Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!midway!clout!chinet!saj
From: saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs)
Subject: Re: Atari Mortis
Message-ID: <1991May19.035413.14005@chinet.chi.il.us>
Summary: Still some hopeful signs
Keywords: history, cheerleading, admonitions
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
References: <9105141732.AA19207@cwns10.INS.CWRU.Edu> <ccAl5B600Uzx83AuIs@andrew.cmu.edu> <4528@bnr-rsc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19 May 1991 03:54:13 GMT

I just did a bit of comparison shopping.  Sure enough, in selected applications,
the TT beats the pants off anything based on an Intel chip.  In a lot of
other applications, it runs pretty much even with a 25 MHz 80486.  And the
price is in the 80386 range.  Leaves it a very good hardware buy.  But the
software situation stinks.  You just don't see the exuberant blossoming of
neat programs to do stuff you wouldn't do with a computer except you wanted to
find another thing to do with it.  You see programs in important niches compete
on lack of bugs, rather than neat features.  Configurability is a problem too:
not that the other name-manufacturers are any nicer about selling you the
machine the way you want it set up, but Atari is the last holdout for LITTLE
boxes: if the standard configuration doesn't have what you want, you either
hang it outboard, or (in the case of a disk drive, in particular) replace the
one it came with.  No room to add stuff.  Pizza boxes are great as network
leaves, but for the one-and-only, lots of room to grow is comforting.
   For the future, the notebooks look like super-neat machines (I have some 
problems figuring out how to market them, but that's not a technical issue).
A successor to the ATW could give Atari a visible presence in education and
research.  The Mega STe looks kinda lonesome at 16 MHz: if the other STe-s
ran that fast, they'd be real challengers in home and small businesses.
   So there are still some sparks.  Developing for the ST isn't so terribly 
hard, but there isn't a ton of it happening.  The hardware is marketable and
marketed, just not as resourcefully as I (we?)'d like to see.  
                                 Steve