🚀 go-pugleaf

one "shy" contribution to the discussion comparing Amiga and Mac (which is
totally above my head otherwise).

If a "later" product is not "better", it is "worse" ....

Even though it is not necessarily true that the Amiga was developed as a
competitor to the Mac, at least not early on, it is, however, still true
that it is the "later" product and there should have been some time to learn,
at least, some lessons from the Mac.  Given the checkered history of hardware
and software development of the Amiga, it is not really surprising that it
disappointed those of us that hoped for a machine that the "Mac should have
been but wasn't".  With years passed, even IBM PCs have become somewhat useful
machines now, even though I never had the patience to bother with one.

The Mac, however, had promise from the start when it was only a "toy"
machine, even though it is my feeling that Apple made as many hardware and
software mistakes with the Mac, as it did brilliant features.  With time, the
machine has grown and things have improved, but there are inherent shortcomings
in the design which only a new machine-design will be able to overcome. And
that machine is just around the corner (to believe the rumours), even though
I wonder, and very much at that, what new pitfalls the new Operating System
is going to contain.  How the hell Apple is going to marry the "friendly"
Mac-user-interface with UNIX-flexibility and stay upward compatible without
falling into a snake's nest of bugs *AND* still be efficient in execution is
beyond me.  I expect '87 will hear a lot of moaning from Mac-Users that
migrate early to that "new" machine.  On the other hand, MPW and MacApp
will make a lot of developers happy, that have suffered through Lisas and
early releases of Inside Macintosh.

The Amiga, on the other hand, had a lot more promise right from the start
in some California garage, and if only luck had blessed the hardware design
and married it with the right kind of money and software-development teams,
this article might well have been written on an Amiga (or rather, not been
written at all; about 2 years ago, I actually expected to be using an Amiga
by now).  Alas, while the Amiga is not quite dead yet (and I still wish it
well), I think the "window" for it has just about disappeared.
While I have friends that have found the Amiga to be a useful tool for some
special applications, I can't see sales reach "critical mass" numbers that will
generate the quantity and quality of independent software developers that
is needed to make the machine a success.  I'd be happy for events to prove
me wrong, so anyone that is terrible optimistic about hardware and software
is welcome to fill my mailbox with "good news,"  but I am not out looking for
either a discussion or an argument, but will soak up whatever information
will show up here.

PS and BTW:  I posted that first article with the pointer to the Byte-issue
	focusing on the 68,000 *WITHOUT* having read it;  when I did read it
	I was tempted to cancel my article *AND* my subscription to Byte
	because I was so disappointed by the quality of the articles.  From
	what others had to say about it, I see I'm not alone in that reaction
	to the issue ....Oh well, it's even less effort not to resubscribe ..