Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!netsys!ames!mike
From: mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Mike Smithwick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga in cinema (again)
Message-ID: <14515@ames.arc.nasa.gov>
Date: 8 Sep 88 00:24:28 GMT
References: <505@nsscb.UUCP> <2314@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <3779@polya.Stanford.EDU> <1848@kalliope.rice.edu> <1832@loral.UUCP> <1353@percival.UUCP>
Reply-To: mike@ames.arc.nasa.gov.UUCP (Mike Smithwick)
Distribution: na
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Lines: 32

In article <1353@percival.UUCP> baer@percival.UUCP (Ken Baer) writes:
>
>Well, last June, I got to talk with Rick Sternback, the Illustrator for the
>new Star Trek series.  I was showing him some Trek related animation that
>did with our products on the Amiga.  He informed me that they had just 
>bought a bunch of Mac II's. 

There's a little more to it than that. The TNG people were very impressed with
the Amiga, Videoscape 3D, beta copies of Modler, etc. and were considering
them quite seriously. Apparently, the powers that be only had their minds
on impulse power at the time, and turned down Amigas, partly for the 
following "reason" :

 "Commodore won't give us the Amigas we need. Therefore, if we're going to
 have to buy some machines, let's get the Apple thingies."

Another reason has to to with the support that Apple could supply (for
the right price). What they were hesitant about was the fact that there
were no Animation packages released at the time for the Mac, and they wanted 
dependable software, no Beta stuff.

On the whole, they found the Amigas proposed to them somewhat easier to 
use, and with proven software, but the Apple support ("sure! You need
some help? We'll charter a plane, and send down 42 techs tonite!")
won them over.


-- 
			   *** mike (starship janitor) smithwick ***
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people
 some of the time, but you can't fool Mom".
[disclaimer : nope, I don't work for NASA, I take full blame for my ideas]