"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message ...
William Sommerwerck wrote:
"josephkk" wrote in message
.. .

Microsoft, like all large corporations, has no interest in producing
"best" anything, just an acceptable thing.

I beg to differ... Pioneer plasma. Nikon & Canon cameras. HP
just-about-anything (but calculators in particular). The SX-70.

I'd definitely agree that the Nikon and Canon products had a lot of
corner-cutting going on... they were designed at a price point for a
market.

Not their "best" products. They're better than "acceptable".


HP is weird, though. HP was a large corporation that didn't act so much
like a large corporation, because even when it was public it was still
managed basically as a private operation by actual engineers who made
products for other engineers. HP is very much the exception to the rule,
or at least it was until Carly wrecked it.

I was thinking more of their consumer products. Their current calculators --
mostly designed in Australia -- are high in features and low in elegance.


Polaroid is another one of those oddities, a company actually driven by
engineering. Unfortunately a side-effect of that was making a lot of
ingenious and amazing products that nobody wanted, like Polavision.

The company was driven by Dr Land's vision, which had no regard whatever for
what people might or might not want. Polavision was his one error, and it cost
him his position at the company. Up to then, everything was a success -- and
Polaroid had spent not one penny on market research.


The SX-70 was interesting too; in terms of image quality it was a step
down from the older 2-part pack technology...

Yes, but...

The SX-70 was Land's -- not the market's -- idea of what an ideal camera
should be. As a piece of engineering, it remains startling, much more than
"acceptable".

PS: You said nothing about Pioneer plasma.