CompuServe Messages

Arnie, If you are a developer, just take a look at the autodocs for the differences. There are some major things (for the programmer) that are only available in 2.1 or 3.0. Anyone programming the Amiga today cannot assume that the end user has anything more than 2.04 — and therefore cannot use the newer features (one obvious example is the color wheel). With 1.3 still out there developers are forced to support 4 different versions of the OS. That's too expensive to do so (in development and support time). If the developer choses one OS version over another any other (and that version is not 3.0) he severely limits the market potential and creates a product that outdated on the day of release. In my opinion, a perfect Amiga world would be an immediate drop of support for all OS versions prior to 3.0 (all current models of the Amiga can run 3.0 — some more easily than others (the A1000 being the difficult one)). CBM should immediately drop any/all non-AGA machines and have the A1200 as the bottom of the line. Development for both games and application software is greatly impeded by a "base machine" that is too low end. I personally know of several developers who either will not develop for Amiga or are currently considering dropping Amiga development because the current low end machine (1M ram, floppy, 68000) just isn't enough. They'd have to scale down to the point that features would have to be left out (alienating the higher end user) or just aim at the higher end users to start with and lose the low end market. The low end has to be moved up (the A1200 is a GREAT machine to start this process — but to be successful, all "lower" machines must be discontinued NOW).