[Dan Nunn]

Imagine a world in which all cars are like the Toyota Prius: four-door midsize hybrids. Sure, they aren’t bad cars, you can paint them any way you want and even modify some parts, but in the end you still just have a generic Toyota with a funky paint job.

That’s the world of personal computing today. It doesn’t matter if you’re running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. Your machine is almost certainly using Intel chips at its core and almost everything else is fairly generic—even the world’s greatest case mod with water-cooled dual-Xeons and quad-SLI graphics is just a really fast PC.

Interesting article but I don't really buy the analogy. Their 'diverse' computing world would be if everyone had different vehicles - that each had different, incompatible propulsion methods. Gas-engined vehicles would need to scope out an appropriate gas station, hydrogen vehicles the same, electric vehicles would need a power station, and the like.

We have plenty of different models of computers that all have features in common (x86) that allow us to run many varieties of software and operating systems with very little inconvenience.

It's a great time to be in computers!

[Filo]

Interesting article but I don't really buy the analogy. Their 'diverse' computing world would be if everyone had different vehicles - that each had different, incompatible propulsion methods. Gas-engined vehicles would need to scope out an appropriate gas station, hydrogen vehicles the same, electric vehicles would need a power station, and the like.

We have plenty of different models of computers that all have features in common (x86) that allow us to run many varieties of software and operating systems with very little inconvenience.

It's a great time to be in computers!

That was kind-of the point. . . ;)