No, I won't fix your computer...

I'm a geek. There's no getting around it. I know about computers and the internet, electrical items like PVRs, TVs and the like and, of course, science. In fact, I have a Ph.D. in the latter. So how did it happen? Why did it happen? It pretty much happened because I just wanted technology to work the way I wanted. When I was 10 I got a NES. It was so simple, just pop in the cartridge and press the power button. When we finally got a PC, it was back in the days of DOS. Getting games to work was surprisingly hard work. Firstly you had to know the DOS commands - even simple things like "cd games" and "cd\" had to be learnt. Then there was memory management... Those who know about DOS days will know all about memory management. It wasn't just how much memory you had, it was all about how it was assigned. There was base memory, expanded memory, XMS and EMS. All this was controlled by two files that were run when your computer booted. I spent many days going through them with a fine tooth comb trying to free up as much memory as possible. Was this fun? Not really, it was dull and time consuming and all I wanted was was to play my games. If you recognise this kind of screen, you'll know the kind of thing I'm talking about. By the time Windows '95 came out, you no longer had to worry about all that stuff, but now you had to manage with games that still wanted DOS. Not only that, but with the added burden of Windows, there was a constant need to avoid start-up programs and even desktop wallpapers as they sucked up precious computing resources. Once again, there was a whole heap of little tweaks that would bit-by-bit improve performance. As before, all this wasn't particularly fun, but if I wanted to get my games to work (short of buying a new computer which I couldn't even remotely afford) they were necessary. Of course, these days computers are so powerful you don't have to worry about trying to scrounge every last KB of memory and MB of disk space.

Likewise, about 6 years ago I moved to a smartphone made by the then-little known manufacturer HTC. It ran Windows mobile 2003, and again had the potential to be tweaked. This time, not to coax more performance out of it, but to enable more functionality in the form of applications. Again, this wasn't a simple process and beyond adding TomTom for satnav, I didn't really customise it much more as it was such as hassle.

Today, there tend to be two types of people - those who want to tinker with everything and those who just want things to work. Since moving to Apple products, I'm sort of now straddling the divide - I understand all the ins-and-outs of the technology, but I know that specifications aren't everything and how easy things are to use are just as important. Of course, manufacturers are willing to market the Hell out of both sides. Apple prides itself on it's user friendliness and slogan "it just works." It tends to hide specifications away from the public for things such as it's iPhone and iPad products and just show the speed and UI off to entice people in. Other manufacturers tend to push specifications a lot more and this can lead intense rivalries between fans of certain companies or products. These fanboi battles have become a lot more commonplace and intense thanks to the internet and various discussion forums. At the heart of these battles seems to be a built-in desire to defend what you have bought to reassure yourself that you made the right decision. Over the years manufacturers have pushed certain specifications to grab attention.

The bit-wars
In the early 90s a new generation of games console was unleashed to replace the incumbent systems of the times. The Master System was replaced by the Megadrive and eventually the NES was replaced by the SNES. While the old systems were 8-bit, the new machines were 16-bit. This essentially meant the graphics were better but it was a hard sell to justify getting a new console to your parents. The next generation brought 32-bit and even "64-bit" consoles to try and get gamers' cash. Strangely, bits haven't been mentioned again since the late 90s. This AVGN video about the Atari Jaguar (the first "64-bit" console) says everything...


The megapixel wars
Early digital cameras were quite low quality things. 0.3 megapixel sensors meant that although photos looked good on monitors at the time, they weren't really suited to printing out decent sized pictures. As technology improved we quickly got to 2 megapixels at which point excellent quality 5x7" photos could be obtained. At 5 megapixels, 8x10" became realistic and at 7-8 megapixels, even 20x30" became possible. At this point, it's unlikely the average consumer would need any more than this, but the manufacturers went further and soon 12 megapixel cameras appeared and were marketed as being better. Unfortunately they were often worse because although more pixels should mean more detail, the size of the sensor didn't change. this meant the pixels became much smaller. The outcome of this was they were more susceptible to noise (sometimes called grain). Every generation the cameras gained improved sensitivity and processing to reduce noise and improve image quality, but this was all but cancelled out by the shrink in pixel size. Thankfully, the manufacturers realised this was a loosing battle and the megapixel wars stopped. In cameras. They have now started up again in mobile phones. Once again people seem to be taken in by this. In mobile phones there is an added futility to it all as often the lens itself won't be very good so all the megapixels in the world wouldn't help. Thankfully some manufacturers are learning. Indeed, Apple's iPhone4 shipped with "only" a 5 megapixel camera, but had a high quality sensor so produced high quality images.