RE: Power on the n.hand, logic, and PC Expo
Rocky,
Well, well, at least you've finally responded to one
of my posts. Would you care to respond again and tell
me what you think of Henry Ford's decision steadily to
drop the price of the Model T in the same way that
Iomega has been dropping the price of the Zip? <grin>
Now, let's get on to the content of your message.
In a very balanced message with various positive and
negative observations from PC Expo, I wrote one quite
negative line about n.hand, to wit:
>The word at the Iomega booth on the n.hand was that
>they were working on the power requirements for it
>and that, because of that, it's not going to appear
>in OEMs until first half of 1998.
Following your usual practice of only selecting the
most negative assessments of Iomega for your commentary,
which in itself tells us volumes about your credibility,
you snipped out that passage, and that passage only,
and then you replied as follows:
>Uh-huh. Yep. In various posts, what did I tell you?
>This no.hand thing will eat up batteries faster than
>that little pink bunny can...well...you know.
Hmmmm. This prompts me to several responses. First,
when you write to me on this and say "what did I tell
you," I suspect that you're falling prey to the
ecological fallacy (i.e., the assumption that the
mean traits of the group are the actual traits of
an individual in that group). You'll be hard-pressed
to find posts from me saying that n.hand will come out
on time, will add greatly to earnings, is a sure thing,
and so on. Go ahead. Search my posts. I did engage
everybody a while ago about the price of flash memory
and its relevance to the n.hand issue, and I may have
written another tidbit or two that isn't very important,
but mostly I've been sitting on the sidelines on this
one, being hopeful of course since I'm a long, but not
thinking one way or the other about whether it's going
to transform digital photography, etc. If you've never
heard of the ecological fallacy before, then I recommend
David Hackett Fischer, _Historian's Fallacies_. He lists
lots and lots of laughable logical blunders historians
have made in their reasoning over time. The ecological
fallacy isn't the first one I've suspected you of
committing over the past several months. It's one
thing to spell badly, and it's another to draw flawed
inferences.
Second, the person I spoke to at the Iomega booth didn't
say that the power thing killed the product (i.e., turned
it into "no.hand"). Rather, he said that they went out
to the possible OEMs with specs and prototypes to see
what was out there, and they heard that power would be
a problem, so now they're working on it. That may turn
it into "late.hand," perhaps, but if they didn't think
they could lick the problem to the satisfaction of OEMs,
or if they thought that they couldn't lick it on time to
get on the OEM gravy train with this particular product,
do you think they would have been exhibiting a totally
DOA product at PC Expo and saying it'll come in the
first half of 1998, when they could instead have devoted
that space to something that's a sure winner? A delay
ain't good, but again your logic is faulty when you
imply that a delay is inevitably a death-knell. Mind
you, I'm not saying that n.hand will indeed appear
in the first half of 1998, nor that it will be a
commercial success. That remains to be seen, of
course. What I'm saying is that we also don't know
that your prediction is correct, either. N.hand's
success remains to be seen, as I said. Uncertainty
does NOT inevitably imply failure. Poor logic again,
I'm afraid.
Next, let's suppose that n.hand does indeed flop.
Okay, what does that portend for Iomega? Will it
file for chapter eleven at once? Will its stock
price go to the proverbial single digits? Will
the Street hate Kim Edwards more than it does now
because he's only executed 95 per cent rather than
executing perfectly? Even if your rash and dire
extrapolations about n.hand are correct, you haven't
yet made a case that the upshot will be dire for
Iomega as a whole, or for its stock price. You
don't really think that most of those 135-odd million
shares out there are in at the current price based
substantially on the distant promise of just n.hand,
do you? If you do, that makes you a one-trick short.
I happen to have a coupla hundred shares of IBM that
have appreciated nicely indeed since I bought 'em.
They did that even with the PS/2 and OS/2 blunders,
which I can assure you were bigger fiascos than
n.hand will be if it doesn't fly.
Finally, I'm afraid I have one other piece of bad
news for you that I haven't seen anyone post yet
about PC Expo. At LAST year's PC Expo, Iomega's
booth was modestly sized, about two-thirds of the
way back into the main floor, and it was about
a third larger than Syquest's booth. This year,
Iomega had an impressively huge booth, right in
the middle of the main floor, alongside Toshiba
and Intel. Syquest didn't have a booth at all.
Those who cannot read indicators make lousy
diagnosticians.
I'll have more about PC Expo later after I've
caught up with the other things in my life a
little bit more. There's no need to hurry.
Only day-traders need the scoop right away,
and for them, the bigger scoop at the moment
is probably options expiration.
Happy trading, one and all.
Cheers, Tom (long IOM) |
