Standards and standards

Some days ago I was watching some videos about the almost religious “clash” between MAC and PC. There are some interesting videos, as you can see below:

I was thinking about it and realized that this dispute doesn’t match to the current market state, that aims in the standards. One great and recent example is the commercial fight (almost over) between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD, with the victory going to the former. Damn! I was cheering for Toshiba! But thinking reasonably, the existence of two (or more) incompatible standards is bad for the end user, because whether you choose one you’ll be deprived of the other’s features. And sometimes (in fact, often) is extremely hard to choose between the available standards because we want all the features (^_^)

So, I think that a similar contention won’t come out soon. The expenses to support a standard (searching partners, developing the technology, paying ads, etc.) is very high to lose everything in the end, albeit Toshiba pronounced its partners in the HD-DVD project will maintain cooperation for future activities. Thus, all efforts wasn’t in vain.