See subject. I think something to do with IBM, but far more applicable to Apple…
I don’t know the answer as to when. But I always thought it was fear, uncertainty, and DOUBT.
I remember hearing about it with regard to IBM mainframe sales in the late 1980’s. The saying went that “Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM”. This was an example of FUD that IBM would tell their prospects.
Let me see if I can find a cite… yes, it’s ‘Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt’
When in Danger
Fear or Doubt
Run in Circles
Scream and Shout
I first found "FUD’ (doubt) described as a tactic by IBM salesmen to persuade the non-technical higher-ups to not buy competing products. Technical people would be aware of the issues and problems with different and competing systems, but the VP FInance, for example, mught have no clue. Mainframes mean millions of dollars over the life of a contract. The sales team would go over the head of the tech experts, invite the executive level decision makers to the IBM country club with some of their big-wigs, and then tell them all the things that could go wrong if they did not buy IBM.
They would suggest quality issues with competitor equipment, suggest that IBM would make some big changes in their equipment that would leave software unable to run on the competition, etc. Nothing specific, of course, just the FUD that competitors could cost a lot more.
It’s analogous perhaps to the modern problem that when a new version of something is coming out, sales dry up ahead of time. IBM would always be mentioning things they were planning that would leave the competition playing catch-up but give them no details to work with. “Our equipment will be out a year before they can make their do that too…” The fear of making a bad choice…
I’m wrong then, about my suggestion of Apple, where I was thinking of its internal culture. Also on the “dread,” which in any case is also a nice third word.
Yours?
From The Hacker’s Dictionary:
If it is, he wrote it decades ago.
Amdahl put out its first product in 1975 and he apparently used FUD in that sense the same year. Fear, uncertainly, and doubt as a phrase had some older uses, but not necessarily about computers.
If anything, it was a term Apple used to describe Microsoft’s tactics in the mid-80’s.
That’s good as a joke, but just for the humor-impaired: anyone old enough to remember the pre-PC world associates FUD with IBM the way we see the USA in our Chevrolet.
Well, I very distinctly recall that term being used by computer magazines in the '80s to describe Microsoft’s strategy of discouraging corporations from using competitor’s products.
From Wiikipedia:
I didn’t say that nobody else has ever used the term or had it used about them. I’m just saying that if you’re over a certain age nothing will budge the association of it and IBM. Apple’s later use was a joking reference to the original and that’s all it was. In the olden days computers were corporate purchases. People could and did get fired for making the wrong choice. That just wasn’t true in the same way in the PC age, even after both companies sought the corporate desk market.
I remember a joke my father used to tell about the Big Blue.
How do you make a computer be a big hit?
Make it 1/3 less powerful than the competitors, 1/3 more expensive and call it an IBM.
This joke was in the 70s.