Re: Computing Editorial (please read)

[Jeff Thomas <a2forever@usa.net>]

Lots of inaccuracies in the editorial.

Commodore may have folded, but the Amiga technology is alive and well.
Eyetech Group (eyetech.co.uk/amigaone) has had the AmigaOneG3-SE in
limited production since March, last year. Sporting 600Mhz Motorola G3
CPU, integrated Ethernet/Fast Ethernet networking, a single 2X AGP and
four PCI slots and the board handles up to 2GB of 133MHz SDRAM in two DIMM

sockets, Dual USB ports and UDMA/100 channels and the usual parallel,
serial, PS/2 mouse and keyboard as well as PC floppy interfaces. They're
already working one successor called AmigaOne-XE, capable on handling
single/dual G4 and possibly G5 CPUs whenever Motorola releases them.

As for the brand name, "Commodore" a computer company based in Holland,
brought it and are selling PCs with "Commodore" name!

Apple Computer still provides technical information and software for the
Apple II product range, notably Apple IIGS System Software, drivers and
info for various Apple II perhiperals. But provides no support, but the
newsgroups are great place to get help.

Some die-hard fans, are attempting to create new motherboards with newer
processors and that are backward compatible with IIGS.

What really killed most of these once great computer companies was bad
mismanagement.

Commodore before their demise, were very reluctant to release newer Amiga
technologies and sadly, crumbled to PC onslaught. We all know how crippled

the Amiga 1200 (A1200) was, just play "Dune II" or "Wing Commander" on
native A1200.

As for Atari, they caused their own downfall. Why on earth, they wasted
their time trying to emulate an Amiga with Atari STE is beyond me. People
quickly realised that the Amiga was vastly superior beast, and ditched
their Atari's. When the A1200 & A4000 came along, well, they were history.

These days, Atari only produces games like it did in it's heyday. I guess,

the computing market was another revenue source, but couldn't keep up.

Apple fared better, but didn't get away unscathed. Despite having a
ten-year head start over Windows. Many computer companies have tried over
the years to emulate the Macintosh GUI, from: Atari TOS, GEM, GEOS,
GeosWorks to Amiga Workbench.

By early 1990s, Apple had invested heavily on their handheld PDA Newton,
which flopped, because poor handwriting recognition, lack of applications
and the market wasn't ready for it. Other companies now realise the
significance of PDAs that has now opened the flood gates to niche market
of Pocket PCs and Palms.

In 1997, Apple's future didn't look too good. Why? Like all the other
computer companies before it, they were missing that killer application,
being "M$ Office" series ~ nothing compared or matched it, on any of the
other computers.

As for books, regarding the early days at Apple, I highly recommend John
Sculley's "Odyssey -Pepsi to Apple" and "Fire in the Valley - The Making
of the Personal Computer". And brilliant, "Pirates of Silicon Valley"
movie.

The main problem at Apple was that the company was run by a person, who
knew very little about computers only had skills in management and lacked
real vision. Once, Steve Jobs was gone, most product releases where
extension of what was already done before with gradual changes and
improvements.

Another contributing factor was the advent of 3D games which PCs led the
way - sure, after people tweaked their systems with hardware acceleration
and other add-ons they could, but by then the masses already switched to
PCs. Beginning with the brilliant (and still highly regarded) "Ultima
Underworld" series of 1992, "Wolfenstein 3D", "Doom" followed by the
"Quake" series.

While Commodore was haggling over releasing a CD-ROM drive for Amiga 1200
with hardware Full Motion Video (FMV) support and possibly CD32 compatibly
(their short-lived former game console, soon displaced by the superior
Sony Playstation), which would be sold as separate add-on, rather than
becoming part of the system, PCs came with them standard, and FMV was
software driven (not Hardware) like: Icom's "Sherlock Holmes Consulting
Detective" series. Providing important extension to gaming format,
enriching the gaming format with larger playing areas, cut-scenes made of
FMV, and CD-quality audio for far less production costs incomparision to
conventional floppy disks or cartridges. No wonder software companies
couldn't be bothered with floppies anymore, also the public are the main
driving force in wanting better games - that's why we ended up in this
never-ending upgrading cycle.

No Bill Gates isn't our saviour. Everyone knows he stole the Macintosh GUI

and embedded it, into his Windows. Try using a pre-1995 Macintosh, and
you'll realise how closely Windows copies it, even down to the application

names that are part of the Mac OS. Here's some comparisons:
Windows  &  Mac
Notepad   /   Note pad
Clipboard  /  Clipboard
Desktop    /  Desktop
Control Panel /  Control Panels
Find             /  Find File
Shut Down    /  Shut Down
Calculator     / Calculator

M$ remains the least innovative company around, and they never really
stopped ripping other people's ideas or competing unfairly like the
tactics they used against Netscape, DR. DOS, Novell and countless others.
Even when they began, with their take of DOS, that they brought and
redeveloped into CP/M knock-off. And more recently, with "System Restore"
that came with Windows Me which is rip-off from Norton's "Ghost" program.

A fantastic book on this, would be "The Microsoft Files - The Secret Case
Against Bill Gates".

Now, M$ are trying to kill-off the game console and gaming industry as
well. Sega already has quit, developing game consoles and are now solely
focused on creating and releasing games. Nintendo's future does look
shaky, doing less well than the Playstation.