Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aimd
From: aimd@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Davidson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: OK, so they sell the STe in Europe...
Message-ID: <2342@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Feb 90 18:55:05 GMT
References: <9002020807.AA08400@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <4876ef20.14a1f@force.UUCP> <1990Feb13.115340.5645@bath.ac.uk>
Reply-To: aimd@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Davidson)
Organization: Edinburgh University Computing Service
Lines: 49

In article <1990Feb13.115340.5645@bath.ac.uk> exspes@bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) writes:
>There is ONE good reason for selling to Europe first.  In general, FCC type
>approval is harder to get than the corresponding approvals in Europe.  So,
>Atari can begin selling the machines over here before they have been
>tightened down to FCC specs.  Or, in other words, it may be that Europe is
>being used to 'bug-chase' the machines before they are released in the
>States, rather than being favored.  Certainly, if problems DO occur with the
>early versions of a machine, it is better to have them surface in the market
>which is potentially smaller, rather than in the one which is potentially
>large.

Personally, I believe Atari UK were forced into distributing the STE
before Christmas simply because they'd run out of STFMs. This can be
seen if you read the trashy ST Format this month when they again slag
off the STE as a 'Christmas turkey' and tell us that 'What went wrong?' was
that the wonderful British games companies were not given enough time to test
out their games on the new STE to see if they still worked.

I can see their point - the software houses might have had enough time to
correct their illegal coding and hopefully old game stocks would have
been sold out by the time the STE was launched, leaving a new stack of
'STE friendly' games on the shelves - if the STE was launched, say,
now...

ST Format, in their article 'The STE - what went wrong?' claim in their
opening paragraph that except for 'one or two' programmers who were
disappointed with the machine everyone was eagerly awaiting the STE's
launch. This is quite a turn-around when you consider it was them who, a
few months ago, published the article in which a large group of
programmers slagged off the machine.  Instead of their 'Lets
slag-the-STE' attitude, they've now taken on an 'What-a-damn-shame-we-
were-really-hoping-the-STE-would-be-great-what-a-shame-for-all-those-
readers-who-bought-one-and-now-can't-get-Kick Off-to-work'

At least when the STE finally makes it to the US there shouldn't be any
of this nonsense since all the problems with the STE will have been
discovered by the Europeans (guess that includes the Brits!). Hopefully
Atari's image will be inhanced by a squeaky clean launch with no ensuing
problems rather than damaged as it undoubtably has been in the UK. Of
course we wouldn't have these problems if programmers didn't feel that
accessing the hardware is justifiable, ah well...

Mark.

PS. Would Atari consider quietly releasing TOS 1.61 which fixed the
simple bugs in TOS 1.6? People can live with bugs that they never see,
but having to install an AUTO folder on EVERY disk they use is a bit of
a bugger.
(I hope this letter isn't screwed up - my terminal certainly is..)