Monopolies in IT companies

[Jun Ishiwata]

We can't deny that we , as computer enthousiasts are confronted with this problem. NVIDIA and INTEL basically took the lead and AMD was left behind (for now). The problem with an IT Monopoly is that the importance of creating a new and groundbreaking product isn't the premier goal at this point. "Our consumer is happy with the product that we've delivered." right? Why invest millions in new revolutionary technology when we can still milk this cow. That's what basically happened with the RTX line and the I9 9980XE. It saddens me to see that these companies are trying to justify these products with sentences like "it just works :)".  These companies and their idea's arn't ran by innovative engineers anymore but money hungry marking and sales people. It's not for the love of technology and cutting edge products anymore. I hope a sensible and healthy form of competition is soon to be seen to re-ignite the fire of these what once were , fantastic companies. 

I ran across a fantastic video of steve jobs talking about IT monopolies : 

 

[Radium_Angel]

18 minutes ago, Jun Ishiwata said:

IT Monopoly

The gov't (at least the US) didn't grant anything of the sort, these companies got there either by having a superior product (Chrome vs FF/IE for example) being at the right place at the right time (Windows) or having competitors that didn't see the threat from others and got complacent (Blackberry, Sun/SGI/Novell) 

 

It takes an extraordinary amount of money, brains and talent to go up against an established competitor. Look at, for one prime example, PhotoShop. Nothing else exists that is even close to it. Adobe didn't get there overnight, they got there by dumping time/energy/money to making it the best.

I don't fault Intel for the i9 series, it's tough when you hit the limits of physics to improve an already stellar product. AMD was terrible for too long, though the Ryzen chips seem to be making headway, Intel got to be the best for a reason.

 

[GoodBytes]

It also has to do with the lack of openness.

Chrome might have been better for a moment compared to Firefox... but even if Firefox is superior again, no one is switching, or giving Firefox another try.

 

We have ARM processor powered laptops, and instead of giving a honest try and see where this device fits in, this very community bashes the products because it doesn't rival Intel best CPU, doesn't have 2x GeForce 2080 Ti, and costs more than 300$. It might not fit them, but they are the ones that recommends (or forces) software and hardware to those who asks them, and their close mind set doesn't allow change. Very difficult to change.

[Jun Ishiwata]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

The gov't (at least the US) didn't grant anything of the sort, these companies got there either by having a superior product (Chrome vs FF/IE for example) being at the right place at the right time (Windows) or having competitors that didn't see the threat from others and got complacent (Blackberry, Sun/SGI/Novell) 

 

It takes an extraordinary amount of money, brains and talent to go up against an established competitor. Look at, for one prime example, PhotoShop. Nothing else exists that is even close to it. Adobe didn't get there overnight, they got there by dumping time/energy/money to making it the best.

I don't fault Intel for the i9 series, it's tough when you hit the limits of physics to improve an already stellar product. AMD was terrible for too long, though the Ryzen chips seem to be making headway, Intel got to be the best for a reason.

 

Sure is ! i use Photoshop day to day since i'm a graphic designer and i cannot argue with that. There is nothing even close. I Don't want to use Gimp or any other product but the difference with these products i think is that you subscribe to them. Whenever there is a new product you get it.. You don't need to buy a new product that costs 600$+- to get a marginally small upgrade. Though indeed it is your decision to upgrade or not. For me it's just that it seems like IT companies are not striving to become better or become what they always promised to be. We're noticing that with games too for instance Blizzard is a "monopoly". Whenever you say MMORPG , top of mind you say WOW. But this game has changed so much over the years for us as consumer. It seems like they've thrown away their core values for money.  

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, GoodBytes said:

or giving Firefox another try

Before Chrome was around, we had to use IE.

Then FF showed up and it was so much better it wasn't even a contest. But FF couldn't leave well enough alone. They had to go muck about with the UI, and made it (subjectively, of course) worse and worse and worse and worse. And they ignored obvious issues (massive memory leaks) in favour of...christ knows what, but it wasn't fixing the bugs. 

 

Then Chrome came along and showed everyone how you do a browser right.

Game over FF.

 

And now Chrome is screwing up, so I jumped ship for Centbrowser, because it's like Chrome was when it started, "it just works" (and the UI is the classic look at that)

Opera screwed up by being sold to the chinese. Palemoon ain't there yet (and at the speed they are working on it, it never will) 

Edge...well, it's dead, and FF keeps saying "look! We're different!" while having long since lost relevancy.

 

People, average people, do not like change, they get used to one thing (look at the UI for Win95/98/2k/ME/XP/Vista/7) and work with it. Then you pull the rug out and change shit up, win8 anyone? And people react badly.

MS can get away with it, but a linux distro, for example, well tread carefully lest you follow firefox into obscurity.

[Radium_Angel]

6 minutes ago, Jun Ishiwata said:

not striving to become better

Sometimes. Change is a risk. Look at the new Diablo, for phone only....that's a change...a bad one, and a bad decision can wreck a company. The more money at stake, the most conservative company leaders become. Some companies can get away with, be the mere fact they are leaders in the field, but imagine what would happen to WoW if their devs said the next version was going to be exclusive to...I dunno, the iPhone 5s for example?

Hell, what happened to EverQuest? Why did WoW surpass them? (I dunno, I'm asking. I'm not much of a gamer)

 

 

[GoodBytes]

31 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Edge...well, it's dead, and FF keeps saying "look! We're different!" while having long since lost relevancy.

And that is the issue. People are not giving another shot and assume things.

 

 

Quote

People, average people, do not like change, they get used to one thing (look at the UI for Win95/98/2k/ME/XP/Vista/7) and work with it. Then you pull the rug out and change shit up, win8 anyone? And people react badly.

MS can get away with it, but a linux distro, for example, well tread carefully lest you follow firefox into obscurity.

Even enthusiasts don't like change. Every single version of Windows has a list of people complaining about things. Heck, the next version of Windows 10 that is in the works, and I kid you not, Microsoft changed the default wallpaper from this:

 

To this:

 

And you have people who freaked out on this. To a point that they sound like they can no longer use their computer.

We had the same story with Vista and 7, people wanted the XP wallpaper.

 

And that is just the wallpaper.. how about:

• Windows XP new start menu not being like the old one
• Windows Vista Start menu not being like XP new start menu, which was defined as the best
• Windows 7 Start menu not being like Vista's and XP's new start menu, despite being the same as Vista, but yes a bit different from XP "new" start menu
• Windows 7 large task bar that everyone loves today, was criticizes, calling it a MacOS replicate (even though it doesn't work or look like MacOS)
• Windows Media Player 12, dropped the ugly look and crappy skins, in favor of a professional more consistent design look, and actually made pretty good thanks to the Zune team (when Zune was defunct) worked on it... people complained, they wanted the old look back... forget the Windows 95 look (which are people still today want it), I am talking about the older Media Player. Version 9 and 10 look. yet people still stick to Windows Media Player look of Windows 95.

And I can go on...

 

Just sad.

[wANKER]

2 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

And that is the issue. People are not giving another shot and assume things.

 

 

Even enthusiasts don't like change. Every single version of Windows has a list of people complaining about things. Heck, the next version of Windows 10 that is in the works, and I kid you not, Microsoft changed the default wallpaper from this:
 

 

To this:

 

 

And you have people who freaked out on this. To a point that they sound like they can no longer use their computer.

We had the same story with Vista and 7, people wanted the XP wallpaper.

 

And that is just the wallpaper.. how about:

• Windows XP new start menu not being like the old one
• Windows Vista Start menu not being like XP new start menu, which was defined as the best
• Windows 7 Start menu not being like Vista's and XP's new start menu, despite being the same as Vista, but yes a bit different from XP "new" start menu
• Windows 7 large task bar that everyone loves today, was criticizes, calling it a MacOS replicate (even though it doesn't work or look like MacOS)
• Windows Media Player 12, dropped the ugly look and crappy skins, in favor of a professional more consistent design look, and actually made pretty good thanks to the Zune team (when Zune was defunct) worked on it... people complained, they wanted the old look back... forget the Windows 95 look (which are people still today want it), I am talking about the older Media Player. Version 9 and 10 look. yet people still stick to Windows Media Player look of Windows 95.

And I can go on...

 

Just sad.

I got dragged into a 'meeting' before by senior management because we 'standardised' wallpapers. 

Ended up getting reversed so people can have their kitty on their wallpaper - was actually like I'd just shagged everyone's mother or something. 

[Radium_Angel]

6 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

People are not giving another shot and assume things.

It takes a lifetime to make a customer, and seconds to lose them.

 

3 minutes ago, wANKER said:

I got dragged into a 'meeting' before by senior management because we 'standardised' wallpapers. 

Ended up getting reversed so people can have their kitty on their wallpaper - was actually like I'd just shagged everyone's mother or something. 

People are funny like that. We have a user at work who insists on having pink glittery hearts on everything, gmail skin, wallpaper, etc.

We dumped the skinning (theme?) ability in gmail at work, and she lost her mind over it.

[GoodBytes]

12 minutes ago, wANKER said:

I got dragged into a 'meeting' before by senior management because we 'standardised' wallpapers. 

Ended up getting reversed so people can have their kitty on their wallpaper - was actually like I'd just shagged everyone's mother or something. 

The over action is funny, but in this case, I understand. No one enjoys crappy forced corporate wallpaper and forced screen savers, that says how the company that they work for is great. In fact, this causes a reversal. It reduced moral, reduces productivity (due to the lower moral), gives the image of the company that they had initially seen to be good/great (I mean they work there) to awful and nit picking starts (which start  snow ball effect and they leave, loosing valuable talent for the company). No one likes to be forced things. Of course they are some applications where you may need to force things or lock things down, like maybe student account in a school environment, or kiosks, or Point of Sale system where customers might see the wallpaper, and you can't start validating wallpapers.

[Mihle]

The more expensive it is to develop, start up a new company, and/or keep the service running, the more likely there is to develop a monopoly.

 

For example CPUs and GPUs is really hard, if not impossible to do a startup, because you both need lots of money and many good brains. It gets easier if you manage to find a new market to make something for tho, but it's still not easy at all.

 

Another situation is with social media or services, where it benefits consumers a lot to use the same platform as other people/people they know. And most often you can not keep running with too small user base without having a price that is expensive. The exceptions is if you do something different than any other company that people gets attracted to. An example is Snapchat.

 

And in the case of OS, if it's not capable of running stuff other OS can, you are just too late to the game (apart from taking some sort of niche). For a new phone OS have any sort of chance of winning, it needs to support apps already out there without requiring stuff from the developers. Today that means just using Android and make your own skin basically.

 

And if someone manage to create something that is better from startup, they will have to have the money and resources to keep it running untill the customers come. In some type of businesses, that is just to expensive or slow for most people and companies.

 

It's so slow because people don't like change even if it's better. Time is required to make people change their mind.