From: foax@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Promises, promises 
Date: 24 Jul 92 22:12:12 EDT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Cornell University

In article <1992Jul23.010152.10912@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
rickan@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Mark Rickan) writes:
> In article <mykes.09pk@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG>
> mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz) writes:
> >I pitched an Amiga project to a very big software publisher in the US.
> >They said NO, we don't expect the Amiga to be around next year.

Actually that behavior might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Americans
will likely abandon the Amiga if the US software market for it appears
to be drying up.  What would they run on it?

> Funny. That's the same thing these guys said in '85, except at that time they
> referred to the system as an Omega (or some variant which they conceived to
> be a non-standard DOS box). Far too often it's not a matter of capability,
> but the underlying corporate pecking order. 

A lot has happened since 1985.  Then the Amiga was an unfamiliar
machine, and many pundits assumed it would fail simply because of
that.  Now Commodore's behavior and the cheap clone market have led it
to be abandoned by US software developers and equalled or outclassed
in performance by cheaper machines with an inferior architecture.

I'm not even sure what you mean by the "underlying corporate pecking
order"; does IBM tell Commodore what to do?  COULD Gateway 2000 tell
Commodore what to do?  Or do you mean within corporate computer
environments?  In that case, I believe the system managers tend to buy
IBM (talk about a rip-off) while individuals tend to buy from the
really cheap companies like Gateway, Northgate, Dell, etc.  (If
someone can correct me on this, please let me know.)  But both groups
mostly buy either PC-compatibles or Macs.

Actually its occurred to me that you're talking about software
companies.  In that case I'd say that these people are trying to sell
software, and that they will write for the machines that most people
own.  I can't see a "pecking order" here, but I do see a
self-reinforcing system.

Anyway the fact is that the primary aspect of a computer's capability
is the software that runs on it.  If nobody writes the stuff, the
machine might as well be a lump of iron.  Then few customers will want
to buy it, unless they like writing their own code or have some
special access to otherwise unavailable software (e.g.  via the
Internet to European shareware writers).  Considering that the
hardware capabilities of PC clones have increased to the point that
they can outperform the Amiga in many respects despite their inferior
architecture, and do so for the same or less cost, with a much larger
support base, then the capability argument becomes moot.

> Somehow I sympathize with the original MIT hackers that felt disdain towards
> the "batch-processed" IBM world which encompassed them in the 60's. It's
> just unfortunate for the rest of us that the bean-counters often prevail.

It is a self-reinforcing system of customers, hardware makers,
software companies, and suppliers that has prevailed, not
"bean-counters".  Besides, the "rest of us" have to spend their money
carefully, and most people don't like taking risks with $500-$2000
worth of it.  And it's not like the rest of the computing world has
stood still.  They've accepted GUI's, which continue to improve, and
they are gradually moving to multitasking systems more robust and
powerful than the Amiga's.

Besides which, given enough time, there WILL be a system introduced
that will blow the entire industry away, and it WILL succeed.  Just
don't expect every attempt at it to be successful.
-- 

--Colin Howell			email to howell@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu
--Cornell Astronomy Dept.	(hopefully switching to computer science)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy