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Remember how everyone likes to note that Apple is never afraid to obsolete itself? Killing OS 9 to start completely new in OS X… Aggressively and constantly re-

by alanh 16y ago

Remember how everyone likes to note that Apple is never afraid to obsolete itself? Killing OS 9 to start completely new in OS X… Aggressively and constantly re-imagining the iPod… Replacing the iPod (effectively) with a completely new touch-based system (iOS)… beginning the revolution from PCs to iPad-style devices (they are selling as many iPads as they are computers, now). When has Blackberry ever really dared to cannibalize itself?

wallflower 16y ago
> Killing OS 9 to start completely new in OS X WWDC 2002: Steve Jobs presides over the funeral for 'The Death of Mac OS 9' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0
deepu_256 16y ago
Cannibalization is not the norm. There are many successful platforms which didn't go the route of cannibalization. Ex - windows. The OS 9 - OS 10 example is more of an exception than the norm. In the case of OS 9 everyone(even Apple people) knew it sucked big time. They tried hard for several years to fix it's problems or try to develop a new one. There was no way for them to continue with OS 9. RIM isn't exactly is in such a bad situation. Agreed that they need to woo developers much much more to their platform but that doesn't warrant cannibalization. They should continue innovating but should be more evolutionary. The bad thing is that for a long time RIM sat on it's laurels without much innovation. Good thing is that they still haven't lost the market share. They already moved from their strong place of qwerty keyboards to touch screens. Much more innovation is needed. Not just copying others but having a vision of the future and then aggressively executing on that vision. They did it once before which made Blackberry such a cracking brand. Now they should do it again.
- alanh 16y ago
  Eh, even Windows could be argued to have followed this pattern, with Windows NT. Different foundation. They did end up supporting the 9.x APIs on the NT platform, to create Windows XP, but the fact is they still released a “competing” version of Windows first.
pwpwp 16y ago
Why do you glorify doing something new and stupid, when doing good things well is what people really should be admiring. — Linus Torvalds
- Andys 16y ago
  Ironic, given my perception of Linux as doing good things in a mediocre way...
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    Apologises for 'wall of text'(tm) (patent pending) TLDR: move along, nothing to see here If you're one of the people who likes fiddling around with your computer, and having very fine grained control over the OS, then Linux is pretty near perfect. If you just want to use your computer to do work, if you want an integrated and unified user experience* that makes it easy to move from one app to another, if you are... dare I say it, a consumer, then Linux may be less than optimal. However, remember that even Mac OS X is built on BSD. Now, my impression of the Linux vs BSD spectrum is that BSD used to have a small advantage, but Linuxes large dev base has more than caught up to BSD and continues to pull ahead of it at a steady (if not spectacular) rate. It is not difficult to imagine that in 5-10 years time Linux will be 2-5 times 'better' than BSD. If, at that time, someone with good taste and a decent usability team went and did to Linux what OS X did to BSD, then they could bury the Mac. This is my definition of a power user -> someone who _uses_ the computer to do _powerful_ things. And I have no snobbery here, I consider programming to be (typically) a 'shallow' use of the computer, and I don't make distinctions between someone who does amazing things in Excel, and someone who does amazing things with home movie or music composition software. *You might imagine this is a not so thinly veiled reference to Apple users ... however I don't consider Apple to be 'perfect' in this regard. In fact, it feels like most of the time their usability/product design is mediocre at best, sometimes even bad or downright awful ... the problem is that no one else is even _trying_.
    - quadhome 16y ago
      In 2-5 years, will the "Mac" product be relevant?
gnufreex 16y ago
About Apple killing classic MacOS, it was really kill or be killed. They did it years too late, IMHO.
- philwelch 16y ago
  They had been trying continuously since the late 1980's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system)
  - isani 16y ago
    You could add Newton OS to that list. It was an attempt to do what iOS achieved: a move out of the Mac into mobile devices. Apple initially planned to implement a large number of mobile form factors based on Newton.
  - gnufreex 16y ago
    They also fumbled with MkLinux and BeOS, IIRC.
dshanley 16y ago
They haven't, but they are currently in the process of trying to reinvent their OS - with QNX. Except, they are launching this OS, but leaving all their Java devs behind. The OS launches on the Playbook with only C++ and Flash support if you can believe it. I don't expect them to have significant market share in two years from now.
martythemaniak 16y ago
For some reason RIM gets little but hate around this place (maybe because it doesn't make products for hackers and it competes with Apple), but I think their story is actually quite inspiring. Mike Lizaridis quit engineering school a early to found RIM in 1984 in a tech backwater. He struggled for a decade, but slowly built up the company over a decade to around 100 people. They then hit a rough patch and had a tough round of layoffs, but survived. 15 years after they were founded, they hit upon both a brilliant idea and execution. When the BlackBerry was released in 1999, RIM had around 120 people and sold 25000 of the units. Over the last decade, they have managed to fend off all big tech companies while growing into a global brand a major tech company. Meanwhile, Mike L has funded one of the coolest charities around (Perimeter Institute) and RIM has turned Waterloo into a major tech center. So, to answer your glib question: many times between 84 and 99, once around 2003 (replacing an old OS) and right now (with the move to QNX and webos-like SDK).

by alanh 16y ago

wallflower 16y ago

> Killing OS 9 to start completely new in OS X WWDC 2002: Steve Jobs presides over the funeral for 'The Death of Mac OS 9' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0

deepu_256 16y ago

Cannibalization is not the norm. There are many successful platforms which didn't go the route of cannibalization. Ex - windows. The OS 9 - OS 10 example is more of an exception than the norm. In the case of OS 9 everyone(even Apple people) knew it sucked big time. They tried hard for several years to fix it's problems or try to develop a new one. There was no way for them to continue with OS 9. RIM isn't exactly is in such a bad situation. Agreed that they need to woo developers much much more to their platform but that doesn't warrant cannibalization. They should continue innovating but should be more evolutionary. The bad thing is that for a long time RIM sat on it's laurels without much innovation. Good thing is that they still haven't lost the market share. They already moved from their strong place of qwerty keyboards to touch screens. Much more innovation is needed. Not just copying others but having a vision of the future and then aggressively executing on that vision. They did it once before which made Blackberry such a cracking brand. Now they should do it again.

alanh 16y ago
Eh, even Windows could be argued to have followed this pattern, with Windows NT. Different foundation. They did end up supporting the 9.x APIs on the NT platform, to create Windows XP, but the fact is they still released a “competing” version of Windows first.

pwpwp 16y ago

Why do you glorify doing something new and stupid, when doing good things well is what people really should be admiring. — Linus Torvalds

Andys 16y ago
Ironic, given my perception of Linux as doing good things in a mediocre way...
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  Apologises for 'wall of text'(tm) (patent pending) TLDR: move along, nothing to see here If you're one of the people who likes fiddling around with your computer, and having very fine grained control over the OS, then Linux is pretty near perfect. If you just want to use your computer to do work, if you want an integrated and unified user experience* that makes it easy to move from one app to another, if you are... dare I say it, a consumer, then Linux may be less than optimal. However, remember that even Mac OS X is built on BSD. Now, my impression of the Linux vs BSD spectrum is that BSD used to have a small advantage, but Linuxes large dev base has more than caught up to BSD and continues to pull ahead of it at a steady (if not spectacular) rate. It is not difficult to imagine that in 5-10 years time Linux will be 2-5 times 'better' than BSD. If, at that time, someone with good taste and a decent usability team went and did to Linux what OS X did to BSD, then they could bury the Mac. This is my definition of a power user -> someone who _uses_ the computer to do _powerful_ things. And I have no snobbery here, I consider programming to be (typically) a 'shallow' use of the computer, and I don't make distinctions between someone who does amazing things in Excel, and someone who does amazing things with home movie or music composition software. *You might imagine this is a not so thinly veiled reference to Apple users ... however I don't consider Apple to be 'perfect' in this regard. In fact, it feels like most of the time their usability/product design is mediocre at best, sometimes even bad or downright awful ... the problem is that no one else is even _trying_.
  - quadhome 16y ago
    In 2-5 years, will the "Mac" product be relevant?

gnufreex 16y ago

About Apple killing classic MacOS, it was really kill or be killed. They did it years too late, IMHO.

philwelch 16y ago
They had been trying continuously since the late 1980's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhapsody_(operating_system)
- isani 16y ago
  You could add Newton OS to that list. It was an attempt to do what iOS achieved: a move out of the Mac into mobile devices. Apple initially planned to implement a large number of mobile form factors based on Newton.
- gnufreex 16y ago
  They also fumbled with MkLinux and BeOS, IIRC.

dshanley 16y ago

They haven't, but they are currently in the process of trying to reinvent their OS - with QNX. Except, they are launching this OS, but leaving all their Java devs behind. The OS launches on the Playbook with only C++ and Flash support if you can believe it. I don't expect them to have significant market share in two years from now.

martythemaniak 16y ago

For some reason RIM gets little but hate around this place (maybe because it doesn't make products for hackers and it competes with Apple), but I think their story is actually quite inspiring. Mike Lizaridis quit engineering school a early to found RIM in 1984 in a tech backwater. He struggled for a decade, but slowly built up the company over a decade to around 100 people. They then hit a rough patch and had a tough round of layoffs, but survived. 15 years after they were founded, they hit upon both a brilliant idea and execution. When the BlackBerry was released in 1999, RIM had around 120 people and sold 25000 of the units. Over the last decade, they have managed to fend off all big tech companies while growing into a global brand a major tech company. Meanwhile, Mike L has funded one of the coolest charities around (Perimeter Institute) and RIM has turned Waterloo into a major tech center. So, to answer your glib question: many times between 84 and 99, once around 2003 (replacing an old OS) and right now (with the move to QNX and webos-like SDK).