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ummm can you say VHS format? Blue Ray, Super Duper HD, or a host of others.
There are *many* examples of the second (or third!) best product in a space having major marketshare. A variety of reasons, most can be pointed out that a combination of superior marketing and negociating on one side matched with a series of poorly thought out or outright blunders on the other. Apple has a great product, they missed the boat on using their OS on Intel platform wanting everyone to use their solution end to end, this allowed others (Microsoft) enough wiggle room (hello Intel! We would like to use your 286 Chip for our OS...) and Apple has been working to overcome that ever since. Of course MS has pretty much allowed *any* hardware maker to belly up to the bar and plug their product (however good, bad, or difficult to support) into the Windows products, and sometimes this has taken mass quantities of resources to support. But that did allow alot of innovation in the market (yes yes, MS is the evil queen and buys up what then want, and sometimes to stifely competition. Surprise! That happens all over the place!) And now, after Apple has put the product out on the Intel platform, and running MS office to get the general office applications, and NOW having their OS based in Linux... what a strange turn? They are still the best in many areas, however the license and seats are MS. So Apple did the *smart* thing, and went to a different playing field, they came out with a killer phone... but locked it up with AT&T as the provider. Fortunately the interface on their phone is so good, and the interface on the competing products is soo bad (it's not a MS problem, it's that RIMM (or blackberry...) has such a commanding lead in Email (*the* killer application) and everyone else is trying to emulate that interface, and really between the software *and* the hardware... can't do as good a job... So, IMHO, if Apple keeps releasing newer Iphones that can work with the other carriers... that will be where they shine brightest. ummmm a Million phones at $200 a pop, are you Kidding me? Wow
But on the other hand... Macinheads are like the Jehovah's witness guys knocking on your door at 7am on a Sunday. Why do they feel the need to try and convert anyone??? ha ha ha! If my job was graphics based I would already be there. However most of my computer usage, like about 90% of the users is split between two areas, Email and Office applications (Word processing, Spread sheet, some presentation software) and MS already has a suite of products that does all of that, is tightly coupled (remember Apple saw fit to figure out how to run MS Office on Apple), and also has FrontPage too if you want to do Website work. (is Frontpage the best? Oh, most likely not, but it's do easy and convienent to use, and again is tightly coupled with MS office...) AND it's the defacto standard... even Apple has seen that it's better to be able to run that software too. Please remember that for well over half of the users this is how it goes, 1) keep the box 2) put the CD in the drive 3) type in your name, 4) type in the serial number, yes it's on the box, you *did* keep the box, right? 5) STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD UNTIL YOU ARE CALLED. 6) Ok, your turn, click on "yes" to reboot the keyboard. and they are up with whatever the just installed and off to the races... Does Apple do it like this too? Sure. Does it matter? No. People are risk averse, period. Being in the middle of a pack, no matter how smart of dumb the pack is, is where people like to be. Apple is doing the correct thing from a business standpoint, keep fighting the fight against MS, but finding a new pack/flock to shepard is the correct thing to do.
Before you want to through rocks at me... Like many on the board I've been around for a bit in the computing world. These are all tools to me, if the tools you use do the job for you then you are done. The zealots of CPM, MSDOS, BERKELY UNIX, BSD, RSTS, VMS, WINDOWS, DB2, MPE, UNIX, HP UNIX, IBM UNIX, APPLE 10X, and on and on... amuse me. I was watching a promo on late night TV about this really *cool* tool (multi master by Fein I think?) and it *really* did some cool things... it compared it's capabilities to "other tools that did circular or reciprocating" motions and how it was better. I think they meant Roto-Zip and Sawzall products. Looking at the things it could do I believed that they were correct, it did a better job... However, stepping back (just before I called the order line... Ha!) I said to myself, do I "want" this or do I "need" this? Meaning, of all the cool stuff it did, and the comparisions of how it did a better job than the other technologies.... how many times had "I" had the issues portrayed with using the inferior technologies? In the last 6 months? Last 12 months? Last 5 years? And what did I do as a work around? Since I'm not a carpenter that is "creating" or "upgrading" onsite, day in and day out... umm about 3 or 4 times... and I spent much less than the cost of said tool... so I hung up the phone... and continued to watch the infomercial.... It *is* a cool tool.... and I am a tool and documentation junkie.... but I just watched the program to it's end and then fell asleep...
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