Larry Magid: Tech can be boring, but it’s getting interesting

As someone who has been writing about tech for more than 40 years, I’ve seen ebbs and flows when it comes to how interesting it is. I have to admit, there have been times when I’ve found it boring, but then something new comes along to pique my interest. That’s happening again.

When I first started my career, the most popular PC on the market was the Apple II, which was exciting until it became commonplace. Then the IBM PC came along and added at least a little excitement, but not much. It had some improvements over the Apple II but still mostly displayed green text on a black screen, storing data on floppy disks and running many of the same programs.

In 1983, Compaq came out with a portable version of the IBM PC, which, for the most part, was a clone of IBM’s machine.  But it was portable, if you don’t mind carrying around a 28-pound machine that looked a bit like a sewing machine. That made it mildly interesting, because you could bring it on trips if you really wanted to, as I once did.

In 1984, Apple came out with the Macintosh, which made things very interesting. Even though it has less power and storage and a much smaller screen than the IBM PC, it was able to display graphics on its black and white screen and came with “what you see is what you get” software that, unlike what you got with PCs, made the onscreen view nearly identical to what came out of the printer. I was running a computer training company at the time, and the Mac, paired with a laser printer, revolutionized the way we created printed training materials, saving us a lot on typesetting and illustrations. It was also a lot more fun to use than a PC. I began my review of that first Mac with, “I rarely get excited over a new computer. But Apple’s Macintosh, officially introduced last Tuesday, has started a fever in Silicon Valley that’s hard not to catch.”

Despite its interesting initial design, the early Macs didn’t sell all that well, so, for years, the PC industry was dominated mostly by battles between IBM and the many companies that made what we called “IBM clones,” machines that ran MS-DOS that were almost indistinguishable from each other. The only major battles were around speeds – how fast the processor would run, which was mildly interesting because, back then, computers were pretty slow, and any significant increase in speed was noticeable. Eventually, computers became fast enough to the point where you probably didn’t even notice a speed improvement, rendering speed improvements mostly boring.

Microsoft came out with Windows in 1985, which was only mildly interesting, because it wasn’t as good as the Mac. It took until 1995 before Windows was arguably competitive with Mac. These days, anyone who claims that the Mac or Windows is significantly better, let alone all that different from the other, is saying something that I consider boring. Now, nearly all Apple PCs and Windows PCs are excellent.

Aside from PCs, there were other developments that got my attention. I wasn’t all that impressed with the Apple Newton or early Palm Pilot personal digital assistants, but I was blown away, sometime in the late ’80s, when I got my first “brick phone” from Radio Shack. The idea of being able to make a call from anywhere fascinated me. I remember pulling up in front of a friend’s house and calling him to ask if I could visit. He said yes and was shocked when I knocked on the door a moment later. Nevermind that the phone weighed about 2 pounds and had a battery that lasted about 30 minutes and had to be replaced every few months. It was interesting.

Cell phones continued to be interesting as they got significantly smaller and better. The Motorola StarTAC was a particularly good phone because of its compact size.

But, as good as these phones were getting, they were still basically just for talking and maybe texting via the little letters printed on the numeric keys.

In 2000, Sharp introduced the first phone with a camera. I got one of those first camera phones and loved the fact that I always had a camera with me and could email my pictures on the spot. Those pictures weren’t nearly as good as the ones from my stand-alone digital camera, but I loved their convenience.

Other things that made tech interesting included the advent of broadband, which made it possible to be online without having to dial-in and without having to wait forever for graphics and even text to display. It also made it possible to stream video, which is yet another very interesting tech development. The Mosaic browser made the internet and the World Wide Web very interesting and, thanks to broadband, easily accessible. The browser became software for all of our online needs, instead of separate programs for AOL (remember all those free floppy disks?), CompuServe, Prodigy and other online services. But that was short-lived. Now we have separate apps for nearly everything we do on mobile devices.

Another interesting piece of technology was the Blackberry, a phone with a usable keyboard that could handle both texting and email.  I loved my Blackberry, especially in the early 2000s when the company started to introduce better form factors and new features. But, in 2007, Steve Jobs introduced a phone that would change everything. I was lucky enough to get my hands on that first iPhone the day it came out. Even though I had some difficulties typing on its glass screen, I loved it more than my Blackberry.  Since then, smartphones have evolved into pocket computers that not only replaced our landlines or early cell phones, but also our maps, cameras, calculators, car keys, radios, MP3 players, TVs and so much more. I know people who use a smartphone as their only computing device.

Those early smartphones, whether running Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android, were very interesting, but these days, the new models are only incrementally better than the old ones. Smartphones just aren’t all that interesting anymore.

AI makes things interesting again

Fast forward to 2024, tech is starting to get interesting again, mostly because of generative AI, which is revolutionizing the way we obtain and create content. I’ve written about it a lot and will continue to write about it, because it’s evolving rapidly in very interesting ways. All the big players are diving into AI along with a lot of startups.

Even hardware is starting to get interesting again. Microsoft just introduced Copilot+ PC, which the company claims, “are the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built,” adding “the most advanced AI models, Copilot+ PCs will enable you to do things you can’t on any other PC.”  I haven’t tested these new PCs, but I’m looking forward to finding out what their new Neural Processing Unit (NPU) will bring to the AI party.

I don’t know exactly where AI is taking us, but as a tech journalist, it’s rekindled my curiosity and excitement. Like any technology, it, too, will have its ebbs and flows and, of course, its flaws. But it will have an impact on our lives that’s at least as profound as the PC, the internet and smartphones.

Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist. Contact him at larry@larrymagid.com.