Two years ago Robert Capps, a senior editor at Wired magazine, published a seminal article, “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine.” The premise of the piece was that in the consumer world simple, inexpensive technology was replacing and surpassing expensive, complex technology.
Single purpose video recorders like Flip were outselling high end digital recorders by huge margins even though the quality of the recordings was inferior. The bottom line was that consumers had little need or desire for high end digital video. Low resolution recordings were perfect for You Tube and sufficient for viewing on a computer. Likewise MP3 has become an acceptable format for audio playback. MP3's can't approach the quality of DVD or vinyl recordings yet the marketplace has established them as the format of choice for the majority of consumers.
Netbooks and tablets are not able to provide nearly the functionality available with traditional portable computers, yet they are being produced and purchased in amazing quantities. We see this trend continuing today. Smartphones and tablets like the iPad threaten to make traditional home use computers obsolete.
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