We are in the final years of our internet

I was looking through old computer magazines from the 1980s and thinking about my youth when there were numerous incompatible microcomputer platforms that had some popularity at some point such as

* TRS-80 Models I and III * VIC 20, C-64, C-128 * Apple II, II+, IIe, ... * CP/M systems based on the S-100 bus * IBM PC

and way too many others to mention. Eventually the PC and the Mac won out, except for a few Amiga fanatics and a specialized "workstation" marked served by vendors like Sun.

It seems the current state of things isn't nearly as fragmented as that!

Punditry at its worst. I would have called it clueless, but the truth is that nobody knows, and given evidence, this does not even seem like a plausible prediction.

Sure you can say "mobiles apps grew so and so". But then I can say that given the growth of a newborn child, 60 years old adult should be 50m tall.

"There will never be one winner."

There will, however, be many losers, and PCs are going to be one of those losers. The form factor won't die, but the philosophy and freedom will die. It is inevitable, given the priorities people have and the money to be made.

If things continue going the way they are going, the only computers that will give users the freedom to do what we can do now will be locked away in research labs, available only to the lucky few who can land jobs in such places. These computers will be so expensive that only people who are doing funded research will be able to afford them. The next best thing will be computers targeted at developers (perhaps "debug" computers), which will be too expensive for most people to consider buying them but (hopefully) inexpensive enough for hackers to get their hands on them; these will still be loaded with restrictions, but at least the user will be able to write and run code and use a debugger. The only computers that will be anywhere near the price point that most people will consider paying will be those that are restricted to running software that was signed by some large corporation (i.e. only approved programs), with only the macro systems for a few "professional" programs (priced beyond what most people can afford) being available for user programming.

Why would software or hardware companies want it any other way? The next "big thing" will have to be filtered through the app store system, and the little startup that makes that software will be bought out before they can overtake the established players. The big media companies will form partnerships with the companies that control app stores (or just mergers, so that the whole stack is controlled by the same entity) that will be immensely profitable. ESPN will require all of Dell's customers to buy the ESPN app, without the option to get a refund or to remove it, and any company that does not take that deal will be barred from having the ESPN app on any of their products. Governments will love it -- no more uncontrolled cryptography, no more Wikileaks, CALEA-style laws for computers, and a chance to spot political movements before they take hold.

"Free flow of information and low friction information searching certainly is one use case where the web is so so much better than apps can ever be in their current form"

You can just pay $1/mo. for a search engine app, right? It will have an integrated web browser/hook into the installed browser. Not much different from having a Bloomberg terminal on your desk, except that it would be terrible for consumers (but profitable for businesses).

"Lastly "apps" have always existed. Nintendo games..."

Gary McGraw has pushed the idea that the security systems seen in video games ultimately become the security systems on all consumer computing devices. At one time, this app store model was something only video game consoles had; now we see it on tablets, and soon we will see it in other form factors. Video game consoles have highly expensive, hard-to-buy "debug" versions and developer systems; is there any reason to think that such a system could not come to exist for other consumer electronics?

And all of that will persist for a short time until someone invents something new that disrupts it all, just like the Internet disrupted old media.

That is why I find the legal wrangling more worrying than anything else. Apple and Google can't stop me from inventing and popularizing a new technology, but the government can do a pretty good job of that, especially the second part.

Really good (long) summary, zanny. That was what I had garnered from the article's musings. It's something I've thought about a lot myself actually. How would I give a child the opportunity to learn to hack or program if they wanted to? For me it started with c-64 basic cause it wasn't compiled, then visual basic when I was like 13... I guess C# or Java could probably be taught very easily, but it feels like starting out learning martial arts by teaching them advanced maneuvers. It feels like the wax on, wax off approach really is the wise course but showing them QBasic or something hardly seems like a step forward.