Another example would be the fax standards. It changed from the very basic to
current standard. Most hardware still support older standards, but that means
extra circuitry and manufacturing cost for them. After 1-2 years, they are
probably going to drop the early standards. If you happened to have an old
standard fax-modem, you can't fax out. So you need a new fax/modem card. Now
if you comoputer is old, maybe you can't find a card that works with your
computer, so you are forced to upgrade.
A software example would be Photoshop TIFF file. In earlier version of
Photoshop, the TIFF file are not strictly compliant to the standard, so some
imaging software had problem with PHotoshop's TIFF file, but since Photoshop
is so popular, the other software manufacturers ended up tweaking the
software to parse Photoshop's TIFF file correctly. But Photoshop has
corrected their end already, so there is no real need for the tweaking aside
from handling old files. I think that after things have stablelized, the
tweaking will be gone. That means that if you have an older version of
Photoshop, you might create a TIFF file that the bureau's software cannot
read.
And this is a real case example of myself: I upgraded my system from Windows
3.1 to Win 95. Not everybody needs Win95, but I work with computer a lot, and
I do need some of the features, and so I upgraded. All my graphics software
caused problem with the upgrade. (To be fair, it isn't the fault of Win95, it
is just that the requirements are stricter that when it finds a system error
in an application program, it kicks it out). But that means I cannot use my
Photoshop, Corel Draw, Corel Photo Paint, etc.
With large companies like Adobe, Corel, they can affort to send out free
upgrade to their users, so I got free upgrades; but not all software
companies do that.
<< And upon "upgrading" the system, experience tells me, there's a good
chance I'd lose some other things,
And with my example mentioned above, my fax software doesn't work with Win
95, so I had to buy a new upgrade. I have no choice. I cannot keep the old
software.
>> I had been using Pagemaker, a data base, MSW & a couple of other programs
(including a graphics program or two) for some years when I failed to get
usable hard copy from photoshop. It wasn't that the actual operation was
hard -- it wasn't -- it was trying to encompass & coordinate all those
parameters, to select the *right* curves and output format, etc., and then
get them from the virtual to the real -- by clairvoyance, or X power it
seemed at the time.
It is not easy, and you should feel very proud of yourself if you can get the
color right (as in my previous discussion, this is different from getting the
color look good). I have worked with manufacturer of film recorder, and
believe it or not, not all of them are getting it right yet. This is mainly
because originally the primary use of film recorders is to make slides, so
algorithm/calibration for outputting to negative hasn't been well researched
yet. Just 2 weeks ago I went to see a demo of mid-range film recorders from a
very famous company in film-recorder industry. The company claims that they
developed the calibration algorithm for outputting to negative. But 2 test
shots and I know that they are not even close.
However, I need to add that the above comments are mainly about personal
computers and how we use our desktop equipments for imaging. For professional
services like image setters, however, the results are more consistent because
imagesetters have been used in printing more than in photography, so the
calibration/algorithm, etc. are ready to handle dye imperfection and color
correction, thus more applicable in alt. processes.
David Soemarko