Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!tws From: tws@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Thomas Sarver) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: How 'Bout HyperCard! Message-ID: <15372@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> Date: 5 May 88 03:59:06 GMT Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU Reply-To: tws@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Thomas Sarver) Organization: UF CIS Department Lines: 122 Keywords: HyperCard, Mac, Magic Sac This is to all those developers out there (and the companies for which they work): ***GET ON KNEES*** I WANT HYPERCARD FOR THE AMIGA! Now that we know what I want, let's talk about the possibilities. I spent about six months of '87 waiting for the news on the Magic Sac for the Amiga. I slobbered over the Atari ST because it had one. I was willing to buy one purely to buy HyperCard. I bought Starboard 2Mb so I would have the room ( I could have gotten by with Alegra otherwise). In summary, ! ***GET UP FROM KNEELING*** Here's a scenario: Get Apple to license a port on a per/copy basis. Charge $X with $(X/Y) going to Apple. Include some PD stacks, maybe even one or two extra disks of them. Remember, Amiga owners don't have access to them. Become a clearinghouse of PD stacks in Amiga disk format. Let commercial Mac developers know you would distribute their work to Amiga community. Sell PD stacks at cost of P&H, skim some off the top of commercial stack sales. Make sure it uses the standard clipboard like OnLine!, Scribble, etc. for easy importing of text. I know, you're saying, "But who's going to spend $600 for memory to buy an $X piece of software?" Along with the main 1M version, sell a Read-Only 512K version. 1M Amiga 500's are commonplace, and A2000's come large (I don't know the particulars, I own a 1000). So what's left are the 1000 owners. Get in cahoots with a hardware distr. and sell HyperCard for $50 w/ purchase of 1M or more. We all know most Mac code is just trying to talk to the system routines. Amiga programs should be less code purely because we have true multi-tasking. **GET ON SOAPBOX*** In the long run: A community of HyperCard users on two types of machines. As memory comes down, more programs are going to require 1M anyway, so that restriction will be removed. A format will be devised so Amiga will be able to download stacks from BBS's in much the same way they can D/L Mac pics or GIF (also a multi-machine format). You'll be making beacoup (that's, boo-koo) bucks and will be heroes for bringing Apple's genius to the Amiga community. (let's face it, Hypertext is genius, but Apple was genius to introduce it for $49.95) [excuse the slobber marks on this page] HyperCard was meant for multi-tasking. Imagine reading uucp using OnLine! as a terminal to a site. You find something interesting. You copy it to the clipboard. You click HyperCard to front, and put it on a card. Make some connections with other cards, get back to OnLine! Incredible! (BTW, you might want another intermediate version that allows text import with only minimal connectivity). ***GET BACK ON KNEES*** (but still on soap box) Final begging: PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! <3 times quick> PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE give us HyperCard. Thank you for your time. If the people want it, you'll make money giving it to them. ***STAND*** (but still on soap box) To hardware vendors: Everyone knows the Amiga laughs and dances (excuse the anthropocentric metaphor) with a meg of memory or more. But people really have to have the wallet to stomach the price. Developers of mega software are not porting to the Amiga because 1M is not standard. I just read in Byte that the first microcomputer based version of POP-11 was for the Mac. Their next port will be the Atari Mega ST, NOT THE AMIGA. We all know the ST is a toy compared to the Amiga, yet it is receiving the high-end ports. Moral of the story: Make memory expansion more affordable. I know the price of chips are high right now, but have those bare boards ready to fill once the price comes back down. And software vendors, you can can help too by making versions of your software that run better with more memory. For example, Logistix comes in two config- urations, one that does a type of overlaying for low memory and one that fits in large memory all at once. This makes user's say, "Yeah, by buying more RAM, I'm letting X,Y,Z,A, & B packages run easier for me." Not just specialty programs like Animation, Video, Sound, Desktop Publishing, but also personal productivity, games (they can use less disk access w/ more RAM), you know, every day type products. ***GET OFF SOAPBOX*** I had a lot to say because I'm not happy with the state-of-affairs of Amiga software/hardware market. One reason for the way it is is that CBM doens't support its machines. Apple puts out a free upgrade of their OS every 8 mo. or so. IBM has such a huge installed base, anyone will put out something. CBM has finally stuck with a computer format that is compatible. I won't go into the number of computers that *were* incompatible with its predecessors, the only ones that were compatible were C128 (w/ C64) and A2000 & A500. The C128 was behind the technology when it first came out, but A2000 & A500 showed real technological advance in two widely different but marketably necessary directions. Bravo CBM! I don't need to tell anyone how badly the Amiga is marketed. Only someone who walks into a Commodore dealership will ever know an Amiga exists. There's no campaign to get naive users to look at Amiga before giving in to peer pressure and buying IBM. I have one thing to say: IIIII L OOO V V EEEE A M M IIIII GGG A I L O O V V E A A MM MM I G A A I L O O V V EEE AAAAA M M M M I G GG AAAAA I L O O V V E A A M M M I G G A A IIIII LLLL OOO V EEEE A A M M M IIIII GGGG A A +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ But hey, its the best country in the world! Thomas W. Sarver "The complexity of a system is proportional to the factorial of its atoms. One can only hope to minimize the complexity of the micro-system in which one finds oneself." -TWS Addendum: "... or migrate to a less complex micro-system."