The Wintel (Windows/Intel) personal computer was “ridiculous” – too complicated to use and too expensive for the average user … Net PCs, would sell for less than $500.
Predictor: Schwartz, Evan I.
Prediction, in context:In his 1999 article for Context magazine on the “Five Worst” Internet predictions, Evan Schwartz included Larry Ellison’s mid-1990s criticism of the Windows/Intel personal computer, which continued to be a mainstay. Schwartz writes from his 1999 perspective, quoting Ellison’s remarks in 1995: ”Back in 1995, Larry Ellison, the billionaire chairman of Oracle, declared that the Wintel (Windows/Intel) personal computer was ‘ridiculous’ – too complicated to use and too expensive for the average user. ‘The price of PCs has been constant for 15 years because Microsoft insists on sticking more and more junk in them,’ Mr. Ellison said. Instead of $2,500 machines with huge hard drives and bloated software applications, his new, disk-less ‘network computers,’ or Net PCs, would sell for less than $500 and run simple ‘applets’ – small applications written in the Java language from Sun Microsystems.”
Biography:Evan Schwartz was a 1990s journalist with a computer science degree who covered information technology. He was a former editor at Business Week, where he covered software and digital media and was part of teams that won a National Magazine Award and a Computer Press Award. He also wrote for the New York Times, Wired, and MIT’s Technology Review. His books include “Webonomics” and “Digital Darwinism.” (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Internet Appliances
Name of publication: Context
Title, headline, chapter name: The Five Worst Predictions of the Internet Age
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.digitaldarwinism.com/5worst.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stotler, Larry