Golden Age of Software -- Gone

Maybe I'm late to the game. Maybe "it's the internet stupid". But today I stopped by a local largeish computer software/hardware store - and was amazed how few shelves actually contained software. I'd have to estimate that half of the area that used to contain software titles - now contain kooky keyboards and kooky speakers.

It's amazing that I used to find myself lost in nerdvana scanning the shelves for the coolest cool tool - or the obscure development tool. Now half of the "utilities" section is populated with nothing but Antivirus titles. I miss PC-Tools, I miss the old school hard core utilities.

Gosh, now the Macintosh software shelves look like they are growing in comparison... maybe the incumbency of Windows will just shrivel - leaving users free to migrate to another platform. I've been convinced that another platform (Mac, Linux, etc) won't really take off unless there was a clear migration path (meaning old software would run --- Windows apps on Mac, just as about every other major transition required --- CP/M to DOS (okay they ran on same hardware - that was easier) DOS to Windows, Windows to Win32 then Win64. Another 5 years and maybe there just won't be consumer software (just games) -- and it just won't matter anymore.

Or maybe not....