Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!oodis01!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!terry
From: terry@wsccs.UUCP (Every system needs one)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Cheap languages/compilers (was Re: Shareware)
Summary: Don't hold your breath.
Message-ID: <585@wsccs.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jun 88 04:57:15 GMT
References: <5541@utah-cs.UUCP> <1898@hubcap.UUCP>
Lines: 39

In article <1898@hubcap.UUCP>, disd@hubcap.UUCP (Gary Heffelfinger) writes:
> I think, though, that there
> just might be a large enough number of Amiga owners who'd like to have
> good implementation of any of the "traditional" languages, that the
> time might be right.  Borland hit the PC market at the right time.
> Maybe someone could do the same thing with the Amiga market.

	The only problem with this is that Bordland advertised Turbo Pascal
for the Amiga "Coming Soon" when the Amiga was first introduced.  In addition,
Commodore had it on their "runs on our machine" list waaaaaaayyyyy back when
they were still practicing that quaint "marketing" thing they used to do...
Now they assume that word-of-mouth is good enough, I guess.  I have the
four-color glossy to prove it.

	If Commodore truly wanted to get into the "office zone", they'd
either get their sales up to 500,000 unit in the US (Ashton-Tate's limit
on doing dBase), or offer to joint-venture with these companies that make
traditional business software.  The companies would not have to pay full
freight on developement (in case Commodore orphaned the A500 and A2000, too)
and would therefore be less skeptical.

	A number of larger companies, when asked what they thought of the
Amiga, stated that they thought it was a "curiousity".  To quote one official
directly, "The Amiga will always have a cult following, but given the numbers
sold over the time it's been out (600,000, according to AMAZING COMPUTING)
compared to the number of IBM's or MAC's sold in the same period.  Amiga's
marketing isn't there".

	Unfortunately, unless you can provide a ready-made market for the
"big boys", they won't play.

	(Actually... makes sense to me...)


| Terry Lambert           UUCP: ...{ decvax, ihnp4 } ...utah-cs!century!terry |
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| SLC, Utah                                                                   |
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