comp.sys.mac.advocacy

-hh wrote:
> Steve de Mena wrote:
>> RobG wrote:
>>> But that is just quibbling - the fact is that Apple drove adoption of
>>> USB among PC OEMs by replacing ADB ports with USB.
>> Hard to believe Apple's 2-3% market share would have had an effect
>> on the 97% PC world.
>
> In a manner of speaking, it didn't have that much impact, since
> there's still some degree of "legacy" I/O interfaces in the PC
> world.
>
> But by the same token, it was a precidence-setter that showed that at
> least some PC paradigms were obsolete, such as the idea that one
> couldn't live without a floppy drive. The $64,000 question is for how
> many more years past 1998 would PCs continued to have floppy drives
> included as standard equipment, had it not been for the iMac's absence
> of one?

With hundreds of thousands of devices, there had to be a method in the
PC world to install device drivers during the install process, so that
the setup process could access the hard drive that it was going to be
installed on. This was one major reason why the floppy drives
couldn't be eliminated, until the day USB keys and drivers on CD were
more common. Apple, controlling the hardware, had no problem putting
everything onto the install CD or DV.

> Ditto for other relatively similar I/O interfaces that are
> still only slowly disappearing, such as 56K modems, etc.

If you want to send FAXes those 56k modems are still indispensible. I
just bought one for my Windows 2008 x64 server, for use as a FAX server.

> This isn't to suggest that Apple has already made the right decisions,
> nor at the right price points, nor if they were premature -vs- too
> late ( ... the underlying argumenet here is inferring that Apple's
> adoption of Blu-Ray is "too late" ... ): the real take-away is that
> Apple does have a history, for better and for worse, that when it
> adopts new technologies, it tends to embracingly "jump in" to the deep
> end (and as such, must 'sink or swim') rather than very timidly
> dipping in but a little pinkey toe in a very "safe" and non-committal
> fashion.
>
> Very little real innovation actually occurs in environments that are
> so intolerant of any risk-taking. Of course, one can't exactly blame
> MS directly for this, since they don't build PC hardware - - that's
> the HPs, Dells & others. However, their reluctance to let go of old
> legacy ports in the face of very slim profit margins is a
> manifestation of their confidence in Microsoft and perception of the
> risk that is represented by competitiveness and consumer fear of "it
> doesn't 'just work'".
>
> Thus, here we are, 8 years after XP finally got USB support sorted out
> and a whopping 12 years since the pendantic "first adoption" date of
> USB in Win95 (2.1) and still we see that there's still some legacy
> ports clinging on to our PC hardware. In some areas, change remains
> fairly slow, as on a desktop unit such as the Dell Inspiron 530s, the
> 3.5" floppy is still available, but instead of it being included in
> the price as standard equipment, it is now a $30 optional add-on,
> which facilitates Dell using a lower 'starting at' price to compete in
> their PC-as-a-commodity marketplace arena.
>
>
> -hh

Steve