{"id":19,"date":"2010-08-23T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T16:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/dvoraks-killer-app-principle\/"},"modified":"2014-06-08T10:53:19","modified_gmt":"2014-06-08T15:53:19","slug":"dvoraks-killer-app-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/dvoraks-killer-app-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"Dvorak’s "Killer App" Principle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who is Dvorak, and why do we care?
\nWikipedia: John C Dvorak<\/a>
\nI read Dvorak through the late 80’s and early 90’s. This particular response refers to Dvorak’s principle of the “Killer App”<\/p>\n

In response to:
\n“Downgrading your computer – Why less is more”<\/a>
\nScott Raymond, 8\/18\/2010 on zdnet.com<\/p>\n

Thesis: You don’t need the latest and greatest hardware for most computing needs<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Response:<\/p>\n

Assuming that all I do is listen to MP3 files, what’s the difference between my mid-90’s 486-DX2 with 16 meg of RAM vs. my current “any desktop”?<\/p>\n

There are two parts to that answer: 15 years of bloat added to the OS and Applications, and “Killer Apps”.<\/p>\n

Dvorak’s thesis through the late 80’s and early 90’s is that the next “Killer App” (what users want to do with the PC) will drive the evolution of the PC itself.<\/p>\n

To some extent, that principle holds true, but we haven’t seen anything “innovative” in the PC space since Windows 95 was released. Arguably, multi-touch would be considered “innovative” if it were widely deployed and if there was a practical use for it — the former precluded by the later (again, no “Killer App” means multi-touch is irrelevant)<\/p>\n

The new “Killer App” is the increasingly richer content that is now pervasive in your browsing experience.<\/p>\n

There was a period of time, probably up through mid-millenium, where I could use my old PII Stinkpad, running Win98, using WM6 and WinAmp for “viewing” rich content.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of the millenium, content got a whole lot richer, and the “norm” became streaming. Even a PIII started to bog down as codecs for compression and streaming became more and more sophisticated, coupled with ever-increasing resolutions (more bits to render) driven by the ubiquitous move toward “HD”.<\/p>\n

So from a utility standpoint, the ever-increasing horsepower requirement stems less from the OS and applications and more from the content, which is now the “Killer App”.<\/p>\n

This means that there is a discreet utility “threshold” based on, basically, what Adobe dictates to the marketplace in terms of capabilities and computing requirements. There is no such thing as an “Adobe-free” internet browsing experience, in any practical sense. 90+ percent of rich content today is delivered by an Adobe platform.<\/p>\n

Comparing Flash to Silverlight, it’s easy to see that even as competition for encoding and streaming rich user content increases, and as the technologies evolve and mature, the computing requirements will go UP, not DOWN.<\/p>\n

I think that for the low-end “utility” PC, the ChromeOS model is the best one out there…. “Boot to a browser”. There is a market for this, and the model supports a commodity cost.<\/p>\n

For your typical consumer, there is definitely a shelf life for computing equipment, and for most people, it’s probably in the 3 year range. If you’re really tech-savvy, you may be able to upgrade later and stretch that investment to 5 years.<\/p>\n

I tell people (and I follow this principle myself) to purchase hardware that is at least 6 months old (marketplace availability), and no older than 12 months. 6 months (out of an 18 month lifecycle) means you are purchasing new but “previous-gen” equipment, whose lower cost is driven more by the commodity itself than the “wow” factor. Purchasing technology that is in the “life support” phase of its production lifecycle puts you dangerously close to the cliff of “diminishing utility”, meaning that the next Adobe update (or 2, or 5 updates from now) could retire your “mid-grade” PC due to lack of horsepower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who is Dvorak, and why do we care? Wikipedia: John C Dvorak I read Dvorak through the late 80’s and early 90’s. This particular response refers to Dvorak’s principle of the “Killer App” In response to: “Downgrading your computer – Why less is more” Scott Raymond, 8\/18\/2010 on zdnet.com Thesis: You don’t need the latest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analyses-and-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}