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