When the digital cameras first came out, they were pretty terrible. Low res, bad colors, small memory. By all rights the consumer should have taken a look at the difference in quality between film and digital and stayed with film. Certainly, if as was imagined in some circles, the average consumer was the kind of connoisseur that valued quality photographs.
The average consumer was not the kind of connoisseur that valued quality photographs. The average consumer wanted something cheap and simple that allowed them to take photos and skip bringing them in to the shop to have them developed. The average consumer wanted to have their photos on their computer without scanning them, and didn’t want to pay a Polaroid premium for instant shots.
Over time digital cameras got better and better until the technology was subsumed into phones. Few people are unhappy about how it went.
This is how these things go. An inferior good is made, competes with the incumbent on cost and convenience, and is improved over time to become the dominant kind of good. This is the definition of disruption. The software industry, after decades of doing the disrupting, is now being disrupted.
The consumer will be happy about it.
The average consumer was not the kind of connoisseur that valued quality photographs. The average consumer wanted something cheap and simple that allowed them to take photos and skip bringing them in to the shop to have them developed. The average consumer wanted to have their photos on their computer without scanning them, and didn’t want to pay a Polaroid premium for instant shots.
Over time digital cameras got better and better until the technology was subsumed into phones. Few people are unhappy about how it went.
This is how these things go. An inferior good is made, competes with the incumbent on cost and convenience, and is improved over time to become the dominant kind of good. This is the definition of disruption. The software industry, after decades of doing the disrupting, is now being disrupted.
The consumer will be happy about it.