There's a lot of truth to what you're saying, yet plenty of platforms, products and services with perfectly viable business models go away. The Apple Newton (for which people paid good money) was launched and discontinued in less time Reader existed.
Perhaps all the "highly influential taste-makers" who are asserting that they'll not trust Google products in the future chose not to buy iPods because of Apple's behavior. I doubt it.
At the end of the day, the "tax" that early adopters pay often consists both of higher prices and the chance that the thing they are investing in will never take off. Indeed, I bought a Sony Smart Watch last year expecting that it'll fail, but I still saw value in getting personal experience with a type of technology that I expect will be influential.
There are reasons why people are slow adopters and laggards, they aren't just Luddites, they want to receive proven value, and not waste their time on dead ends.
We are lucky enough to live in a time where the rate of innovation is increasing. There are more options, more value created, and also more dead ends. Perhaps some people need to re-calibrate how they self identify as adopters.
> There's a lot of truth to what you're saying, yet plenty of platforms, products and services with perfectly viable business models go away. The Apple Newton (for which people paid good money) was launched and discontinued in less time Reader existed.
True, but regardless, a not inconsiderable part of the value of a Newton died when the platform came to the end of it's life. A betamax machine or an HD-DVD player may still exist, but that does not mean a lot for their owner.
The people who bought VHS instead of Betamax aren't getting a lot of value from their systems at this point either. And I've bought, used, and thrown away multiple DVD players over the years.
Point of order: the hypothetical HD-DVD player to which @msabalau refers is not a standard DVD player, as you seem to have assumed. HD-DVD was a format iteration meant to compete with Blu-ray. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD
Oh. I was carelessly assuming it was a competitor to standard DVDs. Thanks for the correction, and no worries. I'll probably throw out multiple Blu-Ray players before I'm done as well. :)
I believe this to be a category error. The Newton is not a technology with a format that died with it. If it was no longer possible to press the buttons or use the screen on a Newton, or that you could only create lists of things that existed in the 90s, the comparison would be more apt.
There was some 3rd party development of applications, and presumably there would have been more if the Newton had thrived. But, fair point, it was mostly a product, and just potentially a platform.
Perhaps all the "highly influential taste-makers" who are asserting that they'll not trust Google products in the future chose not to buy iPods because of Apple's behavior. I doubt it.
At the end of the day, the "tax" that early adopters pay often consists both of higher prices and the chance that the thing they are investing in will never take off. Indeed, I bought a Sony Smart Watch last year expecting that it'll fail, but I still saw value in getting personal experience with a type of technology that I expect will be influential.
There are reasons why people are slow adopters and laggards, they aren't just Luddites, they want to receive proven value, and not waste their time on dead ends.
We are lucky enough to live in a time where the rate of innovation is increasing. There are more options, more value created, and also more dead ends. Perhaps some people need to re-calibrate how they self identify as adopters.