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From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Differentiation and Compatibility (Was: Memory utilization ... )
Summary: Understanding the purpose of a business
Message-ID: <2118@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 9 Sep 89 01:49:49 GMT
References: <1114@aber-cs.UUCP> <278@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> <2089@uceng.UC.EDU> <45369@bbn.COM>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 86

In article <45369@bbn.COM>, slackey@bbn.com (Stan Lackey) writes:
> In article <2108@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) writes:
> >Agreed. But why can't the hardware be tuned to run UNIX? 
> 
> I just knew you were going to say that!

And, recursively, I just knew you knew, etc., >STACK OVERFLOW< :-)

> Actually, it looks to me like
> a lot of the newer RISC's are being made for C and UNIX.

A trend I heartily applaud. The pace of hardware advance is so fast that
vendors lose their market window if they try to go too proprietary with
RISC. And with the massive surges in price/performance we're seeing with
RISC, watch out for some serious erosion among the proprietary holdouts
(but you already knew that...).

RISC/C/UNIX could well crush almost everything else out there in the
general-purpose computing market, *if* the RISC vendors can coordinate
themselves well enough to present a consistent platform to software
developers. Price/performance alone might not free locked-in users from
proprietary intransigence. The RISC people have to get the applications.
The better they cooperate, the sooner they will have them.

[ how the computer market got so fragmented ]

> If your product is not differentiated in some useful way, the only way
> you're going to sell it is through price wars, and you end up with
> terrible margins.

Competition seems to be analogous to highway speed limits---a great
idea, for everybody else. :-)

> It would surely be a great thing [for users] if all machines were
> compatible, but due to business reasons like these they never will be.

OK, let's talk about the philosophy of business. I think the computer
industry could benefit from reading what a few others have said about
why businesses exist and what they are supposed to do. 

For example, Henry Ford Sr., in _My Life and Work_ (a must read for
any entrepreneur) presented his ideas of how to run a business. Ford
claimed that business exists to serve the public, and it does so by
continually striving to give the public more value for its dollar. The
business that gives the public the most value survives and prospers,
and the business that does not, fails. Ford said he did not approach
his work with the idea of making money, because that was the wrong way
to go about it. He said his aim was to give his buyers maximum value,
and then profits would follow as a natural consequence. His book is
full of many interesting illustrations of how Ford and his managers
continually examined their operations, identifying and eliminating
waste, and lowering costs while maintaining or increasing quality. One
of Ford's favorite tactics was to lower prices and raise wages at the
beginning of the year, and then instruct his managers to obtain the
necessary savings.

(Too bad Ford's successors forgot all about what he wrote...ah well,
that's what happens when an industry matures/stagnates, I guess...)

Similarly, Peter F. Drucker, famed management consultant, has written
extensively on how successful businesses operate. In essence, Drucker
echoes Ford Sr. He says the job of the manager is to (1) determine
what constitutes value to the customer, and then (2) to maximize it.
What could be simpler?

Since you already know where this train is going, I could save the
bandwidth and stop right now. But to make sure nobody misses my point,
I'm going to spell it out.

Computer vendors do not need to hire a bunch of high-priced
consultants to figure out what constitutes value to the customer. All
they have to do is pull out their earplugs and listen to the
screaming.  And much of what customers and applications writers are
screaming about is the value they are losing because of frivolous
product differentiation.

I have faith that the quasi-free market will eventually give the
customer what the customer wants. If Ford Sr. was correct, somebody
should be able to make a lot of money by doing so. I certainly hope
that this happens (and it is clearly in the early stages now) before
the public wakes up to the fact that horizontal fragmentation in 
the computer market affects them the same way that any other crime
does.

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu