When the software became the only thing that matters
The history of Microsoft teaches us that moving a large base of PC IBM users to MSDOS was a successful idea. The role of sofware became strategic, and playing as software provider more profitable than playing the role of hardware manifacturer. From that moment on, the software, and the operating system, became the only thing that matters. The increasing number of applications for MSDOS caused users to become MSDOS dependant leaving the hardware to blur in the background without too many worries: users didn't matter if the PC was a real IBM or just a clone. So now, the operating system's no longer something that allows a system to operate, but it is the ultimate user tool, the desktop, the control panel of the underlying technology; while the hardware is just the support and the mere computing platform. Thanks to this, Microsoft filled a huge market ruling the era of PC age and consolidating a monopoly. Ruling the software world is very profitable and confortable in contrast to fighting in the hardware arena against so many competitors. We could say, "hardware" is placed in a sane market, where the pace of innovation is much faster and prices are alway falling down.
When the webware became the only thing that matters
So far, applications are pieces of software released, sold, and installed in our machines but things are changing: we are discovering a new world where the user tool is the web and the applications are in the web. Let's imagine to write emails, documents, presentations without leaving the browser. Web applications are services, they don't need to be released with a traditional software lifecycle and are evolving on a daily basis. Companies like Google and Yahoo are not software companies like Microsoft and Oracle as Tim Oreilly well explained in his article on Web2.0. Protopage, gmail, flickr, delicious, upcoming.org, ajaxwrite are just few examples of how we are moving to interact only with web applications. Now the webware is becoming the only thing that matters and the software is blurring quietly in the background joining the poor hardware to compose together the 'mere computing platform'. So the software is the computer and the webware are the applications; the software provides device drivers and multimedia while the webware talks to the users; the software is the engine and the webware is the steering wheel.
