Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 00:18:00 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Rahul Siddharthan" <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Mundie, Perens, GPL, BSD etc again Message-ID: <000a01c0f56b$4f4c9a60$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010613191818.E57154@lpt.ens.fr>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Rahul Siddharthan [mailto:rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in] >Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 10:18 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: Mundie, Perens, GPL, BSD etc again > > >I think there's an element of truth: there are people who like being >different, but they aren't swayed by marketing tactics. I beg to differ! Most people that claim to like being different all seem to want to wear the same all-black clothing, they go to the same piercing places to get the same steel rivets injected into the same spots in their lips, they get the same paint spray cans to put the same colors in their hair, etc. etc. etc. >They're as >likely to buy a cheap ugly statue as an expensive ugly statue (or >perhaps more likely). > >The people who buy the expensive stuff may be swayed by the desire of >"being different", but often not, because the difference is just the >price -- and in fact the quality too may be genuinely better. The >more expensive Bordeaux wines tend to have a better flavour than the >cheaper ones, while being qualitatively the same thing, but the sort >of people you're talking about would probably buy them just because of >the price, and to appear "discerning" to the rest of the world. > >Also, I think many people do actually like the looks of the VW bug (I >liked the old one, and I'm beginning to like the new one too) and the I liked the old one as well to _look at_ but I hated riding and driving in it and after getting sucked into working on a few friend's old heaps I hated working on them. I've never seen an engine that was more tempermental, had more problems, had more design flaws that just created problems, nor a car that required more special tools to work on than the old air-cooled bugs. The idea you could repair one with a kitchen fork was the biggest joke in the world. Once the engines got more than 80,000 miles on them and all the seals started leaking, nursing another 20,000 miles out of them was impossible. >majority surely like the looks of the Mac, including the new aqua >stuff (look at the number of knockoffs on themes.org). So I think >most Mac users simply find the Mac better looking and easier to use >than Windows -- they don't just want to be "different" (though no >doubt Jobs wants the Mac to be different). Microsoft isn't abandoning >that market any time soon, they want whatever converts from Mac they >can get. > The real point of my not-so-subtle jabbing is that if Apple really wanted to sell computers based on their merits, they wouldn't resort to a cheap physological trick of the translucent colors. Note that Apple never gave the userbase a choice. They ran the translucant colors and never offered black or beige or white as options. So, I don't see that the majority likes the ugly colors. If Apple offered basic beige in addition to the ugly colors so that the users had a _real_ choice, and the majority turned their back on beige, then I'd say your right. All of this is advertising and marketing tricks, and people generally don't resort to those sorts of cheap tricks unless their attempting to make up a deficiency in their product elsewhere. It's screaming that the casing is more important than the guts. Style instead of substance. This is just like the VW new-bug. VW could care less about making a good car, what they want to make is a car that looks like the old 60's bugs because the baby-boomers all have fond memories of their old bugs and want to re-live their youth. I only hope that with the introduction of MacOS X that Apple's turning their back on these kinds of cheap tricks and starting to concentrate on substance instead of style again. >And if you think VW has no competition in ugliness of small cars -- >check out http://www.smart.com (a Daimler-Chrysler company) >These monstrosities are plentiful on Paris roads, and expensive, and I >can't understand it. > Yech!! It looks like a sawed-off new-bug, or a new-bug that was rear-ended by a semi-truck. Thank goodness they haven't let them into the US yet. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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