[MacDV] Re: iMovie3 for OS 9 as well?

[Steven Rogers]

On Monday, January 13, 2003, at 05:26 PM, Gerhard Kuhn wrote:

> You must be the kind of customer they dream of, one born every minute. 
>  Using analogy then if I bought a car that broke down every other day 
> it might be safe but I would should not expect it to be fixed?  . . .

This is a misleading analogy because a car, even today's complex cars, 
are literally millions of times less complex than an auto. You buy a 
car for basically one purpose - to drive. You don't often pull the rear 
wheel and throw on a generator or make other modifications that change 
it from the way it left the factory. There's basically one kind of gas 
and a few kinds of oil. The manufacturer tells you when to change the 
oil, and if you use it exactly as it was intended, it lasts until it 
wears out. If you drive it in a way that's not in line with what the 
manufacturer proscribes, or you change its configuration in any way, 
your warranty is void and you're on your own.

If you were willing to take your computer as delivered from the 
manufacturer with the software they provide and never change the 
configuration and use it *only* for the purposes they describe, then 
you'd have a nice analogy with a car. Personally, I don't want to use 
my computer that way.

And the idea that "If they'd only *told* me in advance that computers 
weren't perfect, then it would be fair" is not realistic. The kind of 
issues we're talking about here represent the state of the art in 
computers. Its not like there's some computer manufacturer who's 
turning out software without bugs and seamlessly upgrading hardware 
while Apple screws its customer base with inferior product. As a 
consumer, you have some responsibility to make yourself aware of what 
you're buying. No reasonably informed consumer should expect a seamless 
user experience (unless the computer's configuration is never changed). 
  If you thought buying a computer would be analogous to buying a car, 
then you need to do some more research on the state of the art in 
computers.

SR