Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!ogccse!blake!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!mp1u+ From: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: AM(iga un)IX Message-ID: Date: 21 Mar 89 16:07:02 GMT References: <72@snll-arpagw.UUCP> <6330@cbmvax.UUCP> <74@snll-arpagw.UUCP>, <2421@sbcs.sunysb.edu> Organization: Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 85 In-Reply-To: <2421@sbcs.sunysb.edu> root@sbcs.sunysb.edu (root) writes: > Sam, the other side to your argument is this: what if, god forbid, > Commodore continues to undercut and screw their developers by > bringing any profitable product in house because it is > "strategic"? This happened to all the third party disk people, > memory people, soon the genlock people, etc. If this trend > continues you will have ZERO hardware developers in the Amiga > marketplace and then what? When the next "gotta have" hardware > widget comes down the pike, you will be left to wait for Commodore > to provide it. Do you like to wait for two years for such things? Perhaps you should have began by saying that you have a vested interest in an Ethernet offering from Commodore, since you offer such a board yourself. Third-party vendors will be inspired to make their money by creating products that offer features and performance that the Commodore products don't, or do the same things at a lower price. For example, there are a variety of broadcast-quality genlocks available, all of which offer their own special features. The GVP disk controller offers features that the 2090A doesn't (mainly a different design). Various third parties offer alternatives to the A501 RAM expander for a lower price. By your argument, nobody who bought a Macintosh would have bothered buying a word processor or paint program because those programs came bundled with the machine. If that really was case, programs such as Microsoft Word, SuperPaint, FullPaint, and Fullwrite Professional wouldn't have a reason to exist. Those packages succeeded because they offered value that the bundled packages didn't. > I would like to see some justification of your statement. Are > you actually suggesting that Ethernet cards would enjoy as wide > of an installed base as a floppy drive? Come on. Practically > speaking I would doubt that Commodore will ever ship more than > 30-40K Amiga 2500UX given the nature of the workstation market > and the fact that they are up against incredibly strong competition. > Of those 30-40K, how many will be Ethernetted? Maybe 20%? I think more than 20% of the Amigas sold for workstation applications would have a network interface. The only major workstation feature that my Amiga doesn't have is a network connection. The network connection provides a networking file system, mail services, and connectivity to other machines, all of which are necessary to be considered a "workstation" these days. > Perhaps the answer is to have Commodore produce "strategic products", > but to price them such as to give third parties some room to stay > in business. I think that to date, Commodore has done a really good job at providing capable peripherals at reasonable prices, but still leaving the market open for third parties who want to build high-performance or enhanced products. > It really befuddles me why Ethernet, 2500UX, etc are an issue > for future growth at all. Commodore really needs to spend all > of its available cycles AND THEN SOME on getting device > independent graphics, new graphics chips, the Hedley, 68030 based > machines, etc to market. These are all hard things that no third > party developer can tackle. Expending all the resources it will > take to field/support Unix, networking, etc will only damage > efforts to make the fundamental changes to the Amiga architecture > that are necessary to remain competitive with Apple, korean 386 > boxes, etc. IMHO. Your point that only Commodore can enhance the architecture of the Amiga line is well-taken. But Commodore at some point has to decide who they're competing against. If they really do want a piece of the workstation market, they can't do it without offering at least the same features as the competition, especially since they don't have a name for themselves in that market. Perhaps Commodore should work with third parties and offer select third-party products with Amiga systems through a licensing agreement. They might license your Ethernet board and sell it under their name, for example, or offer it as an option to A2500 systems but still under the Ameristar name. -- Michael Portuesi / Information Technology Center / Carnegie Mellon University INET: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu / BITNET: mp1u+@andrew UUCP: ...harvard!andrew.cmu.edu!mp1u+ "You just don't get off a spaceship and run." --Avon