Microsoft acted like a spoiled monopolist who aggressively guarded their turf throughout the 80s and 90s. Absolutely. They wanted a PC on every desktop in every home running Microsoft software. All absolutely true.
But did they make this noise from a challenger position, which is the case for all the examples I cited? No. They acted like a big gorilla from the top.
Oracle too is crazy aggressive. In one of the books I mentioned, but not by name, is "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison is that God Doesn't Think He Is Larry Ellison." Fantastic book. Go read it.
It is absolutely possible to find exceptions. There are few absolutes. But I do believe that challengers to #1 who publicly make #1 the target rarely succeed. This is true. It's not "couldn't be further from the truth" because of a few examples.
Microsoft was a huge underdog in many areas, namely to Novell and Wordperfect. Later in the 90s they tried to break into enterprise software, and were largely laughed at, having little credibility in the space. Today, they make billions on Windows Server, SQL Server and Exchange.
I mean absolutely no disrespect to you here, but it's remarkably poor judgement to cite your bio and resume on this site in particular. While you were attending school, I was writing a variable interpolaters in COBOL (a language without strings) -- and I would usually never mention that here, because someone's going to show up that makes me look like the amateur that I am. Your experience is also very heavy in the marketing field, which makes it reasonable to conclude that you might not have had to deal directly with the effects of the business tactics that the giants used (and are still using). Quite a large number of people here, on the other hand, have a much more personal memory of the ruthlessness of the I.T. field. You are Stef Murky, speaking to a rather large crowd of Gregs and Pitrs.
That said: I read your post as though you were making a larger point that it's a strategic business error to focus on "taking down" a competitor, and that's probably usually true, and a good thing to remind people sometimes.
Unfortunately for the rest of the content of your post, it somewhat misses that Apple was referring to IBM in their 1984 commercial; that Apple was publicly mocking Microsoft in the early 90s before a lawsuit made them cooperate, at last, by bringing Office to the Mac; or, for more recent examples, that Google is working hard to depose Apple in the smartphone market or that Apple has its sights set on Amazon with their cloud offerings or ...
It's generally a good idea to focus on your product or service, not your competitor, but pointing to big, successful I.T. companies is not the way to make that point.
This is understood, assuming your personal email is posted to the Web and consumed by others. I am a compulsive email saver, but periodically wipe out categories that are no longer relevant as well.
I can't speak for nvictor, but I think the headline equates a lack of promotion with walking away from web apps altogether. Perhaps "Apple's web app directory spends one quarter unmaintained" would have been less sensational. But, then, that would place all of the content in the headline and all you'd need is a tweet.
All good points. The issue we're facing with DRM, upgradability etc is similar to that faced with moving from LPs to Cassettes to CDs to MP3s to...
Books decay. Digital files get corrupted. Companies rise and fall. I know I'll end up buying things more than once, just like I did with my Depeche Mode collection - at least three times.
That's one of the big points of contention, for me. If I am purchasing a digital copy of your content, then I am essentially purchasing nothing but a license to use that content and it should therefore be your job to ensure I can continue to access that content for the rest of my life (or longer, if we figure out the whole management of digital copies of things so I can give my library to my nephew when I die or something).
When you are changing the physical media, it's a little more understandable (even though you're still really just giving me a license to the content on it and nothing else). When it's already in digital format, it's no longer acceptable to play that sucker's game, as far as I'm concerned.
My problem with "digital decay" is that it's much more "binary" - it's working or it's completely unusable. When the reception gets fuzzy on digital TV, you simply can't watch the station where as an analog signal has varying levels of decay.
If you have a hard drive full of images and it fails, it's all gone (better have a backup!), but if you have a box full of photos and your house floods, some of them may still be around.
Analog fades, digital dies, unless it's constantly resuscitated. When you think about it how many times have you found an old photo that you probably wouldn't have kept if you had the choice? Or some old photos or music at your grandparent's house.
But the problem is that "information on the web" must be kept alive constantly. Everything to do with digital storage is far more transient than a hard copy of a book or a photo.
With a book or a photo, the storage of information, and it's mechanism for display are one and the same. With all digitally encoded media, one must have the appropriate decoder.
If I keep a journal on wordpress.com, it can't be left to grow old and musty, with no effort. It decays absolutely the instant it is not being maintained, where as if I keep a journal on a notepad, it can take up a tiny amount of physical space in the real world, and lie somewhere unmaintained for centuries without decaying to the point of unusability.
As the speed of information creation and transfer has increased, so too has the longevity of that information decreased. From stone tablets, to papyrus, to SMS messages stored on an SD card - the volume of the world's information is now increasing at an astounding rate but would archaeologists be able to discover it thousands of years from now?
A few years ago a similar statement could have been made about Myspace or friendster a few years before that. Would you be willing to make such a statement about either company today?
Would you have been willing to make such a statement about geocities 5 years ago?
No and no. Neither MySpace nor Friendster ever had anything near a half billion users. Facebook has gotten to the point where the government would step in if they wanted to destroy all of the photos.
Mostly, I think Facebook has achieved the status of a utility. It is entrenched, with a solid business model. It's drastically different than Myspace and Friendster in that way. They were just fads.
Also, GeoCities was at least partially saved. As we develop more computing infrastructure of all kinds, that kind of thing becomes more an more likely.
The argument could similarly be made for watching feature films on a TV set with surround sound versus a theater. Ebooks aren't as beautiful (yet) as their hardback cousins, but they are instant, portable, and greener to boot!
Also, you don't have to worry about your pages becoming dog-eared. Or getting finger-grease or smudges on them. Or spines being worn or bent. If you grew up a book nerd, just thinking about these things happening to a physical book can make you squirm. With an eBook, the most you need is a cloth to wipe your reader display!
Also, there's definitely something to be said not only for carrying your book around on a light device, but carrying up to thousands of them around on a single light device. (Though, on the other hand, how often are you going to need to go back and read most of your non-reference books after you've finished them?).
Oddly enough, my non-reference books have become reference books because of their ease of access. For example, I was once trying to explain how a simple shift in perspective can lead to radical changes in behavior. Pulled out Ender's Game and a blurb of "the gate is down" as a 'concrete' example.
As a book nerd, you often relate to books in response to certain situations. Instead of summarizing, we can now quickly access the eloquent prose of a gifted author that had time to express herself :)
Interestingly, I find old books charming, especially ones with signs of wear and age. Kind of like a sturdy old table with nicks and bruises or a skillet with scrapes and scratches.
I think eBooks are fine for "on-the-go," but hard copies certainly have a place on my bookshelf. In time, hard copies will become a niche product, one you use while sitting in your easy chair on a cold winter night. Everyone thought the radio will die with the advent of TV, but it just found a niche (nobody listens to the radio in their house, but they do in their car).
As a side note, the OP said that he prefers reference books as hard copy books. When I think of reference books though, I think searchable content, which means I want my references to be in eBook format.
The radio/TV comparison is a little off. Radio is a fundamentally different experience than TV: it doesn't require sight. So that allows it to occupy it's rather substantial niche.
Paper books still have some interface advantages over ebooks (as several people have described in this thread) but they'll go away as people build proper, well designed ebook readers.
When that happens, all books will have going for them is nostalgia and a pleasant physical experience that can't be replicated digitally. I think a much more apt comparison is records, which don't provide a fundamentally different sonic experience, but do have nostalgia and physicality.
So I think a handful of book lovers will still have collections, and visit the bookstore down the street, but like record players, and unlike radios, I think the vast majority of the population won't have any.
there's definitely something to be said not only for carrying your book around on a light device, but carrying up to thousands of them around on a single light device.
Definitly. There's something exhilerating about bringing all your books with you.
There are practical advantages aswell. I'm going on a 3 week holiday to australia soon. Previously I'd have to deciede what books I want to bring with me (since I couldn't take them all). Now I don't have to think about it. I just take my kindle and I know I have all my books.
