#A Letter to BYTE
I wrote a letter to BYTE today. I'm including a copy of it below to get
reactions from you all since I'm also working on a group User Letter to
C=. So, without further ado, here it is.
(Actually, one note: I have no idea what you all were talking about in the
BYTE threads – I guess it pertains to the June issue, which I don't have
yet.)
Dear BYTE,
I am dismayed by the quality and quantity of your coverage of the Amiga.
The Amiga's installed base is approximately half that of the Mac yet the
issue of BYTE with an article about or even a reference to the platform is
the exception rather than the rule. And worse, much of what coverage
there is is plagued by inaccuracies – Tom Yager's crucial discussion of
the "new" Amigas in January's issue, for example, was filled with blatant
mistakes that gave a sketchy and falsely poor impression of the platform
and its capabilities.
I understand that your priorities must largely be dictated by the makeup
of your readership, but this situation is a case of the
chicken-and-the-egg paradox. A PC-only magazine doesn't start out
covering only Macs and then add PC coverage if enough PC users subscribe,
so why should a multiplatform industry-wide magazine start out almost
exclusively covering PCs until enough users of other platforms subscribe
to warrant coverage of theirs? I know many Amiga users who hunger for the
truly excellent Amiga coverage that BYTE occasionally does provide and who
would be overjoyed to buy or subscribe to the magazine if such coverage
was increased.
The fact is that the Amiga is a very powerful, affordable, easy-to-use
computer. Admittedly, there are a few kinds of applications that simply
aren't available for it, but I use mine every day much more productively
than is possible with my PC at work – and I'm not a videographer, I've
never used the Video Toaster, and I doubt I ever will.
As "The Worldwide Computing Authority" BYTE has a lot of power to educate
and influence. I only wish more of that power was offered to the Amiga
and its users.
(Final note: I caved in an called Clones PCs – a cave-in not because I
like the word Clones (I'd rather find another) but because I think Amigas
and Macs and Ataris etc. are all personal computers – because I figured
the point of the letter was elsewhere and there was no sense wasting
precious space on technicalities. This theory is evident throughout the
letter – letters to magazines seem to have their own form, and I glossed
over a lot of issues. However, it has the same sober,
not-flamboyantly-bashing but not-candy-coating tone that I am trying to
take with the User Letter to C= – which is why I want your comments. It
seems to me that people are going to respect neither the frothings of
lunatics nor the tongueings of suckers. Actually, I expect that the
letter will be lost in the shuffle and ignored anyway, but what the
hell.)
Paul