From: mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: 80,000,000 pc's can't be wrong
Distribution: na
X-NewsSoftware: GRn 1.16f (beta) by Mike Schwartz & Michael B. Smith
Date: 27 Aug 92 00:09:44 PST
Organization: Amiga makes it possible

In article <1992Aug24.200314.8579@clipper.ingr.com> kontos@clipper.ingr.com (Thorne Kontos) writes:
> Mike Schwartz (author of many programs and doesn't mind telling you so)
> now has a strong desire to flame the Amiga by claiming that pc's number
> 80,000,000, and a day spent programming the Amiga is a day wasted by
> not programming for pc's. I love how people keep pushing this number
> at me. Mike, what does it prove?

The numbers prove that the Amiga is a flop in the marketplace.  That's
what it proves.  It proves that a few small businesses can make it on
the Amiga and that's it.  It proves that no matter what the Amiga has
offered, not many people bought them.

> With current trends to port every
> piece of software to every platform, this point of numbers is moot at
> best.

The trend is no longer to port to the Amiga.  The trend is to port
what you have for the Amiga to something else.

I CAN go buy FrameMaker for the PC tomorrow, but I can't buy FrameMaker
for the Amiga.  I have doubts I EVER will.  And I have no doubts it
would be an AWESOME Amiga program...

> What appears on platform A (especially games) will be in the
> hands of a 6 year old Genesis player two months later.

A few Amiga games make it to the Sega...  But many more are simply just
designed for the Sega.  And with 10x the budget and manpower.  Amiga
games sell for 2-3 months and are totally dead with poor sales.  A game
that bombs on the Genesis is the best hit game ever sold on the Amiga,
and then some.

OK, so after a VERY short while - maybe 2 christmas "toy" seasons, there
won't be anyone to make the Amiga games anymore.  But PC games aren't
exactly doing well, either.  The kinds of development efforts I have
seen for PC product that does sell is much bigger than anything for
the Amiga.


> So does the
> fact that there are 80 million of these Intel based systems make it
> a great system? IMHO, NO! (See comments on Tandy's Sensation below,
> which comes closer to what I think a computer should be capable of,
> given today's technology.)
>

And now the world is going to end up on CD-ROM based computers.  You
talk about the Sensation.  Why isn't there an Amiga Sensation.  Why
not a couple years ago or even more?

> So Mike, mind telling us just how many of these pc's are 386-based?
> How many are 486-based?

Those 80,000,000 PC users do fragment their market by buying different
caliber clones, as you hinted at earlier.  What you must realize is that
to sell 500,000 pieces of software on the Amiga, you need to sell to
1 out of every 6 machines.  To sell 500,000 pieces of software on the
PC, you have to sell to 1 in 160 users.

If one out of 20 of those machines is a 386 or 486, that makes more of
them than Amigas.  That makes orders of magnitudes more than there are
A3000's.  And that kind of market makes it possible for people to target
the high end and make money at it.  That means REAL progress at the
high end by a lot of motivated people.  This means "must-have" applications
that cause even more people to move UP.

> So Mike, eventually everyone migrates to other
> platforms, but I for one don't see how programming on any one particular
> machine makes it a day of wasted programming.

Look at it this way:  1 year from now, 1 year's worth of PC experience
will be worth a lot more on your resume than the equivalent Amiga experience



> This statement sounds
> so much like Marc Barrett, I'm beginning to wonder if he is forging your
> posts. To a good programmer, it shouldn't matter what platform he is
> programming on, all other things considered equally. You seem to imply
> the world revolves around Intel-based systems, but in major corporations
> in the business world, IBM mainframes still hold sway.
>

It doesn't matter what platform I program on - I assure you the machine will
do what I want it to.  I'm just writing lots of new code NOT for the Amiga.

> Another thing argued frequently here is disk space. Windows 3.1 takes up
> 12M/ OS2.0/33M when fully installed. Adding programs that would be
> necessary to run a home business (Excel, Word, Adobe fonts, Norton Utilities,
> Corel Draw, and a number more) add up to 77M. So for Windows, this is 99M,
> and for OS2.0 110M, and I have yet to count the associated data files. All
> these numbers were quoted in a recent pc magazine. So what does this say to
> me? It says I need at least a 200M hard drive. Now Mike, tell me how many
> systems come with a 200M+ hard drive installed? Do the Intel based systems
> still look so appealing? Or are you just in it for the money like your
> signature suggests? In that case, program all you want, for whatever
> platform will pay you the most.
>

AmigaOS with all the stuff I have collected for it over the years takes up
300Megs of Hard Disk and spills over onto all kinds of backups.  What's your
point?

My clone came with a 230M hard drive.  Can't get them with smaller ones without
making a custom order, even.  How many Amigas have 200Meg hard drives?  Some of
those Amiga3000UX machines likely did.

> New product info:
>
> The Sensation Machine by Tandy is coming out with a CD-ROM installed/with
> Windows 3.1. This is another product doomed to fail, although it has
> many of the bells and whistles of the supposed Atari Falcon. $1999/wout
> monitor gets this latest in the multimedia wars. They did a lot right, but...

Tandy has over 7500 Radio Shack stores in the US.  They buy software 50,000
copies at a time (or more).  They advertise on TV and in the local paper.
I *WISH* Tandy bought Amiga Corp. instead of CBM.  Get the picture?  I am
GLAD that Tandy is making this machine, and I hope it sells a BUNCH!

Tandy will be just one of a bunch of 486 based CD ROM machines.  I see them
in the stores all the time now.  I've even quoted a price on a system I saw
at CompUSA:  SVGA, 25MHz 486DX, 4MB RAM, CD-ROM drive and 80MB Hard Drive for
$1200 (sans monitor).  That's this year's price.  Christmas hasn't even
come yet :)

You see, it won't just be tandy making 486 VGA CD-ROM machines, it will be
tandy and a lot of other clone makers.  They will sell 4,000,000 of those
machines before the Amiga reaches 4,000,000.

> With only a 486/25MHz, this doesn't make it top of the line. But the stat
> that caught my eye was the expansion slots. Only three of them, and guess
> what? They are 16 bit slots. (Insert mandatory laugh track here as they
> seem to have done everything else right.)

The number, 3, is limiting.  The ISA slots aren't.  There's plenty of stuff
you might want that would take up the slots.  My A3000 has 1 of its 4 slots
used.  It will have a 2nd slot used soon, though.  Wow.  I want to buy stuff
to plug in, but it is all expensive and mostly useless.

> BTW, like all Intel based
> systems, buy more RAM. I have yet to see an Intel-based clone come
> preinstalled with a useful amount of RAM.

Mine clone came with 8MB of RAM - enough to run OS/2 in.  And 4MB in a
CD-ROM machine - along with hard disk for CD buffering - is a far cry
from the A600 at a similar cost.

> Still, it packs more into the box, than your average every-day clone, and
> doesn't require additional cards to do it.
>
> So Mike, when your 80 million machines measure up to the Tandy's Sensation,
> then I'll agree with you. And I think the Sensation still has loads of room
> for improvement...Until then, go join the pc droids on their advocacy groups
> where you can argue over which has more features (OS2.0 or Win3.1).

I don't care about OS2.0 or Win3.1.  I use what works best for me.

--
Amiga programmer of: GRn, MailMinder, Budokan, Beyond Dark Castle, Dark Castle
Sega Genesis programmer of: Dick Tracy and Marble Madness.
Mike Schwartz  (ames!zorch!amiga0!mykes or mykes@amiga0.sf-bay.org)
1124 Fremont Ave.
Los Altos, CA 94024

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy