Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as he always is, his senior writer,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. This will only hurt a little what comes
Speaker 1: next more so? Alright, I don't have any idea where
Speaker 1: that one came from. Maybe our listeners do. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: from a movie I watched on Netflix instant. Don't judge me,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's leads us to a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from Dave from New Hampshire, and
Speaker 1: Dave says, Hey, guys, love your podcast. I was listening
Speaker 1: to your podcast about USB FireWire and in the podcast
Speaker 1: you mentioned the backward compatibility of USB versions. I hear
Speaker 1: these terms a lot, backward compatibility, upward compatibility, and I'm
Speaker 1: always wondering what do they really mean? How about demystifying
Speaker 1: this topic for me and my fellow loyal listeners. Thanks
Speaker 1: for all you do, Dave. All Right, Dave, we're not
Speaker 1: going to do a full podcast on this, we figured
Speaker 1: we'd answer this question quickly before moving on to the
Speaker 1: main course. But backward compatibility is a pretty simple concept.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you have a device and it runs
Speaker 1: a certain kind of software, and then let's say that
Speaker 1: technological advancements and processing power and manufacturing costs have come
Speaker 1: to the point where you can make a new version
Speaker 1: of this device that runs new software and can do
Speaker 1: lots more stuff than the old version can. So let's
Speaker 1: as a simple example, we'll go with a video gaming console.
Speaker 1: Will say PlayStation was the original one and PlayStation two
Speaker 1: is the new one. So PlayStation two comes out and
Speaker 1: it can run new games that the old PlayStation can't
Speaker 1: run well. Backwards compatibility means that the PlayStation two has
Speaker 1: built in it the ability of playing older games from
Speaker 1: the PlayStation one right now. People who like technology really
Speaker 1: tend to enjoy the backward compatibility um model because it
Speaker 1: means that the stuff they've bought before will still work
Speaker 1: on the new stuff they have now. They don't have
Speaker 1: to keep multiple versions of the same device because the
Speaker 1: latest one will run everything right right if you especially
Speaker 1: true uh I think of the video game consoles, because
Speaker 1: a lot of people fall in love with a particular game,
Speaker 1: particular build of a game. They're they're uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we were recently talking about the new version of Civilization,
Speaker 1: and I know that some people really like Civilization two
Speaker 1: and they couldn't stand Civilization three. So people would continue
Speaker 1: to play the older version of the game, and you know,
Speaker 1: if their computers wouldn't run the older version of the game,
Speaker 1: then they would have to either give up the game,
Speaker 1: or you know, continue keeping their old machine around so
Speaker 1: that they could continue to play that, or find some
Speaker 1: sort of emulator that would allow them to play the
Speaker 1: old game. That it's really what we're talking about here
Speaker 1: is the ability to to use older technology using a
Speaker 1: new device or software model. I mean it really, it
Speaker 1: can be anything. It's just a general concept. Upward compatibility
Speaker 1: is kind of similar in the sense that you design
Speaker 1: something with the idea and mind that future iterations of
Speaker 1: that device will still be able to run the software
Speaker 1: you're developing now. So it's it's really it's forethought. You're thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, I've built this device. I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that every device I build in the future will
Speaker 1: still be able to run the stuff I've got now.
Speaker 1: In case, people really like it, So it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those concepts that again is really popular, especially among gamers.
Speaker 1: You hear whenever a new system comes out that does
Speaker 1: not support earlier versions. There's a lot of griping and complaining.
Speaker 1: Nintendo is infamous for this because Nintendo not only will
Speaker 1: give you a new game system that will require a
Speaker 1: new kind of medium, right. You know, you might have
Speaker 1: cartridges in one system, and then you have many discs
Speaker 1: in the next, and then slightly different sized media for
Speaker 1: the for the next one, and they none of them
Speaker 1: will work on the other machines, so you can't play
Speaker 1: your older games on your newer machine. Sometimes. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: the we actually is a big step for that. Yes,
Speaker 1: because I only mentioned that because someone will write in
Speaker 1: and tell us that you can play GameCube games on
Speaker 1: the Wii and it will let you download games for
Speaker 1: the Genesis and older Nintendo systems to right that, Yes,
Speaker 1: they didn't make a big step in that regardment, right,
Speaker 1: But if you look at things like the the Nes
Speaker 1: Super Nes in sixty four GameCube, I mean it's just
Speaker 1: it's a history of not letting you access that older, uh,
Speaker 1: that older product without keeping your older game system around,
Speaker 1: which just means that you end up getting really cluttered. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that's the whole backward compatibility upward compatibility issue. And
Speaker 1: now we're going to move on, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a related topic. It's definitely related. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about early adopters and why they're important. Okay, then, so
Speaker 1: first I guess we should, uh, you know, define what
Speaker 1: early adopter is. It's actually, it pretty much is what
Speaker 1: sounds like. It's a person who is someone someone who
Speaker 1: will adopt new technology before the general crowd does. So
Speaker 1: it's it's the people who have to have that latest
Speaker 1: and greatest thing as soon as possible, before it becomes
Speaker 1: the most you know, commonly owned device out there. So
Speaker 1: early adopters are the people who moved to cell phones
Speaker 1: before anyone else did, smartphones before anyone else did. They're
Speaker 1: the ones who adopted the new form of like DVDs
Speaker 1: and CDs and and h D DVDs and blue rays. Right.
Speaker 1: He Actually the first Uh, if this sounds a little
Speaker 1: foreign to you, that's because this is not really tech speak.
Speaker 1: It's what I would consider marketing speak. The first, the
Speaker 1: first instance I came across of the term early adopter
Speaker 1: was when I used to work in marketing, and um
Speaker 1: it actually came and where I came to be aware
Speaker 1: of it. From Jeffrey A. Moore's book, which was first
Speaker 1: published in nineteen anyone called Crossing the Chasm and UH
Speaker 1: and More comes up with basically five groups of people,
Speaker 1: the innovators, the early adopters, the early majority, the late majority,
Speaker 1: and the laggards. Basically, the innovators to the people who
Speaker 1: are the bleeding edge. As soon as it comes out,
Speaker 1: they've got to go buy it, the first in line,
Speaker 1: the first day a brand new product is released. They
Speaker 1: don't care about the possible bugs. Um, they don't really
Speaker 1: care that it may or may not be a lemon
Speaker 1: or that it may not, you know, take off with
Speaker 1: the market and there's stuff that comes out that's compatible
Speaker 1: with it. Um. They just want it and they want
Speaker 1: it now. And the early adopters followed behind them, but
Speaker 1: not too far behind them. These guys, the two groups
Speaker 1: really make up the the people that marketers have been
Speaker 1: trying to reach with tech products really probably since UH,
Speaker 1: since technolog became such a hot consumer thing, and innovators
Speaker 1: can sometimes get hold of products before they even hit
Speaker 1: the market. That's true. We're talking about people who are
Speaker 1: so motivated to get hold of this technology that they
Speaker 1: form relationships with engineers or companies. Sometimes there are people
Speaker 1: who work within a company. For instance, Google is a
Speaker 1: good example Google. Google does this thing called dog fooding,
Speaker 1: where they encouraged their employees to consume the same products
Speaker 1: that they are building. So for example, the Nexus one,
Speaker 1: that the Android phone that Google put out on the market,
Speaker 1: that was a developer phone, that was an in house
Speaker 1: developer phone before it ever hit the market, and Google
Speaker 1: engineers had been playing with it for several months before
Speaker 1: the public ever got a chance to play with it.
Speaker 1: In a way, the Google engineers were manufactured innovators. You know,
Speaker 1: whether they had that particular personality trade or not is
Speaker 1: beside the point. They actually were using it before anyone else. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the idea with Google is that you can turn
Speaker 1: them into innovator types because, uh, they'll if they like
Speaker 1: the product, they'll go out and they'll talk about it,
Speaker 1: and then that'll lead to the next round of early adopters.
Speaker 1: And we should probably give some percentages here because you
Speaker 1: can think of the whole different classifications as a bell curve.
Speaker 1: So on the bleeding edge. You've got the innovators, which
Speaker 1: make up about two point five percent of the entire market,
Speaker 1: and then you've got early adopters, and that's an additional
Speaker 1: thirteen point five percent, so we're still talking about six
Speaker 1: of the entire market. That's it. You know, everybody else
Speaker 1: falls into either the early majority, so we're talking about
Speaker 1: the people who who follow behind the early adopters and
Speaker 1: buy it, but they're not buying it, you know, right
Speaker 1: out of the gate. They're waiting a while to see
Speaker 1: what the early adopters think. And then you have the
Speaker 1: late majority. Those are that's everybody else. I would probably
Speaker 1: fall into that category for most products. And then you've
Speaker 1: got the laggards, who are the people who they'll buy
Speaker 1: something once it becomes clear that the stuff they they
Speaker 1: own will no longer work for them. Yes, so that
Speaker 1: these are the people who will eventually break down and
Speaker 1: buy a cell phone just because everyone else has one
Speaker 1: and they are, you know there they need one now,
Speaker 1: Or they'll finally go out and they'll they'll buy a
Speaker 1: video game system long after it's been off the market
Speaker 1: because now it's being sold and used game stores and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, I've always wanted to play this, but
Speaker 1: I never had the drive to actually go out and
Speaker 1: buy one when it was on the market for real zes. Um,
Speaker 1: go ahead, I'm sorry, And now I was gonna reference
Speaker 1: back to uh to the chasm here. Chasm for those
Speaker 1: of you who are unfamiliar with the word are because
Speaker 1: we do have a lot of people who may not
Speaker 1: know is a is a gap. So traditionally they're, at
Speaker 1: least according to uh More's thinking, there is a gap
Speaker 1: in between the early adopters and the early majority, and
Speaker 1: the trick for marketers is to get people in the
Speaker 1: early majority to buy it. So they want to, the
Speaker 1: marketers and the product engineers want to cross the chasm
Speaker 1: between just this small, you know, sixteen percent population of
Speaker 1: the market to everybody else. And basically they figure, hey,
Speaker 1: if I can get all these people to take it
Speaker 1: on and start using it, then they'll start spreading you know,
Speaker 1: word of mouth. But we have to get people talking
Speaker 1: about this thing. Otherwise it's only going to you know,
Speaker 1: reach the scent of the market and we'll be trying
Speaker 1: to create a brand new product something else to sell
Speaker 1: to people. So they want to they want to bridge
Speaker 1: that gap, and that's where the title of that book
Speaker 1: comes from and for the most part, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's been a pretty it's played out pretty well, pretty
Speaker 1: true to form. Yeah, what's interesting to me is I
Speaker 1: read a some survey results from Roger's Consulting. They they
Speaker 1: got a famous, uh survey on this back in the
Speaker 1: eighties and it's still kind of something that holds true today. Uh.
Speaker 1: They found in their survey that fifty of early adopters
Speaker 1: held either a master's degree or a PhD. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about people who have reached a high level of education. Um,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of They normally have a lot
Speaker 1: of income they can dispose of. Because that's why the
Speaker 1: things about being an early adopters. It means that you're
Speaker 1: buying the technology back when it first premieres. It's usually
Speaker 1: when it's the most expensive, and you have to you
Speaker 1: have to be willing to take a risk. Right, you're
Speaker 1: going to be investing in a technology. There's no guarantee
Speaker 1: that technology is going to be successful yet, so you're
Speaker 1: spending a good deal of money on a product that
Speaker 1: may not succeed and may not be supported for very long. So,
Speaker 1: so these people are are highly educated and they are
Speaker 1: risk takers and they have lots of money, kind of
Speaker 1: the people I want to hang out with. Well, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's very challenging to reach past the early adopter
Speaker 1: segment for different people, and they're looking at in different ways.
Speaker 1: The venture capitalists who are the people that fund brand
Speaker 1: new companies UM are looking are constantly looking for a
Speaker 1: way to reach past the early majority because they want
Speaker 1: to fund stuff that's going to make them lots and
Speaker 1: lots of money. Now, a brand new startup developer making
Speaker 1: a software or hardware product is really not concerned with
Speaker 1: reaching the early majority because they want to read. They
Speaker 1: want to reach the innovators. They get them to start
Speaker 1: buying it, and they have the early adopters start buying
Speaker 1: it and hopefully after that. I mean, they're not really
Speaker 1: worried about this. And this is this is actually what
Speaker 1: I got from reading Alexis Cold's article on Read Write
Speaker 1: Web not too long ago. But I thought it was
Speaker 1: funny because we started talking about doing this podcast and
Speaker 1: he just wrote this this article about it. UM. He
Speaker 1: actually used the example of the iPod as something like that. Now,
Speaker 1: Apple didn't have that same problem because people knew who
Speaker 1: Apple was. UM. Of course, at the time the iPod,
Speaker 1: they were still still regaining some credibility after several bad
Speaker 1: years of products where they were losing market share for
Speaker 1: the computers. They really didn't have any other consumer like
Speaker 1: tronics on the market other than the computers at the time, um,
Speaker 1: but they had something brand new. They had an MP
Speaker 1: three player, and they were entering a market that already
Speaker 1: had other people in it, in the MP three three
Speaker 1: player market. But what they did, they came up with
Speaker 1: a pretty product. You know, people pick on Apple for
Speaker 1: having pretty products, but you know, that helped them cross
Speaker 1: from the early adopters to the early majority, because that
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that people liked about it.
Speaker 1: That and the fact that it was easy to use,
Speaker 1: and with each new version of the product that it
Speaker 1: became more powerful, and that helped them move past the
Speaker 1: early adopters. One of the things Apple built into the
Speaker 1: iPod is something that tends to frustrate early adopters, but
Speaker 1: it's very pleasing to the majority, which is that, you know,
Speaker 1: you remove a lot of the choice, a lot of
Speaker 1: the freedom out of your product. So the product works
Speaker 1: really well, but it works really well in the specific
Speaker 1: way and and outside of that specific way. It either
Speaker 1: does not work well or it doesn't work at all.
Speaker 1: In other words, you may not be able to use
Speaker 1: it out side of the way they intend you to
Speaker 1: use it. And for early adopters and innovators this can
Speaker 1: be frustrating because they're they're kind of looking for the
Speaker 1: device that will let them do pretty much anything. The
Speaker 1: majority they want something that works, and they want something
Speaker 1: that works in a specific way. So a music player,
Speaker 1: they want a music player that's gonna work really well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna make it easy for them to organize their music. Um,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily concerned about customizing that experience or opening
Speaker 1: it up any They may or may not even be
Speaker 1: aware of the limitations of the device. Yeah, it just
Speaker 1: matters that it looks nice and it works. And uh
Speaker 1: actually Clive Thompson over at Wired had a really good
Speaker 1: article too. Yeah. I was going to mention that targeting
Speaker 1: late adopters. Yeah, and this is one thing that I
Speaker 1: had not considered before. Um, to go back to Scold's point,
Speaker 1: another problem is that some people, some early adopters, adopt
Speaker 1: stuff and give it up before the early majority reaches it.
Speaker 1: So some things are dying more quickly than others simply
Speaker 1: because the early adopters tried out they like it, but
Speaker 1: then there's another new thing that comes out right on
Speaker 1: its heels and they buy it instead, and so they
Speaker 1: never the word of mouth never gets going, and they
Speaker 1: never really sell a lot of them. But in uh,
Speaker 1: in Thompson's article, that's a completely different thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's a completely different way of look. He's
Speaker 1: he's suggesting that by ignoring the laggards, you are essentially
Speaker 1: counting out of the market, which is a huge number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just adding a few people from the laggards category
Speaker 1: into the market for your device would really boost sales
Speaker 1: quite a bit. And so how would you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: Thompson's point is that that laggards are not necessarily always laggards.
Speaker 1: They can leap frog technologies and then not the not
Speaker 1: the company leap frog, but they actually jump over generations
Speaker 1: of technologies and then adopt the latest thing once whatever
Speaker 1: it is they possess is no longer really viable. The
Speaker 1: example Thompson uses is he says, take a person who
Speaker 1: has a walkman, an old Sony Walkman cassette player. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they're happy with it, and they don't have and
Speaker 1: they don't see any reason to change from the Sony
Speaker 1: Walkman until so they skip over the CD revolution. They
Speaker 1: don't they don't go into CDs, they don't go into
Speaker 1: the mini discs or anything like that because the Walkman
Speaker 1: still works fine. Then eventually MP three players come out,
Speaker 1: and then you have the person who has the Sony
Speaker 1: Walkman either realizes that they are hopelessly out of date
Speaker 1: and they want to catch up, or their device no
Speaker 1: longer works because the wear and tear is finally worn
Speaker 1: it down, or if you're talking about cassettes, you can
Speaker 1: also just make the argument of the formats no longer
Speaker 1: really supported anywhere. You can't it's hard to get music
Speaker 1: on cassette now. So if in that case the laggard
Speaker 1: will go out and buy something, well, the lagger is
Speaker 1: not going to go out and buy a CD player
Speaker 1: or a mini disc playerlagger it will go out and
Speaker 1: buy an MP three player, which means that temporarily your
Speaker 1: laggard has switched from laggard to early adopter. So Thompson's
Speaker 1: point is that people who are in these categories aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily always in the same categories. Situation might come up
Speaker 1: where someone behaves as if they are in the early
Speaker 1: adopter category when normally they would be in one of
Speaker 1: the other ones. So Thompson's point is that manufacturers should
Speaker 1: try and find ways to market to these people, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we know that this product that you have
Speaker 1: that you love is great and all, but really what
Speaker 1: you want is this new product because it does all
Speaker 1: the things your old one does, but it does it
Speaker 1: better and you've got more options and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: That's the sort of message you need to give to
Speaker 1: the Lacquard's Uh. Thompson doesn't really go into detail about
Speaker 1: how to achieve that, because that's not really the point,
Speaker 1: the point being that, you know, you can't ignore this
Speaker 1: segment of the market because that's money gone to waste.
Speaker 1: I can actually give you a personal example to UM.
Speaker 1: I we picked up a standard definition television back around
Speaker 1: two thousand or so. UM that you know, it was
Speaker 1: much bigger than the one that we had, and we
Speaker 1: really liked it. At the time. High definition television is really, really,
Speaker 1: really really expensive, at least as far as my income
Speaker 1: was concerned. UM. And then you know, I still consider
Speaker 1: them somewhat expensive. But it's funny because you know, my
Speaker 1: wife and I have talked about the possibility of getting
Speaker 1: a high definition television. Now now that I do tech
Speaker 1: stuff and I do a lot of research on these things. UM,
Speaker 1: I've started looking at the ads and going, well, you know,
Speaker 1: these high def televisions have a hundred twenty hurts refresh rates. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe I should wait until the two forty hurts refresh
Speaker 1: rates are cheap, you know, And it's it's the same.
Speaker 1: And I actually reading Thompson's article, I saw that in myself,
Speaker 1: thinking we'll see. Now I'm waiting for the you know
Speaker 1: what is currently the uh, the higher standard. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for that to come down in price, so you
Speaker 1: know when I finally do, because my current TV works fine,
Speaker 1: it looks it looks fine to have a nice signal
Speaker 1: coming in UM, and I don't have to have high def.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking, well, maybe I should wait. And I
Speaker 1: thought about it, and of course I don't fall true
Speaker 1: to exactly to to his because then I would have
Speaker 1: purchased a two forty hurts TV and become an innovator
Speaker 1: or early adopter of that technology. But still, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of people who go,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing I got works. I don't really
Speaker 1: need to fork over a couple of thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: this next big thing that's come out. I'm gonna wait
Speaker 1: until it comes down in price, and I you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll be even something newer out that I like
Speaker 1: even better. And that's that's another reason why early adopters
Speaker 1: are important. Early adopters will go out and they'll they
Speaker 1: have the income and the desire to purchase these products,
Speaker 1: right A lot of them do. Right. Well, if you're
Speaker 1: an early adopter, you better have the income because you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be an early adopter for long unless you're
Speaker 1: an early steeler. You mean, like the people who paid
Speaker 1: five six hundred dollars for a CD player or or
Speaker 1: four hundred or six hundred dollars for an iPhone they
Speaker 1: first came out. It's a good example. In fact, we'll
Speaker 1: get into that a little bit um. But early adopters,
Speaker 1: what they'll do is they'll go out and they'll purchase
Speaker 1: this technology. It tends to be pretty high in price, um,
Speaker 1: but that can give an indication of which technology is
Speaker 1: going to end up being successful, which means companies can
Speaker 1: invest in manufacturing processes and bring the cost of manufacture down,
Speaker 1: which means they can then in turn drop prices without
Speaker 1: hurting their profit margin too much, which means the rest
Speaker 1: of us can get our hands on it because we
Speaker 1: we couldn't afford a CD player when it first came out,
Speaker 1: but a year and a half or two years later,
Speaker 1: the price had dropped to the point where it was
Speaker 1: now reasonable. Uh. That tends to be the case, but
Speaker 1: it also means that early adopters run the risk of
Speaker 1: purchasing a product that never really takes off and therefore
Speaker 1: never drops in price and and ends up losing support quickly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some examples of this with their their tons. I know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking of first, though, what's that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that you're going to the h d DVD route. HD
Speaker 1: DVD is a really good example. Beta Max would be
Speaker 1: an other one, because those two have some a lot
Speaker 1: of parallels. The HDDVD and Beta max stories. These are
Speaker 1: two different formats for video. You know, it's video recording
Speaker 1: and playback. Actually for for Beta Max, technically it's just playback.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, you would the early adopters went
Speaker 1: now bought these things, and you could argue that one
Speaker 1: was better than the other. For example, in Beta max,
Speaker 1: it's big component was VH. Our opponent rather was VHS,
Speaker 1: so you had two different technologies. Early adopters adopted both.
Speaker 1: VHS ended up being successful. HDDVD you had HDDVD versus
Speaker 1: blu ray, and blu ray ended up surviving. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say be successful. But there are arguments now that
Speaker 1: blue ray. In fact, Microsoft at the time that we're
Speaker 1: recording this podcast this week and executive over at Microsoft
Speaker 1: proclaimed blue ray to be dead. Now, granted, keep in
Speaker 1: mind that's a Microsoft executive and blu ray is a
Speaker 1: Sony technology. That that is correct, So you could argue
Speaker 1: that perhaps they're saying blu ray is dead because they
Speaker 1: have an interest in blue ray not being around anymore. Yes,
Speaker 1: but they're not offering a competing technology. They're actually saying
Speaker 1: that they believe streaming right will take over instead. And
Speaker 1: that's I'm sure that that is making some people in
Speaker 1: the majority and Laggard's pause before adopting blue ray. I'm
Speaker 1: one of them, someone who has not yet adopted the
Speaker 1: blue ray format because streaming is a possible alternative, and
Speaker 1: at any rate, the early adopters who adopted either Beta
Speaker 1: max or HD DVD soon discovered that their product was
Speaker 1: no longer being supported by manufacturers, and so you had
Speaker 1: a very limited library that you could go to, and
Speaker 1: then you know, it was just taking up space that
Speaker 1: There's a huge history of technology that falls into this category.
Speaker 1: I mean video gaming consoles alone. You heard in our
Speaker 1: History of Video Games podcast how many old consoles we
Speaker 1: listed that you may not have ever heard of before
Speaker 1: because they never took off. You know, the Atari ended
Speaker 1: up becoming the dominant video game system of the early
Speaker 1: late seventies early eighties, and the others like Clico Vision
Speaker 1: UH and in television were able to compete a little bit.
Speaker 1: But beyond those three you probably hadn't heard very many
Speaker 1: of the other names we've listed. Early adopters might have
Speaker 1: bought them, but the majority never moved to them and
Speaker 1: they ended up dying. So really, the early adopters are
Speaker 1: hurting because of that. The other big hurt is when
Speaker 1: you are an early adopter, you go out and you
Speaker 1: buy something, and then a couple of months later the
Speaker 1: price drops dramatically and you think I'm being penalized for
Speaker 1: supporting this company. Yes, um, And the big example there
Speaker 1: would be the iPhone, Apple iPhones. So Apple iPhone when
Speaker 1: it came out, I think there were two models of
Speaker 1: four gigabyte, and a gigabyte is four hundred or six
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. So the early adopters rushed out and bought them,
Speaker 1: and I just a couple of months later, they dropped
Speaker 1: the well, they dropped the four gigabyte altogether, and the
Speaker 1: gigabyte model I think dropped two hundred bucks. And so
Speaker 1: the people who early early adopters who went out and
Speaker 1: bought the phone, we're saying, well, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a great phone, and I love it, but now
Speaker 1: I feel like I was an idiot for buying it
Speaker 1: so early because I spent so much money. And then
Speaker 1: Apple ended up giving a hundred dollar essentially gift card
Speaker 1: Apple Card to the early adopters, which helped a little
Speaker 1: healed a lot of wounds. At least was saying that
Speaker 1: Apple was saying, hey, you know what, we appreciate the
Speaker 1: fact that you supported this product, which you know, our
Speaker 1: company has never made a phone before, so there's no
Speaker 1: way of us knowing whether or not it's going to
Speaker 1: be successful. So that kind of smoothed out some stuff
Speaker 1: between early adopters and Apple. But that's that's the danger
Speaker 1: that you run into when you're an early adopter is
Speaker 1: that you you one, are going to spend more money
Speaker 1: than other people in the same product. You're just gonna
Speaker 1: get it first and to it may not succe. The
Speaker 1: product may not succeed, and so you may end up
Speaker 1: with a useless hunk of electronics. Uh and some people.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of interesting discussion about why people
Speaker 1: are early adopters. I mean, there's the whole love of technology,
Speaker 1: but there's also an element of status that comes with
Speaker 1: being an early adopter. So if you ever have known
Speaker 1: someone or if you happen to be this person, the
Speaker 1: person who casually leaves out a new cool device that's
Speaker 1: in view, you know, not necessarily pointing it out, but
Speaker 1: leaving it so that it's easily seen so people are like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's really cool, then you might fall into that category.
Speaker 1: For example, if you're one of those people who happens
Speaker 1: to have an iPad and you leave it out on
Speaker 1: your desk so that every single time someone else has
Speaker 1: to walk by your desk in order to get to
Speaker 1: his desk, he sees the darn thing. Maybe you fall
Speaker 1: into that category just a little bit. I get your point.
Speaker 1: I'm not pointing fingers. I'm just being awfully specific. Yeah
Speaker 1: that that that actually, you know, especially since I'm conscious
Speaker 1: of people saying that about Apple's prought. You know, I
Speaker 1: was kind of thinking about that when I when I
Speaker 1: got the iPad, because that's not you know, at least consciously.
Speaker 1: I I try to avoid doing that, but you know,
Speaker 1: I have no idea whether subconsciously I'm trying to show
Speaker 1: off to other people. But yeah, for some people, they do.
Speaker 1: They make a great big deal out of it. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, you know that that's that's all part of
Speaker 1: why people might want to do that. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: a certain uh infamous venture capitalist and his uh, his tesla.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's true. That Yeah, that is a pretty
Speaker 1: uh that's a pretty expensive piece of Technolog's a double
Speaker 1: because it's a car, which has always been seen as
Speaker 1: a status symbol, true and technology which is you know,
Speaker 1: more of a recent development. Yeah that that that's true.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it could be early adopter, could be just
Speaker 1: about it could be almost any kind of technology, not
Speaker 1: just a piece of computer or electronic equipment or um.
Speaker 1: You know. Actually, I've always heard that it's sort of
Speaker 1: a bad idea to be the early adopter for a
Speaker 1: lot of car models because there are bugs that that
Speaker 1: can be a problem. Actually, I was one of the
Speaker 1: first people to UH to buy an iMac, the very
Speaker 1: very first iMac. I was there on the day they
Speaker 1: opened the store, the first day that you could buy
Speaker 1: when it was their inline and UH at that point
Speaker 1: and tells USB technology. That was the first Mac to
Speaker 1: embrace USB. And I had a lot of problems getting
Speaker 1: USB to work correctly because there weren't drivers available. Drivers
Speaker 1: are the the piece of software that basically allows one
Speaker 1: piece of electronic equipment to interface with another. For example,
Speaker 1: in this case, a computer and a printer. I bought
Speaker 1: a USB printer for it, but you know, I had
Speaker 1: trouble at the very very outset trying to get it
Speaker 1: to communicate with it because there just weren't a lot
Speaker 1: of It had difficulty with the USB interfaces on and off.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just that I had a game pad that
Speaker 1: I bought for it, which most of the time it
Speaker 1: didn't really have a problem with, but sometimes it did.
Speaker 1: And I know that in later iterations, and of course
Speaker 1: now USB is ubiquitous on on just about every kind
Speaker 1: of computer that at least that has some kind of
Speaker 1: external port right. Um, but yeah, that that happens a
Speaker 1: lot with all kinds of early adopter technologies. You may
Speaker 1: find that the market isn't ready to support you yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this does go beyond just the physical hardware and
Speaker 1: software is the same way, like, if you're one of
Speaker 1: the people who loves to try beta programs and you're
Speaker 1: an early adopter, you're an early adopter of software, not
Speaker 1: necessarily hardware. Uh. And I fall into that category. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm whenever Google Chrome comes out with a new beta,
Speaker 1: I'll tend to try it out. Uh. And you know
Speaker 1: that's I don't think anything more of that. That then,
Speaker 1: I don't really think of as a statis symbol because
Speaker 1: it's not like I'm walking around to people saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: I have the latest Google Chrome build on my computer.
Speaker 1: But I have been guilty of other ones where like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm with a group of friends, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna whip out
Speaker 1: this Android phone because it's awesome. I don't do that
Speaker 1: anymore because it's two years old, so it's no longer
Speaker 1: really on the cutting edge. But you know, yeah, to
Speaker 1: your to your point, I'm made a testing a game
Speaker 1: right now, um that I've reached a certain point in
Speaker 1: the development of the character. I created my character, and
Speaker 1: I'm playing through the game, and there's a point at
Speaker 1: which you're supposed to do something to take the step
Speaker 1: to achieve the next level. And they're saying, okay, you
Speaker 1: have to choose from these different paths, which one will
Speaker 1: you choose? Well, when I chose the path, you know,
Speaker 1: I spent hours developing this character and building up his
Speaker 1: his gear and all this stuff, and I chose a
Speaker 1: path and it's like, well, okay, sorry, and now I've
Speaker 1: I've reached the point where it didn't take right as
Speaker 1: it's supposed to in the game, and I can't actually
Speaker 1: go forward with the character now and develop it further
Speaker 1: because there's a bug in the game that won't let
Speaker 1: you continue. So now I've wasted Well, depends on how
Speaker 1: you look at it. I've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: developing this character. And because I am trying, I'm actually
Speaker 1: an innovator in this case, because I'm beta testing this
Speaker 1: one where and I can no longer develop this character
Speaker 1: that you know, sort of poured hours of digital blood,
Speaker 1: sweat and tears into developing. So that's that's a peril
Speaker 1: that you run into. But I, well, actually I don't
Speaker 1: get to brag about it because I signed a nondisclosure agreement. Well,
Speaker 1: at any rate, you get to experience it before anyone else,
Speaker 1: that's true, and it's it's been a lot of fun
Speaker 1: doing that, so you know, there are trade offs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, early adopters are important. They will continue to
Speaker 1: be important. They're the ones who are going to really
Speaker 1: kind of drive the way consumer technology goes because you know,
Speaker 1: if the early adopters go after it and convince the
Speaker 1: majority to go after it, that's what we end up
Speaker 1: seeing available available in stores, you know, and the stuff
Speaker 1: that early adopters go after one year are going to
Speaker 1: be the things that go on sale on Black Friday
Speaker 1: and Cyber Monday the next year. So that's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kudos to you early adopters. I wish I could also
Speaker 1: ignore risk, and I wish I also had the the
Speaker 1: disposable income that you have. Uh, right now, I just
Speaker 1: ignore risk, which is not good when you don't have
Speaker 1: disposable income. I don't see how you could ignore risk,
Speaker 1: it's such a good game. And on that note, let's
Speaker 1: close this off. Remember if you want to give us
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