Editorial:Betamax Logic

Matthew Arnison has written a piece on technology, standards, and an interesting look on the hows and whys. It's worth a gander, so if you're curious, read on.

The following is an editorial writting by Slashdot reader Matthew Arnison

Betamax Logic

"OK, well your system might be better quality, but buying that would be like buying a Betamax."

Oh you've heard this one. Windows is VHS - a bit crappy but it keeps people happy. Macs and Linux are Betamax - they start playing faster and give a bit of a better image, but you can't get any movies to watch on one.

The analogy has huge tracking problems and enourmous sound dropouts, but why is that?

Let's start with people using the gear, and why they want to. Homebodies were willing to shell out for their own video deck for a couple of reasons. First, they could rent movies and watch them at home. Second, they could record stuff off the telly and keep it to gawk at later. Maybe swap with their friends. Make wedding videos.

They didn't buy into it for cinema quality in the home: witness the huge resurgence of cinema-going once people realised a cinema and a video at home are just *not* the same thing. So the quality edge of Betamax didn't matter much. I mean a lot of people don't have that good a telly anyway. You're not going to notice superior sound with one tinny TV speaker.

This set of reasons means standards were more important than quality. And with two completely incompatible tapes, a standards war is a war of marketing and distribution. Video rental shops didn't want to stock copies of every movie in two different formats - why should they waste the floorspace when they could have more movies, or (what seems to happen here) heaps more of the same easy-money blockbusters so they're never left short. I don't know the details, but I reckon VHS must have won in this marketing and distro war.

Now let's look at who isn't using VHS. Professionals aren't using it. They actually use Betacam, a derivative of that complete failure (oh right) Betamax. Or 1 inch tape. The grungy end of independent video production uses either Hi8 tape or maybe SVHS for editing. And then there's the arty filmy types for which using any kind of video tape is just a joke. Despite VHS winning the home video front, lots of other formats are roaring away in their happy niches. And digital video tapes like Mini DV are storming in.

So if Windows is the VHS of computers, what kind of sense does that make? Because a lot of people wanting a plug and play box have it, does that give you a reason to build a web server with it? Handle your network mail? Do your graphic design?

There's a couple of key differences where the analogy starts breaking up. They're about why people want to use computers. They use them to help them get something done. Most folks don't want to frig round with their computer for the sake of it.

So a standard is important. It means you can swap your work around, and don't have to relearn your skills. Means you can get software.

But things aren't nearly so incompatible as in video land. A Linux server will do email with Windows. A Mac can produce web graphics for viewing on Windows. A DVD movie should play on all three. VHS tapes just won't even go in the slot of a Betamax deck.

You might think Windows has the inevitable edge in gaming. Just like VHS. But it's temporary. Look what happened to Sega. Gaming technology is moving too quickly for one company to sit on it. Home video does the job people are wanting pretty well, so no reason to leave the safety of a standard.

This is like word processing and spreadsheets. Since the Mac (or maybe Xerox) defined the point and click paradigm nothing's changed very much. So it's pretty easy for a giant to offer a few baubles and sit on that one - so we get Microsoft Office. People don't notice so much if it craps up on them occaisionally - after all their video deck and their car do too.

It's not the same thing for servers. People use servers to communicate. Like the phone. And if the phone doesn't work, people are going to scream. If it's dodgy enough, people are going to go back to writing letters or dropping round. Because they want to communicate. There's enough problems interacting with your average human being, you don't want more problems interacting with the phone.

The novelty will wear off. People aren't stupid. They'll realise that what's important for a server is not that it runs the same word processor they have on their desktop. What's important is that when they want to write an email to someone, it gets there. When they want to swap files, the network drive opens just like a local drive. They don't want to be told that a service pack upgrade means the server is down for the morning rebooting six times. They don't want to be told they can't do their research on the web for a week until a hotfix is released for a security hole. They don't want to know. It's as irrelevant as what brand switch your phone company uses. The damn things just work.

Imagine a building full of people trying to get work done, frustrated the server isn't coping with the after lunch surge. Imagine hundreds of homes shorted off the internet by a registry corruption. Imagine hordes streaming away from Hotmail if it started crapping out the way the Microsoft web site does. Hotmail (owned by Microsoft) did, so they stuck with Sun servers after sussing out a switch to NT.

It's hard to imagine Windows straggling the divide between server reliability and word processing jingles. 'Cos that's what NT is trying to do. It's like recommending one tape format for both home videos and network television studios. Yeah, like I can really see the TV exec saying, "oh we better go SVHS, everyone else is. It's the same cassette as my VHS deck at home, so if my studio staff are off sick I can work the presentation suite. The viewers don't care if the picture breaks up every day or so."

Maybe Windows will get there. But it's Not There yet. Windows everywhere makes almost as little sense as VHS everywhere. That's good for software diversity. And because I reckon the tools we use shape the way we work and think, that's good for cultural diversity too.