Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ncar!ames!killer!tness1!nuchat!peter From: peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Why are you selling your Amiga?? Message-ID: <810@nuchat.UUCP> Date: 17 Mar 88 13:14:37 GMT References: <702@oberlin.UUCP> Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx Lines: 100 In article <702@oberlin.UUCP>, blandy@oberlin.UUCP (isjimblandy) writes: > Take a look at the software. For the Mac, every WP supports > multiple fonts, onscreen text attributes, proportional fonts, and > they're usually almost WYSIWYG. And this is expected. On the Mac, hardly any editors of any kind support global search and replace. Until Multifinder came along they all took over the machine. > On the Amiga, we've had TEXTCRAFT??!? Scribble!?!? The thing had > dot commands, for God's sake! What are we, troff afficandos? I don't know about you, but I *am* a troff afficianado. I think TextCraft and Scribble are insufficiantly powerful for real work. Vi and Emacs are the only way to fly. I'd also like to note that the PC has a whole lot more serious text editors available for it than the Amiga, the Mac, all the CP/M machines in the world... > Mewling and puking and trying to be Wordstar? Aren't we past that > era? Why did Scribble! win an award from Amigaworld (I think)? Why > is this acceptable? I don't know. I've given up on AmigaWorld. > Why did it take ten minutes (I'm exaggerating) to list a directory > under 1.1? Why was 1.2 better, but still awful compared to any PC > clone? Come on - when I know my machine could scream past them, why > is anything less than wonderful acceptable? It isn't. We've been flaming Amiga on the net for years about the slow speed of AmigaDOS, and how we want a UNIX-style file system. But let's talk about the slow speed of the Mac. On the Mac-II, I have to stop and pause every time I want to do something and wait for the machine to catch up with me. Up to a couple of seconds with a moderate software load. On a 68020? Why is anything less than instantaneous response acceptable? And we could take pot-shots at the Mac file system for years and not do it justice. > Deluxe paint. Suppose you want to do some hardcopy, like posters? > Maps? diagrams or charts for a homework paper or presentation? Why > can't the thing conveniently work with an image larger than the > screen like, say, the size of A PIECE OF PAPER???? Oh, sorry, I'll > do it SIDEWAYS. Right. Even MacPaint lets you work on a page at a > time. And MacPaint has been topped since. Why is this acceptable? Gee. I just pulled up DPaint II, selected "Page Size", and set it to 640 by 800. That's actually a bit larger than 8.5 by 11". I guess it isn't. > Oh, we have a printer driver that will support graphics and offers > standard escape codes. Sorry, boys- a bitmap dump routine does not a > printer driver make. And the fool thing won't handle accented > characters correctly. Why is this acceptable? Actually the printer driver is a *bit* more complex than that, and remember: the Mac only supports *one* printer. Oh, right. Now it supports *two*. The Amiga supports any printer you care to name. > It's frustrating knowing that your computer isn't living up to a > fraction of its potential. Agreed. But it's young yet. Give it time. After all, Commodore is nowhere near as rich as Apple, and the Mac didn't have to put up with being used as a soccerball by Jack Tramiel & Commodore. > *okay, no more flaming* Why? You do it so well. > So since things seem so stable, I'm guessing that the Amiga stuff > isn't going to improve radically. What makes you think that? The Amiga hasn't had any real advertising until last November. Since then the number of machines out there has increased fourfold. > From my point of view, the Mac is > the place to go. Mac users seem to expect excellence and useful > innovation, and from what I've seen, they seem to get it. So, are you a user or a programmer? Do you plan on writing software for your shiny new Mac? There are 600,000 Amigas out there. If the situation is as bad as you say then all you need to do is clone MacWrite or MacPaint and you'll sell 100,000 copies, easy. > I guess what I'm saying here is something about the nature of > computers. So if you think I'm just saying "mine's better than > yours," do the wise thing - ignore me. It's not worth the net. But > if you think I'm saying something new, post something, and let's > argue. :-) You're not saying anything new. Haven't you been watching this group over the past months? -- -- a clone of Peter (have you hugged your wolf today) da Silva `-_-' -- normally ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter U -- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.