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RE: Inside Redhell: Microsoft XAML Blogger Round-Up

• To: 'Rich Salz' <rsalz@d...>, Didier PH Martin <martind@n...>
• Subject: RE: Inside Redhell: Microsoft XAML Blogger Round-Up
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:10:16 -0600
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

It would be interesting if true.  It isn't true.  The 
marketplace favored Windows over MAC.  MAC was a superior 
solution at a higher price, so the consumer bought the 
Windows system.  MAC was a closed system so the developers 
went to the more open solution.  Amplification and feedback 
follow accordingly.  But the MAC has not disappeared and 
emulators thrive.  Apple did not go out of business.  Dec did.

Information ecosystems are not flat.  They are n-dimensional. 
We can characterize them as self and environment, but that is 
too simple a model.  Cost, performance, compatibility, availability, 
ease, these and more affect how a market chooses among the 
products offered.  It naturally seeks a sweet spot and remarkably 
finds it.  But it seems to me that the developers will 
be the early adopters of XAML or XUL, etc.  I don't see them 
being deprived of choice.  I do see them having to decide to 
market to larger or smaller niches based on all of the above. 
They get to vote but that vote isn't binary or simple because 
the applications they will build aren't and the competition 
is thinning out the returns.  As we say in my other life, 
"Tough room."

The really hard problem here, more political than technical, 
is that without standards for rich clients, we will see 
the fat applications play not just 'best on' but 'only on' 
and telling the world 'we just want to provide the best 
technologies' isn't going to work in markets that spent 
billions over the last twenty years trying to get out 
of that chinese finger puzzle and finally can.  Microsoft 
really should try to understand what drove the MID to 
the solution we chose.  If they ignore that, again, like 
Netscape, they have made a fatal decision.  I'm not 
being dramatic.  Failure to get the client right will 
be a catastrophe for Microsoft.

len


From: Rich Salz [mailto:rsalz@d...]

> You probably misunderstood Len, He meant "customer vote". This is the
> ultimate vote. You may argue that they didn't have the choice; they may
> argue that they do not want choice. Just think for a moment, why the USA
is

I did not misunderstand Len.  The marketplace wasn't even free to decide 
if it had a choice. 

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