True. Many Windows consumers wouldn't give a flying flip as long as it
works. And, I can see reason.
Now that PC sales are down, what's next? Service? Hardware? Browser? In
home digital PC didn't blast off
as big as people thought.
>From the marketing end, companies are already running focus groups. Does
the public want a finished, polished product, or buy the source and make
it yourself? People that have more time will buy the source and work on
their own version or flavor -- customize. Others, that aren't into
programming will buy the finished product. Ultimately, the ball is in
the customer's court.
Mark Johnson wrote:
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Benjamin Sher [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> >Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 6:01 AM
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >Subject: Re: [newbie] gates gets Linux
> >
> >Bottom line: Until Linux, which is rich in thousands of applications,
> >has an equally vast and varied collection of CONSUMER applications of
> >every sort, it won't quite be ready for prime time. And this won't
> >happen till Linux is much more popular. The old chicken and egg problem:
> >no consumer applications until there is a consumer market for Linux big
> >enough to justify it, and no consumer market until there are
> >applications.
> >
> And this won't happen until it's easy enough for my mom, wife, and brother
> to use and until the elite hacker attitude subsides. Linux is still a
> paradise for coders not users... However, most linux users don't care about
> running Quicken and such, for linux to win they must pull users off of
> Windows and onto linux (these are the only converts, you won't get a lot of
> MAC users to give up their OS). The intrinsic road block of linux is the
> "cult" personality, like MAC and BSD, us folks are generally emotionally
> tied to the OS. Most windows users couldn't give a flying flip that they
> are using Windows they just want integrated office products and the facility
> offered by those products (and to be able to run their games). They don't
> want to be system administrators, just like I don't want to be a car
> mechanic. I want my car to work when I drive it off the lot. I will never
> upgrade the stereo or engine or interior, i'm just not interested in doing
> that. But this isn't a morally depraved behavior, it's just the way it is.
>
> >Meanwhile, Linux as an OS, with its great and beautiful and configurable
> >new graphical KDE and Gnome desktops
> >
> The thing is most ordinary users don't care what the OS is they care about
> the interface and how easy it is to get their job done and how easy it is to
> integrate their favorite apps. I don't think most folks even mess with
> their Windows settings. (Just showing my wife the "Send To" mechanism in
> Explorer is like pulling teeth!) Having said that, may the gods be praised
> for the efforts of the KDE and Gnome folks but there is still much road to
> build.
>
> The thing that should strike fear into the marrow of our bones is that if MS
> decided to build a flavor of Linux I think it would be a reasonable
> assumption that people like my mom and brother would ditch the Windows
> environment and adopt the linux platform because they don't care out the OS,
> they care about the usabilty of the products and the availablity of the
> products. We laugh about the MS Linux website parody, but really, if MS
> ever decided to distribute a flavor of linux I believe they would give
> Mandrake, SuSE, RedHat, and etc. a very hard run for their money. People
> would actually be willing to give their hard earned money for this new very
> stable linux distrbution version of "Windows", very few of us have probably
> given a dime to Mandrake for all their hard work. If MFC, VB, and COM was
> made available for linux you can be sure that applications would start to
> appear like crazy.
>
> MS has enough resources and money to pull this off - it might not ever
> happen - but if it did it would be a very bad thing. All sorts of
> bastardizations of perl, python, syslog, cron, you name it MS will tweak it
> to lock my family into their version of linux.
>
> >I would guess that the most important of all browsers is Mozilla because,
> >when it is completed this
> >spring, it will spawn dozens of branded versions, which, while building
> >on Mozilla, will add special features of their own. In other words,
> >Internet Explorer will find itself faced not with one derivated, namely,
> >Netscape 6 but with dozens of equally powerful (and superior) browsers
> >all built on the open-source Mozilla. This will be good for the
> >consumers acorss all platforms and a last laugh at Microsoft with a
> >vengeance. There is already one major spinoff of Mozilla called Beonex.
> >It's still not quite ready, either. But by the end of the coming year,
> >IE will find itself outgunned on every front by the Mozilla browsers
> >(under a variety of brands) which they themselves caused by forcing
> >Netscape to go open-source. It will be sweet revenge on Microsoft.
> >
> I hope so, but my pessimism tells me that like the borg MS will adapt,
> out-feature, and overcome...
