Good read, I agree we need to be able to push the boundary. I think however the difference is that we need to push through different standards. Instead we hold onto our older hardware and force companies to hold onto older standards that should now be defunct.
Think about, it has been shown that we can make SFX PSU's that offer enough power for pretty much any system at up to 800Watt. We have shown that we can have 520Watt whilst being passive cooled with just small heat sinks and semi-decent airflow. Now if we got rid of standard ATX and moved to SFX as the new standard then we would start to push the next standard to get it to the next level. It needs the older standards to be pushed out to get to the next standard and that isn't happening.
Think about E-ATX, those boards really aren't needed for home desktops, Mini-ITX, Mini-ATX becoming the normal would push things to change again. It would allow companies to think about it different again. We now know that people want smaller and smaller footprints but with what we have now limits what we are doing because the way we produce elements (manufactures is the "We" here).
Imagine taking the cube shape as the new PCB shape. The size is 8cm x 8cm or similar. The internal of the cube accessed by the clean face/bottom where you connect it to your case & PSU. You place your DIMM slots internal, you place your M.2 internal. You have your sockets to place GPU & CPU chips on the external faces. Ect. I mean that is just an example of how things could change. Take the Mac Pro and although it isn't there yet the principle of the latest Mac Pro really shows some good thinking out the box from the current standards and what could become the next and then once we have got that we move onto the next.
The biggest problem will always be cost of design innovation and so I don't believe it will ever change where it moves forward unless each of these companies decide they need to innovate to increase their profits. At the moment that does not appear to be the case.
