Despite his ponytail and his sometimes counter-cultural language, despite being what I like to call a Truly Handsome Man (it's a brighter term for bald, people) Ted Waitt was always a follower, not a leader. (The picture is from a 2002 profile in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Argus-Leader.)

Waitt was Gimbel's to Michael Dell's Macy's. He wanted to be Pepsi to Dell's Coke.

But computing lacks the stability of the retailing or the soda business. So when Waitt announced his resignation today (at 42 it wouldn't sound right to call it a retirement) it wasn't big news.

Waitt and Gateway did well in the 1990s, following Dell into mass customization. He made his big mistake when he tried to out-think Dell, opening a chain of retail stores that caused $2.4 billion in losses, according to The New York Times.

But I personally think the mistake was more basic than that.

To Waitt a computer, any computer, was basically a TV, a typewriter, and a tape recorder, with a big box in the middle to connect it all up. It was a commodity, a fairly standardized collection of parts.

But that's not what a computer is at all.

A computer is what a computer does.

If you're writing a story then, yes, a computer is a typewriter. If you're watching a movie it's a TV, and if you're playing around it's a game console.

A computer is just the raw ability to do the wishes of software. It's not the box, it's not the interfaces.

An iPod is a computer. The tape recorder is dominant, although we call it a hard drive, but people have run Linux on it.

A cellphone is a computer. The interfaces are shrunken, the network connection is everything, but it's still a computer.

I say a wireless network gateway can and should be a computer. The input comes from sensors, the output goes to actuators. You should run programs like security on it, in which case the PC becomes merely an interface.

The point is that Gateway, and Waitt, and nearly all of what we called the PC industry back in the day have spent all their energy making computers over the last 20 years, never once asking the basic question which is, what else can a computer be?

Because America's best-and-brightest are increasingly turning to other fields, to the point where even IBM has to beg colleges to recruit smart kids into the field, it's unlikely that the next answer to the question, "what can a computer be" will come from within the U.S.

At 42 Ted Waitt looks as old as Keith Richard.