Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!mcnc!ece-csc!ncrcae!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!well!tenney From: tenney@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: More Electronic Arts Bashing... Message-ID: <3554@well.UUCP> Date: Tue, 14-Jul-87 22:32:56 EDT Article-I.D.: well.3554 Posted: Tue Jul 14 22:32:56 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jul-87 06:09:45 EDT References: <3526@well.UUCP> <2507@husc6.UUCP> Reply-To: tenney@well.UUCP (Glenn S. Tenney) Distribution: na Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 47 Disclaimer: I'm not now doing a project for EA, but I did an Amiga project that shipped over a year ago for EA... It is easy to "bash" people at this time. When I started my project, we were working with black boxes at V21 or so, and no DOS, Intuition, etc. What do you do at that time: You use a Sun or develop your own development system. I think we can all understand how expensive a single user Sun system was 2-3 years ago, compared to a PC-XT, so when you have 10-20 people EACH needing a development system, the answer is obvious. Yes, if you USE your target machine alot you get a better feeling for the environment. Because of what I mentioned above, there was nothing I could do with my black box effectively, so... Now, it's a different story. I don't know what Dan Silva is using now for development, but a couple of months ago he was using an AT with a cross development Manx system. The native Manx system is great, but there are times you need a logic analyzer and a cross development system is a good middle ground. Then, there is the point of utilities and peripherals. I can outfit a PC clone with 20 meg hard disk for less than the cost of a hard drive alone for the Amiga. I'm using an A2000 with hard disk right now and let me tell you what it's like NOT having an effective backup capability as I do on my PC based systems. All in all, there are reasons for both methods of development and I don't think your (Leo) bashing reflects a mature analysis of the data. This is NOT to say that I agree with everything that EA does, quite the contrary! I personally hate copy protection and tried to get my project out without it, to no avail. The pipeline is long, and some of the problems you experienced were found and corrected quickly, but the effect takes time. It is quite different to correct an error in a shipment of 500 or a 1000 versus 20,000 or 50,000 units! Leo also mentioned some comments about disk fragmentation. Ok, even the best of us are human and might forget to rebuild the entire disk from scratch; or maybe not everyone has the tools to see what's going on, but ... Whew, much longer than I figured or expected. Sorry, but... -- Glenn Tenney UUCP: {hplabs,glacier,lll-crg,ihnp4!ptsfa}!well!tenney ARPA: well!tenney@LLL-CRG.ARPA Delphi and MCI Mail: TENNEY As Alphonso Bodoya would say... (tnx boulton) Disclaimers? DISCLAIMERS!? I don' gotta show you no stinking DISCLAIMERS!