But again, that's conflating web connected or even web required with mainframe compute and it's just not the same.
PC was never 'no web'. No one actually 'counted every screw in their garage' as the PC killer app. It was always the web.
PC was never 'no web'. No one actually 'counted every screw in their garage' as the PC killer app. It was always the web.
The web really pushed adoption, much more than a person computation machine. It was the main use case for most folks.
The personal computer arguably begins with VisiCalc in 1979.
> Through the 1970s, personal computers had proven popular with electronics enthusiasts and hobbyists, however it was unclear why the general public might want to own one. This perception changed in 1979 with the release of VisiCalc from VisiCorp (originally Personal Software), which was the first spreadsheet application.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#...
Mainstream use of the web really took off in the second half of the 1990s. Arbitrarily, let's say with the release of Windows 95. That's a quarter of a century you'd be blinking for.
That exists, too, with GeForce Now etc, which is why I said mostly.
Some of the online only games I am thinking of are CoD, Fortnite, LoL and Minecraft. The online-first DRM I am thinking of is Steam.
This whole idea that you can connect lots of cheap low capacity boxes and drive down compute costs is already going away.
In time people will go back to thinking compute as a variable of time taken to finish processing. That's the paradigm in the cloud compute world- you are billed for the TIME you use the box. Eventually people will just want to use something bigger that gets things done faster, hence you don't have to rent them for long.
The killer apps in the 80s were spreadsheets and desktop publishing.