Let's face it: as a business environment, the computer business is absolutely
brutal. You can be at the top of your game one year and bankrupt the next.
For example, there was a time not-so long ago when Wang Corporation
owned the monopoly market on a type of machine that
every law-office in the world had to have: a dedicated word-processing machine. IBM's DisplayWriter was a distant competitor to this device which, by all
conventional business-school reasoning, ought to have been a continuous ticket to "the good life" for ... well,
forever. Wang, certainly, did not see the sea-change coming: "they had an 85% market share!"
But the technology changed .. a laughable little machine called the Apple-][ and a only-slightly-less laughable machine called the IBM-PC ushered Wang into bankruptcy and oblivion.
The company which had a very large part in
doing that was Microsoft. (And, like it or not, we should ruefully stop to admit that they
were "a damn-good company" and that they still are...)
How ironic, then, that
this same company is now staring its
own technological obsolescence squarely in the face. A curious little upstart called Linux, started by a college student in his dorm-room in a country that is
much too cold in the wintertime, has utterly displaced Microsoft.
How so? Because the
hardware has changed.
Think about it:
what makes Apple's "iPhone" something that is sure to sell-out just as surely and completely as did 'Beanie Babies?'
{WAAAHHH! IWANTONEIWANTONEIWANTONENOW!}
(ahem...) "It's the
hardware."
Quote:
|
It is 'an OS/X box' that fits in the palm of your hand.
|
By saying "it is an OS/X box," I'm saying that .. although the iPhone is "on the one hand, completely
different" .. it is "on the other hand, completely
the same." 
"Utterly-different hardware = utterly-the-same user experience."
Wow.
It's so "obvious," yet,
can Windows do that? Nope.
Will Windows ever be able to do that? Nope.
So, on the one hand, we have Unix and Linux, who not only
can "do that," but they "already do." On the other hand, we have Windows, which cannot do that and probably (sorry, fellas) never will. Which one wins? Duh.
The
business requirement is that "hardware cannot be an insurmountable obstacle." As the hardware changes, the software must be able to change .. instantly. Windows, unfortunately, is locked away in yesteryear. Linux|Unix, fortunately, is not.
Game over.
(Curiously, history will shake its head at the fact that there actually did come a point where Microsoft probably
believed its own marketing... actually
believed that it had "a monopoly." And
that, in hindsight, is
precisely the point when Microsoft began to die.
Maybe the lawyers convinced them of it; maybe it was the Federal judge. But the market did not wait for them. The market never will.)
... priceless.
