🚀 go-pugleaf

No , I'm not about to participate in the discussion which computer is better:
mac or amiga.
I'd like to say a word or two about the mentality of mac users versus amiga
users. Until recently i had an amiga, because i couldn't afford a mac, so
I know about 10 persons who have an amiga. I bought a mac half a year ago,
and since i noticed that i hardly ever used my amiga any more, so i sold it .
I now know about 7 mac-users.

Let me start off by an example: we had to write a paper for a
university project, and we always gathered at the place of an amiga user.
The paper involved mixing graphics and text. Prowrite was considered being too
slow and having too poor font resolution to print on a 24-pin printer. So the
amiga user reverted to this: all text was typed in an editor !!!, every
paragraph was typed on one continuous horizontal line. After that,
the text was transported to a (very powerful) DTP program, which uses
vector-fonts for hires printer output.
Another Amiga user claimed he would use the same procedure for writing
his thesis.

I think this example gives a pretty good idea of the mentality of an Amiga
user: unprofessionalism. No PC or Mac user would ever think of using an
editor for word processing.

Another example: ergonomy. This means adapting the working situation to
the Human being, and not adapting the Human to the situation. An ergonomic
term for CRTs is often 'flicker free'. Most Amiga users consider this term
to be equivalent for 'non-interlaced'. Actually ergonomics think of flicker
being present in any computer screen, even if not visible for the naked eye.
And of flicker free CRTs being very high frequency monitors.
Most Amiga users put up with interlace, while other computer users consider
using e.g. even a CGA display as being professionally unacceptable.


O.K. except for the video display, the hardware concept of an Amiga is
probably much more modern and efficient than that of a Mac. But Amiga
users really seem to be fixed onto their hardware, while Mac users seem to
be more concerned by a consistent software concept.
A small example is the Clipboard Mechanism. This allows almost all software
ever written on the mac, to behave as one large integrated system.

If you program the Mac, you have to obey very strickt rules on interfacing
to the user.
As a consequence , Mac programmers  will hardly ever 'hack' or program directly
to the hardware. Amiga programmers will say 'that's no fun'. What
are we concerned about: fun or hardware independant software ?


When you criticize an Amiga, you often get a reply like this:
   * when you use the Flicker Fixer , you get a nice picture
   * Workbench 1.4 will fix that...
   * the new chip set will fix that ...
   ....

Well, I've never even seen a flicker fixer live, so I certainly don't know
anybody who uses one. And I have no time for vapourware-talk.

Finally: Amiga users only seem to feel 'good' about their computer if they can
put another computer down. Mac users don't have this urge, because the don't
need to. Is it perhaps because Amiga users have a bit of an
inferiority complex ?

I think the Amiga is great for some purposes. I just can't stand to hear
people who have no professional intentions, put down a professional computer.
It would be the same for criticizing a formula 1 car for being too expensive,
and saying that one should better buy a nice family car to drive to work.We're
talking different catagories here.
A lot of the money you pay for a Mac covers professional support by dealers.
Amigas are sold in super-markets. Many commodore dealers over here
simply refuse to sell Amiga, because they know nothing about it, and can't
support it.
Be careful: I don't claim that the Amiga can't be used as a professional
computer. I just don't like Amiga mentality. Amiga people still think
like CBM64 , Spectrum, Sinclair or MSX users. And that's what many of them
used to be. I was 'raised' with an Apple //c . A teacher of mine once said
it is your first computer that sticks to you. And I guess that's true.


Sorry this document is very unstructured. I just typed what came to mind,
and this IBM mainframe doesn't allow very extensive editing.


*******************************************************************************
* disclaimer : Don't shoot me, I'm harmless
*******************************************************************************