Olin Lathrop wrote:
>> People who need a justification for the failure of their software
>> love this argument (it is only second to the "failure of the market"
>> excuse).
>
> I agree there are far too many people griping about Microsoft just because
> they are a success.  That doesn't excuse some of the business practises of
> Microsoft though.

Yes, true.


>>> From my experience -- if you have a good product, it tends to sell
>>> itself.
>> If you have a product that people don't want (no matter how
>> technologically sophisticated it is), you can spend boatloads of
>> money on marketing and still not even recoup the development costs.
>
> My observation is that once a product is "good enough", the rest is up to
> marketing, distribution channels, etc.  Marketing can't compensate for a
> outright crappy product when there are better alternatives for a 
> reasonable
> price,

Yes.


> ...but it seems that being somewhat better than good enough doesn't get
> you very far except in niche markets.

The product I had in mind, is targeting a niche market without much in the 
way of competition. So I think it doesn't matter whether you're in a niche 
market or not, what matters is whether the product maximizes the qualities 
that are important to the consumer. See http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/


> It is possible to eventually build up a reputation of superior quality and
> then you can get away with charging more for it, but it takes a long time
> and lots of effort to get there.  Think of HP up to the mid 1980s.  Even
> then, others had higher volumes.

I think that a reputation of superior quality should be a byproduct of the 
way a company does things. I am strong believer in the theory that "quality 
is free". Shoddy work costs far more than doing things right the first time.

Vitaliy 

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