Jones Beene wrote:
Don't you find it amusing that any in any new-but-old
technology, the proponents try to diferentiate
themselves on the slimest of variations.
The free market mantra seems to be, "If you cannot wow
them with novelty, then confuse them with sublety".
That happens a lot! Occasionally, however, you see the opposite
marketing strategy, especially when the target buyers are ordinary
members of the public rather than engineers. Companies try to
disguise innovation and make it look like a minor incremental
improvement. Many of the first word processors were disguised to look
like typewriters, as I mentioned in chapter 7 of my book. "With
ingenuity and extra effort, the limitations of the old were imposed
on the new."
To take a more recent example, Toyota took extra effort to make the
Prius look like a gasoline powered car rather than an electric car.
Their message was "you never need to plug it in!" They still oppose
the plug-in hybrid design because they fear it will "confuse"
customers. They seem to have a low opinion of their customer's
intelligence. They have badly misjudged their customers, who include
many engineers and geeks who would love to plug in the car.
- Jed
