+++Help me out. Isn't Macintosh and Apple synonymous?+++
No. The Apple II in all its various incarnations provided the bulk of the company's revenues until well into the late 80s.
One of the reasons I wrote ISOS is to provide the historical perspective questions like this demonstrate the industry lacks. From Chapter 13 of In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech:
The first and most valuable thing most companies can do to avoidacting stupidly is to encourage all employees to learn about the history of the industry in which they compete. The great thing about history (hindsight) is it is full of facts from which you can learn things, such as how to avoid positioning disasters and what to do if a PR roof falls in on you, while many strategic business books are often full of suppositions and untested conjectures. Now please, don't waste everyone's time with an attempt to wiggle out of your required reading by telling us about the "subjectivity" of history; we're all aware that people can differ about the significance of different events. If different writers and historians have different opinions about the facts, read them all, and make up your own mind from an informed viewpoint.
In the spirit of the advice just given, the following sections include my particular lists of "must" and "recommended" reading. Most of these books focus on high tech, but I've thrown in a couple of tomes from other industries to stretch your brain and provide you with some cross-cultural diversity. Feel free to criticize this lineup and add and subtract to it as you see fit. These lists are not that long, and when you are done reading these or similar books, you will have a well-rounded understanding of the forces that shape the high-tech industry, a truly invaluable asset. Both lists are in alphabetical order.
rick chapman (the author) www.insearchofstupidity.com
Re:If the review is accurate, the book is revision
on
In Search of Stupidity
·
· Score: 1
+++How did IBM lose? They stuck to schedule and attempted to uphold their standards of software functionality before releasing it onto the public.+++
This, of course, is a complete fantasy. IBM had their own release date problems and Big Blue TAUGHT the industry about how to use FUD as a marketing tool.
rick chapman (The author) www.insearchofstupidity.com
+++Microsoft did have a big advantage when the first IBM PCs were shipped: MS-DOS, under the name of PC-DOS, was shipped by default. You could get (IIRC) CP/M-86 or the UCSD p-system, but most people had no reason to do so. I would think that Microsoft did have a big advantage with the first contract, contrary to what the reviewer says.+++
They did have a big advantage, but it was due to the bad decision making if G. Kildall (who, BTW, made the pricing decision on CPM/86, not IBM. In the book).
+++or is the account of how Microsoft won the desktop at all correct. By the time there was a Windows 95, Microsoft had already won. Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups were standard+++
The book has it right. OS/2 was crushed by Windows 3.0. The final implosion came in the wake of the Windows 95 release.
+++The view of Apple seems odd, to say the least. I don't think the Macintosh ever had near 30% of the marketshare. If we're talking about the Apple II, that went the way of the other major systems when the IBM PC came out, and there was nothing Apple could do about it.+++
The book never says Macintosh had 30%; Apple had 30%. And there WAS something Apple could have done about it; read about the sorry history of the Apple III.
rick chapman (the author) www.insearchofstupidity.com
That is a good point. The book doesn't claim these catastrophes destroyed these companies, though in some cases it did. MicroPro (WordStar), Ashton-Tate (dBase) are examples of companies destroyed by key marketing mistakes. Borland and Novell were knocked off their dominant perches. MS is slowly becoming IBM and suffering from senescence; over time, the impact of this will be seen.
But EVERY mistake discussed was painful, hurt, and was COMPLETELY avoidable.
rick chapman (the author) www.insearchofstupidity.com
Uh, no. The book is not about that. The book looks at important MS disasters in chapter 10 and 12.
OTOH, when you talk about the collapse of OS/2, the only company to blame is IBM. A multibillion dollar company was beaten at its own game by startup. When IBM was completely screwing up the OS/2 effort it could have squashed MS like a bug.
***2. I never saw them but Dvorak wrote that there were airport billboards saying that "OS/2 will obliterate your hard drive!" Duh?***
I saw them and they said no such thing. However, the ads DID say OS/2 would "warp" your computer. This was a problem due to the Warp naming fiasco described in "Stupidity."
***I suppose it could also be considered a marketing mistake to have an advanced OS that needed 8 meg to run when your competition needed a base 4 meg.***
By the time Windows 3.0 was released the memory spike was history. The cost of memory had little to do with the failure of OS/2 1.2 and 1.3.
Reagan decided to go medieval on Japanese RAM manufacturers and show them what protective tarrifs really looked like around the time OS/2 was developing nicely. RAM was expensive back then.
Uh, Reagan had nothing to do with the memory increase. Memory prices are constantly fluctuating and there have been constant run ups and downs in the industry.
My site was subjected to a online cyber attack which led to the credit card gateway shutting down my company's account. Of course, I or a designated backup are SUPPOSED to be notified when this happens, but guess what didn't happen. And since I was on vacation last week and had made a solemn vow to not read my E-mail I didn't see this happening.
My sincere apologies and please try to place your order now; it should go through.
***ProductMarketing.com is sponsored by Pragmatic Marketing. And who is Pragmatic Marketing? Well, it's a company that provides training seminars -- and they list Aegis Resources***
I have not nor have I ever had any business relationship with Pragmatic Marketing. As for links on their home page, it's not surprising that a site that deals with product marketing would list other sites that do the same. I am not an "alumni."
Dan Shefer first contacted me after reading "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters" and does contact me from time to time ask my opinion on various facets of software marketing. Not surprising, actually. When he quotes me or uses information I provide, he of course gives me proper attribution. I've never met Dan in person, BTW.
***Now, I can't be sure,***
No, you can't be, since you have no idea of what you're talking about.
*** but it sounds like Slashdot published a carefully placed success story. I work in marketing,***
Not very well if this is an example of your behavior. Before making silly accusations, you might check your facts just a bit.
***While some software packages can be successfully sold using online channels exclusively, these are the exceptions***
This statement is factually correct. Most software is sold via a mix of direct and indirect (distribution system) sales. Not a disputable point.
****That pretty much assures me the author does not know what he's talking about.***
If you are foolish enough to ignore the power of distribution channels as a software company grows and matures you are going to face tough economic times.
While the focus seems to be on direct sales, I would be interested in seeing Chapman's comments on dealing with retailers.
The Handbook deals with both retail class and "direct sale" software. The section of distribution talks extensively on how to deal with resellers and distributors.
+++Marketing had nothing to do with OS/2's success or failure. If you actually study the OS/2 debacle, you learn the following: +++
Marketing had almost *everything* to with the failure of OS/2. IBM botched the rollout and launch of OS/2 on practically every front possible, as documented in my book "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters."
+++Not being able to run Office 97, +++
OS/2 was completely moribund by the time Office 97 was released.
+++and some underhanded tactics on MS's part forcing sole distributorships while simultaneously forcing upgrade cycles.+++
MS was a tough competitor, but so was every other company it competed with. It was no different from any of them, but somewhat smarter. And "sole distributorships" had little to do with the failure of OS/2.
rick
I wouldn't waste time feeling sorry for IBM vis a vis OS/2. They bear almost complete responsibility for the failure of OS/2. MS was simply smart enough to take advantage of their stupidity in marketing the product.
rick
+++I love it when authors look back with glorified hindsight on the failures of others and zero in on their mistakes. It's as if to say "if *I* had been there, I woudn't have do it that way"+++
Actually, in 1990 I wrote a limited circulation book for what was then the SPA in which I stated that the problem with developing for the Mac platform was that the Mac market could not grow any faster than Apple.
So I was there and was on record as giving good advice! (At least in that instance.)
+++So what do you suggest now, Merrill? Let see Chapman's papers on how the Open Source movement can navigate its way through today's marketplace. +++
Companies navigate through markets, not "movements." And if the Open Source "movement" wants to navigate through markets, it had better remember that markets are commercial, not ideological, entities.
If you want to use OS tools to build stuff, OK, but avoid use of GPL stuff in your commercial products. You will have a hard time charging for something you have to give away.
I also recommend changing the GPL so that large companies like IBM have to pay for the use of Open Source products. As far as I can see, Linux represents a massive transfer of wealth away from programmers TO large corporations. You many hate Bill Gates, but he's made a lot of programmers rich. Microsoft has created more than 12K millionaires in its history. How many millionaires has Linux created?
It's nice of programmers to do this, I guess, but I don't see the financial incentive for coders to help IBM and HP make lots of money while beggaring themselves.
+++Microsoft's past is littered with failures: Microsoft Bob,+++
Everyone's past is littered with failures! Ashton-Tate had Friday, Lotus had Manuscript, Borland had Object Vision and the botched 1.0 version of Paradox, etc.
Bob was a shell. How critical is a shell to a major software company?
+++None of these mistakes were fatal simply because Microsoft could always fall back on the revenues of their OS monopoly,+++
As someone who competed against Microsoft in the 80s I certainly knew they had that cushion. But so what? Microsoft was competing against IBM for control of the OS environment, no one else, and IBM had plenty of money and the means to handle MS. It was IBM's complete and total ineptitude that allowed MS to seize final control of the desktop with a 16-bit OS shell, not Microsoft's perfidy and not their monopoly. It took monumental stupidity on the part of another company for MS to succeed.
+++and later Office monopoly.+++
MS built that monopoly fair and square. Their products were better than the competitions' (at least the reviewers of the time thought so) and they were the first to build a bundle and then begin the process of integrating the various products that made up the bundle.
No one made Lotus, for instance, wait so long to build a Windows version of 123 and deliver such a third rate product when they did get one to market.
Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
There is, at this juncture, no evidence to support the supposition that SCO's case is stupid. The outcome of the case will be decided on two key factual points. A) is there S5 code in Linux 2.4 and up, and B) does SCO have IP rights to that code?
If the answer is yes, they win the case and get a big chunk of money from some big corporations.
And courts will have no interest in Open Source ideology or beliefs when they exmaine the case.
Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
Errrr, since history, by necessity, is written by people, and all people have biases, yourseem to be arriving at the logical conclusion that no one can learn anything from anyone and it is necessary for people to repeat history by committing the same stupid mistakes again and again.
Which, BTW, is what they do, but usually without the underlying rationale you offer!
Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
As the author of a book on software marketing and of another recently released book on high-tech marketing disasters (www.insearchofstupidity.com) I feel the need to correct some of the statements here. One of the central theses of "Stupidity" is that the reason companies keep making the same mistakes again and again is that they fail to learn from history and the type of myths that a continually perpetuated by stories like these only make it worse for new companies who seek to compete.
+++Before the IBM PC (and their Charley Chaplin ads), the Apple ][ was making inroads into corporate culture, though mostly through the back door. Apple did not have much legitimacy in the corporate culture of the time. +++
Part of this is true. Gates' mom helped introduce IBM to MS. However, the rest is wrong. The Apple II sold very well into businesses (and I speak as the owner of an Apple II and II+ but by 1981 was clearly aging and was repositioned as a "premium" home system. The Apple III was supposed to be the successor but Apple botched its launch.
+++So, IBM decided (on a lark, essentially) to create a hobbyist computer of their own, only geared toward corporate culture.+++
Rather than type this stuff again, I'm going paste up excerpts from chapter two and chapter 10 of In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters.
"Realizing the microcomputer industry was approaching hypergrowth, and worried that IBM might be cut out of the action, a small group of IBM executives decided to act before it was too late. At a meeting of IBM's top management committee in 1980, this group of prescient individuals pitched then IBM President Frank Cary on the necessity of the company building its own PC and doing it quickly. The IBM PC, by the way, was not IBM's first stab at building a microcomputer: An earlier effort in 1975 had produced a management-by-committee machine that was clunky, overengineered, and overpriced. No one wanted it and no one bought it. To avoid making the same mistake again, IBM agreed to allow an "off-campus" skunkworks to be established to build a new IBM microcomputer, out of the reach of the behemoth's bureaucracy. Heading up the effort were Bill Lowe, Jack Rogers, Jack Sams, Don Estridge, and several others. Estridge, put in charge of the project's day-to-day operations, would one day be known as the "father" of the IBM PC. The location they picked for the project: Bill Lowe's Boca Raton, Florida, lab. Code name for the new computer: Acorn. Time to project completion: 1 year.
+++As IBM did not take this project too seriously, they met with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who sold them a CP/M-like operating system they had "developed" for the 8086. (In fact, they had done no such thing.)+++
This is also not true:
"In 1981, the industry's biggest fish first swam up to Microsoft, not Digital Research, in search of both computer languages and an OS for the PC. At the initial meetings, Gates candidly informed IBM that Microsoft had no OS to sell. At the time, Microsoft made most of its money from the sale of languages, particularly BASIC. Microsoft was overjoyed at the chance to sell its products to IBM, but it suggested that for an OS, IBM representatives should contact Kildall and Digital Research to talk about CP/M-86.
Dutifully, the Big Blue Whale traveled south to California to meet with Kildall, who didn't think the initial conference important enough to attend and allowed his wife, a vice president at the firm, to conduct the opening ceremonies. There was an argument about signing a onfidentiality letter, neither group found much to like about the other, and IBM left Digital Research without even a preliminary agreement to talk about CP/M-86.
The IBM contingent then asked Gates to talk to Kildall and persuade him to be more receptive to their overtures, but even this led nowhere. IBM was "the establishment" and many programmers brought up in the 1960s and '70s regarded the company w
++Oh, ok. Go to the article that this story points to and look at the yellow box in the upper left, that talks about Novell. ++
That article was not written by Joel but by me, and reflects the opinions of Novell insiders and others who were closely connected with the company. I don't think it talks much about ANYONE moaning or whining, though considering what has happened at the company, no one could blame anyone for sincere lamentations.
+++The premise of the article itself tends towards machismo, +++
Oh, Heaven Forfend anyone subject you to "machismo!" As you press your nosegay against your sensitive nostrils to defend them against the too fetid air of this rough rough world we would not want to add to your suffering!
++This "SoftwareMarketSolution" site seems to be by and for marketroids. ++
Good God! How did you figure THAT out? OK, OK,the home page does say "Software marketing resources for software marketers," but how can one not be in awe of your acute ability to figure out the strikingly obvious?
++There's a lot of the testosterone-filled jargon of marketing in there.++
Errr, you mean stuff like "Extreme Programming?" That sort of "testosterone-filled jargon?"
Yes, I actually talked to him, and many of the questions, such as what happened over at WordPerfect and Lotus, were my idea, not his. And it's not surprising that some of his answers would sound like...some of his answers.
rick
Slashdot Mirror
+++Help me out.
Isn't Macintosh and Apple synonymous?+++
No. The Apple II in all its various incarnations provided the bulk of the company's revenues until well into the late 80s.
One of the reasons I wrote ISOS is to provide the historical perspective questions like this demonstrate the industry lacks. From Chapter 13 of In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech:
The first and most valuable thing most companies can do to avoidacting stupidly is to encourage all employees to learn about the history of the industry in which they compete. The great thing about
history (hindsight) is it is full of facts from which you can learn things,
such as how to avoid positioning disasters and what to do if a PR roof
falls in on you, while many strategic business books are often full of suppositions
and untested conjectures. Now please, don't waste everyone's
time with an attempt to wiggle out of your required reading by telling us
about the "subjectivity" of history; we're all aware that people can differ
about the significance of different events. If different writers and
historians have different opinions about the facts, read them all, and
make up your own mind from an informed viewpoint.
In the spirit of the advice just given, the following sections include
my particular lists of "must" and "recommended" reading. Most of
these books focus on high tech, but I've thrown in a couple of tomes
from other industries to stretch your brain and provide you with some
cross-cultural diversity. Feel free to criticize this lineup and add and subtract
to it as you see fit. These lists are not that long, and when you are
done reading these or similar books, you will have a well-rounded
understanding of the forces that shape the high-tech industry, a truly
invaluable asset. Both lists are in alphabetical order.
rick chapman
(the author)
www.insearchofstupidity.com
+++How did IBM lose? They stuck to schedule and attempted to uphold their standards of software functionality before releasing it onto the public.+++
This, of course, is a complete fantasy. IBM had their own release date problems and Big Blue TAUGHT the industry about how to use FUD as a marketing tool.
rick chapman
(The author)
www.insearchofstupidity.com
+++Microsoft did have a big advantage when the first IBM PCs were shipped: MS-DOS, under the name of PC-DOS, was shipped by default. You could get (IIRC) CP/M-86 or the UCSD p-system, but most people had no reason to do so. I would think that Microsoft did have a big advantage with the first contract, contrary to what the reviewer says.+++
/86, not IBM. In the book).
They did have a big advantage, but it was due to the bad decision making if G. Kildall (who, BTW, made the pricing decision on CPM
+++or is the account of how Microsoft won the desktop at all correct. By the time there was a Windows 95, Microsoft had already won. Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups were standard+++
The book has it right. OS/2 was crushed by Windows 3.0. The final implosion came in the wake of the Windows 95 release.
+++The view of Apple seems odd, to say the least. I don't think the Macintosh ever had near 30% of the marketshare. If we're talking about the Apple II, that went the way of the other major systems when the IBM PC came out, and there was nothing Apple could do about it.+++
The book never says Macintosh had 30%; Apple had 30%. And there WAS something Apple could have done about it; read about the sorry history of the Apple III.
rick chapman
(the author)
www.insearchofstupidity.com
That is a good point. The book doesn't claim these catastrophes destroyed these companies, though in some cases it did. MicroPro (WordStar), Ashton-Tate (dBase) are examples of companies destroyed by key marketing mistakes. Borland and Novell were knocked off their dominant perches. MS is slowly becoming IBM and suffering from senescence; over time, the impact of this will be seen.
But EVERY mistake discussed was painful, hurt, and was COMPLETELY avoidable.
rick chapman
(the author)
www.insearchofstupidity.com
Uh, no. The book is not about that. The book looks at important MS disasters in chapter 10 and 12.
OTOH, when you talk about the collapse of OS/2, the only company to blame is IBM. A multibillion dollar company was beaten at its own game by startup. When IBM was completely screwing up the OS/2 effort it could have squashed MS like a bug.
Not a disputable point.
rick chapman
(the author)
There are no footnotes like that. I should know, I wrote the book.
rick chapman
(the author)
Tom Peters DID admit to faking the data in a substantive way and the Business Week article in which he did is one of the book's exhibits.
rick chapman
(the author)
The impact of the PS/2 on the failure of OS/2 is covered in ISOS. rick chapman (the author)
No kidding. And refusing to learn from past mistakes is eternal. rick chapman (The Author)
***2. I never saw them but Dvorak wrote that there were airport billboards saying that "OS/2 will obliterate your hard drive!" Duh?***
I saw them and they said no such thing. However, the ads DID say OS/2 would "warp" your computer. This was a problem due to the Warp naming fiasco described in "Stupidity."
***I suppose it could also be considered a marketing mistake to have an advanced OS that needed 8 meg to run when your competition needed a base 4 meg.***
By the time Windows 3.0 was released the memory spike was history. The cost of memory had little to do with the failure of OS/2 1.2 and 1.3.
Reagan decided to go medieval on Japanese RAM manufacturers and show them what protective tarrifs really looked like around the time OS/2 was developing nicely. RAM was expensive back then.
Uh, Reagan had nothing to do with the memory increase. Memory prices are constantly fluctuating and there have been constant run ups and downs in the industry.
rick
My site was subjected to a online cyber attack which led to the credit card gateway shutting down my company's account. Of course, I or a designated backup are SUPPOSED to be notified when this happens, but guess what didn't happen. And since I was on vacation last week and had made a solemn vow to not read my E-mail I didn't see this happening.
My sincere apologies and please try to place your order now; it should go through.
rick
***ProductMarketing.com is sponsored by Pragmatic Marketing. And who is Pragmatic Marketing? Well, it's a company that provides training seminars -- and they list Aegis Resources***
I have not nor have I ever had any business relationship with Pragmatic Marketing. As for links on their home page, it's not surprising that a site that deals with product marketing would list other sites that do the same. I am not an "alumni."
Dan Shefer first contacted me after reading "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters" and does contact me from time to time ask my opinion on various facets of software marketing. Not surprising, actually. When he quotes me or uses information I provide, he of course gives me proper attribution. I've never met Dan in person, BTW.
***Now, I can't be sure,***
No, you can't be, since you have no idea of what you're talking about.
*** but it sounds like Slashdot published a carefully placed success story. I work in marketing,***
Not very well if this is an example of your behavior. Before making silly accusations, you might check your facts just a bit.
rick
***While some software packages can be successfully sold using online channels exclusively, these are the exceptions***
This statement is factually correct. Most software is sold via a mix of direct and indirect (distribution system) sales. Not a disputable point.
****That pretty much assures me the author does not know what he's talking about.***
If you are foolish enough to ignore the power of distribution channels as a software company grows and matures you are going to face tough economic times.
rick
While the focus seems to be on direct sales, I would be interested in seeing Chapman's comments on dealing with retailers.
The Handbook deals with both retail class and "direct sale" software. The section of distribution talks extensively on how to deal with resellers and distributors.
rick
+++Marketing had nothing to do with OS/2's success or failure. If you actually study the OS/2 debacle, you learn the following: +++ Marketing had almost *everything* to with the failure of OS/2. IBM botched the rollout and launch of OS/2 on practically every front possible, as documented in my book "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters." +++Not being able to run Office 97, +++ OS/2 was completely moribund by the time Office 97 was released. +++and some underhanded tactics on MS's part forcing sole distributorships while simultaneously forcing upgrade cycles.+++ MS was a tough competitor, but so was every other company it competed with. It was no different from any of them, but somewhat smarter. And "sole distributorships" had little to do with the failure of OS/2. rick
I wouldn't waste time feeling sorry for IBM vis a vis OS/2. They bear almost complete responsibility for the failure of OS/2. MS was simply smart enough to take advantage of their stupidity in marketing the product. rick
+++I love it when authors look back with glorified hindsight on the failures of others and zero in on their mistakes. It's as if to say "if *I* had been there, I woudn't have do it that way"+++
Actually, in 1990 I wrote a limited circulation book for what was then the SPA in which I stated that the problem with developing for the Mac platform was that the Mac market could not grow any faster than Apple.
So I was there and was on record as giving good advice! (At least in that instance.)
+++So what do you suggest now, Merrill? Let see Chapman's papers on how the Open Source movement can navigate its way through today's marketplace. +++
Companies navigate through markets, not "movements." And if the Open Source "movement" wants to navigate through markets, it had better remember that markets are commercial, not ideological, entities.
If you want to use OS tools to build stuff, OK, but avoid use of GPL stuff in your commercial products. You will have a hard time charging for something you have to give away.
I also recommend changing the GPL so that large companies like IBM have to pay for the use of Open Source products. As far as I can see, Linux represents a massive transfer of wealth away from programmers TO large corporations. You many hate Bill Gates, but he's made a lot of programmers rich. Microsoft has created more than 12K millionaires in its history. How many millionaires has Linux created?
It's nice of programmers to do this, I guess, but I don't see the financial incentive for coders to help IBM and HP make lots of money while beggaring themselves.
Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
+++Microsoft's past is littered with failures: Microsoft Bob,+++ Everyone's past is littered with failures! Ashton-Tate had Friday, Lotus had Manuscript, Borland had Object Vision and the botched 1.0 version of Paradox, etc. Bob was a shell. How critical is a shell to a major software company? +++None of these mistakes were fatal simply because Microsoft could always fall back on the revenues of their OS monopoly,+++ As someone who competed against Microsoft in the 80s I certainly knew they had that cushion. But so what? Microsoft was competing against IBM for control of the OS environment, no one else, and IBM had plenty of money and the means to handle MS. It was IBM's complete and total ineptitude that allowed MS to seize final control of the desktop with a 16-bit OS shell, not Microsoft's perfidy and not their monopoly. It took monumental stupidity on the part of another company for MS to succeed. +++and later Office monopoly.+++ MS built that monopoly fair and square. Their products were better than the competitions' (at least the reviewers of the time thought so) and they were the first to build a bundle and then begin the process of integrating the various products that made up the bundle. No one made Lotus, for instance, wait so long to build a Windows version of 123 and deliver such a third rate product when they did get one to market. Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
There is, at this juncture, no evidence to support the supposition that SCO's case is stupid. The outcome of the case will be decided on two key factual points. A) is there S5 code in Linux 2.4 and up, and B) does SCO have IP rights to that code? If the answer is yes, they win the case and get a big chunk of money from some big corporations. And courts will have no interest in Open Source ideology or beliefs when they exmaine the case. Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
DEC basically ignored the growth of departmental LANS running Netware on cheap Intel boxes until it was too late. Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
Errrr, since history, by necessity, is written by people, and all people have biases, yourseem to be arriving at the logical conclusion that no one can learn anything from anyone and it is necessary for people to repeat history by committing the same stupid mistakes again and again. Which, BTW, is what they do, but usually without the underlying rationale you offer! Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
As the author of a book on software marketing and of another recently released book on high-tech marketing disasters (www.insearchofstupidity.com) I feel the need to correct some of the statements here. One of the central theses of "Stupidity" is that the reason companies keep making the same mistakes again and again is that they fail to learn from history and the type of myths that a continually perpetuated by stories like these only make it worse for new companies who seek to compete.
+++Before the IBM PC (and their Charley Chaplin ads), the Apple ][ was making inroads into corporate culture, though mostly through the back door. Apple did not have much legitimacy in the corporate culture of the time. +++
Part of this is true. Gates' mom helped introduce IBM to MS. However, the rest is wrong. The Apple II sold very well into businesses (and I speak as the owner of an Apple II and II+ but by 1981 was clearly aging and was repositioned as a "premium" home system. The Apple III was supposed to be the successor but Apple botched its launch.
+++So, IBM decided (on a lark, essentially) to create a hobbyist computer of their own, only geared toward corporate culture.+++
Rather than type this stuff again, I'm going paste up excerpts from chapter two and chapter 10 of In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters.
"Realizing the microcomputer industry was approaching hypergrowth, and worried that IBM might be cut out of the action, a small group of IBM executives decided to act before it was too late. At a meeting of IBM's top management committee in 1980, this group of prescient
individuals pitched then IBM President Frank Cary on the necessity of the company building its own PC and doing it quickly. The IBM PC, by
the way, was not IBM's first stab at building a microcomputer: An earlier effort in 1975 had produced a management-by-committee machine
that was clunky, overengineered, and overpriced. No one wanted it and no one bought it. To avoid making the same mistake again, IBM agreed to allow an "off-campus" skunkworks to be established to build a new IBM microcomputer,
out of the reach of the behemoth's bureaucracy. Heading up the effort were Bill Lowe, Jack Rogers, Jack Sams, Don Estridge, and several others. Estridge, put in charge of the project's day-to-day operations, would one day be known as the "father" of the IBM PC. The location
they picked for the project: Bill Lowe's Boca Raton, Florida, lab. Code name for the new computer: Acorn. Time to project completion: 1 year.
+++As IBM did not take this project too seriously, they met with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who sold them a CP/M-like operating system they had "developed" for the 8086. (In fact, they had done no such thing.)+++
This is also not true:
"In 1981, the industry's biggest fish first
swam up to Microsoft, not Digital Research, in search of both computer languages and an OS for the PC. At the initial meetings, Gates candidly
informed IBM that Microsoft had no OS to sell. At the time, Microsoft made most of its money from the sale of languages, particularly BASIC.
Microsoft was overjoyed at the chance to sell its products to IBM, but it suggested that for an OS, IBM representatives should contact Kildall
and Digital Research to talk about CP/M-86.
Dutifully, the Big Blue Whale traveled south to California to meet with Kildall, who didn't
think the initial conference important enough to attend and allowed his wife, a vice president at the firm, to conduct the opening ceremonies.
There was an argument about signing a onfidentiality letter, neither group found much to like about the other, and IBM left Digital Research without even a preliminary agreement to talk about CP/M-86.
The IBM contingent then asked Gates to talk to Kildall and persuade him to be more receptive to their overtures, but even this led nowhere.
IBM was "the establishment" and many programmers brought up in the 1960s and '70s regarded the company w
++Oh, ok. Go to the article that this story points to and look at the yellow box in the upper left, that talks about Novell. ++
That article was not written by Joel but by me, and reflects the opinions of Novell insiders and others who were closely connected with the company. I don't think it talks much about ANYONE moaning or whining, though considering what has happened at the company, no one could blame anyone for sincere lamentations.
+++The premise of the article itself tends towards machismo, +++
Oh, Heaven Forfend anyone subject you to "machismo!" As you press your nosegay against your sensitive nostrils to defend them against the too fetid air of this rough rough world we would not want to add to your suffering!
(Wow, I didn't know programmers were such fops.)
rick
++This "SoftwareMarketSolution" site seems to be by and for marketroids. ++
Good God! How did you figure THAT out? OK, OK,the home page does say "Software marketing resources for software marketers," but how can one not be in awe of your acute ability to figure out the strikingly obvious?
++There's a lot of the testosterone-filled jargon of marketing in there.++
Errr, you mean stuff like "Extreme Programming?" That sort of "testosterone-filled jargon?"
rick
Yes, I actually talked to him, and many of the questions, such as what happened over at WordPerfect and Lotus, were my idea, not his. And it's not surprising that some of his answers would sound like...some of his answers. rick