&#62; It teaches us that consumers don't rate variety very highly<p>You are making the same mistake with regards to competition as communism does. In retrospect it is easy to look back and say what 'consumers' wanted but that ignores the competative pressures that lead to the emergence of the 'winner' solutions. Consumers do not need to be aware of the power of variety to benefit from it, although collectively they do have a great 'variety' of differing needs.<p>Of course the system the won out was the one to fostered the greatest levels of competition within that system, using standards and interoperability to facilitate this.<p>&#62; The major reason why PC manufacturers proliferated so wildly was price, but that battle is largely over:<p>Seriously the era of innovation in computer hardware is over? The whole thing just runs like clockwork now and no further major disruptive forces will change the industry?  I'm sure in the 70s you would have predicted that IBM would rule the industry forever.