Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!denbeste From: denbeste@bbn.COM (Steven Den Beste) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: I think we've got an attitude problem here Message-ID: <4504@cc5.bbn.COM> Date: Sun, 8-Nov-87 10:00:43 EST Article-I.D.: cc5.4504 Posted: Sun Nov 8 10:00:43 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Nov-87 02:36:11 EST Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 166 [And you have an attitude problem, too, line-eater!] I've been reading this group since about March, and I see some things I worry about. This is the feistiest bunch of people I've seen in a coon's age. (Sorry for the picturesque way of speaking - I'm just a hick from Portland, OR., a small town of 1.2 million people where we used to live in a log cabin and keep a shot-gun by the door to shoot the bears. [Sorry, I've got East-Coasteritis.]) Not only do the amiga folks seem to get into more "my computer is better than yours" wars than anyone else - since I've been here I've seen at least two mixups with the ST folks, not to mention the Mac people once and a continual biting at the PC; anyway, they also seem to be continually displeased with everyone else, too: all the software vendors, all the hardware vendors, CBM, fellow netters, binaries and sources moderators, people who write PD software, people who write SHAREWARE software, and even others. (CBM's ad agency?) (In fact, the only person I can think of that everyone loves is Fred Fish.) Speaking as men-of-the-world (and women-of-the-world, too - sorry, jdow) if you want something from someone, do you think that insulting them at the top of your lungs is the way to get it? How do you yourself respond when someone does that to you? [I can tell you this: If my boss yells at me for doing an incompetent job, I don't buckle down, I start looking for a new position because he or she isn't worth working for.] As to the cross-group wars, why bother? Who cares? Just what are you trying to prove? In fact, there seemed to be an undercurrent in them from this side of "the amiga is such a fine machine, howcome more people ain't buying it?" insecurity. Maybe that is why the amigans seem a bit defensive. So, here is an attitude that I'd like everyone to practice not having: "If they did it differently than I would have, then they did it wrong." This is a damaging attitude because it assumes you understand all the problems that they had to solve. Every engineering design is a trade-off. Most projects start with an extremely short list of desired features, and with a retail price goal. (From which you immediately get a manufacturing price goal by a rule-of-thumb which varies from company to company. At a company I used to work for, the rule of thumb was 4-to-1 markup, to cover engineering costs, sales costs, advertising, paying for unsuccessful projects, company overhead and PROFIT.) The engineers have to answer the question: What can we design within that dollar constraint, in a short enough time so that it isn't market-irrelevant, which will sell at that sales price in reasonable volume? (at which point some very impressive juggling goes on about just what volume you expect to try to sell - as the volume goes up, component cost goes down, but you have to gear up the factory to that volume. Most companies try to underestimate this a bit, because if you underestimate you will have a long back-order list but will be profitable, but if you overestimate you will have an idle factory and will lose money.) This answer isn't the same as to the question "What would be our dream machine if we could buy our components at surplus stores in onesies, labor was free, we didn't have to produce in quantity and we didn't have a schedule?" A LOT different. One lament I've heard recently summarizes as "Why didn't you improve the A2000 without making it incompatable?" Problem here is this: To improve something, you much change it. To change something, you induce incompatabilities. Plain and simple. Of course, those incompatabilities can be great or small - they fall withing brackets, and where in the bracket you fall depends on other issues. "Staying compatable with the A1000" WASN'T the only consideration; you also have to include the following: "Getting done on time", "Consuming as little engineering resource as possible" (both to keep costs down, and simply because it allows your engineers to get more done - read "more products"), "Making it sell at a reasonable price", "Making it so we can manufacture it in quantity". Mike Meyers, author of the above lament (and let me say now that I am probably summarizing it incorrectly, because I got sick of it and started skipping the articles a long time ago) asked in one of his articles why they couldn't have designed a product for the A2000 allowing use of A1000 SOTS modules. Well, technically they could have. But technical considerations are secondary: the real issue is resource and profitability. Such a product would be aimed at 1) A1000 owners who 2) own SOTS modules and 3) upgrade to an A2000 and 4) want to bring those SOTS boxes along. Now, by anyone's estimates, that is a pretty small audience for the product and given that C/A has a shortage of engineering talent (and EVERYONE ALWAYS has a shortage of engineering talent relative to all the tasks they wish they could work on) they have to make a decision whether that particular product would be more profitable than another which might address the entire A2000 audience. In this case they have made what I consider a quite realistic decision to let some third-party make it if they think the market is there - someone like Perry, for instance. Instead, they have their hardware guys working on other things - what, of course, I don't know. Maybe a controller for 2M floppies? Maybe the 386 bridge card? Who can say, besides Commodore. But they are not responsible to us for their decisions, they are only responsible to their management and their stock-holders. EVERY decision is a trade-off, and EVERY decision will leave someone pissed off and feeling shat upon. I know it is an old chestnut, but "You can't please everyone." [I'm told that some magazines of political commentary gauge their articles by how many "I'm cancelling my subscription" letters they receive - if they don't get any, they begin worrying.] The only possible answer to the question "Why didn't you do this" is "Because we were busy doing something else we though was more important." Once you understand that the go/nogo decision on a specific product is not only on its own merits, but relative to other products which they could also be working on, you're most of the way there to understanding what they do. For Meyers to stand up and bombastically say "Commodore Blew It And I'm Taking My Business Elsewhere" is at best arrogant and at worst ignorant. My reaction to that comment was "Good riddance." If I've learned anything in the 12 years I've been in this industry (and 6 years as a student hacker before that) it is these two things: "Nothing lasts" and "Nothing is perfect". The biggest difference between a good engineer and a bad engineer is that a bad engineer spends a lot of time bemoaning the sad state of the tools and components and constantly attempts to achieve perfection, whereas the good engineer takes what is, makes it work, sells it and makes money. Does anyone remember an article I posted a few months ago where I tried to analyze the markets the A1000 (and the then rumored A2000) could be sold to? Well, it seems that Commodore had already figured it out, and when the A2000 came out, they had tossed in some things to broaden its appeal. However, the big surprise was the then not-rumored A500, which seems to be selling as fast as they can make them. Are the A2000 and A500 perfect? Of course not. Are they selling and making a profit? They sure are selling, and if they are selling at C/A's manufacturing capacity then if C/A isn't profitable they need to fire their accountants. That makes them good products. Not perfect, but then "perfection" isn't part of the universe of discourse. Do they please everyone? Of course not. GM, perhaps the most successful industrial company in history, has achieved no more than a 1 in 4 penetration rate. For a company like commodore, if they make 1 in 100 they will be fantastically successful. So, the right attitude is "If they did it differently than I would have, then they must have known something that I don't know." Folks, when writing about some lack or flaw, the right way to do it is "Have you considered doing the following?" The wrong way, (the "Meyer's way") is "You stupid jerks, why didn't you do the following?". The former used to be the common way on this group, and it WORKED! But recently, more and more people seem to be destructive rather than constructive. I've never seen a computer for which the designers, both software and hardware, are as available and helpful as for the Amiga - frankly I'm STILL astounded. Not just CATS (it's their job, after all) but Haynes and Robbins and Schein and Davis and Finkel and that guy from Sales whose name I've forgotten. They read our suggestions and listen to them and even implement some of them, they answer questions and make suggestions, they give us (and therefore their competitors) hints about what's coming, and they seem to put up with an incredible amount of abuse for this. Every feature is second guessed, ever decision is criticized; Folks, is this any way to treat people who don't have to do this for us? How would you like it if cbmvax went off the air and we quit hearing from them? Let's start looking at our nine-tenths full glass instead of our one-tenth empty glass, OK? -- Steven C. Den Beste, Bolt Beranek & Newman, Cambridge MA denbeste@bbn.com(ARPA/CSNET/UUCP) harvard!bbn.com!denbeste(UUCP) I don't think BBN cares what I think about this stuff. And that's probably just as well.