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Computer Expectations of Today, and a Decade Hence?
Luciq asks: "The other day I was cleaning out my closet and started reminiscing about all the good times I had with my 33Mhz 486DX. I got the machine 10 years ago just as the first Pentiums were coming out. With a 33Mhz processor, 212MB hard drive and a whopping 8MB of RAM, I could surf the net at 2400 baud, manipulate photos and even play games with full-screen video like The Seventh Guest. Today I use an Athlon XP 2400, 80GB HD, 512MB [not 512K!] RAM. While I can do some neat things with it, I must say that it's fallen short of the wonderous expectations I had for such a system in 1993 (no immersive VR?, no seamless voice recognition?). What expectations did you have for today's PC, 10 years ago and how does the reality match up? What do you expect from computing, 10 years from now?"
i expect everything work right,
and not be asked for a damn windows patch by all my friends every 5 freakin minutes
10 years ago I expected some truly breath-taking an immersive 3D games with excellent gameplay for the present. However, I often times find that today's games are simply breath-taking in a graphical sense but really lack in the gameplay. Am I just spoiled or does anyone else feel this way? Maybe it's just that I'm remembering my childhood playing those side scroller games for hours.
My sig can beat up your sig.
I expect (hope?) that text-to-speech will start sounding natural in 10 years. I'm sick and tired of the bland TTS that still sounds like it did in the '70s. Here's hoping. :)
- OLED displays that are like paper (thin and flexible)
;).
- fuel cell batteries that provide power for quite a bit longer
- 64 bit computing (arriving now - wonder what the next step would be - 128 bit?)
- Windows to require 30 terabytes of disk space
I hope somebody invents a better mouse (or whatever it might be called)
I also wonder if we'll still be using hard disks ten years from now.
John Kerry is a Joke!
I wont make what seems to be the required 512K joke, come on people you never had a typo?
But I will say that my expectations for computer hardware at this point was pretty much exceeded. The fact that I now have about 10 times as much Ram as my first computers had harddrive space I am impressed. However, since you mentioned games within the post I'll reply that my expectation for how FUN games would be at this time was sorely underachieved.
Unfortunately, the pixel pushing hogs that are modern computers have left game design to rely on the next brightest nicest looking graphical engine with most games being "unique" like all others on the market.
It's not the technology I feel let down about, its the basic design for games which for the most part has not advance nor drastically changed in 10 years really.
-Bort
Today I expect a PC that can play 3D games without hiccuping, display complex text and graphics and manipulate them in real-time, allow me to surf the 'Net at speeds that make my old 14.4 modem pale in comparison. I also, unfortunately, expect a system that is much less stable than what I had ten years ago. I expect the systems of today to require an enormous heat sink and a fan with an alarm and auto-shutdown on overheat function. I never needed this with my older systems.
In the next ten years I expect that the heat issue may still be around, but that the solutions will be quiet and won't require near-constant maintenance. I expect that there will be true 3D displays, along with OSes that utilize all that goes along with them. The "personal" in PC may go the way of Dodo with all the connected world has brought us. Although most of us will certainly have, need, or require local storage of some sort, it will most likely do little or no processing of it's own. I hope that I will have the choice to disconnect at the end of the day, but am not sure this will be so as the government and big business seems to need to know every little thing we do.
My biggest expectation for the future is that I will be surprised. That there will be something I want or need my system to do that I can't even imagine today.
If Darwin was right, you'd be dead by now.
A decade ago or so, I saw this fortune:
It was funny at the time. Those specs were ridiculous!
Today I've got a 200MHz+ Zaurus with 64MB of RAM builtin, plus about 512MB worth of CF cards. And you can get 1-2GB CF microdrives. And it costs about $300.
It's like "Unix! I know this!" line from Jurassic Park... reality caught up, and it's not funny anymore. :-( ;-)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
That's what I believed the future could hold for me at the time. Now I'm typing from a gorgeous little Powerbook with built-in DVD writer, which is wirelessly remote desktop-connected to an XP-based 2.4Ghz PC with a DVD rewriter in it, 1 Gig of RAM and a 120Gig hard drive. That's not even considered a top-end system anymore. Peripherals I connect include a firewire video cameras, bluetooth phone, a scanner, an iPod which stores more than supercomputers used to at the time of my C64 dream...all very nice toys. The above systems also have a broadband link out to the internet. Given all the above, I have to say that personal computing (small 'p', small 'c') has surpassed my expectations by a long, long way.
Oh, and the C64? I have the system I wanted, leaving aside the acoustic coupler. Of course, it's an emulated system. I carry it around installed on my phone...
Cheers,
Ian
Oh yeah, add a decent protable long lasting, easily rechargable power source to my list... something like a fuel-cell that can be recharged with butane or gas... whatever, as long as it is light, long lasting, and easily refilled... and prefereably doesn't explode or kill people at will.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I would have KILLED for this system ten years ago. Correction, I wouldn't have imagined this much power, speed, and functionality in such a tiny, yet solid system. Ten years ago I was using a big clunky desktop PC, with a 14-inch CRT monitor, Windows 3-something, Prodigy dial-up to get to a kludgy graphical system where you could read about six lines of text on the screen and the amount of information was very limited, everything was wired together to form a basic ethernet network with lots of hoops to jump through to get it to work seamlessly. I think we had available for the entire department some $5K Toshiba laptop that was also clunky, and heavy, and ran the same lame OS with the same lame limitations.
Now I'm using this aluminum wonder to wireless connect to my broadband, always-on, super fast connection, while watching TV in the living room, a Terminal window open to let me do command line stuff in BSD, while using a super fun, super smooth OS X system that makes Windows 3 look like a torture device.
Speed, power, slickness, functionalty...you couldn't pay me to go back to what I was using ten years ago. Personally I can't wait to see what I'll be using ten years from now. Gripe all you want, but I think things have gotten waaaaaaaaay better in the last ten years.
always seems to be the case, my expectations for 2013 are as follows:
- Computers will be much, much faster
- Operating systems will be much, much more bloated
- Our demands will have gone up
- Mozilla will have become sentient, and will be its own project maintainer
And the end result will be roughly the same. Except that last part, that will be new.
Alpha-blending at the OS-level will be not just standard equipment, but nearly required. Games will be more beautiful, but will come on 3 DVDs and take 3 or 4 minutes to load up, giving about 30-50 FPS on a "fast" machine. (Seriously, load up UT2K3 on a "fast" machine, it looks nice but is very slow...)
The video card will be about the size of the motherboard, and will require more cooling than the CPU. Audio cards will come with fans (if that sounds weird, what if I told you, in 1993, about fans on video cards, water-cooling, or heat-spreaders on RAM modules? Case-mods, LED-fans,
We'll keep hearing about how magnetic media is coming to an end, reaching the end of Moore's law, even while Maxtor is releasing 4.5 TB disk drives, and Seagate (among others) announces a new standard to replace the SATA that we'll have all become quite familiar with.
Video capture/tuner cards will be standard equipment (like audio today), and maybe -- just maybe -- by then we'll have some kind of industry standard on digital broadcast (cable/sattelite). Eh, probably not...
IMO anyway.
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
While I'm in full agreement that today's programs are much fatter than those of 10 or 20 years ago, and I'll bravely resist the temptation to point fingers at Microsoft, I should point out that larger, slower programs are not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, you could get a prompt in a couple of seconds on an Apple II, Atari 400 (my personal favorite), or whatnot, but you couldn't run multiple programs at once, do filesystem operations with a mouse, etc. It takes more resources to accomplish more things, and technology hasn't necessarily been keeping up with that curve. (Though granted, there is far too much gratuitous bloat around--a minimal Linux system I keep on hand can boot in 2 seconds on a machine that takes 40 seconds to get through the BIOS startup...)
The other thing that should be done with the current level of technology, and regrettably rarely is done, is adding robustness. Array bounds checking, input sanity checking, the works. Except in very specialized cases, we have more than enough CPU power around to actually check all these things and still get done what needs to be done in a reasonable amount of time (as in, less than the user will notice). Instead of assuming that a function's inputs will be within range, check that they are in range, and take some sort of error action if not, rather than blowing away random areas of memory or the like. I get frustrated every time I see people saying "extra checks are inefficient and a waste of resources" (though admittedly I was of the same mind until recently). What else are you going to do with all those spare cycles? Twiddle your thumbs?
Ten years ago: I thought some of the titanic applications I was working on would be re-written in nice spagetti-free code that would be easy to maintain and reliable. I was wrong. The code that was there in the 1960's is still there, code today is often like the ultimate junk yard. I thought that eventually everyone would develop code with some degree of planning, coding and testing and maybe "code gardening" where you go weeding and clean up some of the mess. This would produce code that was reliable and easy to maintain blah blah. I thought that governments might be educated to introduce legislation with some understanding of the coding changes required to implement it. We were constantly fighting to get stuff implemented with stupid deadlines. Nobody said "this piece of legislation will take 4 years to implement and cost 1/4 of your annual budget, annually". And they'd pass it with a 3 month deadline or even better "retrospectively" and wonder why nobody ever enforced it. I thought games would get more interesting and easier to play. Wrong. I thought there would be more puzzle based games that didn't require reliable finger twitching to play. There probably are these but I haven't noticed. I thought that the fax-photocopier-printer would be cheaper. I thought that TV's, stereos, and vcr type things would be better integrated. I never thought I'd have a mobile phone, though I frequently wanted one. They still don't work on the lonely highways where you would need one most. I never thought I wouldn't be able to live without email. Actually I'm fine without email out in the desert without email but other things back home fall apart. Ten years from now: I can see a good deal of chaos. How will we filter the information overload, the truth we want to hear from everyone's opinion. I guess Slashdot moderation systems is a start. I'd really like to see real reporting instead of media baron/political brownnosing reporting. I'd like a spam filter that fries the source computer, or at least locates the sender and sends the appropriate info to the cops. I'd like to see companies that insist on inconvenient and expensive activation systems go belly up (broke). I want a home security system with a couple of motion activated cameras that send the photos off site. You can steal my vcr but the pictures are not there. Then the system can alert my neighbour. The one with the rotweillers. I'd like to be able to read stuff on paper or something that didn't involve refresh rates. I'd like a home blood tester that lets me know if I've got something serious that needs treating. I'd still like some privacy but I'm not sure if I will have it. What will cameras everywhere do? Will we all be living "big brother tv game"? I'd like some piece of technology that helps me get a bit of focus instead of distracting me with lots of new ideas and concepts that need to be explored. I'd like to be able to surf the web (what ever that may be) with no wait time. I'd like to have a huge LCD or projection screen with whatever visual art/film/game/novel I like. Hook that up to stereo and have a tropical fish aquarium visual and mood music for dinner parties. I still want my friends to come round. And somehow backup and restore will be redundant or painless.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Ten years ago I had a 486DX/2 running at 66Mhz with 16MB of RAM, 400MB HD, and a 14.4 modem. My 17" IBM running 1280x1024 in 256 colors was the envy of my friends.
...
Rather than being dissapointed by what didn't happen, here is what I'm pleased about that did happen, that I didn't expect.
- T1 download speeds into my house. My cable modem does 1.5Mbits down and 256Kbits up. That never occurred to me.
- Back then my machine could play back video from CD. Now I can do it in real-time off the Internet.
- Back then my computer chirped. Bill Clinton's voice coming from the White House web page in 1996 was scratchy. Now my entire music collection is on it.
- I can make my own CDs. Data, music or both.
- My machine serves as a digital darkroom.
- My machine lets me communicate with other people through email. (More of a social change than a technological change - back then I had email, but nobody to write to!) IM, IRC, etc. are also common now.
- Home networking.
- A powerful version of Unix in my house, free, with a lot of great applications. (Including MYSQL, which I'm toying with now.)
- Wireless capability so I can work where I want to, not where the computer is.
We've come a long way in 10 years
My wish list to add to the above list of realistic expectations. Surely these are also within reach:
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--It all has to come in a shockproof, G force resistant, waterproof watch. In the early 1980s, I saw a $2000 wristwatch in a store window with had a little black and white TV on the watch face. My dad said, "Son, in 10 years we'll all have these -- and they'll be in COLOR." The liar!
--OK, I would settle for a watch or an earpiece (of course the thing should also run on voice) and a bluetooth link to a pocket-sized Palm or Ipod or whatever basestation with a few hundred terabytes of storage. (Moore's law says no problem)
--If you wear glasses, one or both lenses should be able to double as a (bluetoothed) vid screen -- like in the New Order video!
--All your personal info, ever, has to be in there -- and continually backed up, automatically -- both a personal copy somewhere and one stored by subscription in a converted NORAD vault. (Because the next wave of international terrorism could be against data storage facilities.)
--You shouldn't need a wallet anymore. The thing should have some kind of secure, anonymous e-cash feature. It should also work as a substitute for your credit, debit, etc. cards. This kind of technology already exists but isn't fully exploited. (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=74281&cid=66
--It has to function as a driver's license, car key, passport (http://www.immigration.gov/graphics/howdoi/inspa
--Notwithstanding the above and the pandora's box of privacy issues, it needs a TOTALLY ANONYMOUS mode. Which means Microsoft has to be nowhere near its development. And no DRM either! (If this isn't implemented properly, we will all have to wear tinfoil hats.)
--GPS would be nice but then you'll have to increase the size to act as an antenna. Could your bloodstream function as an antenna?
--Traveling internationally should mean not having to lug around giant black cubes to convert the power. Can this thing be motion-powered? Is solar power ever going anywhere? Cosmic ray catcher-powered? Human powered? (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08
Sadly, however, SCO has patents on all of the above...
...
IBM PC, 8088, 4.77Hz, 256K+ RAM, $10,000. Language of choice is BASIC. Video is CGA, but only if you can afford the card, MDA otherwise. Removable storage is the 5-1/2" floppy holding 320K. Some people get wise and punch their floppies to make them double sided.
The OS was PC-DOS, and fit on part of a floppy. Small, fast and feature-less.
Game I remember distinctly was "Gato" (came out about 1985 I think), a submarine hunt game. It fit on a floppy, and was awesome fun!
All PC software had to fit on (and run from) a single floppy.
Networking? Not on the PC! Of course, the PC makes an excellent (but expensive) terminal for a UNIX system, from which you can access the ARPAnet.
Packard Smell, i486, 66MHz, 2Mb RAM, $3,000. Language of choice was Turbo C, although some Turbo Pascal diehards (myself) still lingered. Video is VGA and a smattering of SVGA, XVGA cards. Removable storage of choice was the 1.44Mb 3-1/2" floppy. Some people have CDROMS, but not many. Harddrives are the norm, and their typical sizes are about 100 to 500 Megs.
The OS for most people was still DOS, now version 5.0. People are running this cheesy environment called Windows 3.1 on top of it. I rebel and use OS/2. I need 8M RAM to use it, but it had a UI that GNOME and KDE are barely approaching ten years later.
My games of choice were Civilization and SimCity. They came on floppies, but a lot of other games are starting to come out on CDROMS, which pisses me off since I can't afford one. They also tend to use more RAM and Video than I can afford either.
Software in general is bloating. Stuff that takes up 5 to 10 Megs of disk is common. But I'm not bitching much, since they're adding a lot of features, not counting the GUI.
Networking has arrived! 14.4K modems are becoming standard. If you live in the right area, you can get an internet account. Otherwise AOL and Prodigy are somewhat suitable substitutes.
Home Built, P4, 2.8GHz, 1Gig RAM, $1,000. Language of choice is C++, although several dozen other major languages are common. There are no video standards anymore, but the minimum resolution anyone can put up with is 32-bit 1024x768. GPUs are more expensive and have bigger fans than CPUs. Removable media of choice is the CD-R, with USB memory sticks becoming popular. But the 1.44M floppy is still king. It will probably remain standard equipment until the typical BIOS can boot from USB devices (guesstimate of one year).
The common operating environment is still Windows, but fortunately, the current incarnation runs on top of NT instead of DOS. WinXP recommends 512M RAM. UNIX is making strong headway into the desktop market. Even the most basic Linux distro requires a minimum of 16M RAM, with most recommending 64M.
I haven't bought any games in a couple of years. The last one was Civilization III. (My how things change!) The game market has become dull. My prediction from ten years earlier, that game developers would start scaling back and produce games that would run on systems that the public actually owned, proved false. Instead, the public eagerly upgrades their RAM and GPU's every six months. I see that the many new blockbuster games require video cards that haven't been on the market more than six months.
Software in general has long since passed the bloat stage, and has become quivering mounds of fat reminiscent of dead whales washed up on the beach. This isn't limited to the Windows world. I don't see much increased functionality with OpenOffice versus the Lotus SmartSuite of ten years earlier.
Highspeed internet connections are considered a human right in some regions. You hide your head in shame if you're still using a dialup modem or ISDN.
Okay, now time for 2013 predictions:
Sun Home Workstation, 128-bit i986 class, 1
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Twenty years ago I was using a Xerox 1108 Dandelion. It had a megapixel display (admittedly monochrome only, but for more money you could get an 1132 Dorado which had 24bit colour), an optical three button mouse, ethernet, a WIMP interface, WYSIWYG word-processing, spreadsheet, bitmap and vector graphics editors all as software components so that you could drop a vector graphic into a word-processing document and vice versa. It had a distributed hypertext system, technically similar to the Web. And it had a software development environment which makes today's IDEs look primitive.
The system box was about 10% bigger all round than a modern mid-tower case. The monitor was very big and heavy, but it was twenty-one inch. Sometimes the machine was infuriatingly slow, but then we were running very compute-intensive software, which would still be slow on today's boxes.
So what progress have we actually made in twenty years?
Boxes of this class are now cheaper - much cheaper. Ordinary people can now have them. The Dandelion, in those days, cost about two years of my salary, whereas I can earn the price of my current machine in a couple of weeks. And that ignores the fact that my Dandelion had only 4 megabytes of RAM and 80Megabytes of disk (but against that, the LISP system, criticised in those days for being wasteful of memory, was actually a lot more efficient of memory than modern systems).
And processers are faster. How much faster in real user terms I don't know. I remember when I switched to an Acorn Archimedes - the first ARM based machine - how much more responsive it felt. The Dandelion was capable of around two DEC MIPs. My present box does over six thousand 'bogomips'. How close a bogomip is to a 'DEC MIP' I don't know, but in terms of user experience this machine is certainly not three thousand times faster than the Dandelion - ten times, maybe.
So what I'm saying is that actually we've made frighteningly little progress in the last twenty years. In software terms, we've acutally gone backwards. The reasons are very simple
So what are the achievements of the last twenty years? Well, the hardware boys have achieved a lot. Kudos to them. On the software side I think the best and most creative thing that's been achieved is the GNU General Public License. It's about the only real software advance I've seen in my working life.
The next twenty years
So what does this imply for the next twenty years? I think we have to face the fact that the hardware boys will continue to leave us behind. We will see smaller, lighter, lower power devices. We may see usable speach input. The 'desktop box', as we know it, may die, leaving only servers and portables.
Processors growing faster is always good but in a sense this is academic. For most purposes a good user experience can be provided on machines a thousand times slower than our present machines, or, to put it differently, bad programming can eat up every ounce of speed the hardware boys can give us for no discernable improvement in user experience. What I hope to see in twenty years is my six thousand bogomips of processor in a package that draws curre
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.