Reply to: RE>RED LIGHT DISTRICT or GREEN LI
re: "I might direct everyone to Paul Reilly (Apple) some months who had the sense to ask Kinko's "what IF we did blah blah " and see their faces light up. Kinko's had fallen into the trap of thinking their range of choices were limited to the whims of printer companies."
Hey, Geoff, I'd appreciate it if you would leave me out of any discussion where you regard Microsoft as some sort of deity.
re: "Though Apple missed the boat again as usual (story of its life) on doing anything about this, it is a good point what some intelligent questioning can do."
Another chapter in your book on "How to Make Friends and Influence people"??? I think you better research your topics a little better as Apple is providing solutions for Kinkos.
I propose that we start a second mailing list for random tirades and non constructive comments and reserve this mailing list for technical exchanges on the protocols and standards we are putting forth.
Second anyone??
-Paul Reilly
Apple Computer
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Date: 8/9/96 7:03 AM
To: Paul Reilly
From: GEOFF at PAYPC.COM@INTERNET#
INTERNET4# Document Id: <v02140b00ae30bbe3fd2a@[203.7.176.162]>
Item 4026376 96/08/08 18:22
From: GEOFF at PAYPC.COM@INTERNET4#Ê Gateway to Internet/BITNET/UUCP
To: REILLYÊ Reilly, Paul
Sub: RED LIGHT DISTRICT or GREEN LI
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From: geoff at paypc.com (geoffster)
Subject: RED LIGHT DISTRICT or GREEN LIGHT DISTRICT ?
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Sender: owner-pwg at pwg.org
To: Rob Whittle <RWhittle at novell.com>, pwg at pwg.org
Cc: CRAIG_WHITTLE at novell.com, JKIGER at novell.com, KEN_ISLE at novell.com,
MEPSTEIN at novell.com, SCOTT_ISAACSON at novell.com
Hello Rob
MS *thouroughly* understand the user's perspective. How many copies of Windows are out there ? They also understand printers, or rather how printers SHOULD be. I know this 'cause I work on their printer stuff for part of my living. NT is rather cool, and coming from a confessed Mac and Linux bigot, this should be illustrative. I am not goint to debate NT vs. Novell here, 'cause that is a red herring.
They have also encouraged plug and play that should have happened years ago.
MS are welcome. They can bring about a healthy paradigm shift from the warped perspective I keep seeing in the minds of some - but not all - PWG members. It all sounds very disrespectful I know (sorry Jeff D :-)) but I still maintain that the biggest enemy of printer companies is their own marketing departments who know shit. They see their goal as making themselves immovable gatekeepers of information between users and the engineers (thus guaranteeing their employment as well). This increases the difficulty of information and feedback being heard, and slows down innovation and product cycles.
Some companies may eventually figure this out and have the guts to stop being so lemming like and put some highly visible engineer links out to userland. Imagine that. Imagine being able to get a good idea and implement it without committees and politics. It could mean product differentiation and closing honing the product to the market.
Could be too profitable. Too easy. Too efficient. There is something about large companies that reacts against innovation. I have never understood this, but I think it has something to do with the "we know best because we are being paid to know best and therefore must know best because we are paid to know best". Engineers passively accept this wisdom. They are intelligent people and I can never understand why this is so.
These are the same engineers that can spend $5 billion for an airport in Denver with little or no power points for laptops, and where there are power points they are so close to the groud so that transformers will not sit in them.
This occurs because decisions are made in offices far removed from userland and there is no link to userland except for some very stilted and random questioning. Open up the channels and be suprised at what you are missing out on !!
I might direct everyone to Paul Reilly (Apple) some months who had the sense to ask Kinko's "what IF we did blah blah " and see their faces light up. Kinko's had fallen into the trap of thinking their range of choices were limited to the whims of printer companies. Though Apple missed the boat again as usual (story of its life) on doing anything about this, it is a good point what some intelligent questioning can do.
Asking people for what they would *really* like or dream about - putting feasibility obstacles aside- is where all innovation comes from. MS is superb at this and owes its success to having a developer program where ideas can blossom instead of being shot down as soon as they are raised.
The PWG members, by contrast, have the RED light approach to eveything. You need to GREEN light environment to make innovation happen.
Again my $0.02c worth. Geoff Slater.
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