Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!ukma!sean
From: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Time is of the essence on IPC (hypercard no innovation)
Message-ID: <8609@g.ms.uky.edu>
Date: 18 Mar 88 09:18:08 GMT
References: <1571@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey)
Organization: The Leaning Tower of Patterson Office @ The Univ. of KY
Lines: 63
Summary: Blame it on Commodore.

In article <1571@louie.udel.EDU> rminnich@udel.EDU (Ron Minnich) writes:
>One of the things that bothers me about the Amiga (and the
>guy who dumped his amiga for a Mac II) is that we tend to spend
>a lot of time on basic mechanisms while apple folks get to build
>stuff like Hypercard. Hypercard, like it or not (and i don't, really) is
>a significant innovation. Don't believe me? Read comp.sys.mac.hypercard
>and see what they're doing, and then think about doing the same things,
>*in the same amount of time*, on the amiga.

First of all, hypercard is no innovation. The ideas for hypercard have been
around for forty (40) years. There are a number of precedents.

I've been told that programming an amy for graphics and sound is much easier
than programming a mac.

So what gives? Why does Apple have hypercard and not Amiga?

reason: Sales.

Apple made a huge sales push and got a huge number of Macs into people's hands.
It was a business machine that was easy to use. Point and click. The demand
for software was phenomenal. Everyone knew it was going to be big.

Commodore, on the other hand... why even discuss it?  We all know what
happened, or rather, what didn't.

reason: Standardization.

Apple has a thoroughly documented interface. No vendor has to make their
software use the "MacIntosh Interface", but if they do people can easily
adapt what they already know to using the program. Over time, since these
interfaces are so similar, software writers have built libraries of routines
for doing things in standard ways. This makes developing things like
hypercard much much faster.

Amiga is just barely catching up in this area, but it's not due to
an effort by Commodore, but to an effort by the users. The users want
a way to turn a running program into a small icon. Does commodore help?
No, so instead two or three ways to do it are publically released by
authors. Does anyone really know when the next version of dos is coming
out, or what improvements will be made?


reason: Market

There are a huge number of Mac programmers out there, and a relatively
small number of Amiga programmers.  Money talks.

I've played with hypercard, and I love it.  What it represents is a lot
of sweat by the author, and a successful computer by Apple.

The funny thing is, the Mac started out as an inferior machine, but
because of a wonderful effort by Apple, it made it into a lot of people's
hands.  The Amiga was just the opposite.  Now, of course, the Amiga
has been leapfrogged by the MacII.  This doesn't bother me.  But what
happens when someone comes out with a cheap '020 Graphics workstation with
Unix and far better graphics for about the price of an Amiga 2000? Looks
like I'll be selling out, that's what.

-- 
***  Sean Casey               sean@ms.uky.edu,  sean@ukma.bitnet
***  The Empire Maniac        {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!sean
***  University of Kentucky / Lexington Kentucky / USA
***  "Ludo... FRIEND!"