Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Why are you selling your Amiga?? Message-ID: <45609@sun.uucp> Date: 15 Mar 88 20:12:58 GMT References: <702@oberlin.UUCP> <704@oberlin.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.uucp Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 169 More observations about the state of the Amiga, today, tomorrow, and yesterday. If someone starts a MCIBTYC war we shall shoot them ok? >What Blandy says is : The AMIGA hasn't lived up to its potential, and the MAC > has.... [standard snide remark here is "Well the Mac didn't have far to go."] When in fact this is both true and false. One of the problems with the Amiga 'market' is that there isn't nearly as much money going into it as the Mac market. But that is to be expected for a computer that is only a couple of years old. You see, if you look at history you will see that the amount of development effort that goes into a machine is proportional to the installed base. After all, no one wants to hire eight programmers and pay them 60,000 a year to develop whiz-calc when they only expect to sell a 1000 copies. But if the installed base is a million and they can sell 10,000 copies at $200 a piece then they will make the investment. Thus, the available software is an exponential function that depends on three things : a) Most importantly, installed base. Are people buying this machine? The 500,000 number speaks well for the Amiga here. b) Will people pay >$200 for a piece of software (which is the minimum price for a major, well supported product) c) Is the manufacturer supporting the ISVs and promoting the product. (This helps A. above) Basically, Commodores advertising has kept A) up, plus they seem to update the system software once a year and each time it is an improvement. I have seen 1.3 and it is as much an improvement in the user interface as 1.2 was in the programming interface. The stuff going on for 1.4 is even more exciting. And in the b) category, programs like Word Perfect, VideoScape 3D, and X-Cad show that you can sell software in the Amgia market at the $200 level. So each year the installed base doubles and another bunch of companies start developing software. So lets look at the past ... Ok when I bought my Amiga, I also bought Deluxe Paint and Lattice C 3.03b. (Oh and skyfox and arcticfox). They were ok programs, the best paint program anyone had ever seen, and a decent but not great C compiler. For word processing I used an early version of microemacs. Dial up communications were accomplished by AmigaTerm, the original source to Vt100. A year later, 1.2 had come out with improved system facilities and better programmer support. Lattice went to version 3.10 of the compiler and EA release Deluxe Paint II, a much more useful version of Deluxe Paint. Another 6 months passed before Word Perfect came out. But out it came and I found it quite useful and well supported. Now I have Lattice 4.01, Deluxe Paint II, MaxiPlan+, WordPerfect 4.2, and Shakespeare. The combination lets me do just about anything I could do on the Mac in the second year of it's existence but there are still some problems. 1) Printing is slow and looks *bad* on my Epson printer. (1.3 fixes this problem) 2) Working with floppies is slow as molasses. (They are still slow in 1.3 but should be faster in 1.4) 3) The user interface is still not 'standard'. (Being looked at I'm sure but I don't know if it can be fixed at this point) But these are just problems that take a little software and R&D, and *THAT* is where we really need to look to understand the Amiga. Since the release of 1.1 the number of engineers working on system software for the Amiga decline radically to a low of about 4 I believe, now it appears to be somewhere in the 8 to 12 range. Apple on the other hand has over a hundred people working on Mac stuff. Often times C/A tech support doubles as the systems programming staff , and Apple has a whole separate department with *another* hundred people in it to do that. Maybe as Commodore increases it's revenue it will staff up its programming staff. It really is a snowball effect. Hell, if Apple wanted to get a 'standard' IPC package for the Mac they would just assign a half dozen engineers to go off and design it. And six months later (poof) there it would be, and it would work with everything because they have the source and the access and the time to do it right. What do we have? A bunch of motivated and bright people all contributing ideas but we will never know if what we decide is *right* because we don't have the system perspective. It's worse than a chicken and egg problem, we're an egg with no idea what the chicken looks like. The advantages of this though are that Commodore really does take your suggestions and put them into the software. And you and I really have some influence over what their priorities are so in some small way we are helping to shape the Amiga. I always counsel people who want canned solutions and don't care what the machine is underneath to get a Mac or a PC clone. [Can 1000 lemmings all be wrong?:-)] For programmer/engineers who like to get their hands 'dirty' I always reccomend the Amiga. For budding entreprenures(sp?) it is a toss up, kinda depends on how creative they are and whether or not they have a 'real' job. As with any computer there will be those software companies that grow up with the Amiga and become the leaders. We're just starting to move off the ground floor so look out. So why haven't I sold my Amiga and bought a Mac II (or a Sun which is the better machine :-)) ? Because of the potential and the fun, because Commodore is improving the software and helping others improve theirs, and because I haven't found anything close in it's potential. I'm sticking with it, and helping it grow, and would be willing to predict that in the next couple of years people who write Mac and PC programs will be adapting things that pioneered on the Amiga, ports of 'Amiga' programs will be demanded by those users, and the Amiga will have >1.5 Million installed users out there. Oh, and some comments on the comments here : >But we still don't have bug free WP systems as good as MacWrite. >As for DPaint fuck color (yes I said it) fuck color. I want >something I can write nice B&W reports with. And this isn't it. Well, color will be more important next year when Apple announces it's color LaserWriter no? Also I use DPaint II in black and white mode all the time for the same reason, my printer is black and white. Using a 800 X 1000 screen I can get pretty nice output from it on my Epson, great output on the LaserWriter at work. >The list goes on. > 1) Why didn't CM steal the idea of resource files -- please > read the Apple Documentation before responding. Maybe because Apple threatened to Sue DRI, maybe because they just didn't have the resources to do it right. > 2) Why didn't CM make the drives compatible? So I could > exchange disks -- and source easily. (yes, I'd have to > convert it) Because the Mac uses screwy drives. You could still use the serial port like you would have to if you had a PC clone. > 3) Why did CM insist on a single interface -- ever notice > every program has a slightly different way of putting up file > requestors? Yes, again because they probably didn't have the resources. As things like the arp.library get wider distribution this problem will go away (for file requesters anyway). Now all we need are a standard color requester and font requester and we will be cooking with gas. > 4) Why didn't they insist programs use the ClipBoard? Because it wasn't quite "done" the way it should have been. Why didn't C/A supply an iff.library to read and write all of these IFF forms? If you will recall, CBM was on the verge of Bankruptcy when the Amiga was announced, and no believed they would survive long enough to get 1.2 out the door. Apple was never under that sort of pressure. > 5) Why isn't their documentation as clear as APPLE's > (read the apple docs before flaming) What part did you find unclear? >p.s. Atari is coming out with a 68020 unix color machine for the >American Market 1989. Real UNIX. CM what have you done for me >lately? And if you really believe that I've got a bridge to sell you in brooklyn. At COMDEX they were showing the ABAQ, a transputer based machine that did all sorts of fancy graphics. They said "It will be available in March, if you sign up as a developer you can get one in January." Well, no one I know has one, nor does Atari talk much about them any more, nor does anyone who sent in their $100 developer fee have anything more than a slightly embellished spec. Atari is the land of vapors these days. And I will believe it when I see it and not a second before, even if JT himself called me up and told me they would meet that date. --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.