PC Imagine?
I too believe that the amiga is a dead-end machine despite it
capabilites. I was in London over Christmas where as far as I could
tell over half the Commodore computers being displayed were
Commodore's own PC clones. The 68000 chip line itself seems to be
headed for the grave yard. Apple is planning to use the Motorola/IBM
Power PC chip in their future Macs (this weeks PC Week). So I know
that I am buying a dying breed of computer, and were I buying a
computer for any other purpose other than video and 3D computer
animation I would not even consider an Amiga. As far as I can see,
however, there is currently nothing comparable for video and
animation. Not only is it a very capable computer but it also seems
to have an overwhelming share of this market developed over the years
when PC's did not have the graphic capabilites and Macs were
overpriced. However, a 50Mhz 486 with 8M RAM, a 150M hard drive, 24
bit graphics, an audio card, and Windows 3.1 cost about the same as
an A3000 tower and is a capable of doing anything the Amiga does
except that there isn't the software available for animation and
video. But with the rise of multimedia on the PC all of these tools
will be needed by the users and provided by those who wish to make
money. But how long will that be and more importantly, how long will
the developers of Amiga software like Impulse continue to support the
Amiga market? How long will the installed base of Amiga video users
be able to sustain that market. What I don't want to happen is that
a year after I buy an Amiga I find that Impulse has decided to stop
developing software for the Amiga and have put all of their effort
into the PC/Windows market. Many PC developers have done a similar
thing by all but abandoning the DOS market in favor of Windows even
though Windows is currently only a small fraction of the PC world. So
having rambled on for a screen and a half what do I do? I have a
feeling I won't know even after I've done it but thanks for
everyone's thoughts and I hope you keep sending them.