From: justin@hybris.UUCP (Justin Richards)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re:  Comdex/Quicktime released for the PC
Distribution: world
Date: 31 Dec 92 19:26:46 CST
Organization: FEC Software Programmers, INC.

In article <1hsebbINNf10@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> an780@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Travis Grundke) writes:
>
>In a previous article, mikeh@starnine.com (Mike Haas) says:
>
>>In article <1992Dec14.140513.662@pcnntp.apple.com> Dale_Adams@gateway.qm.apple.com (Dale Adams) writes:
>>>In article <92347.032705MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu> Mark 'Mark' Sachs
>>><MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>>> Yes, I've seen it. It scales the moving images to the size of the window,
>>>> and dithers it if there aren't enough bitplanes for all the colors. This
>>>> might be impressive if not for the fact that it ends up running so slow
>>>> (on a Mac Quadra!!) as to be essentially useless. The Amiga 500 I used to
>>>> own animated full-screen up to sixty times faster than QuickTime on a
>>>> Quadra.
>>>> I reiterate, sophisticated bells and whistles mean little when the
>>>> program does not accomplish its main function!
>>>
>>>No, no, no.  QuickTime does much more than what you describe.  Please
>>>re-read Evan Torrie's remarks:
>>
>>Oh, no.  Another Amiga wanna-be pumping up his mac!
>>
> Don't even get me started on a bandwagon against the Amiga (but this IS
>the advocacy group...) <grin>. Read on.
>
>>>
>>>"  Oh no, not again.  Please, please, please, read some QuickTime
>>>developer's documentation.  QuickTime does far more than just bitblt
>>>moving images to the screen."
>>>
>>>To which I'd add: Or resize them.  Or dither to a different pixel depth.
>>>
>>>If you really want a reasonable technical description of everything
>>>QuickTime entails, please follow his advice and reference the developers'
>>>docs.
>>
>>Again, what is the point?  Your own posting indicates that QT only BEGINS
>>to provide entry-level animation (30 fps 320x240 ... w-o-w) on the top
>>of the line macintoshes?  It is quite pitiful, actually.
>>
> Once again we get our arrogant Amigophile with the "My Amiga can do
>anything" attitude. Sure- it can do anything but become a major contender
>in the market here in the states for sure. QuickTime has won countless
>awards for software design and technology. I don't seem to see too many
>awards for Commodore (or their blundering baffoonities). QuickTime can run
>on almost ANY Macintosh at any selected pixel depth. IT allows users to do
>cheap multimedia and is in NO way designed to be used for high end super
>duper professional work. Its an ENHANCMENT. Keep in mind with the release
>of the PowerPC in the fall of 1993 with new multimedia technology the new
>PowerMacs will make the Amiga look like a toy.
>


What you call an ENHANCEMENT to a mac, I call STOCK to my Amiga.


>>In other words, whatever it does, it needs to do less of it, because


>>the underlying graphics a5rchitecture is antiquated and slow.  The
>>QT facility fails to provide adequate animation on even the average mac
>>and it is a statement about how little the Mac can accomplish in real-time
>>work.
>>
>>>
>>>Also, I believe your numbers are a bit off.  Using QT 1.5 I run 320 x 240
>>>animations at 30 fps on my Quadra 950 on a 16 bit/pixel screen.
>>
>>That may be something to be proud of on a mac using QT, but it
>>is so far behind Amiga animation capabilities it is laughable.
>>
> My my my, are we arrogant today or what? This has blown up into yet
>another "My computer is better than YOUR computer" or "My daddy is gonna
>beat up your daddy" argument. I will fully agree with you that the Amiga
>can do video and animation better than the Macintosh can, but you are
>placing QUICKTIME against professional authoring tools here, of which
>QuickTime CAN do, but isn't designed to do. Take some of the new video
>boards available for the Macintosh- full screen, 24-bit 30fps cards to USE
>QuickTIme and make it the "next big thing"....QuickTime needed and still
>needs time to mature, and 3rd party developers are scrambling to get their
>video equipment released. There is a plephoria of stuff available to get
>QuickTIme to run as well as an Amiga can do video work- just call RasterOps
>and Radius.
>


My Amiga500 is NOT by any means a professional tool, but it will run
circles around the Q950 (my school has 3 of em, I am not impressed with them
at all..  Specially for the $6000+ they cost...)  I have a simple 14 Mhz
accellerator in my A500, and running a mac emulator that I load off of a
disk, I can fully emulate the mac, (except for a mac disk drive, but I have
a hardware hack file that expains how to hook one of those up..) faster
than most of the macs can run their own software.


>>>I doubt
>>>your A500 runs 60 times faster than that.
>>
>>Just the fact that an 8 MHz 68000-based machine can do better
>>at all that your $10,000 Quadra says it all.  And they call the
>>Mac a GRAPHICALLY-ORIENTED MACHINE?
>>
> Maybe some castor oil would help? First of all, ignorance is shown in the
>above statement of a $10,000 Quadra. A Quadra 700 (68040@25mhz) in a 4/240
>setup will set one back about $4199. A Quadra 950 (68040@33mhz) will set
>you back about $6599 in an 8/260 setup. (RAM/HARDDISK). Yes, more expensive
>than the Amiga- but which computer (or company) has a better chance at
>existence 5 or 10 years from now. I think that in your vocabulary, because
>the MAcintosh can't do 30fps in a Classic II configuration its not a
>serious computer. Sorry, my fault. That's why so many businesses I see
>using Amigas are out there. Get real. You sound like a PC dork now.
>


Umm lets see here...  The Amiga is going to be 9 years old this comming
year, and is already emulating IBM 486's at benchmarked 105 Mhz, they
emulate the higher up macs FASTER than the real macs go, running all of
their hardware....  Umm, The Amiga can emulate the Atari ST series, and
the Government uses them as a front end to their Crays.   The C64 is what,
11 years old?  And they still sell 200,000+ a year in Europe and Russia..
Amiga OWNS Europe, Atari is second, and IBM is a very distant third.  There
are 4 local companies to me that use Amigas to do video productions, and
the cable company here uses them to display the public info (weather,
street closings, etc..)   I can remember several movies that have used
the Amiga Morphing abilities, and other special effects.

Which company just "released" a lot of workers???  I think IBM did  (the
IBM-MAC joke of a computer they are coming up with probably made
them loose too much money, (you know, they had to upgrade the macs soooo
much to get them even close to working together...) and when this new and
totally awesome (NOT!) computer comes out, the Amiga will emulate it as
well.  You sound like a "PC dork"...  NO mater what kind of info is given to
you, the Amiga is not as good as IBM/MAC/Doorstop, because you don't
like the fact that is taking over the video production world.


>>>Running anims on your A500
>>>isn't doing what QT is doing.
>>
>>Very true.  The Amiga 600 isn't skipping frames, providing pitiful
>>jerky animation.
>>
> "And let slip the dogs of war."
>
>>>If I just want a simple animation player,
>>>I'll use something like MacroMind Director/Accelerator.  Using this
>>>off-the-shelf software with no special tricks, my Q950 will animate at
>>>over 90 fps on a 640 x 480 8 bit/pixel display.
>>
>>But it won't load up the next animation frames while SMOOTHLY displaying
>>the next.  It won't run OTHER GENERIC MAC SOFTWARE in the background
>>while animating.
>>
> Its better than running NO AMIGA SOFTWARE in the background. If you're
>doing animation work, you really wouldn't be wanting to do too much other
>stuff. Oh I forget, your super-duper Amiga can do 15 tasks in the
>background (including formatting two disks at once with no slowdown and
>feeding starving Somali's at that) and animate at the same time. I keep
>forgetting that while I animate I like to do spreadsheet work. (WHAT?)
> Granted the Ami can multitask well, but the rest of the world could care
>less.
>


Hmm.    This is interesting..  I have a pretty small Amiga, it doesn't
have an 040, or 8 megs of ram, and I can run animations, music, and let
my UUCP program to its thing, with no trouble.  I have in the past ran
3 modems at 9600 baud on this very computer, while playing a game called
Civilization (installed on my Hard Drive), and running my SAS 5.10b
compiler on a 200K program.  I have NO trouble multi-tasking with this
machine, because it was made to multi-task.
                        ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^^^^

>>And why don't we stop talking about Quadras?  It's always
>>mind-boggling the number of times PC & MAC fanatics want to compare
>>the animation capabilies of their QUADRAS and 486's to an Amiga 600!
>>Notice they NEVER allow a 4000 (the flagship amiga) to enter the fray!
>>
> Because Commodore isn't taken seriously- its their own damned fault.
>

This I have to agree with you on.  I am quite stressed because of Commodore
and their market ideas.  But all of that aside, they have done a better
job, with less money, and less backers, than mac or IBM.


>>Hey one of you 4000 owners... how fast can you animate 640x480x8?
>>
> Hey, 4000 owners- how many seriously taken business aps are there out
>there? How many AMigas are in business? How many computers have a long
>future?
>>>I do believe that you've seen QT running dog-slow on a Quadra.
>>
>>That's big of you.  Anyone out there who HASN'T?
>>
> Evidently you.
>
>>>Heck, I
>>>can make any machine run slow if is set things up right (wrong?).
>>
>>I can make a mac run slow even easier than that... just turn it on!
>>
> And I can make business people laugh by showing them an Amiga. ITs all
>relative.
>


I can name a few business people that do anything but laugh at Amigas..
would you like their phone numbers??


>>>I've
>>>seen many Mac dealers demoing Quadras with the 040 cache off and running
>>>all software from a CD-ROM.  Talk about crippling the machine!
>>
>>That brings up the fact how computer-ignorant the average mac owner is.
>>Did you know that for the system 7 tune-up, apple changed their plan
>>and provided a full installer program for it, even though it just needs
>>to be dragged into the system folder.  Seems that they discovered that
>>60% of mac owners DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT!  (reported in MacWeek)
>>
>>
>>>It's easy
>>>to make things run slow.
>>
>>Only on a Mac.  Some games on my Amiga 3000, I can't get to slow down enough!
>>RUn tons of processes, disable caches, run in chip mem, some of 'em are
>>STILL too fast!
>>
>>>The trick is to do things right.
>>
>>Like recognizing Macs for the bloated, slow, antiquated toys they are.
>>Then spend your money on a real engine, an Amiga.
>>
>>
>--
>Travis Grundke             |  For More information about MacGames Digest,
>Contributing Editor-        |  The First Publication Dedicated to Macintosh
>MacGames Digest                    |  Gaming, Please contact us at the previous
>an780@cleveland.freenet.Edu |  E-mail Address. (c)1992-1993 Travis Grundke/MGD

--

Sorry for reposting the entire article, but I had to get my comments in
at the correct places.   Travis, you have such a narrow minded approach
to computers, but, I noticed that you work for a mac magazine.  It is too
bad that people like your self dont just accept that Amiga is part of the
race, and it will always be.  The Amiga is probably stronger than the mac
is.  But macs are soo simple to use, that people who don't know about
computers will buy them, because they are not affraid of macs.  The mac
as a good point on that.  But the Amiga is not that much harder to use,
it can run in the pitiful graphics/icon enviroment (I say pitiful, because
dos prompts are what I live for.  I like telling the computer what to do,
not clicking on some stupid picture).
It is pretty easy for me to say I would NEVER buy a mac.  I have had to
use them since 8th grade, and I hate them.  They are slow, and out dated.
Amiga is my choice for computers (live with it Travis).  Though I must say
at this point, if I was going to run a multi-node UNIX system, I would
probably do it with an IBM setup, because I have used SCO, and
I feel pretty good in its enviroment.  BUT, I have never used an Amiga
Unix system, so I don't know what they are like (probably not much different
I would assume).

Every computer has its good and bad points.  I dont like macs, but I
don't go around smashing them with their limitations, and parade around
like I have the best computer in the world (like I felt you did.)

again, sorry for the length..
---

                      ---==* Justin Richards *==---
Hybris.UUCP  Amiga500  9600 baud      UUCP:  ..mmedia!hybris!justin
INET:  br365@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu



Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy