Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp From: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re:Future Amigas & Suggestions (excessively long) Message-ID: <1093@spice.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Tue, 18-Nov-86 16:37:16 EST Article-I.D.: spice.1093 Posted: Tue Nov 18 16:37:16 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 18-Nov-86 21:57:17 EST Reply-To: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) Distribution: net Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 190 Keywords: From: ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) Subject: Re: Future Amigas & suggestions (Very Long) Date: 17 Nov 86 22:13:12 GMT In Article: <9304@sun.uucp> Chuck Mc Manis weites: >> As far as I know Commodore is successfully penetrating the graphics >> arts markets, video effects market, and home computer market. > >These are markets? Come on now! anyone interested in doing professional >video will use a PIXAR or something. Amateurs may be interested in using >the Amiga but this is not a serious market. (no starving artist can >afford a $2500 machine) Funny. My local Amiga dealer is offering 512K, two drives plus monitor for $1495. >> No Ed, I think you have missed the point. First, Amigas base machine is >> 256K, and it is easily and inexpensively upgraded to 512K. The Mac upgrade >> to 512K was $900 when it came out. With $900 you can upgrade an Amiga to >> 2.5 Meg. Anyone can upgrade their Amiga today, everyone seems so paranoid > >So what? 512K is nothing these days. What you failed to mention Chuck is >the fact that most memory expansions for the Amiga take up the Bus so >further expansion is impossible. If you look at the Allegra card, yes. Why don't you talk to the folks at ASDG or Byte by Byte about their expansion products? Ever hear about the Zorro standard? >I *HOPE* I'm proven wrong here, but I understand that the new 68010 >1 Meg machine will be a seperate product (although completely compatable >with the A1000) and the Commodore will *NOT* make an upgrade available. You can both drop an 010 into an Amiga and expand it past 1 Meg right now without waiting for Commodore to produce a new product. Why do you give the impression that progress is going to leave present Amiga owners out in the cold? The next Amiga is more than likely going to offer improvements that can be easily added to the present machine, such as internal expansion slots, hard disk interface, etc. Any other changes would mean a next-generation machine, and I see no reason for C-A to offer me an upgrade--it's a whole new computer! After all, they sold me my machine in its present configuration, not a promise that I would receive a 68020 wonder-machine a year or so down the road. IBM didn't offer PC owners upgrades when they came out with the AT, did they? >Yep! I am making statements based on preconcieved standards. That's >what standards are for! You cannot successfully market a product >without *AT LEAST* matching the capabilities of your competition. The reason there is a lack of good productivity software is because the Amiga still lacks the stable environment and developer's tools that enable programmers to produce quality, next-generation software. There is no Microsoft C 4.0 or Lightspeed C on the Amiga, and combined with the lack of stability in the OS, things have not been nice for software developers. The situation wasn't much better for the Mac's first year of existence, I might add (except they had MacWrite). 1.2 Kickstart/Workbench combined with the Zorro standard will provide the Amiga with better software and expansion options than currently exists for the PC and the Mac. The only shameful thing about the situation is that C-A is at the point now that they should have been a year ago. They can't be blamed for everything, though...they are trying as best they can. >The average buyer does not CARE about operating system internals! >He want's a tool to get his work done. All the Amiga Operating System >has done is confuse those programmers who were comfortable with CPM or >MS-Dos or UNIX. Again, Amiga has *IGNORED* standards and >tried to establish their own. Only Apple and IBM can do that now that >the Personal Computer Marketplace has matured. A programmer who can't adjust himself to a different operating environment and produce software under it doesn't deserve to call himself a programmer. And I think the personal computer marketplace is far from mature. IBM has stunted the growth of the personal computer industry by creating such a mediocre standard. >The personal computer marketplace demands THREE (count 'em 3) basic >features to insure a product's success: > (1) Spreadsheets > a. IBM has Lotus. > b. Mac has EXCEL. Both are very good programs. > c. AMIGA has MAXIPLAN which was written in C (READ: shit!) > or VIP which ignores all the wonderful hardware. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty certain that Lotus was written in C. That has no bearing on the quality of Maxiplan (which I will not comment on since I haven't seen it), since entire operating systems have been written in C without ill or adverse effects. VIP was not written with the Amiga in mind; it is a port from IBM land and of course ignores all the wonderful hardware (that the Amiga at least has). > (2) Word Processing > a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. You mean CP/M defined it with Wordstar and MicroPro ported it to the PC. Nevertheless, I would be the last to call Wordstar "state of the art". > b. Mac did it one better with the Laserwriter & WYSIWIG. c. AMIGA is nonexistent. > (3) A comittment to keeping the product alive > a. The IBM PC has been around for eons. 1981 is eons? > b. The Apple ][ lives on and the Mac has been > here for about 4 years. Umm, excuse me, but the Mac was introduced January 1984, nearly three years ago. Get your facts right before you open your mouth. The Apple II lives on only through improvements like the IIc and the IIgs. These are the same improvements any product faces to remain in touch with technology. The same can be said about the PC/XT/AT/IBM's forthcoming 386 machine (whatever abbreviations will be applied to it). > c. AMIGA is about a year old and will be > "Replaced" (you said it, I didn't) in > a few months. Far from it. The next machine C-A announces will be an incremental improvement upon the present machine in terms of features. This is nothing wors that what Apple and IBM have been doing. A next-generation machine (i.e. 68020 and more gee-whiz hardware) probably won't be seen until late 87 at the earliest. And I would expect to see some leap in technology by then. >Only if you use some God-Forsaken-Obscure operating system you mean. If you are alluding to the fact that the Amiga is the only machine this side of the Atlantic Ocean running its funny derivative of Tripos, I suggest you look at some other machines running proprietary operating systems: the Mac, the IIgs, the C-64/128, the Atari ST, etc. etc. A non-standard operating system doesn't mean software will never appear; corporate politics and bigotry determines when software will appear. >The point I was trying to make is that if Commodore was serious about making >the Amiga a success, more time would have been spent on *SOFTWARE* In order >to make up for that dearth of software a quick & dirty Software Kludge >called the "Transformer" was created. When that fell on it's ass, the >Sidecar was announced. I understand that the next Amiga will have IBM >Clone Hardware *BUILT IN* Ironic isn't it? the "Better Mousetrap" will >have to rely on an ancient design by a BIG corporation and compete with >similar clones from the far east with *FAR* lower prices. The performance of the transformer pretty much made it a stupid idea to begin with, as is the whole idea of PC compatibility in general. I notice that Apple is rumored to be building PC compatibility into its next incarnation of the Mac as well. Here I agree with you in that C-A should not be determining the hardware configuration for its users by putting in a lot of hardware that some people will not appreciate and do not want to pay extra for. I don't want PC compatibility and am happy that my current Amiga doesn't offer it. But the bigoted businesspeople with blinders on their eyes have to be appeased somehow... >Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) >Plexus Computers Inc. >Phone: (408) 943-2226 >Net: sun!plx!ed Others have said this, I'll reiterate: If you're a former Amiga owner, why are you still here whining? Either offer constructive criticism or go away. The above opinions are not those of my institution. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Mike Portuesi | | Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department | | | | ARPA: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu | | UUCP: {harvard | seismo | ucbvax | decwrl}!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp | | | | "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture" | | --Laurie Anderson, "Home of the Brave" | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+