Opinion: PC Held Back by Past

x86 Windows based systems are always being held back by the past. When the iMac was introduced people questioned it's lack of ports and floppy drive. They pointed out it didn't have serial, SCSI, and ADB ports. They said that because it didn't have a floppy there was no way to backup your data. But they were wrong.

I loved the fact that the iMac lacked all legacy ports and didn't have a near useless floppy drive. If Apple had worried about people's reactions the iMac would not have been as elegant as it was. And the mini could never exist.

And PCs still don't come close. Most PCs still come with parallel, serial, VGA, joystick/MIDI, and floppy drives that most people don't need any longer. No one makes any devices that still use these ports expect for VGA. And if PC manufactures had any balls they would switch to DVI and the monitor industry would follow suite. If you do still have legacy devices you can get adapters.

Windows is also held back by the past. A time when a PC was a stand alone system or connected to an internal network and not subject to the hostile environment of the Internet. It's the need for backwards compatibility that makes Windows so insecure and subject to attack.

Apple has been leading the industry. It's time everyone else caught up and let go of the past.