NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/misc-part1/5099

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.3 KB

Path: tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!demon!user
From: [e-mail] (Andy Dean)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: Amiga 1200 Internet bundle
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 23:12:37 +0000
Organization: Private Node
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <4fda8p$[e-mail]> <4ff86o$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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In article <[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (Branko Collin) wrote:

>In article <[e-mail]>
>[e-mail] (Andy Dean) writes:
>
>>
>>In article <4ff86o$[e-mail]>,
>>[e-mail] (George Sanderson) wrote:
>>
>>>Bullmanure...   MUI makes programming a TONNE easier... instead of
>>>wasting time for weeks trying to use voodo magic to use gadtools.library
>>>for everything, I can code a good and powerful user interface in 2 days.
>>>MUI is certainly "mean".  The lean bit is rather questionable, but i am
>>>willing to pay that price for a powerful GUI system.
>>
>>If Amiga Technologies are to attract new developers to the Amiga, which
>>is essential if the Amiga is to survive, AT must make it as easy as
>>possible for developers to write software for the machine. A new
>>developer is not going to be tempted to write a new program (or port
>>from another platform) if they only have GadTools to create their
>>GUI.
>
>Yes, but...
>
>The Amiga in it's current form has little left going for it, unless you
>count the ability to drag screens, which is only nice to impress the
>neighbours IMO.

The Amiga is the only well supported platform that has an affordable
entry-level model. In my opinion, Amiga Technologies should aim to
provide bundles which entice new users onto the platform - the A1200
Internet bundle is the first step in this direction. Once hooked,
new users will spend their money on upgrades which will be easier
than parting with a large amount of money initially.

This is where Apple lost it, I think. After moving to PowerPC they
dumped many of the low priced 680x0 machines, pushing away any users
who may have been tempted by a low end Mac into buying a PC. Amiga
Technologies pretty much have the low price market to themselves at
the moment, and must capitalise on it.

>The one thing that the Amiga has that no other OS has is it's leanness.
>MUI is about, what, 2 times the size of the entire OS?

Programmers may admire leanness, but what users want are easy
to use, standard, powerful applications. There seems to be this
misconception about the size of MUI - I've just checked my Workbench
partition, which is about 10MB large. 1.2MB of that is MUI. So MUI
is about 1/10th of the size of my operating system, which in itself
is a very tiny proportion of my 550MB of hard disk space; and hard disk
space is a *very* cheap commodity these days. How much RAM does it
take? Difficult to say exactly, but after booting with several utilities
(Screenblanker, mode promotor, tool manager, StickIt :-)) and 250K
of stuff in my ram:ENV directory I have about 9.2MB free of my 10MB of
RAM - draw your own conclusions.

>It's of course nice to attract developers, but if that means scaring away
>half of all users, then I am not sure if that's the right thing to do.

There will always be a bunch of folks who will jump up and down
saying how bad MUI is, their perceptions based on MUI 2.x and Amiga
Mosaic; things have come a long way since then. I'd be willing to bet
that if developing for the Amiga was made substantially easier, leading
to better applications, we'd win more new users than loose old whiners.
"scare away half of all users"? Lose a small vocal minority is probably
closer to the truth.

>BTW, I like the idea behind MUI a lot, and it ties in nicely with the way
>interfaces on the Amiga work: standard, yet configurable. What I don't
>like is it's implementation. I am not sure if it can be done better, AFAIK
>Stefan Stuntz (is that his name?) has worked miracles, but if this is the
>best that can be done then my vote is don't do it.

This has to be the holy grail doesn't it - as powerful as MUI, but
much faster. Given what MUI does, I think it's damn speedy and almost
inperceptably slower than GadTools. My machine is a 25MHz 68030; any
future Amigas are likely to be as fast as, if not faster than, this.

>If it can be done leaner, then by all means, let AT develop (or have
>developed) a gui-builder that'll knock developer's socks off.

The trouble with MUI, ClassAct, BGUI etc... is that they're all
different and none are "standard". If I were a developer wanting to
develop a major new application for the Amiga, which GUI should I
choose? Amiga Technologies don't seem to be making my decision any
easier. If they are developing their own system, how long will it be
and how powerful will it be? If I choose one of the existing 3rd
party systems, will it become obsolete? You can't blame developers
for holding back until these sort of fundamental decisions are
announced. In the meantime, development time is wasted and more users
leave the platform.


--
Andy Dean, co-author of ImageStudio and TextureStudio for the Amiga
Email: [e-mail] WWW: http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~adean/