On 9/24/07, jon louis mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > this is where you lost me...
Imagine somebody has invented the most wonderful operating system in the world... but there are no applications that run on it. How much would you pay? It runs great, but all you can do with it is play Solitaire and create ASCII files. Nobody will pay much for it. Imagine the same OS ten years later with hundreds of popular applications available. Now how much would you pay? Lots more. That's increasing returns for the OS vendor. Each additional copy they sell makes it more valuable because it attracts more application developers, who make it increasingly useful. But new OSes are in the position above, to one extent or another, so they are less valuable, even if they are better technically. This is why there's so much emphasis today on document and data formats... the OS becomes less critical when the data is cross-platform. There's market pressure for compatibility, which somewhat alleviates the network effects. Virtualization helps, too, since it lets "old" OS applications run under new ones. Nick -- Nick Arnett [EMAIL PROTECTED] Messages: 408-904-7198 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
