If you have any Randian or Libertarian "Free Market" friends or co-workers

[johnaries]

here's a question to pose them. If the Free Market is so great, then how did Bill Gates become the richest man in the world selling an inferior product?

Don't get me wrong, I am a Capitalist, but I believe in a regulated Caveat Vendor market.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Is it your impression that only the highest quality products turn a profit?

Are the best products assured of being the most popular or best selling?

Windows and other Microsoft products may not (are not) the best in their market, but they are functional. Microsoft also has amazing marketing.

Another question -- in the absence of a free market, would we be better off? Would only the very best products be available to us?

[izquierdista]

3. Amazing

What's amazing about it is how it crowds out competitors and forces new sales through "releases" and "upgrades".

[johnaries]

5. It is not my impression. It is the belief of Randians that the

highest quality roducts will prevail.

You also hit on the secret of MS - marketing.

As I said, I support a regulated Caveat Vendor market. I won't go so far it will always produce the highest quality products as Randians claim about the Free Market, but it is a much better solution. It protects consumers against "snake oil".

[Buzz Clik]

9. I have no Randian friends, and I've never heard that said. I agree with you...

that it is bullshit.

[johnaries]

11. Unfortunately, I do. Big Ron Paul supporters. I hear it all the time. nt

[cagesoulman]

20. The Randians are very naive that way

If you read Rand's books, her heroes are technologically brilliant but incredibly, incredibly stupid about people and human systems. Howard Roarke and John Galt have these fantastic product ideas and absolutely no clue of how to market them or convince others to back them. In an ideal perfect world, the best invention would win, but in REAL LIFE, it is usually the person or idea with the best backing that wins.

And re: MS-DOS, that product was created by Xerox in Palo Alto on the TAXPAYER DIME. It should have been shareware, not something we had to pay for.

[johnaries]

29. It's almost as if she is giving them an excuse to be selfish and greedy.

Many of the Randians I know have seen examples of people abusing the welfare system, and assume everyone on welfare is the same. They don't like paying taxes and it assuages their guilt for not wanting to contribute to society. Even when I argue that taxes pay for roads and other services they use daily. They seem to believe that the rich are rich because "they deserve it". Which is how Rand presents it. Again, Social Darwinism. But really it seems to me more of a justification for greediness. But, the Market is a "game" just like any other, and there has to be rules. And as players learn to find new ways to cheat, the rules have to be updated.

I'm curious about the origins of MS-DOS you mentioned. Although it really doesn't matter anymore, since MS basically phased out DOS when they decided to copy/steal Apple's GUI OS.

[Statistical]

2. Inferior is in the eye of the consumer.

KIA imho makes inferior vehicles compared to VW but I just saw a car commercial where KIA announced they outsold VW last year.

Quality isn't the only component in a successful product.

[johnaries]

6. Which is why so many companies invest more in Advertising and

Marketing then R&D. Thank you for making my point.

[heppcatt]

7. Kia is made by Hyundai

Hyundai has good quality now.
VW not so much.

[Telly Savalas]

15. Kia's tend to be cheaper than VWs, don't they?

[Statistical]

26. Agreed.

My point is that quality is only 1 aspect of many that determines a successful product.

[cliffordu]

4. He locked in IBM with a LICENSE on DOS - a brain damaged

POS.

THen, he destroyed all competition and continued to push DOS as the only business platform, then stolethe graphic interface from XEROX (the PARC interface) and destroyed all competition through antitrust business practices bordering on gangsterism (convicted in the US twice, the EU once)....


All the while advertizing and locking in suppliers of all hardware and software compatibility with propriety drivers and code libraries.....

ANd destroying competition with spurious patents and FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt)

An example of THAT was when they said UNIX was incompatable with modern operating systems and they were using it to master all their Windows CD's with it.

Other than that, it beats me.

[bigbrother05]

22. Also built Word and Excel for the Mac

very few used either on a PC, but his friend Jobs kept working with MS through several versions until they were passable. After Apple worked out the kinks of a graphic interface, MS co-opted that. Once MS got the a passable Windows (v3), they were able to make the semi-integrated Office package attractive for business apps. Once they had a foothold, they used their ops sys and $ to squeeze out the competition. They hae never been the first or the best, but shrewd (if not illegal) business practices have allowed them to become the biggest. The question is whether their size will allow them to continue to thrive or like the dinosaur, will a newer, nimble species (internet apps) leave them in their wake?

If you had a small program that could manage your hardware and start a browser, would windows really be attractive?

[cliffordu]

23. I've used linux since early '96 and no, I don't think anything by M$ is attractive.

[johnaries]

27. My company sells POS (Point-Of-Sale) systems that were Unix

and we switched to Linux primarily because of the licensing. Linux is easier, but not quite as stable. Still, it's a very stable OS. We are developing a new expanded system, and unfortunately we had to go to Windows because it's the "industry standard" and we have to interface with their back-office. We are testing each phase as it's being developed and have already run into Windows issues. Of course, I can't go into details, but I am doing part of the testing and I have seen the issues and even discovered some of them myself.

So, our Tech Support is not only going to have to learn troubleshooting our system, but troubleshooting Windows as well. We never had to do that with Unix or Linux. Lucky me, I'm the Tech Support Trainer. I wish that when a Windows issue arises we could just pass them off to MS, but they don't provide the level of Customer Service that we pride ourselves on and that our customers demand. *sigh*

Oh, btw, we have hired several former Dell employees in the past. We had to fire almost all of them. I finally went to our manager and put my foot down "Don't hire any more Dell people!" She wholeheatedly agreed.

[johnaries]

28. MS "stole" Word from WordPerfect and Excel from Lotus 123.

I will give the Devil Bill Gates his due. The one good thing he did was steal the best of the best for his MS Office Suite, and then made commands consistent throughout the Suite. The icons are consistent. Ctrl+C in Word is the same as Ctrl+C in Excel and the same as Ctrl+C in PowerPoint and in Access.

I will also give him his due in making databases available to the general public via Access. However, Access can be very flaky. It's great for personal applications but too many businesses have tried to used it for business applications because MS marketed it that way - and it is just not dependable enough for many business applications. I can attest to this from multiple personal experiences.

[heppcatt]

8. Libertarians?

Aren't they just right wing anarchists?

[johnaries]

12. LOL! I have made that same argument myself!

The ones I know seem to think we are governed by the Articles of Confederation, not the Constitution.

[baldguy]

10. Survival of the fittest isn't about being the "best" - its about having the most offspring.

Microsoft has become the dominant software company worldwide because of hyper-aggressive marketing, unfair business practices, and legal & financial intimidation of its competitors. The quality or lack thereof of its actual products is secondary.

[johnaries]

13. That's pretty much the same argument I have tried to make.

And an unregulated Free Market is basically Social Darwinism. I like the way you stated it. :thumbsup:

[heppcatt]

17. Oh yea

People on the right do believe in Darwinism for sure.
They wouldn't admit it, but they do.

[alfredo]

16. Their philosophy was "good enough" and let the paying customer beta test

the product. Crappy is by design. They know there will be bugs, and they know the customer will bitch about it but do nothing but bitch about it. Being a monopoly means never having to say you're sorry.

[Feron]

14. The answer is easy.

1. Apple priced itself into a niche market. The Macs I were looking at were easily twice the price of their PC equivalents. There's no good reason why Macs have to be that expensive.

2. Windows is user friendly and works. There are flaws, but I don't think that it is inferior to other operating systems.

3. Linux is a tinkerer's operating system. Installing programs, for example, can be a royal pain. Whereas I've never had issues installing programs in Windows.

It all boils down to what works best for the individual.

[emulatorloo]

18. Off topic, but 1) microsoft does not make computers 2) Macs are mostly = in price to brand name PCs

with similar features.

Price a MacBook and a similarly configured Sony notebook for example. Or price a similarly configured Dell professional grade machine and a Mac Pro with similar stats. There is not much difference in price.

Additionally for what it is worth, I have a dual G4 tower from around 2000 or so that still is going strong. It even runs Leopard 10.5 pretty decently. Sadly my PIII from the same period ran out of gas long ago.

[alfredo]

19. MS doesn't have control over the hardware so there could be

incompatibilities between the two. You never know if an update is going to break your machine, or peripheral. To prevent such problems MS has to add more bloat just to make their OS work on the dizzying array of possible hardware.

On the Mac there are tight controls on hardware. That simplifies software development for Apple and third party software. Developers know what to expect. On a Mac when you plug in a piece of hardware, you are pretty sure its going to work. It's rare to need a driver. You also know that your hardware is of good quality and will last for many years. You don't find Macs in dumpsters or on the curb.

Macs are designed from the user out.

Apple has taken the UNIX platform and has put a user friendly UI on top. Linux is working in that same direction and is nearly there. Part of it is overcoming perceptions. FUD from PC users doesn't help.

Apple realized that the Niche market was good enough. 10% market share would make Apple very wealthy. They didn't need the business market, they wanted the content delivery market. That is why they control the music market and have Disney eating out of their hand. Their market cap is larger than IBM, Dell, and HP.

They are becoming the mobile gaming platform.

The PC is just one product. MS might have the bean counters and the basement PC gamers, but Apple has the portable music player, the smart phone, portable games, the laptop, music and movie delivery.
The iPhone is easy to develop for. The free tools given the developers and the iTunes store is very desirable for the small up and coming developer.


Look at DU's folding@home team stats and you will see that the number 5 position is held by a Mac Mini, a $799 computer (a MacBook without the screen and keyboard), not some $2,000 monster or cluster.

[baldguy]

21. MS does have control over the hardware.

Every time a manufacturer makes the smallest change to a component - whether in hardware or the firmware that runs it - they have to submit it to MS (and give Bill Gates a big chunk of change) to get the essential "Windows Compatible" label.

[alfredo]

25. But not to the degree that Apple has.

[johnaries]

31. Not exactly.

1. Apple did use a different marketing strategy, but it was actually the IBM strategy that made MS rich. Bad for IBM, good for MS.

2. Windows is user friendly, but they copied the User Friendliness from Apple. Anytime you make a product more "user-friendly" that means that more is happening in the background. MS decided to fast-track their "user-friendly" platforms to the public at the expense of reliability. They also used monopolistic practices to ensure their sales. I don't know how many other OS's you have used, but MS Windows is BY FAR less stable and reliable than any other system I have used. CAVEAT - I am using Windows XP at home. Not because I want to, however.

3. Part of the beauty of Linux is that it *is* a "tinkerer's" system. Rather than benefiting from a few programmers that were selected by a particular company to suit their needs and who are sworn to secrecy, it benefits from programmers all around the world who simply want a BETTER OS. The problem is that there is no "focused vision". It is a classic experiment. However, I'm afraid that the experiment is not being given proper attention because of the dominance of MS in the market.

I agree, it all boils down to what works best for the individual. In which case we should have MORE choices. Let's put it this way - MicroSoft is the WalMart of software. Actually, that's not fair. There are a lot more choices in Retail Stores than there are in OS's. It would be nice if MS were "only" the WalMart of OS. WalMart wishes they could be MicroSoft.

[Moondog]

24. The same way that VHS prevailed over Beta.

Superior technologies do not always prevail over market share.

[johnaries]

30. I thought about including that analogy, but since neither exist anymore

I decided not to. But you are correct.