Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!bagate!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: NeXT-bashing party (hit "n" if you're not interested :-)) Message-ID: <20027@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 21 Mar 91 21:02:32 GMT References: <7724@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <1991Mar17.031448.26855@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <15L002.N06Qt01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Distribution: na Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 50 In article <15L002.N06Qt01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> kls30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Kent L. Shephard) writes: >I really don't think Jobs paid for the ports. I think they saw a new >market anf jumped on it. Remember in the software game he who gets there >first gets market share. Get an installed base early and make it >difficult for you competitors to move in when the market starts to boom. That used to be the way the software market worked, but that's not the way the big guys play it anymore. They're used to a potential market of some 40-80 million systems. A good portion of them don't even jump into the nearly 4 million unit market of the Mac, or over 2 million market of the Amiga. When you're thinking of a system with well under 50,000 units, no matter how early that get in, they don't make enough profit to cover development cost, much less make a significant drop in the bucket compared to normal sales (keep in mind that a good part of the "sales" money for an established program is in upgrade fees, not new sales). The other thing is, the big software guys think about software differently. It used to be, you would write a program to get in on the bottom floor of a new hardware platform, so you could catch a big chunk of the money rolling in as people rushed over to this new platform. These days, the big guys know that in many cases, Joe Business User will buy whatever platform runs their application. Which leaves them little to no incentive to port to anything else, as long as the current platform is capable of doing everything they need it to be doing. The software, not the hardware, becomes the market, and the hardware is simply a way of supporting the software. Not everyone has this attitute so severly, though lots of people reading this very newsgroup believe it to a degree, or "Lotus" would not be the issue, we'd be talking about "a real good spreadsheet". Which is what I think we need; Lotus 1-2-3 stinks, IMHO (though the new one, "Improv" or whatever they call it, is moving toward a concept I call "Data Sheets", which is essentially my idealized spreadsheet replacement. Long ago, I wanted to do things that are still very clumsy to do on a modern spreadsheet, like computer timing models). Some companies want to be established horizontally, and so they port to practically everything, and become an industry standard, like WordPerfect. Others attack it the market vertically -- Lotus, for instance, will get lots more return on their investment writing something new for MS-DOS than they will porting something to a new platform with around 1/1000th the installed base. You can, of course, make it worth their while by paying for the port. That may even be good business sense, depending on your business, how much startup money you're still getting, etc. >/* Kent L. Shephard : email - kls30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com */ -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "What works for me might work for you" -Jimmy Buffett