There is a practice where software companies will either provide their software to schools and colleges for free or will pay schools and colleges to use their software. This leads to the students using this software, learning that software’s sole paradigm, and essentially forces them to use that software going forward because of how difficult it is to shift to another software with a different paradigm. This is Vendor Lock-In. The vendor locks you into their software.
This leads to all future workers being trained in that software, so of course businesses opt to use that software instead of retraining the employee in another. This contrasts with the idea of what an ‘industry standard’ is. The name suggests that it’s used in the industry because it’s better than other software, but in reality it’s just standard because of lock-in.
This is how Windows cornered the operating system market - by partnering with vendors to ship their systems with Windows pre-installed.
There is a practice where software companies will either provide their software to schools and colleges for free or will pay schools and colleges to use their software. This leads to the students using this software, learning that software’s sole paradigm, and essentially forces them to use that software going forward because of how difficult it is to shift to another software with a different paradigm. This is Vendor Lock-In. The vendor locks you into their software.
This leads to all future workers being trained in that software, so of course businesses opt to use that software instead of retraining the employee in another. This contrasts with the idea of what an ‘industry standard’ is. The name suggests that it’s used in the industry because it’s better than other software, but in reality it’s just standard because of lock-in.
This is how Windows cornered the operating system market - by partnering with vendors to ship their systems with Windows pre-installed.
For decades Apple paid schools to teach on their computers. In the 80s and much of the 90s, all you’d find in computer labs was Macs.
It didn’t work because PCs were just better for businesses at the time.
How so?
Software mainly. Apple made software companies pay a license to release software on the Mac, so most companies chose to release on PC exclusively.