CES Is the World’s Greatest Hardware Show Stuck in a Software Era

Mat Honan, reporting from CES:

Sure, hardware is very important. Faster processors. More and better sensors. Radios with better transmission capabilities, running on more frequencies. Pixel density. Delightful chamfers. These things matter. A lot. But the bottom line is software — or it should be. While atoms may indeed be the new bits in terms of production, bits remain king when it comes to consumption.

Even “hardware” features are defined by software, and can no longer be judged on their own. Consider, say, mobile phone cameras. The camera itself is important — the sensor, the lens, the physical size — but ultimately what matters is the quality of the images it produces, and software is a huge part of that.

★ Tuesday, 8 January 2013