The first 25 years in the history of the personal computer were an aberration. Here’s why: The business and consumer markets for the product were essentially the same. When you went out to buy a computer for your home, you used more or less the same criteria that corporate purchasing agents used when buying fleets of PCs for employees. The drab, utilitarian PC on the desk in your study (or spare bedroom) looked the same and worked the same as the drab, utilitarian PC on the desk in your office. That wouldn’t be remarkable for, say, a pencil, but for an expensive and sophisticated product like a computer, it’s an odd state of affairs, to say the least.<\/p>\n
But it’s not going to last much longer. I think we’re finally at the point where we’re going to see the home PC diverge, and diverge quite radically, from the business PC. The home PC is going to turn into a real consumer product – or fragment into a whole bunch of consumer products. My loyal readers (that means you, mom) will know I’ve said this before. Earlier this year, I wrote a piece<\/a> arguing that Dell would have to “class up its act” if it was going to flourish in the home market of the future. I drew an analogy to the car industry, pointing out how consumers first embraced the drab, utilitarian Model T and then dumped it for snazzier models.<\/p>\n So what happened last week? Dell announced that it would unveil a premium brand<\/a> of home computers in time for Christmas, and it would launch a big advertising push to promote them. Dell consumer veep Mike George even rolled out his own automotive analogy in making the announcement: “Consider this the Lexus of our lineup<\/a>,” he said. (I don’t believe he actually thanked me by name, though.)<\/p>\n The news was overshadowed by Apple’s embrace of Intel, but in it’s own way it’s equally surprising. And I think both stories are related. Apple and Dell both want to win big in the home. To do so, Apple will have to reach down-market and Dell will have to move up-market. Those shifts, which go against the competitive grain of both companies, began in earnest during the past week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dell’s launch of a “luxury line” signals a big change in the home PC market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}