Captain Birdseye - tut tut.

so why bother, why not learn to read music notation

spoken like a true folkie - or should that be Luddite?

The world and his brother uses a PC (All who don't speak now).

Because there are some of us who understand and read computers better than notation - or tablature for that matter - now that's another thing - why staff notation when there is a perfectly good system..............

And why did Mr Wheatstone feel impelled to invent a concertina system when there was already at least one in use?

ABC is as simple as you want (or can understand) and can be complicated ad nauseum. And like tablature and staff notation - is open source.

Now - comparing apples and pears - do we really need pears?