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The Complete History of Format Wars

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the one-way-to-put-it dept.

TheFrozenSink writes "The UK bit of Cnet have put up an article on old formats that should have won their respective format wars. The piece makes some pretty spectacular claims, like if Apple had bought BeOS then there would have been no iPod and of course, no iPhone. The article also claims that the Atari ST was better than the Amiga and that MiniDisc should have won over CD."

7 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. No need to RTFA by Zedrick · · Score: 3, Funny
    "The article also claims that the Atari ST was better than the Amiga"

    Thanks for the heads up.

    Obvously the article is written by a drooling moron. No need to waste time on this.

  2. 8-Track? You are SO high by Nova+Express · · Score: 3, Funny
    I can't believe that the person who compiled this list actually thought 8-track tape (of all things) was a superior format. I can only assume that they're someone who never actually listened to an 8-track tape player, which were notorious for having an audible rumble from the playing mechanism. To recreate the experience of listening to an 8-track tape, take a jambox and set it on top of your washing machine while running a large load. That's the pure sonic fidelity of 8-track.

    Now get the hell off my lawn...

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    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

  3. Re:Great, more holy wars. by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    Real men use tiny magnets on their hard drive.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Re:Waste of bandwidth by Nimsoft · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you think the images and advertisements are a waste of bandwidth wait until you read the text!

  5. Absolutely right by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think every example in this article is absolutely accurate. But then again, I'm posting this from a parallel universe on my Commodore 1024 running OS/2 XP in the Confederate States of America.

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    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  6. (Yawn) Sour grapes, overenthusiasm... by dpbsmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    Every single one of these format wars is between two formats that were, in fact, reasonable comparable. This is all war stories and middle-aged nostalgia. As Pete Seeger put it (in his added stanza to "Both Sides, Now") "Something's lost and something's gained in living every day."

    Each of the defeated formats had some nice stuff about it, but it's not as if there was anything so terrible about their passing, other than angst for those who bought into the orphaned formats. Some of his comments are just weird. For example, he praises 8-track tapes basically because of its being marginally easier to find individual songs on them... which is true only if you're comparing it to cassettes, not to CDs.

    Yeahyeahyeah and what's more a B24 Liberator was soooo much better than a B17 Flying Fortress, the U. S. should have adopted PAL instead of NTSC, and a Pickett and Eckel slide rule was way better than a Keuffel and Esser.

    I mean, it's not like Cinerama. Cinerama was great, so much better than CInemaScope or IMAX or any of the other wide-screen processes, and it just blew away anything you think you've seen on HDTV. Cinerama really mattered. The world would actually have been a better place if CInerama had won the format wars. In all likelihood, if only Cinerama had survived, movies would be better, the Beatles would never have broken up, and the Arabs and Israelis would have put aside their differences, united by the joy of watching widescreen movies.

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  7. Re:Argh... by mgabrys_sf · · Score: 2, Funny

    I Agree - there's not even the usual "print this article" cheat to read it on one page. Hell even the NYT provides options to go from multipage to single page. CNet is desperate for page views. Well hell - make me editor. I'll make-em flip after every...

    (click next page to continue>>)

    sentance...

    (click next page to continue>>)

    or...

    (click next page to continue>>)

    every...

    (click next page to continue>>)

    word...

    That's REAL revenue baby! Eyeballs - look at all those eyeballs! HA - take that Google!