Today's computer system is significantly different from a one of
six or seven years ago. Modern computers are able to handle more
tasks than computers six years ago could, which causes people's
expectations of what a computer should be able to do to change.
Twenty years ago, no one would have even thought of trying to
print photos from a computer. A 4.77 MHz 8088-based IBM PC couldn't
do much more than word processing and spreadsheets. That's what a
computer was for back then - storing data.
Today you have both the Mac OS and Windows boasting about their
ability to play back high resolution video files, burn CDs and
DVDs, let you play games with graphics occasionally resembling real
life, let you talk (just like on the phone, but over the Internet),
and many other things that you wouldn't have thought possible when
personal computers started appearing on desks in the 80s.
These new capabilities have also brought new peripherals to
computers which weren't popular 15 years ago. Colour printers, for
one, are something relatively new. Sure, printers have been around
for ages - daisywheel and dot matrix printers were popular in the
late 70s and early 80s.
Apple's first color printer was the ImageWriter II, however it
would only print in color when used with a special color ribbon and
software that supported color printing. Various color StyleWriters
appeared in the early 90s, along with printers from Canon and HP,
such as the HP DeskWriter C. In fact, both companies made printers
for Apple.
Scanners are also a relatively recent tool. Within the past ten
years they have gained popularity. Apple first started selling them
back with the Macintosh IIci and
IIsi. These units could scan any
document or picture and produce a black and white image on the
computer's screen. Colour scenners followed, making them practical
for transferring photos to the computer.
But they were apparently not practical enough, because digital
cameras came next, and, yes, Apple had their own for a little
while. The QuickTake series could connect to any Macintosh and
transfer photos directly to the hard drive. This still wasn't the
best option, since photo quality wasn't as good as a standard 35mm
camera, and the number of photos that could be stored at one time
was limited.
Recent digital cameras are starting to reach 35mm camera quality
[Kodak's latest design has a 14 megapixel imager. ed] and offer
some nice features that non-digital cameras can't offer, such as
the ability to view a photo on the back of the camera after you
take it, zoom in on it, and rotate it.
With the start of "multimedia computing," stereo speaker systems
and CD-ROM drives started gaining popularity, followed by DVD.
Since many video files and sound files were being used, CD-R drives
(CD burners) soon became an inexpensive option. Today users can
make custom "mix" CDs and backup their work to CD - and even DVD on
some computers. Thanks to iMovie, we can even turn our home movies
into DVDs.
What's next? It's hard to say, although some think that the
television and computer will eventually 
combine into one large entertainment center. This has
already been tried (Apple did it with Mac TV [right], the Quadra/LC/Performa 630 series, and
the Performa 5200 series and 64/6500
series - and I believe IBM also tried it), and it wasn't too
popular. Perhaps one reason for this is that many people want to
keep their computers and television sets separate. If you need to
use your computer, it's distracting to have a window running a
television show on your computer's desktop. Also, with large screen
TVs becoming more common, many people aren't interested in watching
television on a 17" or 19" monitor when they've got a 62" console
in their living room.
Maybe television and computers won't have a near future
together, but music and computers certainly do. Music downloading
services remain popular, despite the loss of Napster. Often CDs
purchased by people are immediately imported into their computers
and set aside, and people are importing their LPs and 45s to their
computers so they don't have to use their turntable when they want
to hear one song.
With the addition of things like printers, scanners, and CD
burners, the computer has gone from a "fancy typewriter" to a photo
editing station and a stereo system. Computers seven years ago
couldn't do any of this on a large scale, and we one can only
speculate what computers will be able to do in another seven years.
