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From: fiddler@concertina.Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga mentality cont'd
Message-ID: <134261@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 10 Apr 90 21:21:31 GMT
References: <1342@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <90098.170806JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> <216@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>
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In article <216@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>, dave@cs.arizona.edu (David P. Schaumann) writes:
> 
> |is coming about that both machines are growing uncomfortably similar as time
> |goes on.
> |
> |Fact:  The Mac IIfx has duplicated the Amiga's style of using support chips
> |       for I/O, and other tasks to relieve the CPU of such tedium
> |Fact:  WB 1.4 is going to have a drawer where you put programs that will be
> |       run upon startup.  (sound like a Macintosh CDEV to you?  Does to me.)
> |
> |These are just two examples among many.  The Mac is copying Amiga in hardware,
> |Amiga is copying Mac in software.
> 
> Is it a crime to borrow a good idea?  IMHO, only if it is also propriety
> information...
> 
> I doubt sincerely that there will be an "Amigatosh" as you say anytime
> in the concievable future.  The design philosiphies of the two machines are
> light years apart...  As I said above, I think this is just an example
> of good ideas being used by others.  Refreshing, after so long of the Not
> Invented Here syndrome.

I remember, several years before the Amiga appeared, discussions among
various engineers at Apple about incorporating coprocessors to offload
various tasks from the CPU...on the Apple II.  Even then, it wasn't a
new idea, what with processors running certain (*very* slow) disk drives
for another company's computer.  (And it wasn't original to *them*
either.)

We couldn't figure out why the Mac didn't have coprocessors to aid
disk I/O and graphics in the first place.  (But then, we were where
we were {Apple// division} because we didn't have what it took to work
in a *real* computer company.  It must be true, Steve Jobs said so.  In
public.  Twice.  Before the Mac was ever announced, btw.  Wonder why he
wasn't univerally liked?)  But that was all *long* ago in a previous
life.

A Good Idea is a Good Idea (usually) and deserves to be used wherever
appropriate.  I'd like to see all of use share and use good ideas, and
all benefit thereby.

------------
"Up the airey mountain, down the rushy glen,
   we daren't go a-hunting for fear of little men..."
('cause Fish and Game has taken to hiring axe-carrying dwarves)