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From: fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Commodore, Amiga, Apple, and MAC
Message-ID: <133566@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 28 Mar 90 00:00:47 GMT
References: <15003@snow-white.udel.EDU> <5463@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
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In article <5463@sugar.hackercorp.com>, karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) writes:
> 
> 1.  The 2FX is vaporware in that it will not ship for months.

Like the NeXT?  (Surely not *that* long!)  I seem to remember some wait
between announcing the 2500 and actually seeing a real one.

> 2.  Apple will not be able to sell a whole lot of them at the quoted price.

Sadly, they'll probably sell them as fast as they can produce them.

> 3.  Apple will be struggling to compete against Windows 3.0, etc, as the
>     PC is closing the gap in graphical user interfaces 

Windows n.0 is tracking a moving target.  I'd place it a distant fifth in
usable GUI's.

> The Amiga may have some of the same struggle on 3, but as even the $550 A500
> has a realtime preemptive exec, shared libraries and a rabid following of
> talented hackers who are intent on making use of that stuff.  I am still
> hopeful.  Further, Macs are expensive.  Amigas are not.

Then why aren't they selling that much better than Macs?  Maybe price isn't
everything, and maybe CBM ought to consider what's not working.
 
> Further, Macs crash and burn.  Mac people don't like to talk about it, but
> the ones I know have a lot of mystery crashes.  Plus, small sample size
> here, but they tend to catch fire (because of no fan, perhaps?).  

The smoking Plus.  They don't catch fire, much less burn.  One component,
marginally specc'ed, fails and takes out the analog board (which cover both
power supply and video driver duties).  The fix is to get a better part,
which fix has been well known for quite a while.  Not by the dealers, though.
(Sounds familiar, somehow.)  Later Pluses, btw, use a heftier part and
don't seem to smoke.

Most of the remainder of the ab failures involve failing solder joints.

> A buddy 
> of mine has shelled $180 four times in the last three years to replace his
> digital board (can't really call it a motherboard 'cause there're no slots
> on the affordable ones, right?) after his analog board smoked and fried it.
> Another guy I just met paid $180, too, for the same reason.  Ask around.

They need to find a real tech to fix the problem right.  Probably for less
than $100.  Ask around.

(The Plus is the one that dies.  Adding a fan usually does an endrun around
the problem.  Blame Steve Jobs for that one.  The rest have fans.)

> And after Apple screwed everyone who bought Apple Threes,

How?  By replacing all the original "fine line" ///'s with the fixed
"coarse line" version for free?  (Marketing/executive staff did some
reall dumb things with the ///, but engineering was trying to do it
right.)

------------
"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."   Plato, _Phaedrus_