ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) (11/15/86)
> In summary, I don't believe Commodore should even think about directly > competing in the workstation market - the support would be too expensive. In summary, I don't believe Commodore has ever *SERIOUSLY* thought about competing in *ANY* market. > What Commodore seems to be doing from the rumors makes sense - improve what > they have! Yes it will compete with what's being sold now but what's being > sold now might not go on being sold forever. I.e., new machines REPLACE, ^^^^^^^ > not compete with, the existing ones. I doubt, for example, if Apple sells > too many basic Macintoshes anymore. The Mac Plus is a much better machine. You're missing the point. Apple allowed those folks who bought the early 128K "Wimp-Mac" the opportunity to upgrade their systems rather than junk them. Amiga has no such plans. > Commodore is in the home and personal computer business, as I see it, and not > the "micro-mini" or workstation market. If so, why are "Hackers & Engineers" so endeared to the product? Why is there a *DEARTH* of decent Productivity tools and an overabundance of games and obscure languages (FORTH etc.) no spreadsheets, no WYSIWIG wordprocessors, no affordable Hard Disks. The personal computer marketplace demands THREE (count 'em 3) basic features to insure a product's success: (1) Spreadsheets a. IBM has Lotus. b. Mac has EXCEL. c. AMIGA has MAXIPLAN which was written in C (READ: shit!) or VIP which ignores all the wonderful hardware. (2) Word Processing a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. b. Mac did it one better with the Laserwriter & WYSIWIG. c. AMIGA is nonexistent. (3) A comittment to keeping the product alive a. The IBM PC has been around for eons. b. The Apple ][ lives on and the Mac has been here for about 4 years. c. AMIGA is about a year old and will be "Replaced" (you said it, I diddn't) in a few months. So how does AMIGA stack up? Remember, the buying public does not appreciate elaborate hardware! they want a tool to get their work done. To a novice, the ATARI ST, AMIGA and APPLE ][GS are identical. All have color All have mice and all are 16 bit CPUs. Bit Blitters & sprites are FINE if all you want to do is shoot rocks and play PAC-MAN. The saddest part about the entire AMIGA marketing effort is that it has been Technology driven rather than customer driven. AMIGA never really chose a group of potential customers. Rather than concentrate on applications AMIGA chose to concentrate on "The better mousetrap" approach. The problem here is that the more complex the mousetrap grew, the less usable it became to amateur mouse-catchers. Nuff Said! Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) Plexus Computers Inc. Phone: (408) 943-2226 Net: sun!plx!ed
cmcmanis@sun.uucp (Chuck McManis) (11/15/86)
[..reaching the tongs into the flaming boiler....] I can't find the original reference but these are comments on Ed's comments so that shouldn't be to much of a problem. >> In summary, I don't believe Commodore should even think about directly >> competing in the workstation market - the support would be too expensive. > >In summary, I don't believe Commodore has ever *SERIOUSLY* thought about >competing in *ANY* market. Harumph! I think if you talk to Commodore you would find that they do indeed have some definite ideas about where their market is but what generally seems be the case is that the Amiga got rushed out the door because Commodore had cash flow problems. This has caused a somewhat jumbled view of the product in the market place. Had they been able to afford to make the last 12 months a "beta and developing" phase and introduced it today it would make a much better impression I am sure. As far as I know Commodore is successfully penetrating the graphics arts markets, video effects market, and home computer market. >> What Commodore seems to be doing from the rumors makes sense - improve what >> they have! Yes it will compete with what's being sold now but what's being >> sold now might not go on being sold forever. I.e., new machines REPLACE, >> not compete with, the existing ones. I doubt, for example, if Apple sells >> too many basic Macintoshes anymore. The Mac Plus is a much better machine. > >You're missing the point. Apple allowed those folks who bought the early >128K "Wimp-Mac" the opportunity to upgrade their systems rather than junk >them. Amiga has no such plans. No Ed, I think you have missed the point. First, Amigas base machine is 256K, and it is easily and inexpensively upgraded to 512K. The Mac upgrade to 512K was $900 when it came out. With $900 you can upgrade an Amiga to 2.5 Meg. Anyone can upgrade their Amiga today, everyone seems so paranoid about the "next Amiga" why? No one seems paranoid about the "next Mac". All this crap about a 1024 X 1024 68020 machine is just that crap. Have you gone out and priced 1024 X 1024 color monitors? Can you say $2000 wholesale? Can you say $10,000 list price? Who cares? There are machines like that out their now, and you could probably run TriPos on them, big deal. You cannot produce such a machine as cheaply as an Atari or an Amiga so why worry. The only things Commodore could concievably improve without significantly increasing costs would be memory size and put in a 68010. You can do that to an A1000. Finally, your last statement is probably the most perplexing, did someone at Amiga tell you that a) There would be a more powerful machine, and b) they would not offer an opportunity to upgrade them, or did you just believe this to be true? >> Commodore is in the home and personal computer business, as I see it, and not >> the "micro-mini" or workstation market. > >If so, why are "Hackers & Engineers" so endeared to the product? >Why is there a *DEARTH* of decent Productivity tools and an overabundance >of games and obscure languages (FORTH etc.) no spreadsheets, no WYSIWIG >wordprocessors, no affordable Hard Disks. Your making statements based on some preconcieved standards. I assume from your previous postings that those standards are an IBM PC/XT with a 10Meg hard disk. The answer to your first question is because for the first time in the United States there is an inexpensive microbased machine that has a *real* operating system. (My standard of reference here is the definition of an operating system as put forth by the "Operating System Fundamentals" by Wiley Press Publ.) It actually manages resources, is not artifically limited to a certain kind of hardware, can equally manage bigger and better hardware, and has a real interface to it. My biggest complaint with CP/M and MS-DOS was the fact that they are really just a collection of subroutines that are always in memory and can be called to talk to the hardware. An operating system is a resident program that you send requests for resources to and it allocates them for you and passes them back. As for your second question the answer is *TIME* and *TOOLS*. To write a decent WYSIWYG editor or a fast spreadsheet takes a lot of time and even better tools. And why games you ask? Because they can be written quickly with a minimum of tools and generate revenue now. They also teach the programmers what the hardware can do and what they must do themselves. Those obscure languages like Forth can be used to write Fast spreadsheets. And affordable hard disks? $1500 isn't affordable? I would submit that is is impossible to create a going concern that can make 20 megabyte hard disks for less than that. This isn't Amiga's fault, this is economies of scale. If you sell hard disks to 1% of the IBM PC market then you have sold 60,000 hard disks. If you sell to 1% of the Amiga market you have sold 1,000 hard disks. Call up Seagate and ask them for prices based on 1000 units and 60,000 units. Then do the same for printed circuit boards. >The personal computer marketplace demands THREE (count 'em 3) basic >features to insure a product's success: > > (1) Spreadsheets > a. IBM has Lotus. > b. Mac has EXCEL. > c. AMIGA has MAXIPLAN which was written in C (READ: shit!) > or VIP which ignores all the wonderful hardware. > > (2) Word Processing > a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. > b. Mac did it one better with the Laserwriter & WYSIWIG. > c. AMIGA is nonexistent. > > (3) A comittment to keeping the product alive > a. The IBM PC has been around for eons. > b. The Apple ][ lives on and the Mac has been > here for about 4 years. > c. AMIGA is about a year old and will be > "Replaced" (you said it, I didn't) in > a few months. > My only comment to this is that the Mac and the IBM PC have both been around for 4 or more years. If you believe it is possible to create a Lotus or Excel or Wordstar or Word in one year on a new machine you are very naive. The *only* reason wordstar came out when it did was due to the 8080 -> 8086 translator that Intel was selling. Prior to that MicroPro had spent *years* developing it on CP/M. Apple made a special commitment to getting MacPaint and MacWrite out for the Mac before they shipped, if Commodore wasn't so low on funds maybe they could have done that too, as it stands Deluxe Paint literally *blows* away MacPaint, and Aegis Draw+ does the same for MacDraw, is there a MacWrite equivalent? Not really, although NotePad does some of the same stuff (multiple fonts mostly). As for your last comment the Amiga A1000 *may* be supplanted by a different box by I seriously doubt it would be as major as you make it sound. No more than the Mac 512e is replacing the Mac 512, or the Apple ][e is replaceing the Apple II or the IBM PC/XT is replacing the PC. Lastly, you mention Commitment to a product. Hasn't the Commodore 64 been around for years, still supported, still produced. Yes there is a fancier Commodore 128 but the 64 lives on. Isn't that commitment enough? (Oh and there are suprisingly good spread sheets and word processors available for the Commodore 64 given the limitations in speed, memory, and disk space, check out GEOS sometime) >So how does AMIGA stack up? Remember, the buying public do drowning and has begun to focus on the more germane aspects of getting a computer sold to the public. Since they have the 'better mousetrap' I think they will succeed. >Nuff Said! Amen! >Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) >Plexus Computers Inc. >Phone: (408) 943-2226 >Net: sun!plx!ed Chuck McManis (current AMIGA owner!) Sun Microsystems Inc Phone: (415) 691-4312 Net: sun!cmcmanis -- --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
chapman@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Brent Chapman) (11/16/86)
In article <320@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes: [ Various religious arguments against the Amiga and Commodore.] >Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) >Net: sun!plx!ed If you're a _FORMER_ Amiga owner, and you were so dissatisfied with the machine, why are you still hanging around comp.sys.amiga? Just to give the rest of us a hard time because we happen to disagree with you, and think it is a wonderful machine? That's what it seems like. You made a mistake choosing a machine, apparently. Fine, you got rid of the machine. All well and good. But WHY do you insist on giving the rest of us, who _don't_ think we've made a mistake, a hard time?!? Go away! This is supposed to be a forum for useful information about the Amiga, not for religious arguments by someone who feels, rightly or wrongly, that he's been wronged by the machine or by the company behind it! Brent Chapman (current VERY SATISFIED Amiga owner!) chapman@eris.berkeley.edu or ucbvax!eris!chapman -- Brent Chapman chapman@eris.berkeley.edu or ucbvax!eris!chapman
stever@videovax.Tek.COM (Steven E. Rice, P.E.) (11/16/86)
In article <320@plx.UUCP>, Ed Chaban (ed@plx.UUCP) writes: > . . . > The personal computer marketplace demands THREE (count 'em 3) basic > features to insure a product's success: > > (1) Spreadsheets > . . . > > (2) Word Processing > a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. > . . . IBM?? I seem to recall that Wordstar was available on the Osborne, an 8-bit 8080-based CPM machine that considerably antedates the IBM PC. Steve Rice ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- {decvax | hplabs | ihnp4 | uw-beaver}!tektronix!videovax!stever
kim@amdahl.UUCP (Kim DeVaughn) (11/18/86)
In article <320@plx.UUCP>, ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes: > > (2) Word Processing > a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. > b. Mac did it one better with the Laserwriter & WYSIWIG. > c. AMIGA is nonexistent. Perhaps it is instructive to note that WordPerfect (currently the best selling word processing program on the market), is only now becoming available for the Mac (after what, 4 years?) It was released just a couple of months ago. The Amiga implementation is scheduled for release in 1Q87 (after all of 18 months!) /kim -- UUCP: {sun,decwrl,hplabs,pyramid,ihnp4,seismo,oliveb}!amdahl!kim DDD: 408-746-8462 USPS: Amdahl Corp. M/S 249, 1250 E. Arques Av, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 CIS: 76535,25 [ Any thoughts or opinions which may or may not have been expressed ] [ herein are my own. They are not necessarily those of my employer. ]
page@ulowell.UUCP (Bob Page) (11/18/86)
Ed Chaban should have titled his article Conjectures & Flames. I'll be brief. ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) wrote in article <320@plx.UUCP>: >Apple allowed ... folks the opportunity to upgrade their systems rather >than junk them. Amiga has no such plans. I bet you don't know that. I bet Amiga/Commodore doesn't even know that. >Why is there a *DEARTH* of decent Productivity tools ... Because the Amiga hardware and software are not compatible with existing micro products. It takes time to develop the tools to develop the application programs. It also takes a large user base to convice companies to port their products to the machine. The Mac went through the same initial cycle, and it flourished. > Remember, the buying public does not appreciate elaborate hardware! Sales figures for an IBM PC will show you that. > they want a tool to get their work done. And when the Amiga has those tools, more people will buy the Amiga. >The saddest part about the entire AMIGA marketing effort is that it has been >Technology driven rather than customer driven. Or bank/creditor driven. Hopefully a turnaround soon. >Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) Amen. Go away and complain elsewhere. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. ulowell!page, page@ulowell.CSNET
ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) (11/18/86)
In Article: <9304@sun.uucp> Chuck Mc Manis weites: > >> In summary, I don't believe Commodore should even think about directly > >> competing in the workstation market - the support would be too expensive. > > > >In summary, I don't believe Commodore has ever *SERIOUSLY* thought about > >competing in *ANY* market. > > Harumph! I think if you talk to Commodore you would find that they do > indeed have some definite ideas about where their market is but what > generally seems be the case is that the Amiga got rushed out the door > because Commodore had cash flow problems. This has caused a somewhat > jumbled view of the product in the market place. Had they been able to > afford to make the last 12 months a "beta and developing" phase and > introduced it today it would make a much better impression I am sure. > As far as I know Commodore is successfully penetrating the graphics > arts markets, video effects market, and home computer market. These are markets? Come on now! anyone interested in doing professional video will use a PIXAR or something. Amateurs may be interested in using the Amiga but this is not a serious market. (no starving artist can afford a $2500 machine) > > >> What Commodore seems to be doing from the rumors makes sense - improve what > >> they have! Yes it will compete with what's being sold now but what's being > >> sold now might not go on being sold forever. I.e., new machines REPLACE, > >> not compete with, the existing ones. I doubt, for example, if Apple sells > >> too many basic Macintoshes anymore. The Mac Plus is a much better machine. > > > >You're missing the point. Apple allowed those folks who bought the early > >128K "Wimp-Mac" the opportunity to upgrade their systems rather than junk > >them. Amiga has no such plans. > > No Ed, I think you have missed the point. First, Amigas base machine is > 256K, and it is easily and inexpensively upgraded to 512K. The Mac upgrade > to 512K was $900 when it came out. With $900 you can upgrade an Amiga to > 2.5 Meg. Anyone can upgrade their Amiga today, everyone seems so paranoid So what? 512K is nothing these days. What you failed to mention Chuck is the fact that most memory expansions for the Amiga take up the Bus so further expansion is impossible. > Finally, your last statement is probably > the most perplexing, did someone at Amiga tell you that a) There would > be a more powerful machine, and b) they would not offer an opportunity > to upgrade them, or did you just believe this to be true? I *HOPE* I'm proven wrong here, but I understand that the new 68010 1 Meg machine will be a seperate product (although completely compatable with the A1000) and the Commodore will *NOT* make an upgrade available. > > >> Commodore is in the home and personal computer business, as I see it, and not > >> the "micro-mini" or workstation market. > > > >If so, why are "Hackers & Engineers" so endeared to the product? > >Why is there a *DEARTH* of decent Productivity tools and an overabundance > >of games and obscure languages (FORTH etc.) no spreadsheets, no WYSIWIG > >wordprocessors, no affordable Hard Disks. > > Your making statements based on some preconcieved standards. I assume from > your previous postings that those standards are an IBM PC/XT with a 10Meg > hard disk. The answer to your first question is because for the first time Yep! I am making statements based on preconcieved standards. That's what standards are for! You cannot successfully market a product without *AT LEAST* matching the capabilities of your competition. > in the United States there is an inexpensive microbased machine that has > a *real* operating system. (My standard of reference here is the definition > of an operating system as put forth by the "Operating System Fundamentals" > by Wiley Press Publ.) It actually manages resources, is not artifically ...[ Long Tirade on Operating Systems]... > The average buyer does not CARE about operating system internals! He want's a tool to get his work done. All the Amiga Operating System has done is confuse those programmers who were comfortable with CPM or MS-Dos or UNIX. Again, Amiga has *IGNORED* standards and tried to establish their own. Only Apple and IBM can do that now that the Personal Computer Marketplace has matured. > >The personal computer marketplace demands THREE (count 'em 3) basic > >features to insure a product's success: > > > > (1) Spreadsheets > > a. IBM has Lotus. > > b. Mac has EXCEL. > > c. AMIGA has MAXIPLAN which was written in C (READ: shit!) > > or VIP which ignores all the wonderful hardware. > > > > (2) Word Processing > > a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. > > b. Mac did it one better with the Laserwriter & WYSIWIG. > > c. AMIGA is nonexistent. > > > > (3) A comittment to keeping the product alive > > a. The IBM PC has been around for eons. > > b. The Apple ][ lives on and the Mac has been > > here for about 4 years. > > c. AMIGA is about a year old and will be > > "Replaced" (you said it, I didn't) in > > a few months. > > > > My only comment to this is that the Mac and the IBM PC have both been around > for 4 or more years. If you believe it is possible to create a Lotus or Excel > or Wordstar or Word in one year on a new machine you are very naive. The *only* Only if you use some God-Forsaken-Obscure operating system you mean. > >Nuff Said! > Amen! The point I was trying to make is that if Commodore was serious about making the Amiga a success, more time would have been spent on *SOFTWARE* In order to make up for that dearth of software a quick & dirty Software Kludge called the "Transformer" was created. When that fell on it's ass, the Sidecar was announced. I understand that the next Amiga will have IBM Clone Hardware *BUILT IN* Ironic isn't it? the "Better Mousetrap" will have to rely on an ancient design by a BIG corporation and compete with similar clones from the far east with *FAR* lower prices. MADNESS!!! Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) Plexus Computers Inc. Phone: (408) 943-2226 Net: sun!plx!ed
lyles@tybalt.caltech.edu (Lyle N. Scheer) (11/18/86)
In article <323@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes: > >Yep! I am making statements based on preconcieved standards. That's what >standards are for! You cannot successfully market a product without *AT LEAST* >matching the capabilities of your competition. > Not true! Look at the Mac again.... It was not built on any preconcieved standards. A fresh look at PC capabilities is ALWAYS needed to stimulate the market. Wonko the Sane (you call this SANE??) Disclaimer: I am totally irresponsible. So shoot me then.
lishka@uwslh.UUCP (a) (11/18/86)
In article <4036@videovax.Tek.COM> stever@videovax.UUCP (Steven E. Rice, P.E.) writes: >In article <320@plx.UUCP>, Ed Chaban (ed@plx.UUCP) writes: > >> . . . > >> The personal computer marketplace demands THREE (count 'em 3) basic >> features to insure a product's success: >> >> (1) Spreadsheets >> . . . >> >> (2) Word Processing >> a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. >> . . . > >IBM?? I seem to recall that Wordstar was available on the Osborne, >an 8-bit 8080-based CPM machine that considerably antedates the IBM PC. > > Steve Rice Yeah! I agree here with Steve Rice...my father uses Wordstar on his old Z-80 based Epson QX-10 (count them...8 bits!), and it works amazingly well (he also uses Wordstar on his portable Epson). I believe that the Epson came out around or before the IBM too. (The quiet irony is that while my father runs his Wordstar FASTER on his 8-bit machine, I sit here using VI on a UN*X vax 750, with a terminal that has 2 Z-80's in it (TWICE THE POWER OF MY DAD'S SYSTEM!) and it excruciatingly slow). -- Chris Lishka /lishka@uwslh.uucp Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene -lishka%uwslh.uucp@rsch.wisc.edu \{seismo, harvard,topaz,...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (11/19/86)
Keywords: From: ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) Subject: Re: Future Amigas & suggestions (Very Long) Date: 17 Nov 86 22:13:12 GMT In Article: <9304@sun.uucp> Chuck Mc Manis weites: >> As far as I know Commodore is successfully penetrating the graphics >> arts markets, video effects market, and home computer market. > >These are markets? Come on now! anyone interested in doing professional >video will use a PIXAR or something. Amateurs may be interested in using >the Amiga but this is not a serious market. (no starving artist can >afford a $2500 machine) Funny. My local Amiga dealer is offering 512K, two drives plus monitor for $1495. >> No Ed, I think you have missed the point. First, Amigas base machine is >> 256K, and it is easily and inexpensively upgraded to 512K. The Mac upgrade >> to 512K was $900 when it came out. With $900 you can upgrade an Amiga to >> 2.5 Meg. Anyone can upgrade their Amiga today, everyone seems so paranoid > >So what? 512K is nothing these days. What you failed to mention Chuck is >the fact that most memory expansions for the Amiga take up the Bus so >further expansion is impossible. If you look at the Allegra card, yes. Why don't you talk to the folks at ASDG or Byte by Byte about their expansion products? Ever hear about the Zorro standard? >I *HOPE* I'm proven wrong here, but I understand that the new 68010 >1 Meg machine will be a seperate product (although completely compatable >with the A1000) and the Commodore will *NOT* make an upgrade available. You can both drop an 010 into an Amiga and expand it past 1 Meg right now without waiting for Commodore to produce a new product. Why do you give the impression that progress is going to leave present Amiga owners out in the cold? The next Amiga is more than likely going to offer improvements that can be easily added to the present machine, such as internal expansion slots, hard disk interface, etc. Any other changes would mean a next-generation machine, and I see no reason for C-A to offer me an upgrade--it's a whole new computer! After all, they sold me my machine in its present configuration, not a promise that I would receive a 68020 wonder-machine a year or so down the road. IBM didn't offer PC owners upgrades when they came out with the AT, did they? >Yep! I am making statements based on preconcieved standards. That's >what standards are for! You cannot successfully market a product >without *AT LEAST* matching the capabilities of your competition. The reason there is a lack of good productivity software is because the Amiga still lacks the stable environment and developer's tools that enable programmers to produce quality, next-generation software. There is no Microsoft C 4.0 or Lightspeed C on the Amiga, and combined with the lack of stability in the OS, things have not been nice for software developers. The situation wasn't much better for the Mac's first year of existence, I might add (except they had MacWrite). 1.2 Kickstart/Workbench combined with the Zorro standard will provide the Amiga with better software and expansion options than currently exists for the PC and the Mac. The only shameful thing about the situation is that C-A is at the point now that they should have been a year ago. They can't be blamed for everything, though...they are trying as best they can. >The average buyer does not CARE about operating system internals! >He want's a tool to get his work done. All the Amiga Operating System >has done is confuse those programmers who were comfortable with CPM or >MS-Dos or UNIX. Again, Amiga has *IGNORED* standards and >tried to establish their own. Only Apple and IBM can do that now that >the Personal Computer Marketplace has matured. A programmer who can't adjust himself to a different operating environment and produce software under it doesn't deserve to call himself a programmer. And I think the personal computer marketplace is far from mature. IBM has stunted the growth of the personal computer industry by creating such a mediocre standard. >The personal computer marketplace demands THREE (count 'em 3) basic >features to insure a product's success: > (1) Spreadsheets > a. IBM has Lotus. > b. Mac has EXCEL. Both are very good programs. > c. AMIGA has MAXIPLAN which was written in C (READ: shit!) > or VIP which ignores all the wonderful hardware. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty certain that Lotus was written in C. That has no bearing on the quality of Maxiplan (which I will not comment on since I haven't seen it), since entire operating systems have been written in C without ill or adverse effects. VIP was not written with the Amiga in mind; it is a port from IBM land and of course ignores all the wonderful hardware (that the Amiga at least has). > (2) Word Processing > a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. You mean CP/M defined it with Wordstar and MicroPro ported it to the PC. Nevertheless, I would be the last to call Wordstar "state of the art". > b. Mac did it one better with the Laserwriter & WYSIWIG. c. AMIGA is nonexistent. > (3) A comittment to keeping the product alive > a. The IBM PC has been around for eons. 1981 is eons? > b. The Apple ][ lives on and the Mac has been > here for about 4 years. Umm, excuse me, but the Mac was introduced January 1984, nearly three years ago. Get your facts right before you open your mouth. The Apple II lives on only through improvements like the IIc and the IIgs. These are the same improvements any product faces to remain in touch with technology. The same can be said about the PC/XT/AT/IBM's forthcoming 386 machine (whatever abbreviations will be applied to it). > c. AMIGA is about a year old and will be > "Replaced" (you said it, I didn't) in > a few months. Far from it. The next machine C-A announces will be an incremental improvement upon the present machine in terms of features. This is nothing wors that what Apple and IBM have been doing. A next-generation machine (i.e. 68020 and more gee-whiz hardware) probably won't be seen until late 87 at the earliest. And I would expect to see some leap in technology by then. >Only if you use some God-Forsaken-Obscure operating system you mean. If you are alluding to the fact that the Amiga is the only machine this side of the Atlantic Ocean running its funny derivative of Tripos, I suggest you look at some other machines running proprietary operating systems: the Mac, the IIgs, the C-64/128, the Atari ST, etc. etc. A non-standard operating system doesn't mean software will never appear; corporate politics and bigotry determines when software will appear. >The point I was trying to make is that if Commodore was serious about making >the Amiga a success, more time would have been spent on *SOFTWARE* In order >to make up for that dearth of software a quick & dirty Software Kludge >called the "Transformer" was created. When that fell on it's ass, the >Sidecar was announced. I understand that the next Amiga will have IBM >Clone Hardware *BUILT IN* Ironic isn't it? the "Better Mousetrap" will >have to rely on an ancient design by a BIG corporation and compete with >similar clones from the far east with *FAR* lower prices. The performance of the transformer pretty much made it a stupid idea to begin with, as is the whole idea of PC compatibility in general. I notice that Apple is rumored to be building PC compatibility into its next incarnation of the Mac as well. Here I agree with you in that C-A should not be determining the hardware configuration for its users by putting in a lot of hardware that some people will not appreciate and do not want to pay extra for. I don't want PC compatibility and am happy that my current Amiga doesn't offer it. But the bigoted businesspeople with blinders on their eyes have to be appeased somehow... >Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) >Plexus Computers Inc. >Phone: (408) 943-2226 >Net: sun!plx!ed Others have said this, I'll reiterate: If you're a former Amiga owner, why are you still here whining? Either offer constructive criticism or go away. The above opinions are not those of my institution. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Mike Portuesi | | Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department | | | | ARPA: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu | | UUCP: {harvard | seismo | ucbvax | decwrl}!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp | | | | "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture" | | --Laurie Anderson, "Home of the Brave" | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (Don't have strength to leave) Meyer) (11/19/86)
I can't STAND it. Ed has come up with such utter bilge this time, I have to say something. In article <323@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes: >These are markets? Come on now! anyone interested in doing professional >video will use a PIXAR or something. Amateurs may be interested in using >the Amiga but this is not a serious market. (no starving artist can >afford a $2500 machine) Not true. I worked for a company that was doing quite well selling video images to small local stations, and was doing well because we sold our images for much less than our competitors. That's the way of vertical markets. If the Amiga can do the job for an order of magnitude less than the competition, it'll sell like hotcakes. >So what? 512K is nothing these days. What you failed to mention Chuck is >the fact that most memory expansions for the Amiga take up the Bus so >further expansion is impossible. Which is a good reason not to buy them. If that's the worst you can say about the Amiga expansion, then C/A has done a *great* job. >I *HOPE* I'm proven wrong here, but I understand that the new 68010 >1 Meg machine will be a seperate product (although completely compatable >with the A1000) and the Commodore will *NOT* make an upgrade available. Commodore doesn't *have* to make them available. I've got a 2.5Meg 68010 Amiga *right now*. The only thing I know of that I'd like from the new one is the extended addressing in the custom chips. And that may be available as an upgrade. Since I don't set policy for CBM, I can't say for sure. What's the source you're so sure of? >Yep! I am making statements based on preconcieved standards. That's what >standards are for! You cannot successfully market a product without *AT LEAST* >matching the capabilities of your competition. Like the Piece of Crap matched CP/M-80? All you could get for it was garbage for the first year or so, and damned little of that. Similar comments apply about the Mac. >The average buyer does not CARE about operating system internals! >He want's a tool to get his work done. All the Amiga Operating System >has done is confuse those programmers who were comfortable with CPM or >MS-Dos or UNIX. You got that right. I tell people to find the software they want to run, and then buy hardware to run on it. And any programmer unable to handle the difference between Unix and AmigaDOS needs to change fields. Since CP/M and MS-Dos aren't really operating systems, I'll cut those people a little slack. But message-passing, multi-tasking OS's are the way the world is going (like, the next ARPA-sponsored Unix release!), so they should look on AmigaDOS/Tripos as a chance to get a running start. >Again, Amiga has *IGNORED* standards and >tried to establish their own. Only Apple and IBM can do that now that >the Personal Computer Marketplace has matured. Tripos is as much of a standard as CP/M or Messy-DOS is, being older then either one. It's about as old as Unix, and trying to claim that Unix is a standard merely shows that you don't know anything about Unix. Since Tripos didn't have mouse/windowing support (oddly enough, there aren't standards for those things on Unix, CP/M or MS-DOS, either) it had to be added. Intuition is nicer and less flexible than Sunstools, which is nicer and less flexible than X (what DEC peddles with Ultrix VAXStations). Actually, CP/M isn't a standard (let's see, three different file systems, and two different user interfaces), and MS-DOS isn't a standard - at best it's a moving target. Ducking those two things was one of the BEST things Amiga did. I've sold all my CP/M systems (all four, two 68K, one 8088/8080, one z80), as I never used the silly things. Getting me to go back to such drek would be harder than getting me to code COBOL for a living. Remember - standards merely freeze what we know now, and are thus to be counted as enemies of progress. It's only natural that the Amiga would be hated by anyone enamored of "standards." > (1) Spreadsheets > a. IBM has Lotus. > b. Mac has EXCEL. > c. AMIGA has MAXIPLAN which was written in C (READ: shit!) > or VIP which ignores all the wonderful hardware. Right. C blows green road runners. But you gotta remember that one of your oh-so-precious "standards" (Unix) is driven by C. But Unix blows green road runners, too. And take a look at the word processors and BASIC on the IBM PC for the first year. Gee, they were automatically translated from the 8080 versions. Talk about ignoring all the hardware (calling the IBM PC hardware wonderful is more than I can stomach). Such things are to be expected early in the life of a new generation of hardware/OS. > (2) Word Processing > a. IBM practically defined it with Wordstar. Don't tell MicroPro that - after all, they wrote WordStar, and were selling it on CP/M-80 boxes long before there was an IBM PC. I think even before there was an 8088. But whether from MicroPro or IBM, WordStar is still a piece of SHIT I wouldn't inflict on anyone but an enemy. > (3) A comittment to keeping the product alive > a. The IBM PC has been around for eons. God, your memory is short. I remember when IBM announced the PC (and it was obsolete THEN). Also, note that there have been new IBM PC's about every two years, and each one has new features that the old ones don't, and little or no upgrade from IBM. Ditto for the operating systems. Why do you think that this is OK for IBM, but so bad for Amiga? > b. The Apple ][ lives on and the Mac has been > here for about 4 years. Right - but can you still buy a stock Mac, with 128K? Gee, I though putting more memory in them was a bad thing. Oh, yeah - you can't do 68010 upgrades on the MAC because the applications software abuses the processor in ways that break on the 68010. To bad - no cheap faster machine for Apple. > c. AMIGA is about a year old and will be > "Replaced" (you said it, I didn't) in > a few months. > Replaced means "another will be sold instead." As longs as 1) the same software runs on both and 2) it's got the same expansion bus, who cares? Every indication is that this will be so. True, a year is a bit short (2 years is closer to normal), but the Amiga had serious birthing pains due to an unnamed twit who mismanaged Commodore and now does the same for Atari. >> My only comment to this is that the Mac and the IBM PC have both been around >> for 4 or more years. If you believe it is possible to create a Lotus or Excel >> or Wordstar or Word in one year on a new machine you are very naive. The *only* > >Only if you use some God-Forsaken-Obscure operating system you mean. Since the applications you like so much are written in assembler, they damned well won't port from MS-DOS machines to an Amiga, or any other machine with a real CPU. You could probably put Unix on an Amiga, and get the C applications (but those are SHIT, or so you claimed), but the resulting system would have been twice as expensive, and MUCH slower. Finally, last time I looked, Apple had as yet to license the Mac OS to anyone else. So you either get to reverse engineer it, or start over from scratch. Face it - of your four "standard" OS's, CP/M, the MAC OS and Messy-DOS are little more than program loaders with some kludges to support special-case multitasking. One requires a CPU that's downwards compatable with the 4004. Another is highly proprietary. The third is about dead. As for the fourth (Unix), I notice that you didn't name any applications that ran on Unix. Is that because they're all "shit?" In any case, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that there were more AmigaDOS systems in use than Unix systems (after all, there are only a couple of hundred thousand Unix boxes out there). And what makes you think Tripos is obscure? I'd been looking at different Tripos boxes for TWO YEARS before the Amiga came out. Guess what - the Amiga was the first 68K box that met all my specs. And guess what it ran? Of course, if your are as well informed about OS's as you are about the Amiga, I wouldn't be surprised if we've already mentioned every OS you're familiar with (quick question - how many OS's does IBM sell? I count at least ten). >The point I was trying to make is that if Commodore was serious about making >the Amiga a success, more time would have been spent on *SOFTWARE* In order >to make up for that dearth of software a quick & dirty Software Kludge Look CAREFULLY at the IBM PC market. Nuts, look at *ANY* computer market. Notice that those machines that have lots of neat software tend to have most of it come from people *other* than the vendor. That means it was written by software houses. Which means that the software houses had the machines. How do you think that they got the machines? Gee, the bought them, just like everybody else. That means that they were being sold. Isn't that odd, that's what CBM has been doing with the Amiga - selling it to developers. The Amiga had more software available when it went on sale than *ANY* micro I'm familiar with when they first went on sale - and that covers all the successfull ones, and quite a few now defunct machines (ok, I'll conceede those micros that were running a hardware/OS combination for which there had been development already). Over the past year, it's been adding software at a faster rate than any micro in it's first year except the Apple ][ (yes, that includes the IBM PC), with the same disclaimers. >called the "Transformer" was created. When that fell on it's ass, the >Sidecar was announced. I understand that the next Amiga will have IBM >Clone Hardware *BUILT IN* Ironic isn't it? the "Better Mousetrap" will >have to rely on an ancient design by a BIG corporation and compete with >similar clones from the far east with *FAR* lower prices. That would be foolish indeed. The most successful dual-processor micro around has been the Compupro DPU, with an 8088/8080, and that had a life of a year or two, between the time the 8088 first started catching on (with QDOS and CP/M-86) and the time the software market got into reasonable shape. Other attempts at such have been dismal failures (can you say "Ohio Scientific"? I knew you could.) Of course, buying an Amiga (with or without an eighty-eighty-sux in it) for IBM PC compatability is crazy. >MADNESS!!! Right. I hope this has helped straighten you out a little. >Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) And I'll add my voice to those requesting that you spread your opinionated mis-information elsewhere, as you no longer own one of the machines discussed in this newsgroup. <mike (You'll take my Amiga over my dead body!)
jerem@tekgvs.UUCP (Jere Marrs) (11/19/86)
I can recall seeing a very early Wordstar running on a Northstar computer (CP/M). This was at the University of Oregon in about 1979. Didn't the Ohio Scientific run that also? Comparing these machines with the Amiga is truly an index of the progress in microcomputing. -Jere
wilkes@beatnix..UUCP (John Wilkes) (11/19/86)
In article <323@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes: > >MADNESS!!! > >Ed Chaban (former AMIGA owner!) >Plexus Computers Inc. >Phone: (408) 943-2226 >Net: sun!plx!ed [flame ON] Ed, please unsubscribe to this newsgroup and direct your amiga flames to /dev/null. Alot of us out here are sick and tired of your tirades. If you are a FORMER amiga owner, you don't belong here with us CURRENT Amiga owners who are trying to exchange USEFUL information. Whining and b*tch*ng such as yours is just so much static on the radio station of life. GO AWAY. Amen. [flame OFF] -- John Wilkes -- UUCP: ihnp4!sun!elxsi!embos!wilkes USPS: ELXSI, 2334 Lundy Pl., San Jose CA 95131 # My Employer appologizes for the fact that I have access to the network. # Furthermore, my Employer disclaims any knowledge of the above ramblings, # which are clearly the product of a deranged mind.
billw@navajo.STANFORD.EDU (William E. Westfield) (11/20/86)
Actually Wordstar predates Z80 based systems (or at least it was around when the only Z80 systems were based on the S100 bus). Isn't anyone on this newsgroup over 20? Sigh. BillW
jmpiazza@sunybcs.UUCP (11/22/86)
In article <1107@navajo.STANFORD.EDU> billw@navajo.STANFORD.EDU (William E. Westfield) writes: >Actually Wordstar predates Z80 based systems (or at least it >was around when the only Z80 systems were based on the S100 bus). > >Isn't anyone on this newsgroup over 20? > >Sigh. >BillW Yo. I spent 3 or 4 years using WordMaster for CP/M -- it is the predecesor of WordStar (mother? father?). Not a bad little editor except for lack of an undo. Flip side, joe piazza --- Cogito ergo equus sum. CS Dept. SUNY at Buffalo 14260 (716) 636-3191, 3180 UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!jmpiazza CS: jmpiazza@buffalo-cs BI: jmpiazza@sunybcs GE: jmpiazza