| William H. Magill on 26 Feb 2005 01:24:49 -0000 |
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On 25 Feb, 2005, at 08:51, Art Alexion wrote: I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but these sorts of marketing decisions that override engineering considerations fascinate me.
Ford may have been first, but GM became the automotive powerhouse solely because marketing decided that people wanted something other than "black." Chrysler "always" had the best engineered cars, but nobody managed to sell them. Detroit forgot what marketing was all about and ceded their dominance to Japan and Germany. Univac's was always considered superior to IBM -- except that Univac was run by engineers who had no clue about how to sell what they had. IBM did. Back in those days of heady engineering accomplishments, there was IBM and the BUNCH -- Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, Honeywell ... guess which company is still around today. Digital died primarily because it could not market its way out of a paper bag. They passed that disease along to Compaq who passed it along to HP. Neither Michael Dell nor Bill gates are "Engineering Giants" -- but both are marketing geniuses. The only reason that Linux became a household word was because a certain evangelist [who, I think is still on this list :)] got Linus on the Cover of Forbes, Fortune and Time (I think those were the covers). And as they say, the rest is history. [Many of us in DECUS had long before recognized what Linux was all about, but the marketing folks in DEC could only say "VMS." Finally, after much finagling, Maddog managed to get him an Alpha to develop on. And early versions of Linux were ported from Alpha to x86 as a result.] Jobs is an interesting situation. He himself is a brilliant marketer who happens to also understand how to hire brilliant Engineers. Despite his anal retentiveness, he seems to be giving both Gates and Dell a run for their money. ... Is he hatching another "oh by the way" deal with Sony based on the new Cell processor? We'll see if the next Mac comes with a Blue-Ray or HD-DVD drive option, or is plug compatible with the PS3. T.T.F.N. William H. Magill magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com whmagill@gmail.com ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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