CompuServe Messages

Alex I don't claim any particular expertise but the idea that: > if it isn't sufficiently compatible, it won't last. is questionable in some ways. Every company's new products are usually short of 100% backward compatibility and always have been short. We judge the percieved benefits and either PC-Jr it or buy it and go on. Also > supposedly 5 million Amigas floating around world wide has to be an exaggeration at best and getting more so by the day. Most of them were game consoles with floppy only access and EGA quality displays to start with. That forced the level of Amiga software to gravitate down to the level of the common denominator. Sad, and the fault of CBM for only having the confidence to cater to the bottom end. Damn all cowards to hell. I don't think ayone will challange that the lowend amigas are being stuck into closets and garage-saled at an ever increasing rate. After this christmas they will vanish by legions when the gamers settle into their Sega Genisis with the 32bit option newly grafted onto it, etc. I think only the loaded 2000's, Toaster boxes, 4000's used in production and other high end machines will survive even into 1995 and if no new buyer has an upward migration path opened up by summer many of them won't survive 96. How many Amigas are there, and how many will there be next xmas? Any programmer that suggested a new Amiga project using up thousands of hours and thousands of dollars right now would be fired for cause _before_ xmas. I will suggest that even the production in 95 of stock 4000T units is not enough, not close. Only an UPGRADE that offers something not available on the klones will get even existing Amiga owners to buy them, or programmers to write for them. If CEI or AUK don't build the 5000 and if it isn't able to offer compelling features at great $$/performance they should invest their money in pork bellies instead. I feel Jim Drew is correct to think the time is come to either grab for the ring with a radically new approach that tries to leapfrog the Amiga technology into the future, or forget it. You have to risk your life once a week just to stay alive. Who said that? alternate: jonest@hfsi.com I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers