Amiga's "image"
I met a young programmer about a year ago when we both had new Amigas – we
shared our problems for a couple of months and then went our separate ways. Ran
into him again yesterday and didn't recognize him.
When I first met him, he had an impressive beard, never wore a tie, and
despised the "establishment". Yesterday, the beard was gone and he was
immaculate in suit, shirt, tie and polished shoes – pure IBM! The clothes were
mandatory for a new job (an offer he couldn't refuse) – losing the beard was
his own idea when he saw that all his bosses were clean-shaven.
He remarked that CBM and the software developers don't seem to know that
"image" is crucial in most large corporations, and send the Amiga out into the
business world without a hope of being accepted. The standard Workbench colors
look out of place in a sombre environment and make the Amiga look like an
arcade machine, the "GURU" (instead of a simple "fatal error" message) is pure
"hacker" and messages like "Looking for fonts – are you there, fonts?" are just
childish. He singled out "Acquisition" as a prize example of what's wrong with
Amiga "business" software.
Of course, ex-hackers (like ex-smokers) are sometimes pretty hard on those who
haven't "reformed", but it's an interesting idea.