Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake)

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Paul says

<<Technical superiority is not just a matter of having gee-whiz features,
it is a matter of doing a better job.>>

Sure, but who judges what is a better job. The answer is that the only
person who can judge is the consumer. The VHS vs Beta example is a good
one from this point of view. The tecnical folks at Sony thought that
image quality was *the* important technical quality. But they were wrong,
and they paid for their mistake. In fact playing time was much more
important to the public.

Now some techie may say "stupid public, they don't know what is important",
but it is such misjudgments by technical people on what is important that
leaves quite a trail of business disasters behind.

An interesting case is gathering steam now, there is a question of whether
the new digital TV transmission capability should be used for HDTV, or
more conventional channels. It is beginning to look more and more as though
the public and the hence the networks, prefer more conventional channels.

Now, no doubt some technical folks will get most upset that as a result
the wondrous x by y resolution of HDTV will never see the light of day,
but all this shows, if it happens, is that maybe picture quality is not
so important as other considerations -- a lesson that tecnical folk
*should* have learned from Beta vs VHS, but unfortunately did not (which
is why we keep getting this example misquoted as an example where technical
superiority did not win out).

And, going back to your definition, what does "doing a better job" mean?
Who judges this?

For example, given two VCR's, one with amazing new features, and the other
with solid reliability, which is doing the better job.

For me, I would far rather rely on the consumer to make the decision of
what features are or are not important and thus constitute the basis
of answering this question!