With respect, the article's point is not that tech can't improve, but that those improvements aren't needed. His expression "good enough" means "good enough fo

With respect, the article's point is not that tech can't improve, but that those improvements aren't needed. His expression "good enough" means "good enough for a particular purpose". Sure it can be improved; but it doesn't matter because it's good enough. Consider his example of netbooks: less powerful but more demand. You're taking improvement in technology; he's talking demand for that improvement. Sure, you can make a car that will do 200mph - and what's the market for that? How about a car that uses less fuel, has crumple zones and airbags, easier to park, looks cool, feels great to drive, accelerates well and has seats that smell like leather? You can buy an 8 inch hard disk drive with a hugely larger capacity than a 3.5 inch one you have, and that is also cheaper per GB. But you don't buy the 8 inch one, because the smaller drives have enough capacity for your needs: they are "good enough". Because of lower fixed costs, they are also cheaper (for that capacity). And they'll fit in your laptop. I concede that the expression "good enough" is misleading. He's using it in the sense of "The Innovators Dilemma". It's the basis of each disruptive revolution in computers, and it takes almost everyone by surprise. We keep on improving aspect X, and everyone loves it! Until one day, they stop buying it. How come? I don't know, let's just make X even better! The idea is that people buy something based on a mix of benefits, things like features, performance, reliability, convenience, and price. Saying that one of these attributes is not "good enough", is a way of saying that "there is demand for more of it". The vendor who can supply the best improvement, in terms of the current mix of demand, wins. It's usually seen as one key benefit, and the rest are secondary. That's where the competition is focussed. And this keeps on going for years, decades. Everybody works at improving that aspect, because people demand more of it. But if it eventually saturates the demand for it, people can't use a faster car, they can't absorb more capacity: it finally is "good enough". This is another way of saying that there is now demand for more of some other attribute instead of that one. And competition shifts to that attribute. This plays out all the time in technology markets: e.g. once it's fast enough for their needs, people prefer to buy something cheaper instead of faster. Sure, it can be faster, but that's irrelevant if no one wants it. Fortunately, the demand doesn't usually disappear, but switches to somewhere else, so there is still demand for tech improvements - just different ones.