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Industry execs urge simplicity in PCs

Published: Oct. 8, 1996

BY RORY J. O'CONNOR Mercury News Washington Bureau

ORLANDO -- You are not alone if you think your personal computer and its software are too hard to use: so do six of the top executives that make them.

Speaking at the opening of an information technology conference, executives like Gilbert Amelio of Apple Computer Inc. and Ted Waitt of Gateway 2000, the mail-order PC maker, concurred that one of the main problems facing the industry today is making their products simpler to buy and use.

Simplicity in computing is a theme long sounded in the computer business. Two years ago, at the industry's largest trade show, Comdex, it was a buzzword repeated by many of the industry's leading executives, who bemoaned that in nearly 20 years of making supposedly ''intelligent'' machines, the average adult couldn't figure out how to use them.

Yet the leaders speaking here Monday in a discussion moderated by NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw said there has been little progress since then, despite the explosion in the supposedly easy-to-figure-out Internet.

''I think PCs and the products we offer the industry are just too complicated today,'' said Gateway 2000's Waitt. The result, he said: consumers are frustrated, and businesses pay too much to keep users trained.

Part of the problem is the dizzying array of available technology. While many in the industry consider the variety and constant innovation as a great strength, to many people who buy computers it may be just the opposite.

''Maybe we've created a tyranny of choice,'' said Gary FernandesS, vice-chairman of EDS Systems Corp. ''We have technological clutter. We speak in sound bytes. We speak in acronyms.''

One outcome for the computer industry is that consumers, especially outside the U.S., haven't begun using the technology that's supposed to revolutionize the world. Worldwide, no more than 10 percent of the population, ''maybe less, have access to a personal computers,'' said Apple's Amelio. ''Clearly, there's a lot more people that don't have computers than that have them.''

And most of the non-users are not technically oriented, he said, because ''techies'' are more willing to suffer the weaknesses and idiosyncrasies in order to use the products.

Amelio also said that while the Internet will be important to the industry, its net effect for users today has been far from beneficial.

''After your browse for awhile, it gets kind of boring,'' he said. ''Right now, the Internet has a negative productivity factor, as opposed to a positive one.''

What the industry must do, then, is concentrate on making the technology easier to use and more focused on solving problems for people. And in that pursuit, according to Amelio, the industry is now suffering from overdominance by the pair of companies that set most of the ''standards'' used in today's personal computers: Intel Corp. with its chips, and Microsoft Corp. with its operating systems like Windows 95 and Windows 3.1.

''I don't think you can fundamentally have a healthy industry in which two companies make just about all the profits in the industry,'' said Gil Amelio, Apple Computer chief executive. Of course such statements are not surprising from the CEO of Apple, which makes a competing operating system based on its Macintosh computer line that relies on microprocessors not made by Intel.

So how does Apple Computer regain its position in the market against Microsoft and Intel?

''Nuclear weapons,'' Amelio quipped, ''but we decided to hold back on that.''

In a more serious vein, he predicted that the development of technology to mask the underlying computer from the user and most software would eventually lessen the dominance of Intel and Microsoft.

''Technology has a wonderful way of solving this problem,'' he said. ''Probably, within five years, it's not going to matter what processor you use.''

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

The Gartner IT Conference, which runs through Thursday, is sponsored by The Gartner Group, an information services organization whose holdings include San Jose's Dataquest Corp. The event has attracted 4,700 executives who manage the computer systems in their respective organizations. The speakers at the event include some of the technology industry's biggest heavyweights. Today'sS conference, for instance, has a panel discussion that includes Bill Gates, chief executive of software giant Microsoft Corp., and Jim Barksdale, the CEO of Netscape Communications Corp. of Moutain View, who have become bitter enemies over the direction of Internet-based technology.

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