Comment by happosai
5 hours ago
So much for the long tail I guess. Tough luck if you want anything quirky or unique, society will only manufacture for the mainstream taste.
5 hours ago
So much for the long tail I guess. Tough luck if you want anything quirky or unique, society will only manufacture for the mainstream taste.
Society doesn't do anything of the sort. This is just diffuse irrational thinking. People invest their wealth where it will make the most profit for them and if a marginal dollar investment into the regular iPhone brings more profit than one into the iPhone Mini, then the owners and shareholders will ask the CEO why their money is flowing into suboptimal productions. People put their money investing in Apple in the hopes of a good return on that investment. If you want them to produce something that doesn't give them a good return, you'd have to pay to compensate, ie the price would rise but people wouldn't be ready to pay that. Otherwise you're asking people to subsidize for your enjoyment some luxury product as if it was charity. Willingly foregoing profit for the sake of someone else is subsidy or charity.
Long tail works well when the marginal cost is near zero and most of the upfront costs are born by someone else.