Respectfully, the race has been going for a year. But I think it's clear nobody is sure where the finish line is. That being said, I agree that the value proposition is significant, and stupid to ignore. Nobody wants to be Windows 3.1, with no TCP stack.

I've been doing computers a LONG time. And whenever someone asks me which computer they should buy, my answer is always the same: the one that works for you. So, like, sorry if you don't get it, but Ken Thompson -- a freaking *nix demigod -- has found what works for him. Respectfully, who are YOU to question his workflow?

I mean, YES, people still use desktop. But you have three real parties:
* Office workers
* Gamers
* Everyone else
And the "everyone elses" use desktop for exactly one thing: the web browser. This includes grandma, your non-gamer friends, etc. And they really don't care about the desktop experience all that much. They want to use a sensible UI, and use that to launch a browser. And then they Just Don't Care. Because on the other side of that browser is email, news, streaming, social media, cat videos, etc.

LOL! Same here. I remember when he rolled out accounts, and I was almost, I dunno, against the idea. I'm like, "I can read my Chips and Dips^W^W^WSlashdot when I darn well please without logging in." But after a few days, I finally got around to it.

OMG. Almost a Taco-level event with Mark's post...

OMG. Someone with a UID lower than mine who actually posts.
My hat is off to you, sir.

Whenever something "has" to have an alternate explanation, you are no longer looking for facts, but narrative.

Wait, yes, I do! xmplayer and... xine, I think?
But, yes. VLC quickly became the de facto player for Linux, which was HUGE, because as much as I love Linux, it was a PITA to play video reliably before VLC.

30+ years on, and ISCA BBS (telnet://bbs.iscabbs.com) is still going strong with a couple dozen active users, most of whom have been on since the early 90's. And, yeah, we have eXpress messages as part of the Citadel code the BBS runs on, and I gotta say, ain't no pop-ups in BBS land. But lots of good discussion.

$.02,

-Slarty (a/k/a user "Kena" on ISCA)

Hmm... maybe the waaay early 60's; looks like it was down to a low, low $5/byte, presumably to own (vs. rent), fairly early on after ditching vacuum tubes:
https://jcmit.net/memoryprice....

Nowhere in that article (nor my memory) was RAM that expensive. Hell, I don't think it was that expensive when it was wire-wrapped core. Get your units right, folks.

LOL. If Veritas reported the sky was blue, and the Pope, Catholic, I'd have to start rethinking what I knew about each. From a news veracity standpoint, they make Alex Jones and Occupy Democrats sound like Walter Cronkrite. Nutshell: I am 100% certain that whatever they "report" is 100% wrong.

You win. :-)

You, sir, are a nincompoop.
And not like just the normal troll way, but in the wilfully equating different things and wearing blinders way.
But you do you. It's clear no facts will penetrate your narrative.

Don't get me wrong: they were NEVER cheap. But I don't even think the most expensive base model (the X2) was more than $8K. And I believe the general-purpose one, the i2, went for around $6.5K, plus accessories. Honestly, they were over-engineered: they were under pressure to release, like, yesterday, and so never did enough iterations. Too much steel, dual batteries was probably overkill (and blew the price up $800), double- and triple-redundancy, etc.