Entelligence: Heads I win, tails so do you
By Michael Gartenberg 
posted November 8th 2009 7:30PM
posted November 8th 2009 7:30PM
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.
That's a pretty sappy title. It almost sounds like I'm talking about summer camp. You know, where everyone who goes to camp gets to have a part and everyone gets an award for something.
I think competition is good. I think healthy competition forces people and companies to push themselves further, innovate greater and drive products to the next level. Competition gave us Windows 7, the iPhone, and a host of other technologies and products as vendors looked to up their game and compete. While I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything except perhaps Aaron Sorkin or NYC bagels, I also think fanboys (and fangirls) are good. I like people who are really passionate about the technology they buy and stand behind their passion. It's good for people to be excited about tech. So if you're a Windows 7, Snow Leopard or Ubuntu lover, I say. "Excellent!" Heck, if you're a Newton, Amiga or Vectrex aficionado and hate anything created past 1995, that's cool too. I'm talking about something else. I'm talking about a philosophy that says, If I win, then you must lose.
We've all it seen it a million times. Story after story written about how product X is a product Y killer. But here's the thing: there's no reason that product X needs to kill product Y. There's no reason X and Y can't both can't succeed in a given marketplace, each carving out their respective shares.
I understand that it's not quite that simple, and in the past, not always true. Some of this is historical. Look back at the tech industry and you see it was relatively small just a few years ago. There was only so much room for products that essentially did the same thing, and someone had to win, while others were going to lose. It's even true to some extent in today's market where there are finite resources. As we've discussed before, there's only a certain number of developers and therefore six
mobile platforms won't all be able to offer the depth and breadth of other platforms. Some might not even survive.
But there is a difference between a platform that dies as a result of natural evolutionary forces and one that gets "killed off" by a competitor. Perhaps it's a small difference, but I think it's an important one. Whether you're a vendor or a passionate user, tell me why your stuff is great instead of telling me why your competitor's products are bad. In the end, positive evangelism is the best marketing tool out there, especially in today's market with room for lots of really great products.
I have the pleasure to meet with and talk to a lot of journalists, analysts, bloggers and pundits in the course of a given week In the end, almost all of us want the same thing: cool products that make our lives a little better and empower us to do more while having some fun along the way. We'll take them from whoever delivers. Microsoft doesn't need to kill Apple and Apple doesn't need to kill Palm. There's plenty of room in the market for the best products -- gadget evolution will take care of the rest in the long run.
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net, and he can be emailed at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
I think competition is good. I think healthy competition forces people and companies to push themselves further, innovate greater and drive products to the next level. Competition gave us Windows 7, the iPhone, and a host of other technologies and products as vendors looked to up their game and compete. While I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything except perhaps Aaron Sorkin or NYC bagels, I also think fanboys (and fangirls) are good. I like people who are really passionate about the technology they buy and stand behind their passion. It's good for people to be excited about tech. So if you're a Windows 7, Snow Leopard or Ubuntu lover, I say. "Excellent!" Heck, if you're a Newton, Amiga or Vectrex aficionado and hate anything created past 1995, that's cool too. I'm talking about something else. I'm talking about a philosophy that says, If I win, then you must lose.
We've all it seen it a million times. Story after story written about how product X is a product Y killer. But here's the thing: there's no reason that product X needs to kill product Y. There's no reason X and Y can't both can't succeed in a given marketplace, each carving out their respective shares.
I understand that it's not quite that simple, and in the past, not always true. Some of this is historical. Look back at the tech industry and you see it was relatively small just a few years ago. There was only so much room for products that essentially did the same thing, and someone had to win, while others were going to lose. It's even true to some extent in today's market where there are finite resources. As we've discussed before, there's only a certain number of developers and therefore six
All of us want the same thing: cool products that make our lives a little better and empower us to do more while having some fun along the way. |
But there is a difference between a platform that dies as a result of natural evolutionary forces and one that gets "killed off" by a competitor. Perhaps it's a small difference, but I think it's an important one. Whether you're a vendor or a passionate user, tell me why your stuff is great instead of telling me why your competitor's products are bad. In the end, positive evangelism is the best marketing tool out there, especially in today's market with room for lots of really great products.
I have the pleasure to meet with and talk to a lot of journalists, analysts, bloggers and pundits in the course of a given week In the end, almost all of us want the same thing: cool products that make our lives a little better and empower us to do more while having some fun along the way. We'll take them from whoever delivers. Microsoft doesn't need to kill Apple and Apple doesn't need to kill Palm. There's plenty of room in the market for the best products -- gadget evolution will take care of the rest in the long run.
Michael Gartenberg is vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC. His weblog can be found at gartenblog.net, and he can be emailed at gartenberg AT gmail DOT com. Views expressed here are his own.
this article is a fanboy-war killer
I wish it would die. Engadget comments are around 90% fanboy-kill-fanboy, 10% actual worthwhile reading.
I think this whole article can be summed up in one song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTBPdVpdMc
And another thing I wish would stop: being voted "Lowest Ranked" just because I mention the name of certain products. Not making them sound wonderful, not making the competition sound bad, just mentioning the name.
No you nub.
The same person who likes BIG BLOCK 6 Barrel V8 with Ram blowers is not going to wake up one day and buy a honda civic and stuff 3 turbos and computer chips in it because Honda advertises that their car is the best.
Same thing here... Someone who wants to make a custom computer will NOT be shopping at an Apple store with a nasty H1N1 tainted $5 Cafe Latte in hand.
Hence the division of markets.
@bondsbw:
Not saying this is you, but...
Alot of the knee-jerk low ranking occurs to fanboys who feel the need to name their favorite product in every post, preseumably just because they like the way the product name rolls off their keyboard. Such posts usually have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
@Name:
I have no idea who you're talking to or why you're saying that.
If you're commenting on the article, I think you misunderstood the writer's point. I think the writer's point was that there is room in the markets for different devices from different manufacturers which serve a similar purpose. If you're commenting about the "positive evangelism" point, I think you're taking an overly narrow view. The writer's point was not that (to take your example) Honda or Apple merely telling a consumer that their product is best would be enough to change the mind of a staunch critic of the products of those companies. The writer was instead encouraging information and commentary on "why [their] stuff is great" and stating that would be effective marketing for the products. That is, people might be initially opposed to buying a product but might be persuaded by reading reviews, hearing from their friends etc. and reassessing for themselves whether that product is worth buying.
Well put!! Like in nature I believe only the strong survive and I feel this applies to consumer technology as well. The products that appeal and advance the lives of consumers will pull through, and well the ones that don't do it as well most likely won't be here in a few years.
In this market it's Safe to Say that android and apple most likely aren't going to go away and will most likely evolve into greater things. It's also safe to assume thT web os may struggle a bit more in the future and so may blackerry in the future. The os's I think will hurt most will be winmo and symbian and maemo. I think those will be the ones who will hurt more or disappear totally. Either way this article made me feel ok to be an apple fanboy. Ultimately I guess it's ok to b a fanboy, just not an idiot.
I think all Engadget Editors should read this article and learn from it, they are the ones who start flame wars anyway... and I bet that they enjoy it!.
Hell hath no fury like a geek's fanboyism.
Fanboyism sucks.
Maybe its just me, but it seems that the majority of the fanboys are the ones that know the least about tech.
Why do people feel the need to post THEIR own epinion articles at the end of there rant? Not only does that confirm that you are a fanboy, but just makes you look like a conceited douche.
Who actually reads epinion anyway?
Hopefully this article cleans up the comments section a good bit. Engadget used to be a safe haven from the typical graft that has infiltrated the comments lately.
@tmarks11
I agree with you, and they deserve to be downranked. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about factual statements that show little to no bias.
Ok, look at it this way. Take the following two hypothetical posts:
"The Droid is great."
"The iPhone is great."
At this point in time on Engadget, one of those will be ranked down, and the other will probably be left alone (or even ranked up). No factual data (just opinion), no difference in presentation.
It changes... a few years ago it would be a different story, so I'm not saying that Engadget is totally and always anti-Apple or anything like that.
My point... there's too much fanboyism here, and it needs to stop. And the down-rank should be used for "incorrect", "offensive", "poor attitude", etc. Not for "I disagree".
@RioRyan
if you listen to that as you read these comments, its almost touching. i love sentimental gadget passion.
Reading this article while listening to "Why Cant We Be Friends" was full of WIN
@ Drew
Fanboy wars will continue because people seem to believe that what they own defines then, making them better or more valuable than people who do not possess these things. An affront to what one owns is an affront to oneself. And let us not neglect to mention that if we happen to like things that certain fanboys do not, then it is also an implication that they are uninformed, have poor taste, or both. Of course, this is quite unreasonable and will continue to cause the unnecessary elevation of blood pressure in some afflicted individuals.
Gizmodo could learn a thing or two from this article.
Great article Michael ... after a long time i see someone giving a
totally un-biased veiw of the industry.
I wonder whatever happened to the good old days of just "reviewing" a
peice of hardware or software .... now a days its Everything VS !phone
and the winner is decided even before the showdown which was initially
supposed to be a Review :D ...
yay for competition....
I think the author forgot there are more than 6 mobile platforms now in the market. May be he doesn't give importance to the other platforms, but he may find that the platform he didn't mention may turn out to be one of the winners too!!
Any guess? Well Nokia fanboys know about that.
Maemo.
And there is one more which is Intel's moblin and may be more, which i am not aware of.
I think it it wasn't for the Palm Pre release, the iPhone wouldn't have gotten such a timely 3.0 update to give Copy/Paste and enable A2DP.
The only thing most of these phones are still missing is JAVA/ FLASH full support so we can browse Flash webpages and use chat clients.
As for "fanboy killing"... true gadget fanboys want to see the iPhone get knocked off its pedestal and reversal of the iPhone customers to some new device...thus far, it ain't happening cause Storm, Pre and Droid simply can't knock iPhone out. The fact iPhone uses OSX gives it an advantage pretty much no one can compete with except Windows but they are not releasing their own phone...they only release the software. apple is strong because it ties its software to its hardware and doesn't let other companies infringe on their designs at all.
I'd like to wager that 90% of Engadget commenters don't believe a word of this article.
Well probably, but I'm still part of the other 10% :)
I'll take that bet. All of those people can up or downrank you, and if I can still read your text by the end of the hour, you win.
Fanboys are and will always be a minority, just a very loud one.
Engadget has spoken.
I typed a longer, thought-out reply to this, but deleted it with a "can I be bothered?" sigh.
I've been doing that more and more on engadget lately. This place is a mess, not a place for sensible commenting on technology.
Wait, if you can see his post in an hour it means he was wrong and engadget actually embraces the idea of fanboyism being ridiculous. On the other hand if he is downranked then it means he was wrong and fanboys run this site. Make sense?
Sometimes that happens to me, too. Just about to hit the submit button to reply to another post, then end up deleting it after asking myself: "What's the point?"
I still find myself asking that question here.
@karlW
yup, been there, done that. c'mon people, just because this is the internet shouldn't mean that respect can just be tossed aside. imma say it one more time: respect.
I'm sorry. How does this benefit me?
It gives us cool devices to look forward to like the Courier. Progress is nice.
BTW, for anyone who cares . . . the idea of "I win, so you must lose" is called a "zero-sum game."
See, there's an actual term for that. You learn something every day.
:')
But the attempt to kill the other product is what makes the products better each product cycle. So the goal to kill is great should still be there even if it doesn't work. Right?
Not necessarily. What we're seeing is more choices for the consumer. Let's face it: EVERYONE has a cell phone these days, so why does one company need to corner that market? The iPhone is great, but Apple knows it's not for everyone (which is why they only make one of them). You can get a Blackberry, or a Pre, or a Droid, or whatever.
The problem is carrier exclusivity. I'm with AT&T so my choices are very limited (since AT&T is sitting on its laurels with it's current exclusivity agreement with Apple). I can't jump ship and go with a Droid or a Pre (at least until Sprint exclusivity ends in the next few months).
Congress actually started to look into the legality of carrier exclusivity before the health care debate took all the mindshare.
Well the reason this mentality of "killed-or-be-killed" exists in the market is simply due to greed. Every company wants to be number 1 in the business and roll around in tangible piles of money. But if they are less than number 1, they consider themselves as a failure.
But with technology it gets even trickier because of just how quickly things changes over time. A year ago, a phone like the Droid probably wouldn't have been possible for $200, but here we are today. If companies don't seize the moment and keep up the momentum, they will quickly be dethroned.
The one thing I can genuinely credit Apple for is that they timed the release of the iPod perfectly and have managed to keep their momentum going from 2001 until now. And that momentum doesn't even apply specifically to the iPod, which is even more impressive.
So that killer instinct mentality of the consumer technology business world makes a lot more sense.
Careface
"tell me why your stuff is great instead of telling me why your competitor's products are bad."
This can apply to a lot of things. Politics especially.
...except when politics *itself* is the problem....which is...uhh...most of the time, from an economics standpoint.
I see what you did there.
I don't see what he did there. I see no meme.
Politics in and of itself is not bad. Let's just be glad we can actually HAVE public discourse of political topics. Some countries are not so fortunate.
As Winston Churchill once said (and I'm paraphrasing):
"Democracy is the worst form of government . . . except for all the other ones."
As Simon Phoenix once said (verbatim):
"You can't take away someone's right to be an @$$hole."
i hate politics... it almost perfectly mirrors fanboy flamewars on the internet: single-minded ranting, bashing the other side, hopping on bandwagons, hate, and just general ignorance on all sides.
@ maverick
at least with tech there are several parties(OS's, devices, platforms etc...) and people are inteligent enough to pick what fits there best needs unlike with american political system people blindly put themself in 1 of 2 catagories effectively killing any chance of a 3rd party and the needed improvement of our country. Imagine the tech world without GNU, Linux, Android, Maemo or the many manufactures of hardware, our tech would be 230+ years behind like our government.
We're you not the one complaining about too many OS's?
Very well said... each type of consumer will buy the gadget that is in their desired niche of the market. Thus, the reason why all these different smartphones with different OSs can succeed.
I'm a fanboy of many things, and it hasn't brought me anything but disappointment (eg Star Wars, Firefly, etc). When something good comes along, it's good, when something bad comes along, it's a bigger disappointment than it is for non-fanboys. I don't think fanboys are good, especially not when it comes to products. They're good for free publicity/advertisement, but that's about it. I think people who are opposed to something are better than a blind follower. You're going to get constructive criticism out of them, you wont get that out of a fanboy
"Some might not even survive."
Hence the name, "killer".
Some of them may not survive, but not only because one particular product. It might just die off for reasons of its own.
I love the picture! it just looks so cool!