I Eat Rainbows

Christopher Mims posted on the Scientific American blog earlier, talking about Gates’s keynote at CES. Apparently, Microsoft’s vision is:
Everything -> Windows Media Center 2012 -> (Xbox 1080 -> TV)|Zune|Ford|Some other Microsoft product, and eventually, walls.
Everything means all content: movies, pictures, the internet, TV, games, music,…
He rightly points out that this is doable without Microsoft. However, he has an issue with the increasing amount of work people will have to do to set it up. He says that that is why

the core audience for all this stuff remains, and will continue to be, teenagers and geeks–people who either have lots of time on their hands or little else they’d rather do with it. Call me when the computer has literally disappeared into the walls instead of just becoming them; when I can engage it in a clipped, relatively sane conversation about my immediate needs, like in Star Trek or countless other sci-fi visions of the future.

I don’t agree.
I think that people will either
a) be fascinated by this new&better (TM) way of putting content in their lives.
b) be unaware/uninterested, but have it thrust upon them, and therefore will find the nearest (a)-type to do it for them.

This is somewhat similar to his vision, and very similar to what is happening today, but I believe that there will be a ceiling.
Some companies will ‘get it’ earlier than others. But eventually, they will realize that if you have a userbase, 90% of whom are dependent on other people to use your product, you do not have a happy userbase. The poster child today is Apple. There is no five-button iPod because Apple figured out the simplest way to incorporate all the functionality into four buttons.
(Well, actually, if you count the center button, there are five buttons. But since Mims seems to have ignored that, I will as well.)

This is why, eventually, they will become easier to use.
This is why, eventually, people will ‘get’ technology.
This is why, eventually, tech support calls from hell will cease.