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From: plouff@kali.enet.dec.com (Wes Plouff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga coverage in Byte
Message-ID: <20761@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 5 Mar 91 18:46:04 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 71


tucker@tahoe.unr.edu (Aaron Tucker, or is it Juan Trevino?) writes:
>Your flames to BYTE are undeserved, in my opinion. You would love to have
>BYTE condemn the IBM, MAC, SUN, etc. to doom because the AMIGA is here. 

This thread has actually not been full of flames, in contrast to other Byte
topics in recent months.  We are discussing, I think, Byte's claim of good
Amiga coverage that editor Fred Langa made in the February letters column.

>BYTE started out as an IBM only magazine and has
>been expanding thier coverage of machines. 

Quite the opposite.  Anybody who can tell you the story behind the name
"Virginia Londoner Green Helmers" can fill you in.

kdarling@hobbes.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) writes:
>plouff@kali.enet.dec.com (Wes Plouff) writes:
>>But consider this: Byte has never run a full review of any Amiga 
>>machine, complete with benchmarks.  
>BYTE Oct '86 had a six page Review on the A1000, including benchmarks
>against the IBM PC and Apple IIe.  

I stand corrected, and you make a telling point.

>...But you bring
>up an interesting topic: what products would you review against each other?

My short list was: A3000, A3000UX, AmigaVision, Video Toaster, Imagine, survey
of accelerator cards, AMAX II, survey of 24-bit video cards.  Some of these may
seem too obvious to review, but the microcomputer world at large does not know
about these products.  I chose them as comparable to the kind of thing that
Byte already reviews, but better.  The list may reveal my hardware bias. :-)

daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:
>In BYTE's defense, I think they've managed to improve recently.  They have had
>more Amiga information.  I, for one, don't buy BYTE specifically to hear about
>Amigas, or PCs, or anything that's real system specific.  I buy it to hear 
>about goings on the computer industry as a whole.  Things like the Video 
>Toaster, or perhaps the article on Exec from a month or two ago are reasonably
>significant to the industry.  I don't think a review of "BlazeMonger IV" for
>the Amiga, or the 5,768,347th way to write a TSR for MS-DOS would be a 
>reasonable thing to read about in BYTE.

Mostly agreed.  Two years ago I was passing through Peterborough and stopped at
Byte's offices to talk with an editor about benchmarks.  Having no appointment,
I had plenty of time to read Byte's marketing literature on the reception room
table.  It was full of stuff about decision makers, power users, and the IBM
PC.  (A few mentions of Macintosh were thrown in.)  But there was nothing about
it being a general industry magazine.

What got me writing the letter to Fred Langa, and answering in this thread on
Usenet, was simply this:  If Byte never claimed to have any special Amiga
coverage, I would still read it for its articles on technology and trends in
computing.  I am pleased to see Amiga coverage when it appears, in articles
such as "The Four Multimedia Gospels."  But Fred Langa said that he was proud
of Byte's Amiga coverage, that it was the best of the non-machine-specific
magazines.  My points are: large number of mentions does not equal depth of
coverage, and lack of Amiga-oriented reviews is not "good" coverage when there
are products plainly superior to the MS-DOS or Macintosh products that do get
reviewed.

It's worth rereading Stan Seiler's letter and Langa's response.  Seiler
complained that Byte has "blindness to the Amiga."  Langa responded, "Byte is
not an Amiga-hostile magazine!"  Problem is, they're both right.

-- 
Wes Plouff, Digital Equipment Corp, Maynard, Mass.
plouff@kali.enet.dec.com

Networking bibliography:  _Islands in the Net_, by Bruce Sterling
			  _The Matrix_, by John S. Quarterman