Despite the incredible pressure that people feel to be the first on the market with the latest release, I think history shows that it is almost NEVER the first product to market that has long-term success, at least in high-tech. The IBM PC was not the first to market by a number of years. Microsoft hasn't ever gotten there first with anything that comes to mind. VisiCalc. WordStar. Doc-to-Help was, I think, on the market before Robohelp, yet they got outmarketed ultimately. VHS vs. Beta: Beta was, and is, a better overall format but VHS outmarketed Beta and >poof< no more Beta. And so on. It could be argued that what tends to work is the products that watched what the first product did and then didn't make the same mistakes or at least capitalized on marketing. There are exceptions to this--Visio comes to mind--where something is so truly innovative as to be unique, but these are rare and stellar examples. For the most part, the first product to cross the finish line is guaranteed to ~not~ survive the test of time.
Even on a short-term basis, pushing a product out the door to meet an arbitrary schedule gets you what you deserve. Who here is fool enough to install the .0 version of anything from, say, Microsoft or Adobe? And who, having done that, got away with it with their computing skin intact? Robert Cringely was nice enough to quote me in his column a couple months ago: "At Microsoft, quality is job SP1," but this is an aphorism you could apply to a lot of companies, not just the folks in Redmond. They all feel the same pressures and make the same mistakes. If I knew that a company was actively taking a few extra months to plan things and deliver me a bug-free product, I'd be very impressed and would consider that heavily when shopping for something. Yours truly, John Hedtke Author/Consultant/Contract Writer www.hedtke.com <-- website 541-685-5000 (office landline) 541-554-2189 (cell) john at hedtke.com (primary email) johnhedtke at aol.com (secondary email)
