[lbo-talk] Re: world improved when you want to lick a computer

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Wed Dec 13 07:40:57 PST 2006


Ravi:

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Indeed, I have mentioned it and spoken about it multiple times here on LBO. However, I was speaking from an end-user perspective. The basic philosophy behind *nix has always been a combination of simplicity, extensibility, and configurability. The Apple UIs are quite poor in comparison, choosing instead, IMO, to mandate to the user what she should be doing and further what she should not... unless you hack your own code, drop down to the *nix underneath and use an Objective-C bridge (or equivalent) for UI.

[WS:] I think the work needed to configure the system by oneself poses considerable transaction cost to many who would rather do other things with the computer than tweaking under its hood (that also applies to piano players, car drivers and users of any other kind of machinery.) By making these choices for the user, Apple or Windows substantially reduced the transaction cost and thus offered a genuine value to innumerable users, which may help explaining their market position vis a vis Linux.

This is yet another example showing that transaction cost economics (TCE) explains far more than the classical economic (including Marxism) or its neo-classical variety possibly can.

Wojtek



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