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Posted by Jukka Aho on 11/07/06 01:17
rob wrote:
> This reminds me of when digital audio was getting popular and
> many bozos were saying that they could hear the bits and that it
> would never work.
There was a time (ca. 1989, or so, if my memory serves me right, or
perhaps a bit earlier) when various people on dial-up BBSes - grown-ups,
seasoned computer users, not just random teenagers - insisted that "a
real computer" [1] would never ever need any fancier audio features than
a piezoelectric beeper. "After all, sound features are only ever needed
for games and gaming plaforms. A serious computer, such as the PC, does
not need such things."
A couple of years later, sound cards started appearing left and right
for the PC, and the PC became the primary gaming platform...
* * *
A similar argument was made about multitasking. Multitasking on a
personal computer was - according to mostly the same group of people -
just a fad, and not _only_ a fad but a totally _ridiculous_, _needless_
thing for a personal computer, or its operator. "After all, on a
single-user system, you can only really use a single program at a time."
A couple of years later, every technically-oriented PC user and their
dog was installing OS/2 on their 386 or 486 because it could multitask
for real.
_____
[1] "A real computer" is, of course, the computer platform the writer is
using himself. Those guys mostly had IBM-compatible PCs running MS-DOS.
(The whole argument was brought up because the Amiga line of computers -
which was quite popular at homes then, especially in Europe - had
4-channel DMA-controlled digital stereo sound and pre-emptive
multitasking - both features which were unheard of at that time on other
"home computer" platforms and operating systems. [2] The buzzword
"multimedia" had not yet been invented.)
--
znark
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