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On Friday 13 May 2011 18:57:47 Walter Dnes wrote: |
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> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:56:27PM +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote |
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> |
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> > On Wed, 11 May 2011 20:40:02 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote: |
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> > > > KDE devs decided to take the risk and make the jump ahead of the |
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> > > > curve. |
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> > > > |
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> > > Coca Cola went from Coke Classic to New Coke; at least they had the |
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> > > |
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> > > guts to admit that it was a bad idea, and reverse it. |
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> > > |
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> > > IBM walked away from their market leading AT. Rather than put a 386 |
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> > > |
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> > > cpu on the motherboard, they went with the PS/2 design, which bombed. |
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> > > |
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> > > Micropro *OWNED* word-processing with a DOS-port of their cpm-based |
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> > > |
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> > > Wordstar product. People were begging and pleading with them to patch |
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> > > it to recognize subdirectories. Instead, Micropro dropped Wordstar, |
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> > > and came up with a "user friendly" menu-driven abortion called |
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> > > Wordstar 2000. That was the end. |
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> > > |
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> > > Do you see a pattern here? |
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> > |
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> > The pattern I see is that of selecting only changes that failed and |
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> > implying they are the norm. |
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> > |
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> > Why not add other improvements that were so bad, like the switch from |
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> > floppy disks to hard disks, or CDs to DVDs? Companies try to predict |
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> > where the market should go so they can lead. No one gets it right all |
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> > the time, the ones that survive are those that get it right often enough. |
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> > The ones that are most likely to fail are those that never try to |
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> > innovate in case someone doesn't like it. |
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> |
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> Floppy disks were being sold long after hard disks were invented. |
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> Ditto for CDs after DVDs came out. If Coca Cola had brought out "New |
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> Coke" *IN ADDITION TO" "Coke Classic", it wouldn't have been a problem. |
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> "New Coke" would've died more quickly, and Coca Cola wouldn't have seen |
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> so much backlash. Corporations (IBM's biggest customers) were begging |
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> and pleading for ATs with a 386 CPU, not proprietary PS/2s. IBM ceased |
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> to manufacture ATs, and said PS/2s or nothing. IBM is no longer a force |
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> in the corporate desktop market. If Micropro had added directory |
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> support to Wordstar 3.3, it would've been around a lot longer, and |
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> Wordstar 2000 wouldn't have been the death blow it was. |
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> |
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> Hard drives and DVDs competed against their predecessors and won. |
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> They were obviously superior. But if your new and allegedly "improved" |
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> product can't stand on its own 2 feet and compete against older |
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> generation products, and you have to shut down or drop support for the |
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> older products for the new one to survive, then it's obvious that the |
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> "new and improved" product is a piece of crap. |
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|
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You are confusing matters. |
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|
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The launch of "new & improved" product is often a matter of designed |
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obsolescence of the old product for the purpose of generating additional |
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sales. In a (pseudo)competitive capitalistic model this is what most consumer |
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goods have been doing, canibalising their own previous generation of products. |
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|
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In a FOSS model this argument does not stand or make much sense. I think that |
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the KDE devs made a strategic design decision and took KDE4 in a different |
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direction than KDE3. Some of us we happier with the KDE3 ... a selection of |
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apps, rather that a heavy duty integrated DE with semantic searches and what |
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not. |
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|
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What is common between your examples and KDE is (perhaps?) the lack of |
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adequate market research and testing. |
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|
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What-ever, life moves on of course and the wrinkles on KDE4 are being ironed |
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out. |
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-- |
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Regards, |
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Mick |