Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!herald.usask.ca!telepro!tptbbs!James_Hastings-Trew From: James_Hastings-Trew@tptbbs.UUCP (James Hastings-Trew) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.multimedia Subject: Re: CDTV Motion Video Message-ID: Date: 15 Jun 91 15:46:12 GMT Organization: TelePro Technologies Lines: 71 In a message dated Sat 15 Jun 91 01:46, Yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (brian Yaman wrote: YY> Apple has always excelled in software creation. Anyone who has used YY> the Mac can see that in the elegance of its interface. Of course YY> they can't seem to get pre-emptive "multi-tasking" to work. But they YY> excel in human interfacing and application program interfaces. I disagree. While a GUI is great for beginner and casual users, the Mac's total lack of scripting abilities and lack of multitasking really prevents the machine from being a machine for serious work. Given the same task and relatively equal harware capabilities, a multi-media creator working with Amiga systems will always be able to produce a given project faster and cheaper than a creator with a Macintosh. AmigaDOS scripts and Arexx give us the edge to massage large amounts of data without a lot of time consuming operator intervention. This gives the Amiga an undisputed competitive edge. Quick Time sounds neat, but the hardware itself is lacking - no Mac I have ever worked with can play sounds and access the hard-drive at the same time without serious system performance degradation. Pray-tell how Quick Time allows the simultaneous decompression of video frames, updates the display, and plays back digitized sound at the same time on a machine that cannot move the mouse and read the directory of a floppy at the same time? The assertion that "any Mac can display compressed video" with Quick Time is bogus - only the fastest, most pumped up, most accelerated machines have the ability to do this with any credibility. YY> I think we can no longer say that Apple produces only expensive YY> systems. QuickTime puts multi-media in the reach of many with the YY> LC, and Super Mac has unveiled a $500 video capture and playback board YY> for it. *Ahem*. Who said the LC was inexpensive? Oh yeah... Apple did. Must be true! YY> Of course the Amiga still has many hardware advantages that a Mac YY> doesn't, so Commodore is not out of the game yet. As I said in YY> another post, we just need better resolution and colors with greater YY> OS support. That would really make the Amiga the best solution. We already have good colour/resolution options on the Amiga - at great prices too. The OS support is a red-herring issue. All application developers at some time or other whine that "XYZ support should be built into the OS." This seems to be the approach that Apple takes with their system software. Examples: TOPS provides for a distributed networking solution. Apple adds this to the OS MicroSloth Mail provides for network EMail. Apple adds EMail to the OS Adobe Type Manager provides for superior type on screen. Apple adds this to OS Quick Keys provides for Mouse/Keyboard macros. Apple adds this to OS Virtual provides virtual memory. Apple adds this to OS Quark provides for Hot-Links with other apps. Apple adds this to OS The list goes on and on. Apple seems to be intent on not allowing any creative force in the Mac development community to keep any kind of advantage. I wonder why developers are leaving the Mac in droves for Windows and DOS? Maybe because IBM does not seem intent on stealing all their best ideas. What would Digital Creations think if Commodore suddenly created a similar technology and incorporated that into the hardware/OS of the Amiga? Why am I disgressing to this discussion of Apple's software policies regarding their OS? Because I see things like video/audio formats and solutions to be more of an APPLICATIONS problem, not a OS problem. Commodore is there to sanction file formats (IFF, SMUS, etc.) so that we do not turn into a wilderness of file format incompatibilities (how much development time is wasted in each Mac appliation to make it compatible with TIFF, PICT, PAINT, EPS, WORD, WRITE, etc. etc.) Let the free market decide which video/audio/authoring solutions are the best.