Re:Apple's First Public Demonstration of the Mac, Unseen Sin...
by m_mueller on Sunday January 26, 2014 @05:31PM
(#7127324)
Whenever I see those classic demos like Engelbart's in the 60ies or the first Mac, I feel a bit ashamed for our profession. Computer Software really doesn't seem to have developed much in the last 50 years. We have turned working academic prototypes and concepts from back then into products, not even to the full extent they were perceived. Other than that everything seems to have turned in circles. The minicomputer, the PC, the LAN, the Web, mobile devices - it all brought cool new hardware capabilities, but when it comes to software it was just reinventing the wheel again. The hardware has usually dictated the way the device is to be operated instead of the other way round. Mac and iPhone have been notable exceptions to this.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Apple's First Public Demonstration of the Mac, Unseen Sin...
by yeukhon on Sunday January 26, 2014 @06:07PM
(#7127490)
While I agree with you, we should view it this way: we started out with nothing and so any progress we made back then would been incredible. Now we have so much progress we are just looking at how to fine tune things and so there aren't much surprising, revolutionary ideas out there. And because there are so many tools to turn people's idea into reality (which increases competitions), there is little room for surprise. The truly surprising technology that we start utilizing and making big progress would be 3D printing. It has been around for many years but now we finally start using it...