#State of Amiga
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Interesting. Here in the SF Bay Area, virtually all of the User Group members
are unmitigated techhies (make that HACKERS, we have John Draper (Cap'n
Crunch)), many of whom are employed by heavy-into-Amiga software houses like
EA. Apparently, there was a pretty good crop of "early adopters" that pushed
sales up to 35,000-40,000, but sales have fallen drastically since the first
of the year due to *no software* (other than great games, etc) and the
THUNDERING ABSENCE of the IBM hardware emulator. (Everyone seems agreed that
the Transformer ain't gonna cut it for a serious IBM-land user). So sales by
the software houses have been fairly good (EA must have easily made back
their investment on Dpaint, and deservedly so), but the market seems to be
flattening out for the less-thanspectacular offerings. I think (based on the
Developers' meetings) that the Amiga is really pretty difficult to program
spectacularly unless you have had previous experience with the complexities
of a graphics/windowing environment (I'm sure that MACexperience is a GREAT
help). This may at least partially explain why developers are having one hell
of a time getting their wares to market. Meanwhile, the machine dies…. It's
gonna be close, very close. Between C-A's business problems and the software
vacuum and the still very flat non-IBM computer market (the Mac is on a
downhill glide as well, and very little new software is being written for
it), well, the Amiga is gonna have to really corner some specific areas (like
CAD and music). -Larry-