Frozen Accidents

[Gordon Webster]

IMHO, the current state of the OS market for personal
computers lends considerable weight to the point that
Dan is making. There aren't many, even amongst Windows
users, who would seriously argue that Win is a
"better" OS than Apple's OSX (myself included). But
until the advent of the iPod, Apple had made one
marketing misstep after another that eroded their user
base, causing fewer people to provide support and
software for the Mac, further eroding their user base,
causing fewer and fewer .... and so on and so on. 

Below some critical threshold, even the "better"
product gets used by fewer and fewer people just
because it started to be used by fewer and fewer
people, in a self-sustaining cycle that's hard to
break out of. If the greater computing infrastructure
evolves sufficiently around one product to the
detriment of others, that product becomes more and
more the "best" product for working within that
infrastructure, in an almost circular  and
self-fulfilling fashion.

There's are interesting parallels to this in the life
sciences. Biologists call them "frozen accidents". How
did the four bases in DNA come to be an almost
universal genetic code? How did the 20 amino acids
that they code for get chosen? For example, why is
gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a very common amino
acid in a vast range of living organisms, not coded
for? 

The internet was a sea change in the computing
"ecosystem" that opened the door for alternative
technologies when Microsoft were unable to see the
writing on the wall. Apple must probably pray for
another such shift and for the ability to be the first
to see it coming. They did it for "music on demand",
but can they do it for computers?

My $0.10

Best

Gordon


--- Dan Shafer <revdan at danshafer.com> wrote:
> Well, Lynn, while I wouldn't disagree with your
> perspective, I would  
> nonetheless argue that a world-class technology
> product with few  
> marketing resources and no legal clout will get
> buried by a  
> competitive product which, though inferior, has more
> marketing money  
> and/or legal backing 99 times out of 100.
> 
> While it's certainly true that you can spend gobs
> and gobs of money  
> and still end up with a total failure, it's less
> likely than having a  
> total failure from *lack* of marketing resources.
> And given a market  
> with two products characterized as I did above, the
> one with more  
> marketing will beat the superior product with
> mind-numbing regularity.
> 
> 
> On May 3, 2005, at 10:28 AM, Lynn Fredricks wrote:
> 
> >> Amen.
> >>
> >> It's never about the technology. I've seen so
> many great
> >> technologies buried by inferior products that had
> either more
> >> marketing money or better lawyers than I've seen
> succeed.
> >>
> >
> > Technology isnt usually what wins the day, but
> neither is it  
> > entirely money
> > or lawyers, but strategic use of both. Marketing
> (and sales) isnt a  
> > big
> > packaging machine that vendors throw money into,
> as its very  
> > possible to
> > spend gobs and gobs of money and still end up with
> a total failure.
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Lynn Fredricks
> > President
> > Proactive International, LLC
> >
> > - Because it is about who you know.(tm)
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> >
>
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Dan Shafer, Co-Chair
> RevConWest '05
> June 17-18, 2005, Monterey, California
> http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit/RevConWest
> 
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:::::::::: Gordon Webster ::::::::::