Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!cdh From: cdh@bbncc3 Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Amiga reactions Message-ID: <3568@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 21:21:55 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.3568 Posted: Fri Sep 6 21:21:55 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 7-Sep-85 13:27:32 EDT Sender: daemon@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 75 From: "Carl D. Howe" I saw an Amiga here at BBN, and I got to play with it a week or two ago (although not in any significant way). I thought people might like to hear some subjective reactions I had, particularly since I usually use a Mac. 1) In terms of text resolution, it's not as nice as my Mac. I guess this is because text display is done in 640x200 mode. It also looks like it is poorer resolution just because the Mac display is so small and the Amiga display is 30% bigger. Nonetheless, I don't think the characters were nearly as pretty to look at. Of course, there's nothing to stop you from using better fonts (other than not being able to fit a full 25X80 screen). 2) The bit mover coprocessor provides an incredible feeling of smoothness and transparency to window moving. When I move a window on my Mac, I can see it redrawing the outline of the window as I move it. The contents remain blank until I've placed the window. On the Amiga, the whole window moves as an entity with absolutely no hesitation or flicker. When we moved the 640x400 picture of the baboon out of the way to get back to the desktop, it was like pulling down a windowshade with a baboon painted on it. The interaction of the mouse and the graphics is so good, you would swear they were physically connected. 3) I saw the famous "bounce" program and was blown away. For those who haven't seen it, this is an animation of a beach ball bouncing in a room. The beach ball is red and white patchwork, and rotates on its axis as it moves. It also has a shadow which follows it across the floor and the background. If you close your eyes, you can still locate where the beach ball is, because the stereo sound of it bouncing tracks its location on the screen, complete with gymnasium type reverb sound effects. The really impressive thing about this demo is the amount of work the 68000 is doing; it's actively doing something only 8% of the time. That means it's 92% idle! 4) The desktop needs some work to make it really pretty. Strangely enough, the use of color on the desktop makes it look cheap somehow. No shadows are provided for windows, nor is there any differentiation between the blue desktop and the blue text background. Red characters on a blue background are very hard on the eyes (this color scheme is used occasionally on the desktop). I don't know if the color choices are customizable or not. 5) The command line interface seems really quite usable and is a great feature. It feels a lot like a cross between MS-DOS and UNIX. The ability to multitask is quite impressive and makes me feel differently about the machine. Always having a command window waiting for me to type something, even when the machine is doing something else makes me feel like the machine is waiting for me rather than me always having to wait for the machine to get around to talking to me. 6) The 640x400 graphics were very impressive. The ubiquitous baboon (I think it is really called a mandril) was truly beautiful and had no obvious flicker. In general, I was impressed by the lack of flicker on the screen because I am very sensitive to it (I'm constantly annoyed by the 60 Hz flicker of the background on my Mac; I've often wished it had a longer persistence phosphor). On the other hand, the demo graphics may have been tweaked to avoid obvious horizontal lines in interlaced mode. But my suspicion is that the Amiga monitor has a phosphor that persists somewhat longer than most other monitors. I'd be curious to compare it with another monitor (like a PGS HX-9 for a more fair size comparison to my Mac). Finally, a comment about the "hello world" program that circulated today. Just from looking at that program, it appears that the interface provided to the programmer is a little nicer than that on the Mac. When I was writing some C code for the Mac (admittedly using SuMacC), I seem to remember it was much more painful to get a window set up in such a way as to be able to print things in it, resize it, etc. On the other hand, once it was set up, you had lots of options of how to deal with various events that occurred. This may just be a tradeoff of power vs. ease-of-use. I'd be interested in seeing more code examples as they become available. Sorry this is so long, but given the scarcity of Amigas in the world at the moment, I though people would be interested. Carl (chowe@bbncc3)