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From: conte@uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: The trouble with the Amiga
Message-ID: <42600006@uicsrd>
Date: Tue, 9-Dec-86 09:48:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uicsrd.42600006
Posted: Tue Dec  9 09:48:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Dec-86 22:33:58 EST
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Nf-From: uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU!conte    Dec  9 08:48:00 1986



> The trouble with the Amiga is simple. I still, after almost a year
> now, can not point out a set of programs to someone that will 
> let them work on the Amiga as well as they can on a Mac. Can anyone?

First, you are comparing apples and oranges :-).  As you said, after
almost a year... Apple... etc.  Give the Amiga time.  I see two adds
in the Jan/Feb Amigaworld that look promising for Mac-alike word processing.
(Check out ProWrite (p. 13) and PageSetter (p. 79)).

> One of the major complaints on a paper I submitted was the quality
> of the illustrations, done on an Amiga. And yes, i have LoadILBM and 
> I have modified it to use the rast port dump. I have played with 
> all the parameters. It still looks bad. 

Hang in there.  The Mac took a while too.  You chose to be different,
you bought newer technology (Amiga vs. Mac) and now you have to live
with the growing pains of that technology.  There is no doubt the power
is there in the Amiga, there is no doubt developers want to provide
Amiga owners with the same or better features as Mac's.  Hold out, you
did the Right Thing.

> Multitasking is wonderful. How many Amiga products really support it 
> well? DeluxePaint for one takes up the whole machine. TextCraft used to. 
> A lot of the early software showed (to me, anyway) that many 
> DEVELOPERS did not understand multi-tasking. 

TextCraft is the strangest program I have ever seen.  It appears that
its authors didn't want to use the Intuition interface at all and just
brewed their own.  That's not so great, considering it was one of the
first programs out for the machine.  A lot of the bugs I hear about
seem to say that it was developed without any idea what the software
for the machine would be like.  My advice: throw it out.

> Sure, there are some really terrific programs, (InfoMinder comes
> to mind) but people are going to judge an Amiga by the Mac standard.
> And it fails. People just do not understand that the machine is different
> and better in most ways. They only understand that it will not do what 
> a Mac has done since Jan. 1984.

...and do more and less.  People are going to have to realize that the Amiga
is not another Mac.  They don't seem to compare the IBM to the Mac and
say, "ho hum, guess I'll buy a Macintosh."  The Amiga is an Amiga.  It
can do many Mac-like things, it can do many IBM things (SideCar/Transformer).
It can also do Amiga things.  They are starting to understand it's different.
You bought your machine just a little after mine, and we both knew the machine
was still in its development stage.  Now it is `giving birth,' and gaining
mass appeal, hang in there.


Tom Conte      University of Illinois
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