/// ONLINE WEEKLY Amiga Report Online The lines are buzzing!
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From Portal's AmigaZone
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.../Message Bases/General Q&A, Announcements, and Help!/The Amiga is DEAD. Why
16026.3.575.2 Amiga declining?
8/14/93 00:52 92/4571 Harv
>I have been reading everywhere that the AMIGA market is rapidly declining
>in the US. And today I learned that my favorite mag "Amiga Resource"
>will stop publication because of a "General Slowdown" in the Amiga market.
Half of that is Compute's own damn fault for doing very LOUSY
distribution of their Amiga edition, not to mention screwing
up subscriptions for MANY folks who specifically asked for the
Amiga REsource edition. I think Compute's management is just
to blind to see that they slit their own wrists on this one (sorry
to mix those metaphors). If they had simply stopped screwing around
with 436 different versions of every monthy issue, and just made ONE
Compute version and distributed it everywhere.. well, who knows.
>Seems that the Commodore 64 section has more readers, because it will
>continue to be published.
Well who knows why. You'd think that in these days of intersteller
everything that a $100 "disposable" computer that's terribly
slow, has godawful monsterous disk drives, the world's worst
operating system (if you can even call it that).. I guess people
still buy the damn things. But hell, you can buy an Amiga 600
for just pocket change more than a 64 costs these days. Then again..
who knows it exsts?
And there's the rub... Commodore's top management who seems more
concerned about gold-platnig their tennis courts with their
multimillion dollar salaries (some of the highest paid computer
execs in the world work for Commodore, believe it or not),
insulating themselves from their stockholders, not advertising
the best damn personal computer ever made (and I'll argue all
the fine points of this debate with anyone who wants to step up
to bat with me :-) - well it was suggested long ago that
CBM's motto should be "Ready, Fire, Aim!" when it comes to
marketing their product. Still rings truer than ever.
>Can anybody tell me how can all this be possible? Specially with the new
>Amiga 600 selling for only $179? That is less than one half what a
>Commodore 64 with Disk Drive cost the last time I saw it advertised on
>TENEX. What is going on???
See above.
Possible solutions:
1. Get rid of Irving Gould, C='s Chairman of the board, and his
cronies. See Mark Rifkin's "Stockholder" stuff in our Text library.
2. Hire an entire new board of folks who know how to market
computers in the USA
3. Take that former top mgmt salary and hire engineers and
reinvest the bucks in R&D
4. Advertise.
5. See #4. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
6. Get the machine some killer well known big name applications.
How often have you heard someone ask "But will it run [some big
name Mac or MS-DOS app software]?" How many people bought
clones or Macs because the Amiga's best word processors or
spreadsheets, even if they CAN exchange files with other platforms,
are completely unknown in the mass marketplace?
Lemme tell ya something.. I recently spent a month at a well-known
Amiga software house writing a manual for them. It was for a Mac
product. Hey, don't hit me, I needed the money. I used the product
while writing its docs, on a 20 Meg Mac Quadra 700 with
mongo hard drives. That machine would sell for about $8000.
When all is said and done, I would prefer to use an Amiga, selling
for a third or even a quarter of that, than that Mac. All the Mac
had going for it was its 24-bit display. Period. Quicktime is
a joke. Multitasking is laughable on a Mac. Hell, you can't even
open a shell window and type "dir" if you want to.
No thank you, keep the Mac. And keep the PC with its bloated
windowed operating systems pasted on top an early 80's DOS, that
take 4 or more Meg of RAM just to come up. IBM people get all
wet and gooey just to see icons. We Amiga people have the most
elegant operating system of ANY personal computer on the market.
What we need is a company to back it up and market the thing
in an intelligent way.
Who knows if Commodore can come to their senses. Irving Gould
has been quoted as making a sarcastic remark something along
the lines of "I wish someone would tell me how to sell computers
in the United States." Well after 8 years, it's crystal clear
he doesn't have a CLUE as to how to sell Amigas and it's long
past time he stepped aside, retired to the Banahams and his
gold plated tennis court and turned the reigns of the company
over to some fresh blood with good ideas and the talent
to implement them.
As far as Compute magazine's STUPID decision to can Amiga Resource,
they had THE BEST group of Amiga authors in the business writing
for them, and they did not even know it.
Harv
------------------------------
.../Message Bases/General Q&A, Announcements, and Help!/The Amiga is DEAD.
16026.3.575.6 Re: The Amiga is DEAD. Why?
8/15/93 09:57 46/2509 DennyA
>How can the Amiga market be nose diving when the new Amiga 600 is selling
>for only $179? That is way lower than the price of a 64 with DD.
Olaf, I think it's because anyone buying their first computer has four
or five "expert" friends who say "oh, you've gotta buy an IBM
compatible." Not to mention the fact that tons of people just don't
KNOW the Amiga exists. You don't see them in Office Depot and Circuit
City like you do PCs and Macs, sigh/
>I have been reading everywhere that the AMIGA market is rapidly declining
>in the US. And today I learned that my favorite mag "Amiga Resource"
>will stop publication because of a "General Slowdown" in the Amiga market.
>Seems that the Commodore 64 section has more readers, because it will
>continue to be published.
I'm glad you liked Amiga Resource! I'm sorry to see it go as well. :-(
The Commodore 64 section has a TON of subscribers -- last I hear they
had more than half as many as AmigaWorld does! While Harv's right that
delivery problems had a lot to do with some people becoming frustrated
and dropping subs, the Gazette folks have had the same problems. But
the difference there is that Gazette is the ONLY remaining national
C64 publication in the U.S. Amiga folks had the alternatives of
AmigaWorld, a very good mag, and Amazing (mumble).
>Can anybody tell me how can all this be possible? Specially with the new
>Amiga 600 selling for only $179? That is less than one half what a
>Commodore 64 with Disk Drive cost the last time I saw it advertised on
>TENEX. What is going on???
Commodore dropped the ball. They didn't advertise back when they had
the money to do so. They should have taken the cue from the Mac a
couple of years ago and touted the fact that the Amiga CAN read your
PC disks from work, and that there are applications that can read your
PC files. But they got overwhelmed by the DOS monster. The Tenex deal
is FANTASTIC, but who knows about it?
It's a rough time out there for the Amiga right now. I really hope to
see a rebound. If CD32 is successful in Europe, it may give Commodore
the cash it needs to climb back up. I really hope it happens.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Denny Atkin | dennya@cup.portal.com | Mercenary Amiga |
| Entertainment Editor | Portal and GEnie: dennya | Journalist for |
| COMPUTE Magazine | CIS: 75500,3602 | hire. |
--Author, DENNY ATKIN'S BEST AMIGA TIPS AND SECRETS, from COMPUTE Books--
------------------------------
.../Message Bases/General Q&A, Announcements, and Help!/The Amiga is DEAD.
16026.3.575.7 Re: The Amiga is DEAD. Why?
8/16/93 17:54 19/900 TomK
>Commodore dropped the ball. They didn't advertise back when they had
>the money to do so. They should have taken the cue from the Mac a
>couple of years ago and touted the fact that the Amiga CAN read your
>PC disks from work, and that there are applications that can read your
>PC files. But they got overwhelmed by the DOS monster. The Tenex deal
>is FANTASTIC, but who knows about it?
Its more than that. A few years back, when the 500/2000/2500 pretty
much described the Commodore line of Amigas, the user base was screaming
for Commodore to improve the resolution and color of the Amiga
chip set (which, truth be told, had needed an upgrade since the day
it was released).
Commodore made the disingenous reply that there was no reason to upgrade
the line, since the 500 was selling well.
I could only reply that by the time sales are dropping, its too late.
Guess what? Sales are dropping.
------------------------------
From Usenet's Comp.Sys.Amiga.Hardware newsgroup
-----------------------------------------------
In article <1993Jul23.154058@informatik.uni-kl.de>
feck@informatik.uni-kl.de (Christoph Feck IRZ) writes:
>In article <22mmstINNs0f@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>, keithc@tomahawk.
(Keith Christopher) writes:
>> What is the possibility of getting an Amiga based on one ? It seems like
>> a hot chip.
>It would be good, if Commodore could get the same chip, that
>Apple gets - the one with hardware 680x0 code execution.
Apple is using a plain old everyday PowerPC 601 chip in their first PowerPC
systems. Neither it, nor any other announced PowerPC products have any
hardware emulation of the 680x0 instruction set. Apple has announced that
PowerPC systems will run Mac binaries, but that's done via a soft 680x0
emulator. With enough of the Mac OS routines recoded as native PowerPC
routines, the performance should be decent. Don't compare it to a PClone
emulator. A good portion of the slowdown in PClone emulators isn't based
on the need to emulate an 80x86 processor, but rather, the need to emulate
the PC's hardware registers at the bit level. Since nothing in the Mac
OS should require any such bit-level emulation (in theory -- I'm sure Jim
Drew's gang could tell something about this in practice), Mac program
should run at full Mac II speed, at least, on PowerPCs.
--
Dave Haynie | Commodore Technology | Ki No Kawa Ryu Aikido
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com | High-End Amiga Systems | "Life was never meant
{BIX,Portal}: hazy | "The Crew That Never Rests"| to be painless"
"I will give the secrets you request, and you will be the one to sacrifice"
-toad the wet sprocket
------------------------------
In <CBnyAG.C4u@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com>
daveh@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:
>Apple is using a plain old everyday PowerPC 601 chip in their first PowerPC
>systems. Neither it, nor any other announced PowerPC products have any
>hardware emulation of the 680x0 instruction set.
However, I think it is only fair to point out that the
instruction set of the PowerPC 601 is quite well suited to
running emulations of other processors. It has the ability
to think big-endian or little-endian, and (I am led to
believe) has a wide range of bit manipulation instuctions.
I would hazzard to say that emulation of other processors
was a strong design consideration.
>Apple has announced that
>PowerPC systems will run Mac binaries, but that's done via a soft 680x0
>emulator. With enough of the Mac OS routines recoded as native PowerPC
>routines, the performance should be decent.
I am told they have about 80% of the OS native 601
code. I suppose it depends a lot on _which_ 80% of the
OS is native. However, it is expected that the performance
will be similar to that of a 68040 Mac running at 25 Mhz,
while running the emulation on an 'average' application..
Again, sweeping statements, but you get the idea.
>--
>Dave Haynie | Commodore Technology | Ki No Kawa Ryu Aikido
>daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com | High-End Amiga Systems | "Life was never meant
>{BIX,Portal}: hazy | "The Crew That Never Rests"| to be painless"
So is the "crew" thinking about porting things these days?
A 601 Amiga before mid-January would not only take a _lot_
of wind out of Apple's sails, it would surprise the whole
industry. And it's about time people had good reason to look
on the Amiga with a certain amount of awe, just like waaaay
back..
Stephen.
.........................................................................
: / T | / Stephen John McGerty (C.Sci) "Theory must never Amiga // :
: / | |/ smcgerty@unix1.tcd.ie precede creation" \\// :
:.......................................................................:
------------------------------
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|
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