Brian Zhang Larsen’s Blog

I was just looking in Shapiro and Varians “information rules” and found this rather amusing quote about network effect and positive feedback:

The familiar if sad tale of Apple Computer illustrates this crucial concept. Apple has suffered of late because positive feedback has fueled the competing system offered by Microsoft and Intel. As wintel’s share of the personal computer grew, users found the Wintel system more and more attractive. Success begat more success, which is the essence of positive feedback. With Apple’s share continuing to decline, many computer users now worry that the Apple Macintosh will shortly become the sony beta of computers, orphaned and doomed to a slow death as support from softwarte producers gradually fades away….. falilure breads failure, this too is the essence of positive feedback.

I guess they were wrong about the slow death at least. The book is from 1998 by the way.