That may very well be, but I could've sworn someone spouted out that figure. I'd need to see some studies or something before I thought otherwise; we have to remember that our immediate group here is very different from the casual gamer. Heck, most of us probably buy at least one game a week, maybe 5 per month, easily.
That may be true, but the habits have to form. It becomes a bit circular if you just say IBM PC and compatibles became the standard because they were so popular. You can say that about Microsoft, too--they are popular because everybody has it--but it still doesn't really explain why people were willing to move to DOS and then Windows in the first place. Somehow, IBM PC had a critical mass that allowed for enough people to adopt the platform that it made sense to try to clone it and start competing for that userbase's dollars. I could be wrong, but I don't see any real advantage the IBM PC had over the competition in terms of usability or compatibility when it came out. Of course it did have advantages for business and serious apps, but I don't really see how those would have been that big of a deal to Joe Smoe.
I think the critical era was really in the mid-80s when you had systems out with colorful GUIs and multimedia out the wazoo, and the clones were still chugging along lucky to have anything beyond monochrome and pc speaker. There's a ten year gap between the first Macintosh and Windows 95, for instance, and I definitely didn't see a mass migration from DOS to 3.1 (though your experience may be different). Heck, I remember people refusing to go Windows 95 and there are STILL people who insist that DOS is far superior (of course most of those have now moved on to Linux and extol its shell until your ears fall off).
What I was saying is not circular. To my thinking (and others), the PC won out for three reasons, one, was the ability for any company to make a PC clone, two with so much competition within the PC world from all the clones there was a constant push for the next big thing to advance the state of the art on the platform, and three PC's were used in the office. Eventually these three things overwhelmed the one company, niche approach of the competition. Apple survived only because they had the most compelling niche for the era (desktop publishing versus video (Commodore) and audio (Atari) production), plus far fewer losses from side projects like Commodore and Atari, who seemed to want to play in every market segment. Apple also carved out a niche in educational institutions, unlike Commodore and Atari, who were never able to full crack that nut (particularly Atari).
So of my three points, to provide more detail, one there were a huge number of PC clones, which eventually drove prices down to levels matching Atari and Commodore, so those platform's price advantages became minimized. Two, while the PC started out as technologically inferior to everything else out there, eventually it caught up to and surpassed the other platforms in the two most immediately obvious areas - graphics and sound. Of course it was also the first computer platform to more-or-less standardize on hard drives, and to me that's a huge factor on the technological sides, as we're all well aware of the benefits of hard drives over everything being disk-based. And three, PC's were used in the office. Businesses are notorious for going the no-frills route and being averse (for both good and bad reasons) to the latest and greatest. Command line systems were proven and familiar, GUI's were new and untested, and frankly, on the earliest systems, offered a performance hit for business applications. GUI-based systems never got the momentum while they still could, the PC platform became entrenched in businesses, and it flowed down to the home desktop as time improved on the other points, namely cost and more home friendly technology.
In short, it's been proven time and again that people don't necessarily go with the best, they just go with what's good enough and stick with it until they HAVE to make a change or there's something so amazingly good as a replacement that there's no way they can resist. DOS and Windows 3.1 were good enough in comparison to the competition, and eventually Windows 95 and its descendents erased the final barriers.
Matt Barton wrote:
So, anyway, what I'm saying is that there was a huge gap there in usability and at least a reduced gap in compatibility. My guess is that if you were to tell someone in 1985 that the Atari ST, Amiga, and Macintosh would all fail horribly compared to MS-DOS clones in every sector--even though they wouldn't get a true GUI-based OS for ten years--they would have laughed at you. Personally, I would have found it much more plausible that Macintosh would become the standard.
Again, the GUI was something new, unproven and somewhat scary. In fact, at times, it was derided versus the more "professional" command line interface. Also, let's not overlook Apple ALWAYS charging a premium back then, even moreso then they do today. They were famous for 30% or greater profit margins on their computers, something few companies could ever get away with. In short, their computers cost way too much and always have. Only in recent years have they loosened that up a bit.
Matt Barton wrote:
The one thing that always comes to mind when I think about stuff like this is the QWERTY keyboard. That keyboard arrangement was designed to slow you down, because when it was invented, there was a problem with people typing so fast that it jammed up their typewriters or some such. However, out of force of habit, we've maintained that layout, even though other layouts like the Dvorack are far better. That case really kind of makes it clear what you're saying about habits dying hard. But they obviously do sometimes change, or we'd still be using typewriters and not computers. ;)
Again, it's what I said above. The QWERTY arrangement is good enough and it's what everyone knows, so the system sustains itself. It would require huge amounts of education and training to get people to learn Dvorak, and for what, just so they can type 50 WPM versus 35 WPM? 35 WPM is good enough, so why change? Now if something came out that allowed you to type 100 WPM versus 35 WPM, then you might have something there, but then you'd still be working against the existing infrastructure of keyboards and devices in the QWERTY format. Hell, we couldn't even get this country on the Metric system when it was a government initiative because there was too much resistance to change. Imagine trying to change something that people use everyday now.
That may very well be, but I could've sworn someone spouted out that figure. I'd need to see some studies or something before I thought otherwise; we have to remember that our immediate group here is very different from the casual gamer. Heck, most of us probably buy at least one game a week, maybe 5 per month, easily.
Here is your link on attach rates, and you can drill down to the actual data: http://forum.pcvsconsole.com/viewthread.php?tid=18305
That may be true, but the habits have to form. It becomes a bit circular if you just say IBM PC and compatibles became the standard because they were so popular. You can say that about Microsoft, too--they are popular because everybody has it--but it still doesn't really explain why people were willing to move to DOS and then Windows in the first place. Somehow, IBM PC had a critical mass that allowed for enough people to adopt the platform that it made sense to try to clone it and start competing for that userbase's dollars. I could be wrong, but I don't see any real advantage the IBM PC had over the competition in terms of usability or compatibility when it came out. Of course it did have advantages for business and serious apps, but I don't really see how those would have been that big of a deal to Joe Smoe.
I think the critical era was really in the mid-80s when you had systems out with colorful GUIs and multimedia out the wazoo, and the clones were still chugging along lucky to have anything beyond monochrome and pc speaker. There's a ten year gap between the first Macintosh and Windows 95, for instance, and I definitely didn't see a mass migration from DOS to 3.1 (though your experience may be different). Heck, I remember people refusing to go Windows 95 and there are STILL people who insist that DOS is far superior (of course most of those have now moved on to Linux and extol its shell until your ears fall off).
What I was saying is not circular. To my thinking (and others), the PC won out for three reasons, one, was the ability for any company to make a PC clone, two with so much competition within the PC world from all the clones there was a constant push for the next big thing to advance the state of the art on the platform, and three PC's were used in the office. Eventually these three things overwhelmed the one company, niche approach of the competition. Apple survived only because they had the most compelling niche for the era (desktop publishing versus video (Commodore) and audio (Atari) production), plus far fewer losses from side projects like Commodore and Atari, who seemed to want to play in every market segment. Apple also carved out a niche in educational institutions, unlike Commodore and Atari, who were never able to full crack that nut (particularly Atari).
So of my three points, to provide more detail, one there were a huge number of PC clones, which eventually drove prices down to levels matching Atari and Commodore, so those platform's price advantages became minimized. Two, while the PC started out as technologically inferior to everything else out there, eventually it caught up to and surpassed the other platforms in the two most immediately obvious areas - graphics and sound. Of course it was also the first computer platform to more-or-less standardize on hard drives, and to me that's a huge factor on the technological sides, as we're all well aware of the benefits of hard drives over everything being disk-based. And three, PC's were used in the office. Businesses are notorious for going the no-frills route and being averse (for both good and bad reasons) to the latest and greatest. Command line systems were proven and familiar, GUI's were new and untested, and frankly, on the earliest systems, offered a performance hit for business applications. GUI-based systems never got the momentum while they still could, the PC platform became entrenched in businesses, and it flowed down to the home desktop as time improved on the other points, namely cost and more home friendly technology.
In short, it's been proven time and again that people don't necessarily go with the best, they just go with what's good enough and stick with it until they HAVE to make a change or there's something so amazingly good as a replacement that there's no way they can resist. DOS and Windows 3.1 were good enough in comparison to the competition, and eventually Windows 95 and its descendents erased the final barriers.
So, anyway, what I'm saying is that there was a huge gap there in usability and at least a reduced gap in compatibility. My guess is that if you were to tell someone in 1985 that the Atari ST, Amiga, and Macintosh would all fail horribly compared to MS-DOS clones in every sector--even though they wouldn't get a true GUI-based OS for ten years--they would have laughed at you. Personally, I would have found it much more plausible that Macintosh would become the standard.
Again, the GUI was something new, unproven and somewhat scary. In fact, at times, it was derided versus the more "professional" command line interface. Also, let's not overlook Apple ALWAYS charging a premium back then, even moreso then they do today. They were famous for 30% or greater profit margins on their computers, something few companies could ever get away with. In short, their computers cost way too much and always have. Only in recent years have they loosened that up a bit.
The one thing that always comes to mind when I think about stuff like this is the QWERTY keyboard. That keyboard arrangement was designed to slow you down, because when it was invented, there was a problem with people typing so fast that it jammed up their typewriters or some such. However, out of force of habit, we've maintained that layout, even though other layouts like the Dvorack are far better. That case really kind of makes it clear what you're saying about habits dying hard. But they obviously do sometimes change, or we'd still be using typewriters and not computers. ;)
Again, it's what I said above. The QWERTY arrangement is good enough and it's what everyone knows, so the system sustains itself. It would require huge amounts of education and training to get people to learn Dvorak, and for what, just so they can type 50 WPM versus 35 WPM? 35 WPM is good enough, so why change? Now if something came out that allowed you to type 100 WPM versus 35 WPM, then you might have something there, but then you'd still be working against the existing infrastructure of keyboards and devices in the QWERTY format. Hell, we couldn't even get this country on the Metric system when it was a government initiative because there was too much resistance to change. Imagine trying to change something that people use everyday now.
Books!
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.