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No matter what they do, they always lose. No, not some amateurs but the companies with consistently the best solutions, technically speaking that is.
MacOS was better than Windows, yet Windows owns the market now. OS/2 was better than NT, Windows and MacOS and look where its got to. Many of AMD's and Cyrix's offerings are improvements over Intel's chips, yet the giant prevails.
Why do things work like that? Well first its important to remember that some technical prowess (but not a lot!) is needed for success. Then we get into a circular argument of failure breeding the innovation we see now, purely for survival. But this innovation seems to breed more failure, so it could be endless.
A lot of Microsoft's and Intel's success is down to massive amounts of clever marketing. The technical genies that inhabit the innovative companies probably are great at writing assembler in their sleep, but they can't manage a company and they don't know the first thing about marketing. Of course, once they're established its extremely hard to knock the giants off their perches.
Take a fond example of mine. Gravis released a brilliant soundcard called the Ultrasound about five years ago. It was the first consumer card with wavetable synthesis, and it had onboard memory, loads of great software, and a great 3D sound system that REALLY worked (you could hear sounds all around you with only two speakers!). Around two years ago Creative released the SoundBlaster AWE32 with wavetable synthesis, some software and no 3D sound. Everyone bought it while the Gravis struggled. Why? The Gravis had better technology way before Creative.
SoundBlaster had become a de facto standard due to Creative's agreements with suppliers worldwide. It was hard for Gravis to lure suppliers away from their deals (for less-good cards) to an unknown quantity. Also their marketing wasn't so hot. So Creative continue in their rule, especially through having their cards supported by all games, whereas the Gravis isn't always (but usually these days!). Ok so Gravis could have done better, but Creative were established. If there was a standard software driver interface for sound cards Gravis could have garnered support for games, but instead they had to virtually beg companies.
Its not fair, but that's life I guess.
by Jeep
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