From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Nov 16 8:45:34 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from probity.mcc.ac.uk (probity.mcc.ac.uk [130.88.200.94]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 50F8814DFE for ; Tue, 16 Nov 1999 08:45:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Received: from dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org ([130.88.200.97]) by probity.mcc.ac.uk with smtp (Exim 1.92 #3) id 11nlj9-0000Ye-00; Tue, 16 Nov 1999 16:45:07 +0000 Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 16:45:06 +0000 (GMT) From: Jonathon McKitrick To: David Schwartz Cc: Erick White , freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit" In-Reply-To: <000001bf2ff8$63026740$021d85d1@youwant.to> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, David Schwartz wrote: > First you said this.... > A company can have all the ideas in the world, but if they can't turn it >into a product that consumers actually want to buy, it won't amount to a >hill of beans. Microsoft excels at turning ideas into marketable products. >And that's what the market wants -- products, not ideas. > > Ideas were once a dime a dozen, now they're $1 a bale in 10,000 idea bales. >The market doesn't buy ideas. Then you said this.... > If you had an idea that was really better than Microsoft's, that should >give you enough of an advantage to take a sizeable market share. If the >better idea isn't winning, look long and hard at whether it's really better. > Which is it? Better ideas or better products ? > Sure, and I don't have to buy it. Any manufacturer can charge any price >they want for a product. What they can't do is make people buy it if it >isn't worth the price. > > Yes, but a company with superior technology wouldn't need to brainwash >anyone. If it really had a better product, it would eventually take over the >marketplace. Really. Not true. What kind of VCR do you have, if you have one? Beta? Why not? Beta had a way better picture, and a smaller medium. Because VHS won the marketing battle, not because it was a better product. Has the VCR market _forced_ us to buy VHS VCR's? No. But it has made it pretty darm inconvenient NOT to. Those who went with Beta now have very high picture quality paperweights. Why do customers upgrade Windows? Because they like to spend more money? No. Sure there may be some new hardware drivers or new features they like, but most do not need these. If they are upgrading the OS, they usually had hardware that worked before. But it's also because M$ adds requires developers who want the official M$ seal to use the newest API calls in their programs. Now, when customers genuinely _need_ a program upgrade, they also need an OS upgrade. And sometimes a hardware upgrade as well to handle a more bloated OS. The whole upgrade scam was carefully engineered to put more money in their pockets by staying ahead of the competition just enough to make it unfeasible to switch. It's the donkey and the carrot. Sure, M$ had some innovations. But just enough to stay ahead. They kept the really good stuff for when they needed it, which will always be the next OS release, JUST around the corner. And I won't even comment on how many of those ideas were taken from other companies.... Just a comment on the CD vs vinyl debate: it was a case of the Emperor's new clothes... anyone who remembers the original CD players know they sounded HORRIBLE... but no one would say that except audiophiles, because no one wanted to argue that vinyl sounded better than new-fangled digital technology. Same with windows. No one wants to argue that such a cute, easy to use OS really is unstable and is a carefully engineered money making scheme. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message