Re: Experience the New Windows

[Udhay Shankar N <udhay@xxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote: [ on 09:00 AM 2/26/01 +0530 ]

> I am not sure if you gentlemen are aware that this particular metaphor 
> originates from Neal Stephenson's _In The Beginning Was The Command Line_. 
> My mirror of this *extremely* fine piece of writing is at 
> http://www.digeratus.com/beginning.html

What the hell - I'll post the relevant part, for the lazy ones - don't let 
it stop you from reading the entire essay, though.

Udhay


MGBs, TANKS, AND BATMOBILES

Around the time that Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, and Allen were dreaming up these 
unlikely schemes, I was a teenager living in Ames, Iowa. One of my friends'
dads had an old MGB sports car rusting away in his garage. Sometimes he
would actually manage to get it running and then he would take us for a
spin around the block, with a memorable look of wild youthful exhiliration
on his face; to his worried passengers, he was a madman, stalling and 
backfiring
around Ames, Iowa and eating the dust of rusty Gremlins and Pintos, but
in his own mind he was Dustin Hoffman tooling across the Bay Bridge with
the wind in his hair.

In retrospect, this was telling me two things about people's relationship
to technology. One was that romance and image go a long way towards shaping 
their opinions. If you doubt it (and if you have a lot of spare time on
your hands) just ask anyone who owns a Macintosh and who, on those grounds, 
imagines him- or herself to be a member of an oppressed minority group.

The other, somewhat subtler point, was that interface is very important.
Sure, the MGB was a lousy car in almost every way that counted: balky,
unreliable, underpowered. But it was fun to drive. It was responsive.
Every pebble on the road was felt in the bones, every nuance in the pavement
transmitted instantly to the driver's hands. He could listen to the engine
and tell what was wrong with it. The steering responded immediately to
commands from his hands. To us passengers it was a pointless exercise in
going nowhere--about as interesting as peering over someone's shoulder
while he punches numbers into a spreadsheet. But to the driver it was an
experience.
For a short time he was extending his body and his senses into a larger
realm, and doing things that he couldn't do unassisted.

The analogy between cars and operating systems is not half bad, and
so let me run with it for a moment, as a way of giving an executive summary
of our situation today.

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated.
One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started
out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect,
but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one
day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled
cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was
something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original 
Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when 
bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely,
with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking
bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed
comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and
easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal
station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet
worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous
success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking off-road vehicle
intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no more beautiful
than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has
changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans
and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING
OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they
have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger
station wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along
more recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the
BeOS). They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better
designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as anything
else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which
is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic
domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live
there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks;
these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials
and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But
they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that
they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on
ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks
are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number
of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition.
Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety
percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons
or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.

Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing
only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station
wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite side of
the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, these customers
deride them cranks and half-wits.

The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut
who wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept,
at least for now, that it's a fringe player.

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is
staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with
bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible situation.
A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks!
It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles
an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is 
true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes
wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here,
and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening
to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers
to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"

<snip>

--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
     God is silent. Now if we can only get Man to shut up.