This topic of open vs. closed (or hacker box vs. appliance) is interesting to me. When I first started using computers (Commodore PETs, Apple ][, TRS-80, etc.) I really perceived it as a machine to be programmed -- writing code was what it was all about. I also perceived it as something that kids were mainly interested in, like comics or rock n roll. We hung around the computer lab and screwed around with these new machines and read Byte and pranked each other by writing fake BASIC interpretors and leaving them running in the lab. So the open architecture certainly made sense for this culture. I was always saving up to buy some crazy board to put in my Apple or soldering something (like the shift-key mod for the ][).

I suspect that my perception of PCs as kid/hacker culture was driven in large part by the fact that the business community hadn't yet embraced personal computers. There were no killer business apps yet -- ones that businesses had to have. I remember talking to my dad, telling him about "word processing software" and how we all might, one day, use that instead of typewriters. He probably smiled at his hacker son but never imagined that my "hobby" would one day be something he'd have at his desk at his office in the business world.

When Lotus 123 and the other killer business apps came out, that really started us down the road of moving toward the appliance. Businesses purchased computers to do a task -- sometimes just one, like spreadsheets. They weren't buying gear for you to hack on -- they wanted productivity. They also wanted machines that had the same kind of reliability as an office phone -- you pick it up and you've got dial tone. (Still haven't really achieved that.)

This really changed things because once the business world started using them solely to run off the shelf software, that became what computers were all about. That notion moved into the home too -- buy a computer and you can run software program X or game Y. It wasn't about taking it home and hacking anymore. Sometimes I find this troubling -- all the kids I knew in the '70's who had a PC all knew how to code and how computers worked. But kids I meet today often have no idea -- they only know how to use an appliance. The underlying platform is a mystery. But, on the other hand, I certainly see what Jobs was going for. My dad eventually got a computer and he loves it. He doesn't code -- he can't even install a software patch himself. But he can use some off-the-shelf applications and finds his Mac useful and fun. So things are different now.

Thanks!