Arguing that an idea or product has merit because it has popular support is one of the oldest argument tactics around. It’s also one of the most flawed. Does McDonald’s have thebesthamburger because they sell billions? Is a Toyotabetterthan a Ferrari because one is far more common than the other? Is Britney Spears a better musician than Mozart, who you never hear on the radio? The counter-examples continue ad infinitum and ad nauseum.
Why does this occur? My guess is that it’s a confusion between cause and effect.Quality is often, but not always, a cause of popularity.如果两个产品在功能上是相同的，那么随着时间的推移，质量更好的那个应该会更受欢迎。德国vs意大利比分预测这种理论情境的问题在于，它只是理论上的。两种产品永远不会相同。有不同的营销、品牌、广告、消费者对公司的看法、包装、功能、设计和价格。所有这些因素，以及我遗漏的一些因素，都会影响消费者的购买意愿。
Even professional journalists can make the mistake of arguing that popularity indicates some inherent quality. Take a look atthis article in Forbes about Vista adoption:
The Mac, for all of Apple’s snazzy advertising, has less than 1.6% share of the PC installed base. Linux, for all of the millions of column inches devoted to its wondrous abilities (many of those lines by yours truly), holds about 2.5% share. (All figures are from Gartner Dataquest.) No wonder nobody at Microsoft seems too upset about the bad reviews of Vista. First of all, it’s easy (and fashionable) to talk trash about Microsoft.And it’s all too easy to overlook Microsoft’s achievements, like making operating system software that works well enough and is priced well enough to attract 96% of the world’s PC users.
The article appears to say that Windows XP spread because of the “choice” of customers. Quick question: do you think most people actually choose their operating system, or just get whatever came on their machine?
Did youchoosethe operating system on your phone? Your TV? For the non-geeks out there, no. You got whatever OS the manufacturer put on there (if you bought it) or whatever your IT department put on there (if your company bought it for you).
So, the real question becomes“Why did the manufacturer/IT department install that particular OS?”. There’s a long, sordid history on this, but there are a few obvious reasons:
- If the computer manufacturer is Apple, they will install an Apple OS which supports their company — their definition of best.
- If your company already runs Windows, the next computer they give you is likely to run Windows. Your IT admin will give you whatever is cheapest to operate, maintain and train you on — their definition of best.
- 如果它来自像戴尔这样的个人电脑制造商，他们将包括销量最大、利润最高的产品——他们对“最好”的定义。Notice that Ididn’tsay security, features, reliability or user interface. They will focus on what sells the best, and the reason it sells doesn’t really matter (except, perhaps, to forecast what will sell the best in the future).
什么操作系统是“最好的”这个问题太笼统了，没有意义。告诉我细节:最快。最可靠的。最好的价格/性能。最易于使用的。最兼容的。给我一些细节!
Don’t presume that qualities like market share or usage is a direct reflection of end-user choice. Sure,products can become popularbecause they have the best quality. Or, they can become popular because they have a lot of advertising. Or they have no competitors. Or because their name is first in the alphabet. Or people have inertia and don’t want to switch. There’s a lot of reasons. It’s a fallacy to think that just because something happened/was elected/was decided, it was the “best” decision. Sometimes things just happen.Look at a product’s popularity and ask why.
In the case of PCs, popularity is a reflection of the choice by the providers (manufacturers) and the people making the purchasing decisions (IT departments). In most cases, users are just along for the ride. The vast, vast majority of operating system sales are made to manufacturers and corporations. Not many people buy Windows off the shelf at Best Buy.
把这篇文章改写成“Windows是用户最好的平台，因为它拥有最多的市场份额，最多的应用程序，与最多的设备兼容”是有意义的。仅仅因为它吸引了很多人就声称它是最好的，这是不可能的。
Of course, this reasoning may not stop screaming fans from declaring their system the “best” because it is widely used. It will just prevent you from believing them.