The Problem with Personal Computers

So what can you do with that new Dell laptop with Windows or that MacBook? Well, really, the answer is “whatever the hell you want”. You can run your business, create the next Google, develop a new website, design wedding invitations, edit videos, or a million other things. But what does the average consumer actually do? The list suddenly gets much shorter. Email, word processing, printing, a calendar, photo storing, playing music and video... oh yeah, and surfing the web and all that comes with that.

While the personal computer was intended to be placed into the average person’s home, it is not designed for such. Current personal computers do too much, so they are needlessly complex. Why do we get blue screens of death and the nemesis of all mac users, the spinning beach ball? Because of all the moving parts that is complex software. Current operating systems have to be able to handle everything from emailing your mom to editing and encoding video to creating the next great ruby app. This is ideal for programmers, designers, or the guy controlling the software that runs your bank, but does your average consumer need it? Not so much.

The average consumer doesn’t even know what a browser is, or that Google and AOL are not browsers, much less why they should care that there are a half dozen of them to choose from. And they don’t honestly need to. My mom doesn’t need to know what a file system is or the difference between a zip and a rar. She doesn’t need to understand why her doc file is different from the odt I sent her. All she needs is to be able to read the document she was emailed. She doesn’t even need to know where it was saved on the hard drive (or in the cloud) as long as when she clicks ‘Open File’ in her word processor, her document is there for her to read.

The average consumer doesn’t need more features, they need less. They don’t care in the slightest about processor speeds or ram speeds or graphics card memory. But that’s what we give them. Go to buy a new computer and you will be buried in technical gibberish that you need your local geek to translate for you. When my mom bought a laptop a few months ago, she called me to pick one out for her. When my grandmother bought a new computer after years of the old one, she called me. In fact, even when my technology savvy friends go to buy a new computer, they call me. Do you know what they don’t all call me for? To buy a new TV. Of course, some may, but the majority don’t. And why is that? It is because TVs have been boiled down to very simple and obvious numbers. 52″ is bigger than 40″. 1080p is higher than 720p. TVs have really been brought down to four things. Screen size, is it high def, is it pretty, and does it have a ton of inputs in the back. And as someone who worked in electronics for a couple of years, trust me that the inputs (read, flexibility) is a distant 4th. We’ve even pushed cars down to “space”, “looks”, “power/speed”, and “fuel economy”. Why can’t we do that for computers? “Looks”, “space”, “screen quality”, “battery life” seems a good goal to shoot for. Beyond that, like any other piece of electronics, people will assume the newest one is more powerful and will buy on brand reputation.

So we need to get consumer computers down to the level of other consumer electronics. The obvious trouble with this is that currently, all of those crazy numbers are actually important. But why is that? Why is there so much fragmentation? The obvious, or perhaps not so obvious, answer is software. Software is complex and needs increasing amounts of power to run. So the real question is who drives the need for complex software. The, again, perhaps not readily apparent answer. It is developers, hobbyists, and that guy who runs your company’s IT department. But if you want insanely happy customers who come back time and time again, you need to market to consumers. If you don’t think that will work, look at the Nintendo Wii. The Wii outsold the xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. Not quite combined, but close. As of the end of 2009, the Wii is the most sold gaming console of all time. We all know by now that they beat out two more powerful systems by being the system your parents can grasp and enjoy. This is where we need to push personal computing.

Currently the average consumer uses the same machine as the professional programmer. Sure, there are different software packages, but the machines are the same. This is where the split needs to happen. We need different markets for the professional and for the general consumer. We need machines and operating systems that make sense for average people. We need to make computers consumer electronics like dvd players or the ipod. Less transparent machines for simpler software. No one I know needs even a quarter of the options that come with Word. Why are those options all in the standard edition? Is confusing little old ladies the goal? Simplify.

Now I’m not convinced there are many companies willing to take the risks involved. Currently, I think Apple has the best shot, but not because I think they necessarily have the ideal product in the iPad. No, they have the best chance of changing the face of computing because they will follow one of the core truths in user experience design. They will ignore what people say they want, and instead, look at what they do. The Wii proved it can work in an industry where your mother was never before part of the target market. I want to point to the iphone, but it isn’t as clear an example. The only true phone comparison of this currently in action is the iphone vs the android. The iphone with its closed system and the android with its open and more flexible one. Some of the geeks I know will claim that if you put both the iphone and the droid on Verizon’s network, the iphone wouldn’t crush the droid, but that’s nonsense. Sure programmers like the droid. Sure techies like the droid. Sure there are people who will buy the droid because it isn’t the iphone. But to the general consumer, the droid is just the closest thing they can get to an iphone without being on AT&T’s network.

I am rooting for the iPad, though I do not know that Apple is marketing it correctly. Apple needs to make sure the iPad isn’t seen as something like Barnes and Noble’s nook. It needs to be the replacement for our parents’ laptops, not an additional gadget for geeks and people with money to burn. My fear is that Apple won’t push the iPad correctly and will allow it to become a niche machine. But this is the company that made the ipod synonymous with portable music and turned the cell phone industry on its ear. With the iPad, they have taken the first steps. They aren’t selling specs, but the experience. You no longer save files, they just are. They don’t use swap files as most people understand them, so opening apps is so fast you don’t need to keep open programs you aren’t using this second. You don’t worry about where your files are stored, the apps keep track for you. This is what the average person on the street needs. Something that doesn’t have 8 different options to shut down (I’m look at you, Windows). Something where the ‘delete’ key actually deletes (hold your head in shame, OS/X). A computer where the consumer doesn’t need to know what a driver is and never feels the need to ask if they should run scandisk. I know this goes against everything most programmers believe in, but it is where we need to be going.

We don’t need to (only) educate users, we need to give them machines that don’t require intense study to use properly. The iPad is getting there. I’m not sure it will escape being perceived as a niche device, but I’m cheering Apple on as they take a shot as remaking personal computing.