Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!vsi1!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: AMIGA Message-ID: <1991Jan17.091837.14920@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 17 Jan 91 09:18:37 GMT References: <1991Jan15.201647.16637@rice.edu> <1991Jan16.053729.14144@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <17683@cbmvax.commodore.com> Distribution: usa Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 84 andy@cbmvax.commodore.com (Andy Finkel) writes: > xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >> Bundled software can be the kiss of death for your machine's market >> respectability. You just can't get people to buy something they think >> they've already gotten for "free", but you sure do get to listen to >> them complain about the lack of adequate tools until the cows come >> home. >> Consider the effect of the several editors bundled with the Amiga on >> the sales of the much superior Cygnus Ed (or the creation of any >> other commercial superior programmers' editor), for example. > I agree with you, up to a point. Some basic tools need to be included. > A text editor or two. (not a word processor). A language of some kind. > (like Basic or Arexx). And so on. Sure; trouble is, Ed is actually a pretty competent editor, though the only examples I've got left are the ones on my original C= disks, by now. When you have an editor that can do a _lot_ of desirable tasks, like accept and execute macros, etc., then the buyer is looking at the next purchase in terms of _incremental_ utility, but the seller is pricing it in terms of _total_ development costs. If only Edit had been available, a better programmer's editor might have come quicker. Edit is plenty good to write code, just a bit crufty for use to maintain large suites of software further down the pike. (Of course, this question is considerably confounded by the many PD emacs ports that quickly appeared, since lots of us prefer emacs to lots of the second best stuff.) > I guess I've been influenced by the software mix that comes with > almost any Unix system. Yep, me too. Once you see all that neat stuff, going back to vanilla MS-DOS is pretty painful. That's why the MKS Toolkit sells so well. > In terms of advanced editors, compilers, etc, I agree with you; but > for basic tools that let you get the job done, I think there is a > need. Sure, or you can't _write_ the better tools. The competition between the PD stuff and the commercial stuff is as big a problem as the competition between the bundled stuff and the commercial stuff. Eventually, given a big enough market, you attract the kind of team effort that puts PD stuff to shame, but still you are talking about pretty small companies in at least the Amiga market, and they can't compete on price alone with the development resources of the micro vendor, even though the independent has a lot more motivation to produce a quality product: its survival may depend on its premier product in a way the micro vendors would not depend on a bundled add-on. >> It's taken a _long_ time to build up an installed base such that >> there is a sufficient number of users willing to ignore the "free" >> editor software that comes with the Amiga and _pay_ for something >> really good, to make the risk of developing this product seem >> acceptable. Now, with the ice broken, a competitor is champing at the >> bit to enter from the wings. > This doesn't explain the lack of a good solid spreadsheet on the > Amiga, though ... there are probably other factors at work as well. Yep. The cheap PC-Clones that can run the really mature spreadsheet software are easily able to capture the business market and elbow the Amiga _and_ any software out of the way. If a vendor were to develop a really high quality spreadsheet program to sell into the minor part of the Amiga market that uses the Amiga for business stuff, the software would have to be priced high enough to cost more than the IBM-PC market software with a PC-clone thrown in. I wouldn't develop into a market like that either; I'd fully expect to lose my shirt in the process. When you write for a business market, you're writing for folks who can afford to buy the machine to run the software they like, rather than buy software to run on the machine they have like the home market, and that changes the marketplace a lot. (And I'll frankly admit that if someone _gave_ me an Excel or other supreme quality spreadsheet perfectly ported to the Amiga, I'd probably reformat the disks to store some graphics data, and use the manuals for tinder. Some of us don't _want_ bean counters' software, under any circumstances.) Kent, the man from xanth.