And to Mr Rat Poison, Who said anything about AuntFlo running the current Bitcoin client on her Virus ridden Windows PC ? I hypothesized an ATM-like machine that enabled person-to-person transfers across national boundaries. Aunt Flo can pop into her local corner store and withdraw her funds in the local scrip, without even having to own a computer thanks to the bitcoin network . Its just an example end user application.
I'm not sure if you realize or not that the ATM-like machine will require money to run and maintain, and additionally there will be fees for transferring the bitcoin to/from the local currencies. Once you move the bitcoin client away from a home PC or smart phone, it essentially becomes another third party money transfer service.
And I've already told you that the mainstream public does not want to move money around by themselves, because they're too worried (for good) reason that they'll mess it up or that the value will crash before they can convert back to the local currency. So as you can now clearly see from my argument, bitcoin is "fixing" a problem that nobody has.
You go ahead and keep on saying that everything it does is already being done better.. repeat it often enough and you might even convince yourself. After all, who needs email ? Whats wrong with a written letter ? Stamps have been good enough for AuntFlo for 50 years you know.
Here's the difference: people like getting e-mails, but nobody aside from fanatics want bitcoins. They're volatile, need to be converted for fees, prone to security issues, and can be completely lost in the case of a hardware failure.
If you lose somebody's e-mail, you can ask to have it sent again. If you lose bitcoin, then good luck!