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Can Marc Do it Again?
Someone gave us the link to Marc Andreessen's
latest company effort. He's got a good team, lotsa money, and credibility - and he wants to rule the space of "hosted applications".
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When will people realize that MS doesn't matter? Anything they do at this point is too little, too late. The future of information technology doesn't have ANY place for them and their current product models. The DOD trial and "Linux competition" aside, in three years it won't matter WHAT Microsoft is doing unless they abandon all their products now, or at least re-work them for the next wave.
Larry Ellison is right: it will be all about weak/cheap clients and beefcake centralized services. There will be one fiber running to everyone's house (provided by companies that look like telcos combined with cable companies) and over that you will access data in any form you want. A "Telephone" in your kitchen, "Television" in the family room, email from your palm-based device (eventually a more appropriate interface: voice or otherwise), and any other sort of data acquisition/modification from other specialized devices.
You'll still have your video game device (the merger of console and pc), and something to write documents on (of course, by that point there'll be little need to make a hardcopy, but the provisions will be there), both consisting of simpler, more usable software stored in firmware, with modular elements loaded from the "Internet." (Which is where the successor to Java steps in... hardware/platform independent software that (by then) will perform well.)
The only possible product have even a niche need is WinCE, which probably won't survive given real competition -- it wasn't developed with the future mindset in consideration. They'll wither away as they try to include more and more features in it, when the world will be moving towards two things: 1. more appropriate interfaces for computing and 2. usable software that doesn't need to be "learned" the way today's does.
Today's computing is klunky, ugly, and expensive in terms of time needed to do things, space, electricity, and actual hardware/software costs.
The future of "computing" isn't bigger, better, and flashier... it's completely transparent.
-Chris
Ob means obligatory, and BZZZZZT try again means that Gates never invented BASIC. You want to take Gates out of that top list and put "John Kemeny of Dartmouth" in his place. That's who invented BASIC, and maybe some day more people will give him credit for it than Gates.