From your post on the Roon board, I will reply to each section as I read it, so as to explain the natural opinions formed as one might read it, even if later portions explain things in more required context.
I was recently asked why I migrated from a NUC to a Nucleus. And I have taken positions on devices and on NAS that have been disconcerting to some. These views are rooted in a broader view of the future evolution of technology. So I’ll explain my reasoning here. It might be interesting for people who care about the tech field, and it might be useful for people thinking about setting up Roon. And if you don’t care about the technology, it might not interest you at all.
I think we are in the midst of a profound shift to ubiquitous, small, single-purpose devices. Not just a change in how computers are configured, from large general-purpose to small single-purpose. More fundamentally, small, single-purpose, intelligent and network-connected devices will be everywhere and will have a huge impact on the world, bigger than the past computer revolution. In the Roon context I favor Nucleus and MicroRendu and such devices over a Windows PC or a Mac or a NAS. But the observation applies much broader than audio. And the magnitude of the shift makes it long term: it is a prognosis for the next 50 years. But it has started.
All devices start as specific purpose, so your recollection of history isn't valid. With respect to computers, single-purpose devices are the things that are folded into general purpose computer feature-sets. This is all driven by the litmus test provided by objective economics of supply/demand. If a technology has mass appeal in terms of "mandatory" application, and makes sense to be a part of a computing stack, then the attempt to bring it to a computing "general purpose" device will be attempted (so as long as the cost isn't astronomical as it usually is when using the single-purpose version).
If after that there is a market that demands high-performance versions for such function, a single-purpose version will be refined or created (if computers already killed the single-purpose version prior to joining the fold of "computers").
Software driven devices are especially prone to never fulfilling your sort of reasoning simply because there aren't many people willing to pay a price premium for the Roon Nucleus that you have, compared to a NUC and network stack that at least fulfills the performance requirements (read/write speeds, as well as things like wireless performance perhaps, and things of that nature). Single-purpose devices will never overtake what ephemralization's effects are in the mass general market (empheralization is the concept of doing more with less, like CPU die density increasing while die size decreasing on the nanometer scale every generation, while also increasing performance AND at the same time decreasing power usage).
Unless you start seeing devices that can offer value higher than offered along with a "computer", this sort of paradigm shift you envision is not going to happen with the way the hardware and software sectors operate currently. Especially even more unlikely when you take a deep philosophical dive with how Intellectual Property stands to always continually stifle progress attempts in specific purpose devices, and the price premium that is paid because of close-source products.
At the end of the day, it ALL has to do with costs, and when you have industries the rely on one another (there isn't a single product out there that I know of that handles ALL of its hardware and software design for a computing device, which is why you will never see a device like a motherboard made FULLY in-house).
But recently, since the turn of the century, we have come to realize that systems management has become one limiting factor. And in my view, this is driven by the complexity of the general-purpose architecture.
I am particularly sensitive to this, I spent twenty years working on this problem. I saw studies by Gartner that showed the Total Cost of Ownership for a corporate PC was several thousand dollars per year, far beyond the cost of the machine. We strove to improve, but the fundamental complexity is irreducible because of the ambition to make the machines general purpose.
Roon is not corporate, management is not a cost, but the root problem remains: complexity makes it difficult to set things up and keep them running reliably and adjust and tune them. Computing complexity is the bane of our enjoyment. Just look at the forums.
Turn of the century, and turn of the last decade or two are totally different, and cannot be comparable in the slightest with respect to topics of contention. Cost of ownership of my workstation/performance PC is simply removing my fan filter, and cleaning them once per two weeks, and changing the thermal paste once per year just for good measure on the CPU/GPU. There is no other serious cost aside from electricity. Again, the demands of a few decades ago were nothing to what they are now (in the same way a general purpose iPhone 30 years ago wouldn't have been needed today, but good luck living without a smartphone today in any major metropolis).
Another reason why general purpose devices like computers today aren't going anywhere, is if they offer modularity, they can always be upgraded and made to fit the times. The Roon Nucleus device, will instantly be obsolete by relative comparison when a new version of it hits. That isn't to say we aren't seeing the destruction of the general purpose computer (by soldering all parts to it's motherboard for instance in laptops mainly), but this is just economics flexing and stabilizing with respect to entities seeing what they can get away with. So with respect to "general purpose devices going away", you may have a point, but without actual context, anything can be argued. You MUST give specific examples, because the economic aspect hasn't been spoken much from your side, and it needs to be.
As for complexity, this is a design/UI/UX issue that can always be honed, hardware or software regardless, so not a valid complaint. The argument you make with this claim can be logically argued in conclusion by someone like me saying "Okay so there is value in people not willing to take the time to learn something, yet be willing to pay astronomically for a simple single-purpose device". That's not how the general flow of human awareness unfolds. Compared to the general population of 500 years ago, we would be similar to gods with respect to understanding and insight.. same thing here, and dumping a NUC in favor of the Roon Nucleus will never be a mass-market thing simply due to the massive price difference if not anything else.
In parallel Moore’s law has upended the economics. We used to think of Moore as continual speed improvement, but it isn’t a technical “law”, it is an economic observation. As it is, we can’t make machines faster like we did because they melt, but they are cheap so we can have many of them. That’s the cloud model, and it is also the new device model.
It’s the Internet of Things model, the Ambient Computing model. We will be surrounded by smart, connected devices. They will have compute capability built in, but it will be quaint to refer to “computers”.
And the changing economics will change our attitude about what resources we leverage. An anecdote that illustrates the product design consequences of price-performance shifts: in the eighties somebody invented a general-purpose kitchen appliance, by inserting an electric motor in the kitchen counter, and you would have blenders and food processors and can openers that would snap onto that motor. It failed in the market, in my view because it tried to reuse the electric motor which is no longer an expensive component. There were practical disadvantages with a single motor fixed in one location, and the economic shifts allowed us to solve that by having lots of small electric motors built into single-purpose devices like blenders and food processors and can openers.
Similarly, we will have less incentive to reuse computers for multiple purposes because they are cheap, we can have many of them. But this works only if the many are so simple that managing the swarm of single-purpose devices is in the aggregate less work that managing the single multi-purpose device.
Incorrect, while proponents of Moore's Law said it would continue with exponential pace (like the idiots that they are), the ever progressing pace of technology is a natural law in the same way something like natural selection is. So as long as the conditions for it to be fostered exist, machines are always improving in general. Not just machines, but technology in totality. While we can't take along with us, all improvements and have them applied in the newest revision of a product (like the odd kitchen appliance product failure you spoke about) we still take the lessons and scientific reasoning with us, and apply the base tenants with respect to goals in mind. There are no "economics" that will ever prevent the attempts technology makes in doing more with less (the ephemeralization I talked about prior), otherwise we would still be using rocks instead of pneumatic hammers. So while some products will utterly fail the test of economics (like plasma televisions did with their non-ability to scale with resolution, and instead ballooning power requirements as size and resolution demands rose), the lessons and few principles we take from them doesn't mean "general purpose devices are failing to have a place". Two totally different observational inferences..
The other problem arises when you compare computers, to mechanical devices meant to do something a computer can never do, but you attribute prior the raise of "Cloud Computing" (this isn't really rising, and will be essentially vaporware for the forseeable future in consumer applications of serious scale until costs, and ethics issues pertaining to privacy and ownership are dealt with, but this is a broad topic that must be discussed with specificity, cloud computing doesn't actually mean anything tangible currently). Yet the same cloud computing is driven by general purpose devices like computers.
Also the reason we have less incentive to resuse computers, is because better versions are constantly being released. The same will happen to the Roon Nucleus the moment the next-gen version is released. Likewise with single purpose devices like Amps.. eventually they will fall out of favor, and not be reused. This has NOTHING to do with "general" vs "specific" purpose devices, and has everything to do with economics and the paradigm of planned and intrinsic obsolescence that is upheld by closed source tech development, and non-modular thinking/product offerings.
This is profound: computers are cheap so we can have many of them. And with many cheap computers the complexity-driven management problem is a gating factor.
So this is the heart of my observation: we can have a lot of inexpensive compute power, and we will revolutionize our world, if we can solve the management problem, if we can reduce complexity, which requires single-purpose devices.
And I think this will drive a revolution that will dwarf what computers achieved so far, with vast quantities of single-purpose computers, building on but inverting the general-purpose machine revolution of the past 50 years.
The complexity with cheap computers is due to new features and standard evolving, while companies try to create products that adhere to new standards (as selling points), while also retaining backwards compatibility/legacy support for older systems. Single purpose devices like an AMP/DAC can suffer this just as easily by not offering support for older tech and interfaces. So the "complexity" is self inflicted by not letting go of older pieces that should have been retired ages ago in favor of better modern standards.
When you conclude with the middle sentence about "which requires single-purpose devices" if we are to reduce complexity, this is simply preposterous. Because I can easily take this down a ridiculous path with respect to computers and create an enclosure nightmare where it will be a daisy chain of parts all just doing one singular thing. A simple motherboard would have at least like 10 different devices that can be hooked up enclosure to enclosure. PCI-E interfaces, storage, PCH, CPU socket, temperature probes, sound portion, graphics, fans, I/O hubs for each, power delivery, volatile memory interfaces. And all things like this is before I even mention the software stack required to make this work (unless you're proposing a single company provide all of these parts in-house).
We don't actually need one device to do just ONE thing. As long as the device meets the needs of purpose, and other parts we don't use don't impede on user-case or cost. General purpose devices will never cease. That isn't to say single-purpose are dying or anything, because with single purpose, you have singluar focus to refine such product. So if you need generally higher quality, or UX needs, then that option is there for you at usually much higher cost for little return (which is why you see devices like the DX3 Pro from Topping, while a multi-purpose device, it still mops the floor with some incredibly expensive and niche "single purpose" products). Complexity can be reduced when you have an effort to do so. And when the cost to do so is lower than simply making a single purpose product that is equally as complex, that single purpose product ceases to be relevant.
It should be obvious that I am primarily talking about the software stack. The hardware is often general purpose, with a specific device purpose we can simplify and optimize it, but the challenges I discuss are primarily in the software.
And it isn’t that Windows or MacOS are poorly designed. They are well suited to the purpose. But that general purpose makes them complex, which makes them ill suited to the purposes we have now.
These single-purpose devices are typically based on Linux, but the point is not that Linux is easier to manage when used as a general-purpose system. Its advantage is that it can be fitted to a specific purpose, because of a modular architecture but more importantly because the open licensing model. So while Linux as a whole is complex, Roon Labs can build a simple Nucleus based on Linux.
Ah I am glad you now went into software side of things. The thing with software, is it's "general purposness" can be constantly pin-pointed, or generalized at whim. I explained prior the problem with Mac/Windows, and by extension the reason you hold such beliefs, is because they are failures in the natural order of prosperous economic and technological advancement. The stupidity of closed-source, and the hoarding of ideas under "trade secrets" is what staggers progress. Linux can be more general purpose than either, yet be as specific as any custom software solution essentially. The reason is because open-source can share ideas, and Linux is built on a foundation of being modular. So complexity that you spoke of prior, can be instantly trimmed away at will and with relative ease. Don't use the blunders of the idiotic closed-source product community and it's pitfalls and technology stagnating effects and relate them to "general vs specific purpose" devices.
Software stands to make many things obsolete in the hardware realm given enough computing power (heck we even have emulators of devices that are only found in landfills these days). And just like that, as you yourself agree, the issue can be solved with the proper outlook and open-sharing of ideas. Not simply "purpose built" under all circumstances.
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In the end you speak a bit about setting up Roon and such, and how your purchase made sense because it didn't allow the complexity of having the ability to install Office or Photoshop (I don't understand how the ability to do so increased the complexity of you installing what you wanted but alright).
Most of your ideas are grounded in a soft of bias based on conflicting ideas in the sense. While you do save yourself when you speak about software. You're unwilling to go to the finish line to realize that "purpose built" has almost nothing to do with viability in reality with respect to the general trend. You attribute the idea that computing devices of general purpose will fade, but that is only because of artificial economic push/demand of general public. Yet don't mention the only reason this can happen is due to the democratization of technological progress, and the end of wasteful/bloated software stacks and hardware builds by people looking to maximize profit at all stages of product creation.
Also, when you have a general public (due to economic realities) that still requires NEEDS be met first, the trend to go and buy a Nucleus over a NUC and such are far smaller than those that would do the opposite. Also you've tried to hit on many points, but argue with ambiguous terms, like "complexity" not actually being contextualized in all aspects where you use such term, or "general purpose". Otherwise, we would be seeing strictly e-mail devices being offered on the market that simply just handle e-mail (which we don't).
Good post, but could do with further elaborations I would say.
