Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!texsun!newstop!sun!frisbee!jcb From: jcb@frisbee.Sun.COM (Jim Becker) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amiga and Multimedia Message-ID: <132899@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 14 Mar 90 01:33:01 GMT References: <13468@baldrick.udel.EDU> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Lines: 52 BARRETT@owl.ecil.iastate.edu (Marc Barrett) writes: As I said in a previous message, I am sick and tired of people complaining about the Amiga not being mentioned in articles about multimedia. What do you expect from a machine that isn't being supported by the company that sells it?? Don't write your letters to these magazines. Write your letters instead to Commodore!! Pressure Commdore to get off their corporate asses and start seriously pushing the Amiga in multimedia. I have to second this. The Amiga is great for multimedia but the support has to come from CBM in terms of the basics needed. My tenure with the Amiga was early on, doing this stuff now called `interactive multimedia' the first couple of years the machine was out (InfoMinder). My system kinda wanted a Genlock, harddisk and extra memory to work. I demoed a prototype of my stuff on Computer Chronicles, with one of the first genlocks, videodisk and BbyB Pal box. This was in September of 1987. The problem was that CBM didn't come out with the needed hardware until years afterward, although they *had* the technology at the time. Did they ever really come out with `Live!' ? That was showing the first time that I saw an Amiga. They were taken to court and lost over that one. From what I was told the genlock only surfaced because there were threats of FCC legal action due to false advertising. (They advertised it but never came out with it.) Also, in spring of 1987, Irving Gould told me that they had Unix running in the labs and it would be out soon. So is it out yet? The bottom line is that the people of CBM work really hard to do a good job, but historically upper management has dropped the ball on the things that would improve the image of the Amiga as a real computer. They could have come out with harddisk and extra memory for the A1000 at launch in 1985. Instead they pushed it down toward the game and A500 market. The other various hardware that was done came out years after it was implemented and debugged by engineering. There is some lead time to get things to market, but the problem wasn't the engineering feats needed, it was political direction of the machine. I invested a lot of time and resources in the Amiga, but after running into lots of walls waiting for CBM to do something useful I joined the ranks of the ex-Amiga addicts.. -Jim Becker -- Jim Becker / jcb%frisbee@sun.com / Sun Microsystems