Inferior vs. superior.

["Michael Edwards" mje@xxxxxxxx]

                         Michael Edwards.

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[Norman Bauman:]

>With regard to the question
>of whether it was possible for Microsoft or anyone to dominate the industry
>with a technically inferior product, some economists were using the Dvorak
>keyboard as an example of a technically superior product that failed.
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   It doesn't seem to me to be an open question. I'm sure it happens all the
time that an inferior product wins out. Qwerty would seem to be an example.
Also the common cassette, VHS (so I've read), and Windows. They all seem to be
inferior things that defeated superior alternatives that either existed
previously or arose at about the same time.
   In fact, in my more cynical moments, I wonder whether, if something is
clearly superior, it is *less* likely to win in the end.

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>Some
>other economists were arguing, on the Wall Street Journal editorial page,
>that the original claims of the superiority of Dvorak were exaggerated. I
>certainly wouldn't take the WSJ editorial page on faith, but they did raise
>the question of, how do I really know that Dvorak is better. I dunno. Does
>somebody really know?
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   I would have thought that experiments conducted where some people used
qwerty and some used Dvorak would give pretty objective results. If large
enough groups of people were used in these experiments it would tend to
eliminate individual differences between different participants. I thought it
was an established fact that the Dvorak keyboard was faster and less tiring.
   And of course I would imagine that anyone who has learned both keyboards
would be aware of whether one was noticeably superior to the other. I've
already heard a couple of opinions to the effect that the Dvorak was
considerably better. I've never heard anyone claim that the qwerty keyboard is
better: the arguments usually raised in its favour allude only to its
commonness, its status as a universal standard. I suspect that, for any
commodity, there is a threshold of commonness that, once reached, is
irreversible and quality doesn't matter any more (very sadly). I suspect that
happened a long time ago with Windows.

             Regards,
             Michael Edwards.