Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!singer
From: singer@XN.LL.MIT.EDU (Matthew R. Singer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Atari no-support?
Message-ID: <942@xn.LL.MIT.EDU>
Date: 29 Mar 88 15:36:05 GMT
References: <148leigh@byuvax.bitnet> <2064@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <196@bdt.UUCP>
Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA
Lines: 68
Summary: Would you admit to being an Atari Developer???

In article <196@bdt.UUCP>, david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes:
> In article <54@avsd.UUCP> govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett) writes:
> >At the Hannover Fair last week, one of the Flying Tramiel Brothers said
> >that, since iratA gets 60% of its (16-bit ?) revenues from Deutschland,
> >the US market would suck hind tit, not to put too fine a point on it.
> >
> >The grafitti is on the wall.  Time to dump the boat anchor while you
> >can still get a decent price for it.  Don't count on Two-Tongue Jack
> >to ever support the ST in the US.  All he'll ever provide is crumbs to 
> >keep the peasants quiet. 
> 
> I'm glad somebody finally said it.  Howdy neighbor. Did you fall for it
> too?  We should'a listened to everybody that said we were fools.  Now
> Jack and his boys are laughin' & drinkin' to their health with my salary!
> 
> My friends who program "real" computers really gave me a hard time when I
> started with Atari and the ST.  Now everything they warned me about seems
> to be coming true.   You see, I used to be a real programmer.  No really.
> No foolin'.  Now on my resume I'll have to say "well see I was on an
> extended vacation for those three years.  No I never programmed an Atari
> before".
> 
> How long will the T's keep finding suckers?
> 
> -- 
> David Beckemeyer			| "Yuh gotta treat people jes' like yuh	
> Beckemeyer Development Tools		| do mules. Don't try to drive 'em. Jes'
> 478 Santa Clara Ave, Oakland, CA 94610	| leave the gate open a mite an' let 'em
> UUCP: ...!ihnp4!hoptoad!bdt!david 	| bust in!"



This is quite interesting.  When I moved to Boston from Washington DC
about a year ago,  the head hunters I had the "pleasure" of dealing
with specifically told me to leave anything about being an Atari 
developer off my resume.  

Yeah, I fell for it.  $2500 for a development system that when it
got here didn't come with what they said it did. (SS/DD drives
instead of DS/DD and it wasn't until I was going to go to a
lawyer 7 months later that I finally got my hard drive)...

I've been fooled twice.  I bought an Atari 800 after being convinced
it would be better than the Apple 2.  It may have been better, but it just
did not have the support for "real" applications and half the items
in the Atari catalog at the time of purchase never came out.  

I bought the ST developers system (pre ST release) on the hope that
it would be the next C-64 (market size / cheapie machine that
had some "real" application support).   God was I wrong....


There's an old saying:

Fool me once. Shame on you.  Fool me twice. Shame on me...

I won't get fooled again.  (should be a song title...)


If after all this Atari thinks they can get "real" developers for
a 030 machine, based on their past history of support, they have
been going to the wrong fortune tellers.


Yep, I'm writing for a Unix based system. But it sure as hell won't
be on an Atari!

Matthew R. Singer