Does the revolution start when PCs are brown goods?

Or pink, blue, black, etc etc......

Yesterday at Tuttle we were discussing the implications of the average small business being able to deploy equal, if not better, information handling gear than large companies and what that means. Add a bit of Coasian Transaction Cost theory (the lower the transaction costs, the smaller the organisation required) and you get to an interesting place. You knew all this, of course - but its always been "in the future", without a precise "when". Its been a serious discussion for at least 5 years, and mooted for at least 15 before, and yesterday we were talking about the smartphone (especially the iPhone) as the potential "tipping point" system. Today, an interesting article in the New York Times about the shift in how a PC is sold made me think the future may have arrived, sorta:

PC makers began to sniff a change in consumer sensibilities a couple of years ago and, often influenced by Apple, went on a quest to find their swagger. Dell, for example, placed a premium on design, wrapping computers in everything from brushed aluminum to bamboo sheaths. Hewlett-Packard hired the fashion designer Vivienne Tam to construct a multicolored, purselike laptop and put a slick piano-black finish on its main product line.

Computer makers have tried to make life easier by sidestepping Microsoft’s Windows and adding their own user interfaces. Many of these changes come less from a sense of largess than a sense of desperation.

In other words the whole PC cash-o-system is turning into yet another brown goods market like TV, HiFi etc. This is pretty inevitable in any market over time - the technology starts out hard to use so geeks are kings, but over time it gets bedded down and rationalised until the technology is invisible. What is also happening is that the "pain point" in the bundle is shifting to connectivity, not computing power:

Now, many consumers desire a speedy Internet connection above all else. They are the people buying the underpowered, low-cost netbooks, providing the PC industry with its lone bright spot (though lower profit margins) during the recession.

Traditionally, PC makers relied on their software partners to build bulkier, more demanding applications that required new hardware. But that strategy has fallen apart. Consumers and businesses balked at Microsoft’s bloated Vista operating system, so the company’s upcoming Windows 7 software should actually require less horsepower and storage space to run well. The same goes for Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system.

The other fascinating thing this time is that the home gear is now better than the stuff found in the average corporate:

Workers now also want their computers at work to look as good as their computers at home.

“Back in the olden days, you had a computer at work and that informed what you might buy at home and now that has switched,” Ms. Conrad said.

A number of companies have started to give employees a budget for their computers, allowing them to pick any machine they like. Typically, these workers will pack their computers with software for work and play like social networking or watching YouTube, blurring boundaries between the home and office.

Now the article kinda stops with the observation that the customer, not the geek, is starting to be king which is the standard state in a mainstream commodity market.

But I think the big story, not touched on in the article, is the corollary angle - ie to our above discussion, the day the main pieces of gear that you use to start the revolution are available in the high street supermarket and even (especially?) a child can use it and any erk can afford it, and its better than the (insert your epithet to corporate capitalist behemothdom here) then you have really hit Marxist nirvana of putting the means of production in the hands of every worker.

Whether the digerati who believe this will be the New Utopia will be quite so happy when all the hoi polloi do get active and fail to behave as hoped is another matter, of course.......