Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!m2c!ulowell!page From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Amiga Futures Message-ID: <7009@swan.ulowell.edu> Date: 11 May 88 20:29:31 GMT References: <341@unicom.UUCP> Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) Distribution: na Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept. Lines: 87 I'll stand in front of the soapbox and make the observation about some of the unique aspects of the Amiga. First, the Amiga's operating system made a whole lot of new things possible on a micro. College CS/EE students ate it up; they could relate to the stuff they were reading about in their OS classes, as opposed to some of the other micro "operating systems" that are/were little more than program loaders and interrupt handlers. It also marked the first time in a long time that a technology-driven (rather than marketing/solution driven) microcomputer system came out, and brought back all the micro programmers sick of silly monitors posing as operating systems. It also brought in all the mainframe and mini programmers who wanted a real operating system on a micro. Sure, it didn't have everything, and still doesn't, and never will, nor should it. But it built a unique community of support, almost all technical, and almost all third-party. Another thing was that the company that produced the machine didn't take an ivory-tower approach to development and support .. they tried to (only to keep the Amiga developers busy and away from support roles), but the community was too close, and they (first Amiga, then Commodore) realized what a great benefit this user community was ... at the time, the user community was really a developer community. We all came up to speed together. Amiga employees had the jump on us, but that's no longer true (except that they have the source code). The Amiga was also the first micro where memory was more abundant than mass storage .. many people had 2MB RAM and only 2 880K disk drives, rather than 640K and 20MB disk, or 16MB and 400MB disk. It spawned a new generation of users and programmers; people who approached the task of computing at a different angle, since their resource limits were different. Some of that is flattening out now, with the DRAM shortage and more and more mass storage devices becoming available, but the mindset has been shaped. Anyway, because the original developers at Amiga loved the machine, and the developer community loved the machine (OK, so some were more like love/hate), and because Commodore had little resources for developing the Amiga market, the technical side kept getting better and better. Not perfect ... but there was a lot of interaction between the Los Gatos folks, CBM development, CBM tech support, and the developer community. Probably much more than any other company or machine available. In fact, many times the distinctions blur -- third-party packages included in CBM releases, CBM development staff getting the USENET Boing award (for user support, as I understand it). To its credit, Commodore does not subscribe to the "Not Invented Here" attitude like so many other vendors. It makes the Amiga a unique machine, and it makes the Amiga a better machine to work with. Of course, nothing is perfect, and we can talk about lots of the problems with the Amiga. And we do. At length. But we do more than just talk about it. We think about solutions, we describe solutions, and we create solutions. They may not be solutions for all of us, but they are solutions for some of us. Look at ARP. ARexx. Commodities Exchange. VD0. VT100. Csh. PopCLI. FastFonts. Facc. ConMan. Pipe-Handler. The list goes on. But these are state-of-the-art problems as far as micro operating systems go. We're just making the machine better. Perry's and Eric's Amiga Working Group concept is another example of the Amiga community teaming up with CBM to make the machine better. Much more than a user group, AWGs are developer consortiums, advisors to Commodore. Now I'll stand on the soapbox. So there's IPC. Run-time "resources". User Interfaces. Multiple port handlers and names. Resource tracking. All kinds of current things happening, and lots of people with lots of viewpoints. But we can't look at what other people have done and blindly imitate them. We have to look at what problems they were trying to solve, how they went about it, how successful they were, and how successful other schemes were. Only then can we take the best and improve on it, or throw it all away and invent something new. (I hear patriotic sounds in the background. Is that a flag waving?) Amiga owners, users and developers have earned a special place in the evolution of the Amiga. It's still quite technology driven, which is upsetting the marketing folks but is a benefit to many of us for now. We can and should capitalize on this unique position to help define the direction of the Amiga. The Amiga has always been a leader, from day one. It should continue to lead, not follow. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@swan.ulowell.edu ulowell!page