Recently, yours truly assisted a friend at a recording session. The recording went well-until we needed a camera stand that we didnt have in our shack. Luckily, an old friend of us lived closeby, and so we went over to get the stand that we needed. And-oh wonder-our brand new Sony camera fit onto the 20 year old camera stand beautifully.
But why doesn’t every manufacturer abide to some sort of standard? For example, why cant each Opamp have more-less the same pinout if it comes in the same packaging? The answer is binding customers to a product line-if a customer owns hundreds of bucks in accessoires, he is not very likely to switch brand, even if the current lineup of the manufacturer is far-from-perfect.
Standards can work very well though-if the following conditions are met:
- The standard can “grow”
- The standard is smart
- The manufacturer does not produce a product that can replace the standardized one
Number three is the main reason IMHO. Palm does not produce memory cards(it just rebrands them), and thus they chose an open format. Sony produced its own memory cards, thus, its Clies were “Memory S(t)icked”. The same thing applies in many areas-only a select few manufacturers adopt open standards when able to produce an own, and those usually produce very good products…
How do you feel about this?
Related posts:
Content, RSS
Twitter