<big snip>
if 'better' ruled, we'd have all had betamax videos,
Robert Derman replies: I was involved in home entertainment electronics
at the time of the Betamax Wars. Betamax may have had better image
quality, but it had two fatal flaws in other areas. First, it was
actually a commercial/professional format that Sony tried to market as a
consumer format, which it wasn't. VHS stands for Video Home System, and
it was designed from the ground up as a consumer format. In the
recording speed that produced the higher image quality the smaller Beta
cassette only held enough tape for one hour, this at the time when 2
hour TV movies were just becoming popular. If you wanted to record a
complete 2 hour program while you were away, you were out of luck. VHS
from the beginning held 2 hours worth of tape. This led most people to
choose VHS for the obvious reason that it was more practical! Being
able to record the whole program trumps image quality every time. Sure,
Sony soon came out with slower speeds that let you record enough on the
cassette, but by then VHS had already gained so much market share that
Betamax could never recover. Also when you recorded 2 or more hours on
a Beta tape it no longer delivered a significant image quality advantage
over VHS in 2 hour SP mode. The other fatal flaw was that the Betamax
transport mechanism was much more complicated than VHS and was therefore
more expensive to manufacture. Being more expensive is an automatic
death sentence for any consumer format.
So for a product to succeed it must not just be technically better, it
must be better in ways that actually matter to the average consumer of
that type of product. On the average TV in use at the time of the Beta
Wars, the extra quality of Beta was not all that appearant.
That is why I think that OOo will win with average consumers. If
average consumers simply become aware of the existance of OOo, they
will, in most cases choose it over M$ Office. OOo's price trumps M$
Office's features almost every time. And in my own experience M$ Office
doesn't even have any features that would lead me to choose it over OOo,
even if it cost the same!
You're absolutely right. But you see, this isn't merely a technical
merit. We know that "better" doesn't always rule. We have strategy
here. Getting support from OASIS and ISO is also strategy.
the attitude conveyed in your writing shows a complete and utter lack
of empathy for your audience.
This is typical.
Cheers,
Daniel.
