Betamax Logic

"OK, well your system might be better quality, but buying that would be
like buying a Betamax."

Oh you've heard this one.  Windows is VHS - a bit crappy but it keeps
people happy.  Macs and Linux are Betamax - they start playing faster
and give a bit of a better image, but you can't get any movies to watch
on one.

The analogy has huge tracking problems and enourmous sound dropouts,
but why is that?

Let's start with people using the gear, and why they want to.
Homebodies were willing to shell out for their own video deck for a
couple of reasons.  First, they could rent movies and watch them at
home.  Second, they could record stuff off the telly and keep it to
gawk at later.  Maybe swap with their friends.  Make wedding videos.

They didn't buy into it for cinema quality in the home: witness the
huge resurgence of cinema-going once people realised a cinema and a
video at home are just *not* the same thing.  So the quality edge of
Betamax didn't matter much.  I mean a lot of people don't have that
good a telly anyway.  You're not going to notice superior sound with
one tinny TV speaker.

This set of reasons means standards were more important than quality.
And with two completely incompatible tapes, a standards war is a war of
marketing and distribution.  Video rental shops didn't want to stock
copies of every movie in two different formats - why should they waste
the floorspace when they could have more movies, or (what seems to
happen here) heaps more of the same easy-money blockbusters so they're
never left short.  I don't know the details, but I reckon VHS must have
won in this marketing and distro war.

Now let's look at who isn't using VHS.  Professionals aren't using it.
They actually use Betacam, a derivative of that complete failure (oh
right) Betamax.  Or 1 inch tape.  The grungy end of independent video
production uses either Hi8 tape or maybe SVHS for editing.  And then
there's the arty filmy types for which using any kind of video tape is
just a joke.  Despite VHS winning the home video front, lots of other
formats are roaring away in their happy niches.  And digital video
tapes like Mini DV are storming in.

So if Windows is the VHS of computers, what kind of sense does that
make?  Because a lot of people wanting a plug and play box have it,
does that give you a reason to build a web server with it?  Handle your
network mail?  Do your graphic design?

There's a couple of key differences where the analogy starts breaking
up.  They're about why people want to use computers.  They use them to
help them get something done.  Most folks don't want to frig round with
their computer for the sake of it.

So a standard is important. It means you can swap your work around, and
don't have to relearn your skills.  Means you can get software.

But things aren't nearly so incompatible as in video land.  A Linux
server will do email with Windows.  A Mac can produce web graphics for
viewing on Windows.  A DVD movie should play on all three.  VHS tapes
just won't even go in the slot of a Betamax deck.

You might think Windows has the inevitable edge in gaming.  Just like
VHS.  But it's temporary.  Look what happened to Sega.  Gaming
technology is moving too quickly for one company to sit on it.  Home
video does the job people are wanting pretty well, so no reason to
leave the safety of a standard.

This is like word processing and spreadsheets.  Since the Mac (or maybe
Xerox) defined the point and click paradigm nothing's changed very
much.  So it's pretty easy for a giant to offer a few baubles and sit
on that one - so we get Microsoft Office.  People don't notice so much
if it craps up on them occaisionally - after all their video deck and
their car do too.

It's not the same thing for servers.  People use servers to
communicate.  Like the phone.  And if the phone doesn't work, people
are going to scream.  If it's dodgy enough, people are going to go back
to writing letters or dropping round.  Because they want to
communicate.  There's enough problems interacting with your average
human being, you don't want more problems interacting with the phone.

The novelty will wear off.  People aren't stupid.  They'll realise that
what's important for a server is not that it runs the same word
processor they have on their desktop.  What's important is that when
they want to write an email to someone, it gets there.  When they want
to swap files, the network drive opens just like a local drive.  They
don't want to be told that a service pack upgrade means the server is
down for the morning rebooting six times.  They don't want to be told
they can't do their research on the web for a week until a hotfix is
released for a security hole.  They don't want to know.  It's as
irrelevant as what brand switch your phone company uses.  The damn
things just work.

Imagine a building full of people trying to get work done, frustrated
the server isn't coping with the after lunch surge.  Imagine hundreds
of homes shorted off the internet by a registry corruption.  Imagine
hordes streaming away from Hotmail if it started crapping out the way
the Microsoft web site does.  Hotmail (owned by Microsoft) did, so they
stuck with Sun servers after sussing out a switch to NT.

It's hard to imagine Windows straggling the divide between server
reliability and word processing jingles.  'Cos that's what NT is trying
to do.  It's like recommending one tape format for both home videos and
network television studios.  Yeah, like I can really see the TV exec
saying, "oh we better go SVHS, everyone else is.  It's the same
cassette as my VHS deck at home, so if my studio staff are off sick I
can work the presentation suite.  The viewers don't care if the picture
breaks up every day or so."

Maybe Windows will get there.  But it's Not There yet.  Windows
everywhere makes almost as little sense as VHS everywhere.  That's good
for software diversity.  And because I reckon the tools we use shape
the way we work and think, that's good for cultural diversity too.