CompuServe Messages

People seem to keep missing a very important fact when making statements like "The Amiga is in trouble as an applications machine" and the like. It is true, I admit, that the Amiga has a small portion of that market in the US. And possibly, the percentage of that market the Amiga has may have even declined. But what nobody seems to recognize is that the number of units being used for such applications is still increasing. The decline in percentage of market share for applications (which I'm not even sure exists: Most of the market analysis I've seen seems to ignore the Amiga entirely, so it's hard to get correct figures…) can be attributed to one thing only: The competition is selling more machines combined than the Amiga is selling. It doesn't mean there is no growth within the Amiga segment of the industry (on the contrary, it's growing quite well, thank you…) and frankly, *that* is the only thing which counts as far as the survival of the machine is concerned. If we were seeing a decline in the number of Amigas sold during a time period, or the number of applications sold in that time period, *then* and only then would I even begin to consider that the Amiga was in any sort of danger. (And even then I'd be skeptical considering that the entire rest of the computer industry is suffering a bit of a slump.) As for the things you mentioned as key requirements: 8 bit chipset support is hardly necessary, DIG is a far more useful thing to have and I hope it's implemented soon, and Amiga DOS 2.0 will be out Real Soon Now. <grin> Actually, none of these are necessary for the Amiga's survival, but might be needed if the Amiga wishes to gain ground in the business market in the US. Finally, as for Brute Force accomplishing what the Amiga can do, I'm surprised you haven't considered what the same Brute Force, in the guise of high speed 68030 and 68040 chips, can do in *addition* to the Amiga's basic capabilities? Think about it. –>Steve Bennett