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From: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga,net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: ST wins over Amiga (??!)
Message-ID: <309@3comvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Dec-85 20:44:13 EST
Article-I.D.: 3comvax.309
Posted: Fri Dec 27 20:44:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Dec-85 14:26:30 EST
References: <617@ihlpm.UUCP> <2511@dragon.fluke.UUCP> <1958@islenet.UUCP> <4301@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz)
Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA
Lines: 67
Xref: watmath net.micro.amiga:1330 net.micro.atari:2124
Summary: 

In article <4301@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> eric@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Eric Lavitsky) writes:
>Wow, you read InfoWorld! - I hear it's a great magazine!... (ahem)

The latest issue of InforWorld reviews the Amiga, and is a real detriment
to the Amiga.  Not only did the article contain several
mistakes, but they reviewed version 1.0 of the workbench and kickstart,
which we knew had bugs.  Now, 1.1 has been out for a few weeks, and
I have not really had a whole lot of trouble with the software crashing.
My Amiga crashes all the time when I pass extra parameters to function
calls, etc., but during normal use, system crashes are rare. 

InfoWorld also talked mostly about the 256K machine, which is like
reviewing a 64K IBM PC.  The Amiga is an 8+Megabyte of RAM machine, 
and those of us who own Amigas are just licking our chops waiting for
the equivalent of an AST card.  The Amiga with 8+ megabytes and the
68020 should be compared with the IBM AT and MicroVax.  InfoWorld 
did review what they had available, but we who read net.micro.amiga and
net.micro.atari seem to be better reporters of the state of the Amiga
(and ST as well) than the "Professionals" at InfoWorld.  I hope to see
another review next week, since the new software is so much better.
Also, InfoWorld did not mention any of the software packages that I
saw several weeks ago at Computer Attic, when I bought my Amiga almost
3 weeks ago!  Yes, they probably have some lead time, but to write
TWO FULL PAGES about a machine that they couldn't even try any software
out for, and then make statements like "As an aside, we forsee a flood
of bad software written for the Amiga by programmers unaccustomed to
multi-tasking programs..." is pretty stupid, if you ask me.  They also
put an "Editor's note:" at the bottom saying how they had a "lack of 
cooperation from Commodore."  I wouldn't expect Commodore to cooperate
with InfoWorld because of several degrading articles (John C. Dvorak, and
others) about Commodore and Amiga.  Also, the Amiga was given 2 terminals.

Now to the defense of Infoworld, they did have some nice things to say
about how Intuition was as friendly and easy to use as the MAC.

Please note, this article is very comparable to Infoworld's, except
turned around so that InfoWorld is the one getting roasted.  InfoWorld
did not even mention a single piece of software that we have all been
seeing and hearing about since they were anounced and demonstrated at
the June launch.  Off the top of my head, I can think of Flight Simulator,
the digitizer, perhaps 10 different Electronic Arts titles, Chang Labs
(InfoWorld gave their IBM PC software good reviews) has some business-type
software (I saw an accounting and general ledger package), or any of the 
other products demonstrated at the launch. Where was InfoWorld at the
launch?  Didn't they see anything then?  Couldn't they call Chang Labs
and ask for software for evaluation?  Couldn't they do any investigation
at all? 

Another quote: "Judging from the number of beta-test programs floating
around, we can expect to get a chance to judge the software side of the
Amiga system a lot sooner than we could when the Macintosh was first
introduced."  Well, in June, the Amiga had more software packages announced
(with real live developers working on the stuff) than any other PC
in history - including the Mac, IBM PC, Atari ST, Atari 800, Commodore 64, et
al.

I have been reading InfoWorld every week for a couple of years, and never
noticed anything like this before.  Typically their articles are real good.
In the same issue as the Amiga review, they review Apple's new 20MB hard
disk.  It costs $1500 and is "two or three" times faster than the floppy
disk (oh boy, now it only takes 1 minute to load a word processor instead
of 3 minutes) and they (InfoWorld) gave it 3 (count 'em) terminals.  Sounds
kind of biased (just kind of) to me...

Sorry to be so long winded...

/mykes