Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <16630@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 18 Dec 90 15:07:02 GMT
References: <453@mathlab.math.ufl.EDU> <93075@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <4e6afc49.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> <14934@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Distribution: na
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 43

In article <14934@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cleland@sdbio2.ucsd.edu (Thomas Cleland) writes:
>In article <90346.222605JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu> JKT100@psuvm.psu.edu (JKT) writes:

>>Anyone else notice that this isn't the first time Commodore has
>>adopted an impending "standard" only to be screwed when nobody
>>else adopted it?  It sure happened with the IFF "standard"...
>>:-(

That's a bad example, since IFF was created for the Amiga, and made public
domain so that anyone, on or off an Amiga, could use it for free.  That doesn't
at all detract from its usefulness on the Amiga, and I'm not all that sure that
having IBM and Apple stand behind it would do that much good, other than
perhaps getting some more interesting FORMs standardized -- they did good at
the beginning with ILBM, 8SVX, SMUS, etc. but still really need to address some
more complex issues, like forms for 2-D and 3-D structured drawings, DTP, etc.

A more obvious one might be the character set.  The Amiga uses ISO characters,
but 1/2 the printers out there use Epson or IBM characters, which are a defacto
industry standard which works OK in the US, though perhaps not as well world
wide.  And some people even complain about the Amiga keyboards, which are
inspired by the obvious industry standard, the VT100 keyboard, rather than the
drastically inferior (especially to Emacs users) PC-AT keyboard.

>You speak wisdom, but I think it won't happen this time.  The
>recognized leader in desktop workstations, Sun, and SPARC clone
>makers in the workstation market, not to mention AT&T.  I don't
>know how fast the academic VAXes and the like will port over.

And, of course, there are the PCs.  Sure there's Xenix and others on the PCs,
but the real UNIX on most of them is SRV3, so one would expect most PC business
UNIX users to adopt SRV4.  Apple uses SRV3, so it's also reasonable to expect
that some day they'll move to SRV4; no one's going to use the Mac OS as a UNIX
GUI unless they're already using the Mac OS (eg, they're already Mac 
developers).  Even Atari, if they really have a UNIX, would likely adopt SRV4
(so they can run programs for Amiga UNIX most likely).  And, of course, 
Motorola themselves use AT&T UNIX on their systems.

>   //  / Thom Cleland                       / It is easier        /

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
		"I can't drive 55"	-Sammy Hagar