And yet, people buy SSDs even though they could get more memory in a HDD. Because they value speed over capacity.
"The Innovator's Dilemma" traces back the disk drive industry, and in each generation, people choose smaller memory capacity, for the sake of a smaller package (there used to be 8 inch drives, for example). The theoretical idea is that once users' need for performance is satisfied (it's "good enough"), they turn their attention to other issues - such as price, convenience/ease-of-use, customization etc.
It has happened with desktops: that's what caused the brief "netbook" popularity, and what made smartphones successful. Desktops had overshot what was needed for many tasks (browsing, email); but the smaller devices were just becoming powerful enough to manage. So although desktops were more powerful, that extra power didn't matter to many users.
The underlying idea is twofold: (1) all technologies improve over time, as engineers find better ways to do things (Moore's law is just one example); (2) what users demand also increases over time, but at a slower rate
Therefore, if you start with new approach that really struggles with many tasks, eventually it will become powerful enough for what users need; during the same period, the old technology started off powerful enough, and became even more powerful - but users didn't care, because it was more than they needed (or, at least, they didn't want it as much as they wanted other qualities, like convenience etc).
"The Innovator's Dilemma" traces back the disk drive industry, and in each generation, people choose smaller memory capacity, for the sake of a smaller package (there used to be 8 inch drives, for example). The theoretical idea is that once users' need for performance is satisfied (it's "good enough"), they turn their attention to other issues - such as price, convenience/ease-of-use, customization etc.
It has happened with desktops: that's what caused the brief "netbook" popularity, and what made smartphones successful. Desktops had overshot what was needed for many tasks (browsing, email); but the smaller devices were just becoming powerful enough to manage. So although desktops were more powerful, that extra power didn't matter to many users.
The underlying idea is twofold: (1) all technologies improve over time, as engineers find better ways to do things (Moore's law is just one example); (2) what users demand also increases over time, but at a slower rate
Therefore, if you start with new approach that really struggles with many tasks, eventually it will become powerful enough for what users need; during the same period, the old technology started off powerful enough, and became even more powerful - but users didn't care, because it was more than they needed (or, at least, they didn't want it as much as they wanted other qualities, like convenience etc).