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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this book was hugely influential

https://www.google.com/search?q=innovator%27s+dilemma&ie=UTF...

And came to the conclusion that many firms like DEC and Xerox did not sufficiently move to new technology because their customers were not interested and didn’t feel served by it, at least not until it had decades to improve.

Today we have the FOMO dilemma where executives all read that book and no way they are going to end up like DEC or Xerox so you get things like Windows 8, really a lot of what Microsoft has done since then has been in the same vein. We’re yet to see a “big tech” company die from the FOMO dilemma but maybe 20 years back we’ll see Google or Facebook or Microsoft in that frame.

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This more recently happened to IBM (as a computer manufacturer). If your platform is not accessible to hobbyists, the next generation will not be familiar with it, and when they go get a job, it probably won't be with the technology they don't know. Then, assuming there is a credible alternative, the inaccessible technology will die out in a generation, as we've seen with IBM mainframes.

Yes, many companies even start with hobbyist tools. IBM proves that going all B2B is not a good idea.

The other end of the problem is Apple which is a consumer company, but they prohibit companies to use their hardware for building new things.

Both approaches suck for consumers and/or startups, but Apple's approach at least works for them from a business perspective.

> Then, assuming there is a credible alternative, the inaccessible technology will die out in a generation, as we've seen with IBM mainframes

Unfortunately IBM mainframes are still around. No new customers, but existing ones are too afraid of touching it because it's usually the result of decades of spaghetti hence they're locked in for the forseeble future. So they'll keep renewing contracts and refreshing hardware periodically. IBM prints money with this stuff, and use some of it for all their acquisitions of various software companies (biggest one was Red Hat) to leverage their massive B2B sales org to sell oher stuff to those existing customer relationships.

To their credit, IBM is still making zArchitecture chips that aren’t completely humiliated by x86 and ARM. Note also since 2000 IBM helped improve the Linux kernel and got it working in zArchitecture so if a business that has old COBOL or CICS applications wants to run some Linux apps in virtualization on the same machine they can.

The “CTO” at my small employer used this book to explain why we needed to stick with Perl and Oracle 9i in 2020.

It sounds like your CTO took the opposite message of the book. Well the modern interpretation anyway. But can't really argue with not rewriting working code, even the Oracle licensing is probably is probably nothing in terms of cost. Might wanna update to a supported version though.

Would that have failed? It still works

Well, almost the entire book is about how companies like DEC and Xerox just could not move to the new technology, whatever their decision makers decided.

I really don't understand the executives that read it and decide that "yeah, we are doing that impossible thing, disregard the sensible alternatives the book shows or thinking of something new!"

Windows 8: some people in the early 2010s (me!) thought laptops were cooked…. My hackathon kit from then was a dirt cheap Android tablet, plastic clip, Bluetooth keyboard and Bluetooth mouse. It looked so sleek compared to the MacBooks and gaming laptops everybody else had. I don’t think Microsoft was crazy chasing the tablet dream but I was the only one.

Meta Quest: Facebook has users, advertisers and all sorts of people who depend on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and such. Facebook knows that platforms like that fail eventually and doesn’t want to be the next MySpace so it has been struggling to get them into a virtual reality platform that, on a certain level, is well executed, but that people don’t have enthusiasm for. VR games for the Quest platform are pretty good but there are so many good flat games that I barely have time for them. I’d make the case that the 8GB MQ3 has enough RAM to run carefully optimized games but not enough for ordinary people to author content (some of why Horizon Worlds is dead: no way McDonalds is going to build an experience if they can’t import an SVG or PNG of the Coca-Cola logo to out in the cups and instead have to painstakingly make it out of solid geometry using the controller by hand… and the same is true for small businesses and enthusiasts) —- we are seeing 16GB headsets from Apple, Samsung and Valve now and maybe it will be better but quite probably it won’t. I know though that if Zuck gives up and somebody else succeeds he’ll have the most terrible regret.

Tablets weren't actually disruptive at the time.

That said, no, Microsoft wouldn't be crazy to make a tablet facade for Windows. What made them stupid (still not crazy) was to remove the desktop facade from their OS that sold exclusively to desktop users at the time.

Link to Worldcat book information: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1423132421

Alibris link: https://www.alibris.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-When-New-Tech...

thanks, gp's google link was unusable for me (apparently my activity is unusual)

I thought the Google search link was some facetious joke at first. I’ve only seen people share a search result as a sarcastic “lmgtfy” response.

It was an accident on my part tapping away on my tablet when I was out of town.

You see this happening right now with LLMs. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc are incredibly worried about being disrupted. But all they can really do is try to shoehorn AI into their existing products (OSes, search, social media), which is a difficult sell to their existing customers.

Ultimately, LLMs will probably find their place in a new product category instead.

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