“But our (bloated, useless, yes-men filled) Marketing shows that the American people WANT the kinds of cars we build!”
Yeah, I remember that. Trying to make that argument out of one side of their face while arguing for protectionism out of the other side. They deserved to fail.
Best revenge ever was watching my dickhead first Owner/Big Boss (of a computer company no less) buy out an Electric Typewriter Sales company in 1981. You know, the kind that sold for as much as the first PCs. Icing on the cake was watching all but one of the (all female) employees of that organization quit en-mass upon hearing that Mr. Good Old Boy/Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Factory was buying their company.
So why are all the PCs on the market today called IBM PC compatibles (or a descendant thereof). They created the PC market, and Apple was left to divide up the home micro market with Commodore and Atari and Sinclair and a few others. However, the IBM PCjr was a failure in this space. Once IBM PCs gained multimedia capability and dropped in price, the home micro market collapsed. Even when Eagle and Compaq and others started cloning PC’s, IBM was incredibly influential. The point they did drop the ball on was OS/2, though.
And by that time, the color was the least of its problem. In 1908, the Model T was a reasonably up to date car but then they produced them virtually unchanged for nearly 20 years at a time when their competitors were essentially inventing the modern car. If you look at a 20’s Model T, it was slow and fiendishly complicated to drive, wheras the same vintage Chevrolets, Plymouths, etc were cars you or I could jump right in and drive.
Due to Ford’s (and mostly Henry’s) stubbornness in insisting people didn’t need an updated car, they basically handed away 2/3rds of the near monopoly market share they had earlier in the century.
It’s a dual clutch transmission, so basically a computer-controlled manual. I think the main problem with automatic motorcycles in the past has simply been ergonomic-- it’s very disconcerting not being able to immediately cut power with the clutch, but none of the autobikes have come up with an alternate way to do that which isn’t just as much pain as a clutch. Some of the old autobikes were downright dangerous because of the risk of accidentally rolling the throttle when you’re stopped at an intersection.
Interesting. This thread is the first time I have ever heard it suggested that the Model T (and the Model A) Ford was a mistake. Or a failure.
The Model T and A were sold around the world for 30 years and in fact some of them are still going today. Crude yes, clunky yes, but cars which had a high ground clearance, light weight, and simple to work on if they stopped. In extreme a horse or bullock could pull them out of the mud and these brilliant cars would continue on their way.
With all due respect, I think its particularly harsh to include the Ford Model T as a “failure”.
Oooooh, good one! This is about the third time 3D has been foisted on us as the next great TV innovation. Until they can devise a technology that doesn’t require us to wear special glasses (and that won’t result in a TV that costs as much as your car) 3D is doomed to remain a novelty gimmick that resurfaces once per generation.
The Model T wasn’t a failure. Not updating the Model T to match changing consumer trends (and losing massive market share in the process) was a failure.
I remember the first Hondas with auto (1977?) and they were an exotic curious choice which most motorcyclists turned away from. It seemed like a gimmick at that time.
But the years pass and today its possible aged riders will welcome an auto bike. Especially if it is an auto trike.
What always puzzled me is why the Suzuki RE5 rotary motorcycle failed. It was revolutionary.
Although Alfred P. Sloan went beyond upgrades, into the never-never land of planned obsolescence; a business theory that’s arguably done more damage to companies and society as a whole than any intractibility like Ford’s
Exactly. The Model T was obviously a huge success that, like I said, lead to Ford having a near monopoly during the 1910’s. But the combination of laurel-resting and hubris associated with Henry Ford’s whole folksy ideology gave the other big car makers a chance to get established and take big chunks of market share. If they’d actually updated the Model T during the late teens and 20’s, Ford might have single handedly controlled the whole US auto market for decades after.
Yes. It’s an urban legend, but prodded along by Ford’s own writing that classic comment about “any color, as long as it’s black”. But as many sources have reported, that was never really true.
From Wikipedia (because it’s quickly and easily available):
Please observe that not only is it not true that the Model T was only available in black, in its first years it wasn’t even available in black.
One could argue that it’s Apple who has a “blind spot”, and continues to ignore the market demand for touch & stylus enabled devices that can be used as main computers for professionals. And their insistence that “nobody wants a stylus”.
3D may be catching on for movie theaters, but not so much for home TVs. BBC just announced that they are putting 3D program production on hold indefinitely.
Well all I can contribute is that this is curious discussion. Ford, a motorcar company which is active and known world wide to this day is nevertheless given up as a business which failed to adapt.
Duesenberg - yes, we can accept that. Glorious vehicles but a failure nevertheless.
Apple: clever but almost gone 15 years ago. If it wasn’t for Bill Gates and the Microsoft megalith helping Apple out in their hour of need, there would be no iPhone etc. Funny old world eh.
I would be shocked to see market research that says customers are asking for this, even older ones - it’s just some weird corporate tic of theirs. The DN-01 with “Human Friendly Transmission” was just killed off, the VFR1200 sportbike with sequential option has never done well, now the NC and CX. No one’s pushed this idea as much as Honda.
Is 3D catching on in movies too? I had to go see “Hobbit” in 3D because it was the only way to see it in HDR. 3D really does not add anything to most movies.
Microsoft seems to have a penchant for - if something is useful in a version of Windows or Office, they will either hide or delte it from the next version. If they hide it, when you finally find it, the panel that you it from use will be identical to XP; they changed the surface vener, but underneath it’s the same code.
Most companies have a serious blind spot when it comes to reality and math. So many - like Kodak, like the automobile companies, like Wall Street - seem unable to see reality and do math. The auto companies were totally unsustainable with the workforce and obligations they had to pay… yet they kept going, like a corporate version of Greece. Same with Wall Street and the junk-bond mortgages; airlines flying everywhere one-third full before the reality check of 9-11. Corporate executives seemed to think - “something will change next year and we will make a profit doing this.” Or, more likely, “even if the company goes tits-up in 5 years, I’ll have my golden parachute fully financed by then…”
Exactly. Interest in 3D television networks seems to be fading fast. There was supposed to be a 3D ESPN network, but that was recently canned. It appears that last year was the high-water mark for the most recent iteration of 3D mania. It’ll probably linger longer in movies, but I would expect that by next year you’ll be hard-pressed to find any movies being released in 3D.
Well, in the current technical incarnation. I hasten to point out that there has been a low-intensity market for 3D video for decades now, using slightly different technology than the current big-outlet buzz. I expect that low-level interest will continue, even if the currently marketed systems go under.
Genuinely superior to the mess of dialogs and menus that came before. User resistance to this is just “I don’t want to learn new things”, in my opinion.
I agree with that one completely. I do think people tend to protest too much-- the only real issue is that now the Start menu is an entire screen and not just a menu. If you don’t want to use the Windows Store interface, nothing forces it on you. (Especially in 8.1, where you can set it to boot directly into the desktop environment.)
