I was musing recently about could-have-beens. About disappointments and how things might have been if only handled better. For example, compare the new Star Wars trilogy to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. One was handled beautifully, and anyone would be hard-pressed to suggest any improvement. The other was a horrid mess, and I've already given you the top 20 problems.
In my ideal geek world, the third XMen movie would have been even better than the first two, a faithful recreation of The Dark Phoenix Saga, and the second and third Matrix movies would have continued in the mind-blowing and deeply philosophical tradition of the first, and the series would have been looked back on in the same way that we now look back on the original Star Wars trilogy.
In my ideal geek world, Microsoft would be taking major strides towards usability with its new products. Vista would be using WinFS, and would have taken drastic steps towards reducing bloat in its operating system. The OS would run beautifully even on five-year old machines, although the snazziest features would only work optimally on newer models. And there would be no registry.
Microsoft Office would have basic versions of Word and Excel included in all its operating systems as non-optional components. These versions would have all the bells and whistles (such as mail merge and macros) stripped out, but would provide basic functionality. Microsoft would charge for the versions with bells and whistles, but hardly anybody would ever use them anyway. Microsoft Works would not exist. Internet Explorer 7 would render stylesheets as well as Firefox and Opera without need for css hacks.
In my ideal geek world, Indigo Prophecy would have had a good ending. In fact, the plot would be so brilliant that as to win storywriting awards.
In my ideal geek world, the RIAA would have gracefully vanished from the face of the Earth with the emergence of the internet, and nearly every artist would be their own label. Digital Rights Management would have been a passing fancy, as the owners of intellectual property would have realized long ago that file sharing only increased the popularity of their works, and thus increased sales.
In my ideal geek world, we'd have a Star Wars game for the Nintendo Wii where your lightsaber was mapped perfectly to the Wiimote. To block, move your lightsaber to the correct angle. It would have all the intricacy and nuance of actual swordfighting. No longer would geeks have to LARP in order to learn the joys of virtual swordfights.
The Playstation 3 would be $400, have an online service as good as the XBox 360, and an amazing starting lineup of games including Resident Evil 5, Beyond Good and Evil 2, Psychonauts 2, and Half-Life 2 as launch titles.
It's too bad that my ideal magical geek world is only fiction.
