[ Thanks to steve
hill for this link. ]
“Most of these markets have a similar pattern of growth: a
hardware company introduces a device into a reasonably settled
market, said device is hailed as ‘revolutionary’ by tech
‘journalists’ and ‘celebrities’ alike and thus demand is high.
Shortly after this competitors in (or entering) the same market
want to emulate the ‘first’ product and often turn to free software
to reduce their costs and undercut their rivals on the shelf. Now
you may argue that the initial product is not always the most
innovative but the implementation of the technology often
revitalises the market. For example touch screen phones were about
long before the iPhone, but whatever you say, Apple’s device
changed the way people interacted with their phones and the
software on it. Next thing we know, along come a host of similar
devices, many of them based upon Android which is free software,
even if it is often locked down by the hardware manufacturers. It’s
a similar tale with tablets, how many rumours of ‘Linux based’ iPad
wannabes do we have to endure before we actually see one?”