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My PC wish list for 2003

Charles Cooper, CNET.com CNet

Published: 03 Jan 2003 15:06 GMT

Just for my own entertainment value during this holiday break, I pulled together a PC wish list for 2003.

It got to be a fairly long list. Unfortunately, I found myself doodling about the equivalent of a plate of tapas when what I really craved was the Tech Enchilada, something that truly redefined personal computing.

We've grown so accustomed to inch-by-inch advancement that that may sound like asking for the impossible. But I can offer a couple of examples, though each is admittedly getting long in the tooth, where big ideas led to big breakthroughs.

On the computer hardware side, the Macintosh was the most brilliant development of the last couple of decades. PC bigots will give me an argument, but I believe the Mac set a qualitative bar that other computer makers (and Microsoft) have struggled to meet, let alone surpass.

You didn't need to be a geek to make the damn thing do your bidding. The machine didn't make you feel like a dodo. And it was actually fun to use. Unfortunately, that signal product debut took place in 1984. Back then Ronald Reagan was President and Saddam Hussein was considered our buddy. Apple Computer subsequently introduced modular improvements to the design and the operating system but never came close to coming out with a second "wow" product.

On the software side, the last big tech event was the Internet. Kudos to Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen's team at the University of Illinois, but give credit where real credit is due: The Internet was a belated throwaway gift, courtesy of the US Defense Department. And the original DARPA project dates back some 40 years!

There's since been nothing to rival those two separate developments. I suppose that's the fun of being surprised, and I'll be more than delighted if some bright bulb next year invents a radical departure from the creeping advancement that's marked most of the last couple of decades of personal computing.

In the meantime, here is my revised shortlist of what I'd like to see in the PC goodie bag in 2003. For your consideration: