day 8

parable of an innovator 5: the secret of success

Is mediocrity the answer? Will the computer industry slump into a heap of junky Microsoft software? Is there no reward for excellence in the PC industry? Is Microsoft a cow instead of a race horse? Microsoft has created an industry by leaving many things out of its products, thus attracting third party vendors. It has sucked 60,000 developers into the formative stages of an industry. This industry is making lots of money by enhancing Microsoft products. They build add-ons, plug-ins, and niche software, that fill the gaps left open by the Megalith. Crummy software from Microsoft means lots of opportunity for the rest of us. And this is the secret to its success. Visual BASIC is a hacker's dream, but there is so much money to be made selling VBX's and incremental fixes that even Sun Microsystem's Java doesn't compare. What about the core of Microsoft's hold on the industry? Windows NT is not on a par with UNIX even though it will kill UNIX. Again, there is simply too much money to be made by hacking up NT as compared to UNIX. Besides, UNIX vendors are behaving like Apple - they think they are invincible. The high prices of UNIX boxes (compared to NT boxes) will drive them out of the market. The next generation of Microsoft Office will work with the Internet, but it won't be elegant, sleek, or especially advanced. Still, Netscape and the rest of the Nethead gang will have to run very fast indeed to hold their own against the Microsoft Industry. All of these, Visual BASIC, NT, and Office have one thing in common: they are foundations of an entire industry. They have attracted a swarm of small fish that nibble at Microsoft's leavings. They form the single most important ingredient needed to cause an industry: a food chain. Apple, on the other hand, savaged its third-party developers. Each time a good piece of software was produced by a non-Apple company, Apple would either buy it and remove it from the market (CADMUS - a company that built the first MacOS toolkit for UNIX was bought out just when Apple should have been spreading its OS to other platforms. But, you never heard about CADMUS, right?). Or they'd kill it with a product of its own. As if that was not bad enough, Apple created Claris, thus scaring off most of the database, integrated software, and utilities houses. The secret to success in the PC business is to create a food chain of vendors. Using win-win techniques similar to those of the Nethead Gang, the last great hope of Apple is to use its advanced technology as a way to create a food chain. Apple needs to donate its most precious family jewels - its technology - in the best interest of creating the next industry. Let Apple technology be the plankton of the food chain leading to the next earth-shaking industry.

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