NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/misc-part1/9454

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 5.9 KB

Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!rycohen
From: [e-mail] (Ross Y Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: New Press Release!
Date: 24 Mar 1996 01:42:54 GMT
Organization: UB
Message-ID: <4j29au$[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4itbc2$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu
NNTP-Posting-User: rycohen

In article <[e-mail]>,
Jeroen T. Vermeulen <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>In article <4itbc2$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ross Y Cohen) writes:
>
>>     The fact is, and was then too, that to attract any sort of
>> a real user base (and as importantly, programmers) you either have to
>> be a _real competitor in the market-share game, _or have a machine
>> that makes people drool with unconcealed envy and lust.
>
>Those are more or less the options if you lack imagination.  Thank Manfred
>Schmitt for having more imagination than that, otherwise he would have found
>little reason to buy the Amiga.
>
>Schmitt's approach is:  Seek markets that are not covered by the competition
>at all.  Deliver a product that does not comply to the standard image of a
>PC. Give people *new* reasons to buy a computer.

Giving people a new reason to buy a computer is great, but you also have to
give them a reason to make it _your company's computer.
The reason I, and everyone I know who bought an Amy did so is because it
could do things other machines couldn't (or at least significantly better).
The MAC gave me a reason(the GUI) to go out and get a computer, but when I
did so, I got an Amy (for reasons obvious then and now).  If you bring
something _genuinely new(and capable of generating serious interest)
to the market, I doubt it will be something able to realized without serious
CPU/graphics/sound power.

As far as I can tell the only market that isn't very well covered by the
PeeCee Clone is the mid-range-performance-for-low-cost market.  But the
fact is (and it's growing truer every day) that your low end garden-
variety PC is becoming rather powerful.  And if you want to, you can spend
less money and pick up a 486 for little more than a comparably equiped
Amiga. My point here is that our vaunted mid-range-performance-for-low-
cost market is dissappearing too.

>
>But AT simply explores new markets that are still open for growth to an
>established platform without the $600+ price tag that goes with the official
>Conformism Compatible(tm) sticker.
>
I'm not sure we're disagree seriously here: we both think the present
developement going on at AT is a good thing, but there is a reason for
the $600+ price tag.  Decent CPU, hard drive, 6+ M ram, etc.  I do
not regard having a hard drive in all machines conformism, any more than
I regard seats in a car conformism.  Having the power of your current low-
end CPU be with in a factor of 2 of the competition's low end should not be
considered conformism either.  The amiga should be able to run software
comparable to that of other systems. No one bothered to port a Doom
style game to the Amy because she was not deemed to have a big enough
user-base of machines of sufficient power.  Rendering has been
migrating over to other platforms because the CPU power wasn't there.
It's hard to console youself by saying, "Well, at least I got the most
bang for the buck."

>
>Once they're finished testing the new 68060 motherboard they can expand
>their product line again.  It shouldn't be long now.

I'm looking forward to this, but will the software market come back to
life? I'm becoming pessemistic.

>>     I think AT's long term prospects would be a lot better if they
>> took BE's approach: ~ $2200 machine that blows all the other paltforms
>> out of the water.

>Doing what the others are doing does *not* improve your prospects if you
>have a few years' development to catch up with, and your competitiveness
>comes at a higher price than the others'.

I agree, but having a kick-ass (I hate sounding like a speed freak)
machine _will.  Quality is always important.  Our OS  gives us an
advantage that offsets our market size problem.

>Besides I think your line of reasoning is Pentionic (ie. flawed):  If AT do
>as you suggest, they will still need a shorter-term machine to make up for
>extra development time.  They will also still need to fund the extra
>development--even more so than the competition.

No argument with you here.


>>                                               The Amiga would
>> then have recaptured the 'WOW!' factor that it used to have.
>>     I like my Amy alot, but, ultimately my loyalty goes to the
>> machine that is better _overall.
>
>"Overall" is a deceptive term.  What matters is what you do with it:  It
>happens to not be the best platform right now for, let's say, molecular
>modeling so that's not part of the equation if you use a different machine
>for that.
>
>The PC market has established itself and is trying to force upon us their
>notion of what a computer is and does.  The user doesn't necessarily agree
>with this, or might have different needs that are not satisfied by that
>definition of a computer.  Those are the needs that invite competition from
>original thinkers.
>

I think the opposit is the case: we forced on the PC industry _our conception
of what a computer does, and they have spent the time and resoursed necessary
to come up with some sort of semblance: responsive GUI, fast cool graphics,
sound, decent apps, cool games.  Now they're starting to beat us at our
own game (in spite of having a _rather poor OS), largely through brute,
inelegant force.  And now I'm starting to hear statements from Amy users
that years agoe you would have only heard from PC weenies ("Well sure, a
PC is great if you want to play _games, but with my Amiga I do _serious
work.")

Ross.