v092mgp5@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Scott K Wood) (10/18/90)
I would just like to ask all the people predicting the Amiga's demise:
WHAT ARE YOU ALL WORRIED ABOUT???
Apple has not announced anything new! If you take a look at the specs for
the new machines, it is clear that Apple has taken their top of the line
machine (IIFx I think) and cut bits and pieces out to make new machines. The
"Mac Classic" is a farce. They decided to bundle the Mac Plus with a hard
drive and a new case. Boy, my feet are shaking now, the Amiga has to compete
against a Mac Plus in a grey case and a chopped up Mac IIfx!
I agree that it would be nice for Commodore to improve, but don't you all
tihnk the 3000 was a MAJOR improvement? While Commodore might not have the
24-bit color and stuff on the motherboard, for less that the price difference
between the Mac and Amiga, you can ADD all those things. Think about this..
when I envision the Mac II and the 3000 I can only find only one thing the Mac
beats the Amiga in: # of total colors.. Is that enough to justify the
demise of the Amiga? I think not...As soon as Apple developers come up
with a Video Toaster for Mac, I might start caring, though I don't see that
happening for a LOONNNGGGG time...'Nuff said..
Scott
BITNET : v092mgp5@ubvms.bitnet
INTERNET : v092mgp5@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edurms@gorf.UUCP (Roger M. Shimada) (10/20/90)
In article <41371@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> v092mgp5@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu writes: > WHAT ARE YOU ALL WORRIED ABOUT??? Allright, you asked for it! [Hit 'n' now. Really, otherwise you might regret it!] > Apple has not announced anything new! [Description of the new >Macs deleted. Summary: it's not impressive hardware.] The real key machine in the annoucement was the LC. This is because it has the following options: color, internal hard drive, and //e emulation. I assume this is the machine Apple wants their K-12 market to buy into, which I'm sure they will. It's also a good medium use system, though pricey. > I agree that it would be nice for Commodore to improve, but don't you all >tihnk the 3000 was a MAJOR improvement? Yes, but...who can afford them? There is a gaping hole in the Amiga product line between the 500 and 2000. What there needs to be, soon, is an 2000 (7.1 MHz 68000) version of the 3000 motherboard in a 3000 box. Expanding 500s is awkward, the 2000 has too many slots (is plain too big in other words, and no intergral SCSI), and the 3000 is just out of most people's price range. >While Commodore might not have the >24-bit color and stuff on the motherboard, for less that the price difference >between the Mac and Amiga, you can ADD all those things. Think about this.. >when I envision the Mac II and the 3000 I can only find only one thing the Mac >beats the Amiga in: # of total colors.. Is that enough to justify the >demise of the Amiga? I think not...As soon as Apple developers come up >with a Video Toaster for Mac, I might start caring, though I don't see that >happening for a LOONNNGGGG time...'Nuff said.. > Scott >BITNET : v092mgp5@ubvms.bitnet INTERNET : v092mgp5@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu You're talking entirely about hardware. Most people couldn't care less. Yes, the Amiga can't be beat for HARDWARE bang for the buck. Would you immediately buy a Toaster if you found one forsale? Would you actually put it to practical use? What do you really need more than interfaces for a hard drive and printer? Anyway, back to the original question: Why Worry? Okay, I'll bite, but first a little backround info: I started programming by learning BASIC on an HP 2000 using teletypes. I programmed Apple IIs professionally for serveral years. The first personal computer I had real respect for was the Amiga 1000. I'm writing this response on my Unix-pc. Amiga vaporware: I think the Amiga has the dubious honor of the having some of the worse kept or never to be completed products. I picked up the first copy of AmigaWorld, and once in awhile think about Live! which took awhile to release, the Toaster, UNIX...and unspeakables like the Tecmar add-ons and Turbo Pascal. Amiga floppy drives: Using the blitter to do track based I/O was an interesting cost saving measure that wasn't worth it. 1.44MB floppies are now common in both the PC and Mac worlds. Amiga product line: As indicated above, there is a big gap between the 500 and 2000. Most of us believe that the 2000 is not cost competitive with PC clones, which it isn't for the casual user (i.e., getting software, support, and even finding a dealer in the first place). Amiga system software: It's sad that Commodore didn't take advantage of the existance of the Macintosh. Someone should have said "Hey, look at the software of this existing product! We have to release something better than this!" as opposed to "We gotta get this thing OUT!" Apple even had the forsight to have the hooks for multiligual capability - the ability to change the text in programs. So Apple can sell in such places as Japan. No resource tracking on a multi-tasking system is a shame. One of the first things that many people could do with the current generation of computers is write. One of the normal steps involved in writing is printing. I was shocked when a person needed to use a CLI to get a printer driver installed in 1.3. (This is because there are no icons for the printer drivers, so using Workbench is out.) Okay, so assuming one managed to define a printer, one would print. Most people will be using dot-matrix printers. Amigas loose to Macs here. This is inexcusable, as Apple's 9-pin dot-matrix print quality hasn't changed significantly since 1983 - when they did it on the Lisa. I worry about the 500: Well, you can't print as well as a Mac (at least not economically), so some can could use it for video. For game playing? Hm...for $150, one can pick up a Nintendo Power set...geez, the cost of some Amiga software. One would be tempted to replace the power supply and/or get a SOTS box, which I don't think anyone particularly likes. UNIX: Rumors have been flying around for over a year about UNIX on an Amiga. The story is that Commodore was about the release System V Release 3, when Release 4 became available. So the decided to wait. Pity, as I'm sure it costed them customers. Last I read C-A was waiting for a releaseable 4.1. Well, get a good product out; that's appreciated. Unfortunately, Apple has not sat still in the UNIX department. Their first release of A/UX was not well received, and they fixed it. A/UX 2.0 is still mostly System V Release 2. But it also has a version (of the awful kludge) MultiFinder. So, a Mac running the latest A/UX can have UNIX processes and Mac Applications running "simultaneously." Commando, a program that uses a graphical user interface to create command lines, is also available. Last I read AmigaDOS would not run under Amiga UNIX, which if true, will be a media laughingstock when compared to A/UX. Amiga market directions: I don't really know of any. This is tragic. The machine will have a hard time making it big without 1) software and 2) exposure, in that order. If somebody knows where the Amiga is targeted for, please tell me! -- Roger M. Shimada rms@gorf.mn.org -or- rms@gorf.sialis.com [Whichever works for you! :-(]
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (10/24/90)
In article <123@gorf.UUCP> rms@gorf.mn.org (Roger M. Shimada) writes: >Amiga vaporware: > I think the Amiga has the dubious honor of the having > some of the worse kept or never to be completed > products. I picked up the first copy of AmigaWorld, > and once in awhile think about Live! which took awhile > to release, the Toaster, UNIX...and unspeakables like > the Tecmar add-ons and Turbo Pascal. I don't think the Amiga's worse than anything else in this respect, only that [a] we all know it better and [b] it was in the rather unusual position of having a magazine on it printed up before it was ever shown. Any time a new machine has been introduced (and there have been quite a few new one introed since I began to mess around with computers in '76, though many of them haven't made it this far), all kinds of companies announce support. Some make it, some don't. Some stay with their intentions, some reconsider. No big surprise. >Amiga floppy drives: > Using the blitter to do track based I/O was an interesting cost > saving measure that wasn't worth it. 1.44MB floppies are now common > in both the PC and Mac worlds. The blitter doesn't do track I/O; the actual I/O is done via a dedicated DMA slot on the chip bus. If you don't think this was a good idea, you should see what happens to a Mac during disk I/O. The main reason the Amiga system stays active during a floppy disk transfer is that all the floppy timing is guaranteed in hardware, regardless of what you have the CPU doing at the time. 1.44/1.72MB floppies aren't impossible, just trickier. I have previously described three ways this can be done on the Amiga with simple hardware, though I don't know how Applied Engineering does theirs. > One of the first things that many people could do with > the current generation of computers is write. One of > the normal steps involved in writing is printing. ... > Most people will be using dot-matrix printers. Amigas > loose to Macs here. This is inexcusable, as Apple's 9-pin > dot-matrix print quality hasn't changed significantly > since 1983 - when they did it on the Lisa. They only did one printer. And that's all you hook up to the Mac. If Commodore supported only one kind of printer, they could have had software that did everything with 140DPI in mind. However, the Amiga philosophy was to make things as open as possible. So they supported printer device drivers to support any kind of printer, with vastly different resolutions. Early print dumps and programs didn't support this well. Currently, I can get a printout on a 360DPI dot matrix, 300 DPI HPLJ, or any Postscript printer that's pretty close to what that printer's capable of. So at least some of the market's software has caught up -- if you're still expecting miracles from TextCraft, you may have a long wait... > Last I read AmigaDOS would not run under Amiga UNIX, which if > true, will be a media laughingstock when compared to A/UX. Don't count on it. Apple wants to make UNIX people into Macintosh people, and they are even trying to promote the Mac GUI as Yet Another UNIX GUI, of course a proprietary one. Amiga UNIX is for UNIX people who would like to remain UNIX people and use Amigas. So it's standard UNIX. Sure, it would be nice to have Amiga tasks running under UNIX, but not at the expense of doing UNIX right. >Roger M. Shimada rms@gorf.mn.org -or- rms@gorf.sialis.com -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold -REM