Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 22:18:09 -0500 From: Technical Information <tech_info@threespace.com> To: FreeBSD Chat Mailing List <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20011202215531.018f3d80@threespace.com> In-Reply-To: <15369.3159.548082.862287@guru.mired.org> References: <008901c17a30$7d084f40$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15367.37543.15609.362257@guru.mired.org> <040701c179af$4bda25f0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15367.43943.686638.723011@guru.mired.org> <003301c179ea$8925d270$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15368.2156.193643.17139@guru.mired.org> <005601c179f3$a4030640$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15368.5624.255357.964607@guru.mired.org> <008901c17a30$7d084f40$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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At 11:59 AM 12/1/2001, Mike Meyer wrote: > > That's because once you get past "good enough," technology doesn't matter > > (otherwise it wouldn't be good enough, would it?). > >That's a one-sentence summary of my "good enough is best" paper. MS is >willing to keep trying until they reach "good enough", and has >excellent marketing. Their technology is just barely better than "good >enough" in almost every category. As such, there's usually better >technology available from companies that don't have the marketing >smarts that MS has. This is one of the things that never ceases to amaze me about this list--how easily the people on here forget that YOU (WE) ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF MASS-MARKET COMPUTER USERS. If we were, we wouldn't be here now. Other people don't spend time poring over technical specifications to see which one is best suited to their needs. Most people want compatibility and easy access to software and support. They want to be able to easily walk into a store and purchase software or buy it online. They want to know that the nifty new MP3/video player that they saw at a friend's house will work on their system too. They want to be able to buy hardware blindly without scouring the box for that obscure label on the bottom that says "Works on Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP and [insert your favorite OS here]." Compatibility, backwards and forwards, is a major consideration for most users. Crashes are an inconvenience at best, not a mission-critical disaster. For most people, the crash means the you have to reboot and re-establish your dialup connection to finish reading your e-mail. Your download was interrupted? It sucks, but nobody has lost anything because of it. For many of you, a crash on the wrong system could mean thousands of dollars in lost productivity, the loss of your job, or even a ruined career. Trust all that to Windows? Hell no. But for casual web-browsing and playing MP3s, it's the bomb. I don't envy Microsoft for having to maintain the legacy that it does. Believe me, there's a reason that every version of Windows to date will still run the same DOS software that existed nearly 20 years ago. And it ain't because anybody thinks that software had such high technical merit. Once you've got customers on your team, you can't change the game on them mid-stream or you run the risk of losing them. Even the FreeBSD/Linux developers realize this. Hell, people on this list don't even want the kernel *interfaces* to change because they're busy doing things in the source code. But they don't want the innovations to stop either. Maintaining the balance between the two is hard, especially if you've got hundreds of millions of customers to whom you're beholden. I've often said that technologically superior products are doomed to fail in the marketplace because they tend to rely on their superior technology as incentive for people to buy them. I think OS/2 is a prime example of this. While IBM was busy telling people how many wonderful technical features they had implemented, Microsoft was out getting hardware vendors and developers on their team. The applications and the customers followed naturally. Even IBM's own divisions wouldn't pre-load OS/2 on their PCs after Windows really picked up steam. I do training on Windows computers. And my students are always very interested when I tell them about the wonderful things UNIX can do, things that it has done for decades that Windows is only now starting to do. And it never fails to impress them. But when it's all over and they're ready to play a game or download a new streaming media player, those technical considerations all crumble to naught in the face of compatibility. --Chip Morton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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