turner (02/18/83)
#N:ucbesvax:10400001:000:3034
ucbesvax!turner Feb 18 02:48:00 1983
There seems to be some serious questioning of the quality of some
REAL workstation products going in this column. Particularly amusing
is the report (from GM, was it?) of the popularity of an 8-bit micro
over the Star!
This is very interesting to me. I worked for about 9 months for
a company putting out a 68000/UNIX box. We had no graphics and no
networking. The disk was slow. People DID buy these things, though,
partly because they WORKED, and we were actually shipping a product.
(Albeit a product with a critically short life-time.) Some competitors
who planned to offer fancier stuff were running into various problems:
software not ready, hardware still flakey, etc. That they were much
better capitalized might help them win out in the final scramble. This
scramble will not be at the forefront of technology, but rather in
establishing good customer support and fertile markets.
I read recently (Business Week or Fortune) about Xerox's often ill-
fated workstation products. The article was not loathe to point out
an increasingly sharp irony: Xerox has more lead-time for development
than anyone else! (I.e., they have PARC) The famous Alto went from
being a revolutionary machine to near-obsolescence without ever becoming
a product. Isn't this amazing? Actually, no.
Two generic industry fables for you:
Semiconductor House:
A visionary architect assembles a small team, defines and prototypes
an advanced microprocessor. Due to a lack of internal support, and out-
right hostility on the part of powerful marketing flacks within the
company, no support chips are under parallel development. Somehow, the
resulting chip gets to market, and (surprise! surprise!) people want it.
The company scrambles after a market it had not planned for, coming
late with its support, while its main competitor fields an inferior
product with better planning, and holds its own.
In the meantime, the visionary architect has gone on to a smaller
company.
Computer Manufacturer:
A hot young programmer, fresh from college, joins up and is handed
a relatively uninteresting project, to be developed under an operating
system that should never have seen the light of day. He'll do his
project, but first he really needs a good operating system, so he
brings up his favorite on one of the company's products. He's not
exactly rewarded for this, especially after the people who are
responsible for the previous disastrous system discover that their
previously well-covered asses are now bare. But when the operating
system that this programmer so contemptuously introduced explodes
on the market, threatening to become the industry standard, the
software department works feverishly to reproduce this programmer's
effort and exonerate themselves in the eyes of management.
In the meantime, the hot young programmer has gone on to a smaller
company.