[robski]

I suspect my line of work is quite closely aligned with Karl's. I work for a company that develops and supplies systems to the printing industry ( mainly newspaper not to be confused with photo printing). Adobe got a strong foot hold in the print industry when it developed PostScript which became the standard (universal) printing langauge. Up untill this point each vendor supplied their own bespoke langauge which was not compatible with other vendors systems.

At the same time they developed their own Raster Image Processors (RIP) which takes the PostScript Language code and converts it to a bitmap format for imaging film, paper or press plates with lasers.

Photoshop started it development path at the same time and became sucessful for much the same reasons as PostScript did. The Raster Image Processor code (CPSI) is now imbedded in most of their technology now.
e.g Photoshop, illustrator, Acrobat for pdf and so on.

So Photoshop is accepted as the standard because of it's compatability. Fortunately for us Adobe have added a host of nice features for digital photography because newpapers are now using digital cameras.

Adobe have their faults but generally their software is very good.

With regards to VHS and betamax. VHS became the standard in the UK mainly because it was the only format that your local video hire shops would supply.

Oddly enough Betamax was the standard in Turkey for some reason.
( I just had a flash back to my previous life as a TV & Video Service dept manager) Ok the dizzy spell gone I am OK now.

Rob