R
Richard Steven Hack
===========================================================
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?"
===================================================
BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
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?"
===================================================
BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!