Friday 2 November 2007

What do you wish your computer could do?

I've been asking people what they wish their computers could do better or do at all. I've been wondering because that's what we do as programmers, only we have the tools and have learned the skills to do it ourselves. But the barrier to those skills is large and too much trouble for the average Joe, so I've been thinking of ways to make it easier to program for the layman. In order to do that usefully, however, I want to know what tasks people are trying to perform with their machines. The answers so far have been more incremental than revolutionary, and most are on the way or possible today with minimal effort. Either people's thoughts have been boxed in by their limited machines already or I haven't asked the right people.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I may have to get my inspiration elsewhere.
PPS - That's fine, as long as I know where.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Zero wait-time would be really nice. Turning on a computer should be like turning on a TV. Opening a program should be as simple as changing channels. None of this "wait while we load stuff into memory" crap.

John said...

I think Microsoft are trying to do some of that, particularly with the "Superfetch" stuff in Vista. I don't know how well it works, though.