>If GE came out with a new refrigerator model, would we think it was >acceptable for it to have MAJOR fatal flaws, even if they sent a >repairman out to fix them at no expense to us? Hell no, we wouldn't, and >the same goes for cell phones, fax machines, and other electronic devices.
This is a similar analogy that has been made about MS in the past. Would people accept a car that worked as poorly as Windows. I'm not saying it is a bad analogy, because you are 100% correct... computers will never penetrate fully into households until they DO work as well as phones and toasters and refrigerators. However, there is a reason computers (and more acuratly, software, because for the most part, computers themselves are just as reliable as other appliances), don't work as well. Cost. Software costs a LOT to write. And bugs are a matter of course (why, because humans write the code). Debuging a specialized item like a phone is a peice of cake... because if all the features work, they will ALWAYS work. There aren't 6,000 different variable conditions that phone might be put thru. If you want to make sure that software has ZERO bugs in it, and that it works with every possible combination of other software, and situations, that costs money... LOTS and LOTS of money. Yet software developers can't charge what is needed to recoup those costs... so they have to meet in the middle. They do less debugging, so that they get it to the point that it is "good enough", and then they market it at a price that maximizes what people are willing to spend on it. Hell... look at some of the software projects out there that have not had to deal with making a profit... and you will STILL see bugs. NASA has screwed up how much stuff now? All because of little bugs... and these are people that have millions of dollars to spend just getting one peice of code to work right. There are figures out there as far as what NASA has spent for truely bug free software for manned space missions... it ranks into the BILLIONS of dollars for small, very specific, very isolated software code. So given that bug free software potentially costs billions of dollars... how would someone like me be expected to write and release 100% bug free code. Applications that work just as well as your telephone. I can't be expected to do that. Nor can other software authors. So now you have allowed for bugs in applications.... which means the OS companies (Apple, MS, whoever), are now expected to be able to write 100% bug free operating systems... figure on 100's of billions of dollars (because the OS is really just tons of smaller specialized billion dollar bug free applications). Are they expected to pay that? And then still sell OS X to you for $130? But don't forget... you allow for authors like me to release buggy applications... so now not only does Apple or whoever have to spend the 100's of billions of dollars making their OS bug free... but they need to spend even MORE so that they can test against every other possible application that might be run on it that IS allowed to have bugs. And make sure that they compensate for the bugs and problems introduced by those applications. Pretty quickly it becomes evident that you can't have bug free software. Period. Not in a realistic, commercial market. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net> ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
