Today, my wife, my daughter, and I went to the mall.  We had decided to look for new outfits to wear to an upcoming wedding.  After the clothes shopping, I decided to go into the Apple store and look around.

Years ago, going to a computer store was almost like a religious experience.  Computers were things filled with mystery, unknown possibilities… and the people that hung out in computer stores were mostly wanting to know more about and discover computers, and there were always some computer-gods or gurus who hung out in the stores as well.  I’m talking about the computer stores that were small mom & pop shops, not the big box stores, or these days the Apple store.

The first computer I owned was an Apple IIe… I got it by working at Computer-land (a chain store, not a mom & pop, but it was a franchise) and it was a thing of wonder.  The people at the Computer-land I worked at and hung out with were amazing.  They were into the hardware, creating software and generally trying to demistify computers for people wanting to buy and use one.

The experience I had today was kind of dissapointing.  The Apple store is pretty cool, but there isn’t much mystery there.  You can get some of the fastest and easy to use computers made these days… but they have become more of a commodity.  There aren’t groups of people really getting together to try and figure out what you can do with them, it’s obvious these days… computers are not just for the hobby set.  It’s no longer about the amazing things that can be learned about the computer itself, the projects you can create and improve the hardware you purhase – like figuring out how to make an interface to your computer that will control the lights in your house, or using the computer as a brain for a simple robot you are making. Nope, it’s all about the money, the content and how cool the stuff looks.

It’s kind of sad.  I don’t see the same kind of future possibilities for computers in the hands of the enthusiasts anymore, at least for hardware.  Software still has those possibilities, and the internet has opened up other avenues as well.  But the computer itself, that has come to being developed as much as it possibly can be. 

The only thing that can and will improve these days are speed, capacity of memory and hard drives, and size of your monitor.  

The computer store itself seems to no longer harbor the wonder and excitement that it did in the early days of computing.  And so it goes…