Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!rutgers!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!gatech!mcnc!thorin!hatteras!mueller From: mueller@hatteras.cs.unc.edu (Carl Mueller) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Some MAC and Amiga Comparisons. Message-ID: <16885@thorin.cs.unc.edu> Date: 18 Oct 90 01:36:11 GMT References: <33538@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <11388@life.ai.mit.edu> <84888@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <11419@life.ai.mit.edu> Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu Reply-To: mueller@hatteras.cs.unc.edu (Carl Mueller) Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Lines: 152 In article <11419@life.ai.mit.edu> Ray Cromwell writes: >In article <84888@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Todd R Johnson writes: >|Even with lower priced Mac's, Mac software is expensive. So unless your >|a pirate, buying a cheaper system wont help you much. >|... Microsoft Word... MacDraw II...Canvas... Adobe Illustrator... >|... Excel... Wingz...[stuff deleted here, including quoted prices] >|... My point is that as a student I can get much >|better software for the Mac at much lower prices than inferior Amiga >|software. > > I've never seen MacDraw, but I wonder how it compares to stuff like >Deluxe Paint. I also wonder if Mac has software that is comparable to >the Amiga's turbosilver,Disney Animator, JourneyMan,LightWave 3d, >Scult, The Art Department. AAAAAACKK!! That's not what MacDraw does! Please don't advertise your ignorance to the whole net! (pause while I regain control) Sorry, I didn't mean to have my flame-throw on high like that! MacDraw is an object oriented drawing program. You draw using primitives such as lines, boxes, circles, arcs, smoothed polygons, etc. Not PIXELS! When you print a MacDraw document, it prints the primitives in the highest resolution the printer can handle. So even though the circle appears in 72 dpi on the screen, it prints at 300 dpi on the printer, and looks perfectly round. It's basically a CAD program, though most of the users aren't engineers. They're people who want to put nice figures into reports and presentations. You see, one of the Mac's prime advantages over Amiga and PCs is that I can take these object-oriented figures and paste them directly into my word-processor document. I don't think Amiga IFF includes this format (I don't know, does it?). As the original poster stated, the Mac's primary advantage over the Amiga is software. Not just applications, but its operating system as well. They put in a lot of effort to achieve the goal of user friendliness, and did pretty well. The Amiga's operating system is a very good technical achievement (whereas the Macs is nothing special - no multitasking, etc.), but as far as "Joe User" is concerned, he could really care less HOW it works. Gee, I could start making a list of things where the Mac has advantages over the Amiga (standard file requestors; icons that don't take forever to appear and stay where they're put without specifically being told; oops! I'm starting!), but that would make me just like Marc Barrett! > For Word processing I use DME (yep) If I want to do fancy formatting >I'll use TeX. Sadly enough, I don't use a Word Processor everyday, >and I don't think many people do unless they are Journalists,etc. >I use Emacs(Unix) everyday, and DME(Amiga). And if they are WYSIWYG, >I don't know what is. Did you mean "if they aren't WYSIWIG"? They certainly aren't. And if you think the average user would prefer using TeX over something like MacWrite I'd have to laugh my head off! TeX certainly offers a lot of power, but you have to learn a whole new language before you can begin to use it! Indeed one needs to learn to use MacWrite as well, but the difference in learning curves is like day and night. As for Emacs, I use it everday also. In fact, I'm using it right now. I like Emacs, but it's NOT a word processor. It's a text editor. There IS a difference. Will Emacs do subscripts, different point type size, variable line spacing, etc. and show you interactively on screen what the printed page will look like? Can you paste figures into Emacs? (all this applies to DME as well.) >| When you compare power you need to look at software. The >|fastest machine in the world is useless without the right software for >|the job. My Amiga is excellent for TeX, games, and animation. My Mac >|is good at doing the things that I need to do almost every day. Sure, >|the Mac is terrible at multi-tasking, and the hardware is boring, but >|it does the jobs that I need to do. That's the bottom line. It does what the 'average user' expects, and does it pretty well. Remember, it's the computer made for idiots. And there are hordes of idiots, uhh, I mean 'average people' out there buying computers. (I guess I sound a bit elitist here. Sorry about that!) > For programmers I think the Amiga is much better. (especially if >you learn on Unix.) The Amiga's environment is very Unix-like, >and the Mac's OS would be very boring. I agree. But you won't make a lot of money if you only sell computers to programmers (at least, not easily). >| Finally, the Mac is easier to use. For non-techie students, >|this is a big plus. > > Yep. But a $500 PC system is also easy to use for Word processing, >and its much cheaper. I don't think C= needs to worry about Apple. >I think Apple needs to worry about the NeXT. We have our niche >(multimedia), whereas the NeXT is a direct attack on DeskTop Publish >ing(Mac). What happens is remain to be seen. Who Commodore needs to worry about depends upon whom they're trying to sell computer to. Commodore's market overlaps with the PC's, Mac's, and Next's. I get really quite ill whenever I see people who state that better than NTSC video is unnecessary for the Amiga since the video people don't need it. Fact is, not only video people use the Amiga. Programmers do to, and we who are used to workstation displays with megapixels and 8 bits/pixel feel really cramped when working with a 80x24 display. Do you have any idea how small a 320x200 image looks when viewed on a display that's 1024x800 or larger? Gad! I seem to have 'gone off the handle' again. Let me come back down to earth and make a few things clear so I won't get flamed too badly. First of all, I like the Amiga very much. I have an A500 and I plan to get a 3000 when I can afford it. I like the principles embodied in the computer and I generally like Commodore and its pricing policies. On the other hand, I despise Apple for gouging its buyers ever since they came out with the Apple II back in 1978(?). I want Commodore to do really well, so that a lot of us can afford well-thought-out computers. I want Apple to do okay so that there is competition in the market, especially against IBM and the clone horde. What _I_ feel is Commodores most pressing need is some operating system standards for 1) add-on hardware such as video boards 2) object oriented data formats (like PICT for the Mac) (if this doesn't exist already) 3) hmmm... let's see, printers and I/O devices are already handled fairly well; I can't really think of anything else right now. Heck, I just remembered another peeve. Why oh WHY? on the 3000 was there not enough memory put into the deinterlacer to support the Super-Hires mode? It's SO BOGUS! You have all these video modes which you can display on a 30 khz monitor EXCEPT for Super-Hires! You need a multi-sync just for this one mode. What's so bad about that, you may ask, given that multisyncs don't cost so much now? What's so bad is that when future video modes appear that require a 60 khz monitor (the ULowell board?) you won't be able to find a monitor that can sync from 15-60 khz to display every mode! There might be some monitors like that, but I've not seen any. Most multisyncs go from 15-35 khz _OR_ 30-60 khz. Could somebody prove me wrong and point out an affordable monitor that is an exception to this rule? Wow, I didn't expect to write so much! But I guess I just had to let the steam off sometime.... >| ---Todd >|-- >|Todd R. Johnson >|tj@cis.ohio-state.edu >|Laboratory for AI Research >|The Ohio State University >-- >"NeXTs are useless... Mac's are irrelevent.. IBM's are futile. Amiga's,however, >are quite nice!" -Capt Jeal-Luc Amiga | Flames to /dev/null >Ray Cromwell rjc@wookumz.ai.mit.edu | // AMIGA! \\ >"Your software will adapt to service ours!"| \X/ AMIGA! \X/ -Carl (mueller@cs.unc.edu)