> Amiga's don't count because there was virtually no software other than
> Lightwave 3D.
oh come now tim, that is totally untrue. there were several hundred
commercial programs and several tens of thousands of public domain and
shareware programs available on the amiga, many of which were good or
better than commerical products on other platforms, and many of which
were direct ports of unix apps (which i always loved to use).
admittedly, microsoft didn't port more than its BASIC interpreter and
their crummy flight simulator to the amiga, but look how long it took
to get microsoft products to the apple (and look what a state they are
in today).
> Granted, and actually the driver doesn't still doesn't use pure dma is
> it still isn't native. But I digress. Take Joe adverage. Have him
> attach a Zip to his PC. Then have him attach a UMAX scanner. Then have
> him install a larger HD.
>
> Then have the guy sitting next to him attach a Nikon cool scan to his
> PC, or Sun, or SGI. This is the reason Apple is where it is.
so you are saying that apple is more plug-and-play than plug-and-pray.
well, that certainly didn't convince the masses either on the amiga.
ah, those were the days, buying a new card, plugging it in, putting a
single device file in /devs/ _only if it were in fact a radically new
device type_, booting the system, and everything just worked. nope,
not on a mac and certainly not on a pc, only on the amiga from day 1
(circa 85).
> 99% of the people that bought Mac A/V systems gave a shit about that.
> And the sales figures prove it.
>
> The A/V series of Mac's are consistently the largest selling in the Mac
> line.
wait a second. you're telling me that _most_ mac user's are buying
a/v system and _most_ of them know what the hell a/v is all about and
use it? (i.e. they own complementary a/v systems and actually _use_
the features?) i find this _very_ hard to believe, especially that i
know several dozen very high-power mac users and developers, many of
which own a/v systems, none (or few) of which use the a/v
capabilities.
sure, users in the a/v market will buy and use them for such (video
titlers, editors, animators, etc.), but certainly not the layman.
> * i'm a little confused. are you saying that mac users must be
> * accepted by corporate america and thus macs must as well?
>
> No I'm saying that Apple felt almost embarrased by their users
> because they weren't the type that was going to be accepted by
> corporate Amerika. Thus they ignored them and went after the users
> that they felt they could be "proud" of.
understood and i agree. dippy.
> * "amiga, computers for the creative mind."
>
> Well if almost every major film and TV show (editing), and Midi artist,
> ad agency, newspaper, magazine, pre-press solution, photo re-touching,
> illustrator, etc. were using Amiga's would you be saying the same
> thing?
well, we had the same argument several years ago before commodore went
under. remember when the market was split in many of the above areas
between the amiga and the mac and the video domain was solely owned by
the amiga? i do - i was a broadcast animator and dtp consultant at
the time. (yes, i know my way around lightwave quite well - and
imagine, and real 3d, and wavefront, whoops, wrong platform, but
similar feel).
> * i'm afraid that probably won't cut it, but we'll see. i'm wishing
> * apple all the luck in the world, but i wouldn't bet 2 cents on their
> * chances.
>
> Their chances are fine IF and this is the point to all this, the
> fuckin' computer industry would just leave them alone. Go ask the
> users of Macintosh's what their want, and you know what they say?
> "I want a faster Mac." PERIOD. They don't really give a shit about
> multi-tasking, multi-threading, protected memory etc. Why? Because
> they don't have a clue what the fuck that is. Bring a Win'95 user
> to me and I'll show them NeXTStep running on my Micron P-133 and
> watch the drool drip out of their mouths. They don't know what it
> is either. They just think they have a good OS until they see
> that. Apple is (and I can't really go into much more about this
> here) firmly and finally coming to grips with their market. Apple
> is also firmly committed to bringing some really hot shit new
> hardware to market. Is it going to be the one that you drool over
> to replace your P-Pro's and NT 4? No. That isn't Apple's market. Is
> it something a graphic artist, or film editor, or effects person is
> going to give his left nut to get his hands on? Yep.
well, if that is their (sole) market, i'd argue that they will have a
difficult time staying alive (from a financial standpoint) at their
current size given the finitude of that market.
joe