On Dec 28, 2011, at 11:33 AM, objectwerks inc wrote: > Why the drive companies even make these bottom of the barrel drives with > their names on them is a mystery to me. It just tarnishes the brand.
Testing new technologies. The biggest drives are all green drives, except maybe the Seagate Barracuda. If you go looking for enterprise SAS drives with 5 year warranties, they top out at 2TB and the fastest are still below 2TB. Even Western Digital makes "greener" lower power enterprise drives, but I bet they are testing some of the components in consumer disks. It would make a lot of sense to do so. I think all of them put on brandless disks that represent 1st generation of thus far only lab tested disks. > > All the drive companies suck in terms of trying to pump out as many drives as > cheaply (and also as inexpensively) as possible and not giving a flying hoot > about the actual customer. Too many MBAs running companies who don't have a > clue on "delighting the customer." It's a commodity product. There's not a lot in delighting the customer potential. Look back on 2002 when XServe was announced. It delighted many a Mac fan, because even if they weren't the target market to buy the product, they were the target market for the marketing of it. And even the Mac nay sayers were the target. It totally changed the perception of Mac OS that Apple themselves took it seriously enough to make a rack mount server. Eight years later, that task done, Apple cedes that market, it's just not a customer delight potential market. > > "The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes" ---- > http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/ > > While Apple has its share of miscues and screwups (all big organizations do), > they try and "delight the customer" more than they try and do the > bean-counter thing which is why they have $70-80 Billion in the bank and rank > the top of the customer satisfaction surveys. These other companies could > try and learn from that. In the long run, they would do better. Oh come on. Microsoft had been the giant billions in the bank company for a decade before Apple. Did they delight the customer, or were they bean counters? What about Exxon, previously the biggest company in the world by market capitalization? Delighting the customer with different gasoline grades and additives? Apple has a unique business model, but it is directly tied to innovating things that delight customers. If that innovation slacks off, the profits will slack off. What works well for Apple, I do not think would work well for Dell or vice versa. Different business models. Different markets. I think you underestimate the complexity of the market and what consumers want. Look at Android's success in aggregate dollars despite not being first, despite fragmentation between manufacturers, and even despite the fragmentation on specific models where the manufacture will not update the OS post-sale. Those manufacturers still don't get it. They try to be so f'n cheap with their narrow lack of vision. They treat their own products as mere commodities, with a lifetime OS, basically guaranteeing consumers will have no manufacturer loyalty at all. But are they being punished for it? Not yet. Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
