Simplicity, plus why the Net was successful.

I Find Karma (adam@cs.caltech.edu)
Sun, 13 Apr 97 18:57:29 PDT

> BILL GATES SAYS "NEXT TARGET IS SIMPLICITY"
> Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, who wants the PC to take its place in the
> living room as part of an all-digital home entertainment system admits
> that the PC must become easier to use and promises: "I think people are
> going to be pretty stunned. They saw how quickly we adapted the PC to
> Internet standards. The next target is simplicity." (Financial Times
> 11 Apr 97)

Simplicity running WHAT? Windows CE? Windows NT? Windows 98????

> DON'T ASK RESEARCH PEOPLE WHY NET WAS SUCCESSFUL
> Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold says the development
> of Mosaic and similar Web-oriented products were social and commercial
> breakthroughs (and "fine work"),

Fine work???

> but not technological breakthroughs. "If you'd said up front, 'My
> research program is that I'm going to allow bitmaps to get transferred
> over this simple protocol,' people would have said, 'That isn't
> research.' It isn't!" And so what, exactly, has happened? "It
> turned out that a low-tech social phenomenon called the Internet has
> suddenly arisen and surprised people. But it's like asking people in
> plastics research why the hula hoop was successful." (Upside Apr 97)

The hula hoop was successful because they put in a little bit of sand to
make the experience more pleasant.

The Internet was successful for myriad reasons that have nothing to do
with its being "low-tech".

----
adam@cs.caltech.edu

Writing good software is just plain hard.
-- David Chappell, _Understanding ActiveX and OLE, Microsoft Press, 1996.