Muscle car analogy.
I think that do it yourself PCs will always survive. "Well, duh." you say.
What I mean is that even if Apple, or Sun, or IBM or Compaq, or Dell...if any of them were to totally redefine and dominate the market with a pre-built box, there are enough people out there with a love of tinkering and electronics that the build your own PC would survive. These people are the same types who are working on open source, Linux and the likes. Not all geeks have the same interests (overclocking, building PCs, programming, etc) but they all have some personality trait that draws them to the world of computing.
Oddly enough, I think a lot of innovation and cool stuff comes from these types of people and their communities. Even though I'm a die-hard Mac lover, I never want to see Macs completely dominate the marketplace. There will always be a part of me that remembers building Linux kernels for my PPC, trying to get DVDs to work, etc.
Those were the days...
Matthew
