I totally support PD in this crusade. I’ve supported a lot of their crowdfunded campaigns and own a lot of their stuff. All very well thought out products.
I’m also very upset at people who are buying knockoff products. They are the reason why innovation companies are dying and copycat companies are thriving.
Remember Digital for example? They were super innovative. Just one example: They introduced a 64bit CPU called Alpha in 1992! And also pioneered many portable technologies, like the first laptop with 1024x768 resolution and WindowsNT support in 1996 with hardware suspend/resume support. Close lid, computer sleeps, open, wakes up in less than 1 second. (This is years before XP introduced it’s shitty hibernate/sleep support.)
HP and Compaq mainly just revere engineered Digital’s notebook line, and put it on the market for 20-30% cheaper with shitty drivers. And people choose them.
It’s easy to put something on market cheap when somebody else paid for the innovation...
Compaq ended up buying Digital in 1998. And then HP bought Compaq later.
And we ended up with shitty notebooks. HP can no longer copy somebody. Well, it tries to copy Apple now, as everybody else.
In this story a source of innovation has died because of cheap people, who were willing to buy cheap knockoff products.
There are many more stories like this unfortunately.
Only buy from source of innovation, to keep it coming.
There is a fine line though, comoditization can be a hugely benefitial thing for consumers, too. If nobody had ever ripped off the iphone, would the mobile web and app world still be a niche thing for premium users only?
I agree that Amazon's blatant copying of PD is upsetting, but I also resent the notion that consumers are to blame for this outcome.
The solution is to change the rules so that we are optimizing towards the outcomes we want to achieve. Instead, we're banking on the unlikely outcome that lots of people with limited resources will all make the altruistic decision to support these nebulous ideas we care about.
I’m also very upset at people who are buying knockoff products. They are the reason why innovation companies are dying and copycat companies are thriving.
Remember Digital for example? They were super innovative. Just one example: They introduced a 64bit CPU called Alpha in 1992! And also pioneered many portable technologies, like the first laptop with 1024x768 resolution and WindowsNT support in 1996 with hardware suspend/resume support. Close lid, computer sleeps, open, wakes up in less than 1 second. (This is years before XP introduced it’s shitty hibernate/sleep support.)
HP and Compaq mainly just revere engineered Digital’s notebook line, and put it on the market for 20-30% cheaper with shitty drivers. And people choose them.
It’s easy to put something on market cheap when somebody else paid for the innovation...
Compaq ended up buying Digital in 1998. And then HP bought Compaq later.
And we ended up with shitty notebooks. HP can no longer copy somebody. Well, it tries to copy Apple now, as everybody else.
In this story a source of innovation has died because of cheap people, who were willing to buy cheap knockoff products.
There are many more stories like this unfortunately.
Only buy from source of innovation, to keep it coming.