entirely true that you can create in an environment that's unconducive or openly hostile to creation. Political prisoners have written on prison walls using their own feces; that doesn't make poop a good medium to work in.

[commodorejohn]

I think people would say the market decides these things.  Take the classist line out, and what you get is that sales of tablets and smartphones are spiking while desktops are flatlining or declining somewhat.  Its not just opinion its fact.

What it sounds like you are saying is that there is some sort of  conspiracy to dumb down the creative people with modern software and  tablets.  I disagree.  I think it comes down to simple marketing and  focus groups and what is actually selling on the ground.

Saying that "the market decides this stuff" is like saying that plate tectonics decides when and where there will be earthquakes. It's true, in a strictly observational sense, but it says nothing whatsoever about whether or not that's a good thing. And anyway, it's overlooking the fact that market forces are not the only factor in what sells. If the industry hadn't spent the last couple years in a mad push for tablets, and spent billions on marketing to tell people that tablets are the New Hotness that they really really need to have, tablets wouldn't be selling like they are. It's not just some passive reaction; the industry wants this to happen. Tablets are cheap to make but sell for a bundle, are inherently disposable because they can't be upgraded, and the app-store model brings in a steady post-purchase revenue stream; of course the industry likes that. Of course they're going to push for it.

Last edit, and it sucks but is true:  Some people are honestly stupid.  Some people are smart.  It is what it is.

The more I observe people, the less I buy that - at least not in the sense that you're meaning here. Plenty of people are mentally lazy and/or have not had their faculties nurtured (*cough*crapeducationsystem*cough*) and of course any given person doesn't necessarily have the same aptitude for X as the next guy might, but I've never met a person who was inherently stupid, and certainly not someone who was inherently geared towards being the kind of brainless Facebook cattle that tablet advocates seem to think average users are. Hell, I know mentally handicapped people (and we're talking serious developmental handicaps, not Rain Man socially-awkward savantism) who show more spark and creative inclination than you're ascribing to the healthy, un-handicapped common man.

"Some people are just naturally better than other people" is a nice thing for people to tell themselves when they want to feel special. It's a philosophy that lets technologists and futurists feel Very Benevolent when they push for platforms that will let the poor witless Normals have a taste of what it's like to be Enlightened without taxing their poor little brains. But it's something that I just don't see borne out in real life.

[commodorejohn]

You vote with your dollar/yuan/euro.  No one puts a gun to your head to buy.

No, but they do everything they damn well can to talk you into buying.

Some people are stupid and slow and retarded and unable of abstract thought.

Provided we're not talking about actual mental handicaps, I'm going to have to say that's bullshít. People can be less apt at something than most, don't get me wrong, and they can certainly never have developed their ability for something, but they are not inherently cattle.

Not everyone is Picasso or even have the capacity to be if only we could reach them somehow, and to suggest otherwise is sweet, but untrue.

Don't mistake me: I'm not saying that natural talent doesn't exist and everybody is capable of being as good as everybody else at everything. All I'm saying is that this idea that the masses are just inherently incapable of complex thought or even the fundamental human creative urge is a crock.

Spend some time in the Army and your youthful naivete concerning the goodness of all will be permanently fixed.

Goodness? Who said anything about goodness? I was talking about creative drive, not morality.

The mistake is equating being in the middle or tail end of the bell curve with societal worth.

I'm glad to hear that that's not where you're coming from; certainly it isn't what I was implying. But all the same, there's an awfully uncomfortable egoist bent to a lot of these arguments; and even when they're made in sincere benevolence, they're still predicated on the false assumption that "the masses" are lacking in the fundamental capacity to be more than the lowest common denominator, or even to want to.

but that your argument is actually the one bordering on elitist by suggesting that the tablet apps are for morons

Well what am I supposed to think? Everything I'm told by tablet advocates says that "it's not meant for productivity, it's meant for passively consuming content!" and "it's dumbed down because normal people just can't understand computers!" and "the most important thing is to protect users from themselves!" Is it or isn't it designed on the assumption that users are stupid?

not some illuminati conspiracy.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think that Dr. Claw is sitting in a darkened room somewhere and stroking his cat as he plans the destruction of general-purpose computing. I do, however, see this as the industry quite transparently pushing models that put overall financial gain ahead of a healthy mutually-beneficial relationship with customers, and then justifying it by telling them, via billions of dollars' worth of marketing, that they probably don't really need or want what's being taken away, and wouldn't they rather just sit around on sites where their communications are dredged for advertising potential like good little consumers? Honestly I'd prefer a Legion of Doom behind this, because then people might be less unwisely trusting and unquestioning of the motives behind this.

[commodorejohn]

Most people who buy cars don't work on them, don't modify them, don't do anything with them except drive them.  It's a utilitarian relationship.  Same with tablets.  Technology ever advances.

We're not just talking about programming, though.

[commodorejohn]

Not so easy to use on the toilet though is it....

It's all a matter of having the right bathroom furniture.

Also, remind me never to touch your mobile devices.

[commodorejohn]

Not only can you use a phone for art I know people who have published  books and got prestigious awards for exclusively using an iPhone.

They got awards for using an iPhone? That's just sad. What kind of trend-junkie Wired-reading my-farts-smell-trendier-than-yours ninnies give out an award for that?

Again, it's not that you can't do work on a tablet - it's just that, as tablet advocates like to repeat any time you criticize tablets, "they're not designed to be useful for work!" (They seem to think this is a selling point.) You can do it, sure. You can also do ice sculpture with your fingernails; that doesn't mean it's any kind of ideal solution.

Ever seen the audio apps available on the iPad?  There's some seriously  impressive synths available Wavegenerator, iMS20, Animoog and more.

There's even a big multi-channel recording app - a DAW on a iPad.

Yes, there's audio apps available on the iPhone. There's also several orders of magnitude more audio apps available on the PC. Even the free VSTs outweigh iOS virtual instruments by a huge margin. Get back to me when you can do this on an iPad, and then I'll be impressed.

There is a bit of irony about discussing this on an Amiga site though.   Amiga's were never about raw CPU speed, they were about the clever use  of hardware to do the heavy lifting - exactly what phones and tablets  do.

That's quite a bit of a stretch. Tablets use one of a handful of prefabbed CPU/GPU solutions; it's nothing like the Amiga, where the OS and the hardware were designed for each other.

I fail to see this fascination with wires.

Well, they're quite handy - they carry power for stuff, so you don't have to be changing batteries all the damn time! Quite nice.

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, that's true - though do you know whether they did any design work on the non-CPU components, or are they just synthesizing a system out of other people's parts?