#Cringely sez …
10 messages in this thread
He's not really in the closet. There's just not a lot of demand for Amiga info
in InfoWorld.
-R
No, there isn't alot of demand, but it doesn't help when Infoworld says
something like they got complaints from everybody who uses the Amiga in
business, and both of them were really angry, or something like that.
Infoworld as with most mainstream computer mags have tunnel vision on
which platforms they will cover.
Richard -> AutoPilot on the A1000
PMFJI here, but….
I remember that line; I took it as a joke. (It _was_ in one of the
last-page essays.) Our OnLine Today humorist, John Edwards, also pokes
fun at the Amiga, and does it quite a bit, and in much the same fashion;
and although I may chafe initially (public damnation of the alien-in-our-
midst), I eventually see the humor in it (well, usually).
I consider humorous slander of Amigas and their users to be a good
sign: There's little point in making a joke that nobody "gets"; and jokes
about the Amiga in _any_ professional newsletter like InfoWorld (which
isn't exactly a household name) indicate that there are still a lot of
professional people who know of the Amiga (otherwise they wouldn't "get"
the joke). Even where John Edwards's online essays are concerned: I've
never read a "Behind The Screens" _in_ CompuServe Magazine (which every
CIS subscriber gets, no matter how well or how much they use CIS) where
Mr. Edwards slammed us or our chosen computers; his articles, while
computer-related, tend to be rather simplistic (and occasionally dull).
Online, however, his articles are slanted more toward the knowledgeable
computer user (he tends to get humorously nostalgic, and nostalgic humor
ONLY works on "those who have been there"), as are the back-page essays in
InfoWorld (for obvious reasons). If you think about it for a moment, the
sheer fact that a joke told makes you want to "set them straight" really
means that they already know enough about the subject to have seen the
humor in the situation. (Besides, that "everybody who has one, all two of
them" joke goes at _least_ as far back as the Model T Ford.)
And anyway, what _is_ "Toaster" in Korean? More to our point, what is
"girlfriend" in Korean? A joke that wouldn't have been so easy to "get",
perhaps?… <g>
Mr. C (Amiga: Muerte O Suerte?)
>There's just not a lot of demand for Amiga info in InfoWorld.
But that's the old dilemma faced by responsible journalists: Do you tell
'em what they WANT to know, or what they NEED to know? I'd argue computer
patrons NEEDED to know about the Amiga, or at least what it represented.
Instead, they learned almost nothing reading the computer press, which is
why so many computer users not only have never heard of the Amiga, but
think Microsoft, Apple and IBM invented multimedia and desktop video —
and you can bet THOSE folks know all about the Amiga. The computer press
more and more kisses off anything that isn't in the mainstream. And they
more and more celebrate complexity, as well as newness for the mere sake
of being new.
— Ron Legro / MILWAUKEE WI USA via AUTOPILOT
["Phun, phun, phun on the Infobahn…"]
Just got the May 16th issue, anybody have ideas what is meant by him being
"secretly grateful that this tattoo landed where the sun don't shine". Is it
that he doesn't think Samsung will do much with the Amiga????
Richard -> On the A1000 Autopilot, the only Amiga not to have
Commodore on the front.
I _think_ (and this is just my opinion) that he meant that since the
Amiga is so little known by the General Public (like the skin on your
face), it could be to Samsung's advantage that the Commodore mismarketing
"blemish" (tattoo) isn't likely to be seen (on Samsung's corporate @ss).
Mr. C (Amiga: Muerte O Suerte?)
> But that's the old dilemma faced by responsible journalists: Do you tell
> 'em what they WANT to know, or what they NEED to know? I'd argue >
computer
………I thought that person died in '07, is there one still working
somewhere? 🙂
regards, Lu on AutoPilot downunder
Mike Royko is permanently embalmed in Billy Goat's Tavern….
(Oops, I meant "perfectly preserved"….)
(Maybe it's just "pickled"?…)
Mr. C (Amiga: Muerte O Suerte?)
Every computer newspaper/magazine wants to cover the "latest" stuff so that
they will be competitive. To do this, they rely heavily on being TOLD by the
computer vendors what's new. Commodore's PR was PATHETIC, so the press
basically never heard about the Amiga. I wouldn't blame the press for the lack
of Amiga coverage.
Actually the press in general, if I may paraphrase from your post,
"more and more celebrate celebrity". They didn't do this by choice;
people used to WANT hard news (from which came "responsible journalism").
And then the hard news got too hard to take, and people decided they
wanted fluff instead of fact from the media, and that's how news turned
into People Magazine…. (BTW: Has anyone out here ever figured out what
Zsa Zsa Gabor ever did that caused her to become a "Celebrity"?…)
And magazines themselves (especially the glossy ones which cost a
fortune to print) are driven by their advertisers, not their readers
(Trust me on this; I used to write "how-to" and product-review articles
and I know firsthand how often the word "not" gets edited out of "This
Product Did Not Meet Expectations" when the Product's manufacturer buys a
full-page ad that month): Would you seriously expect a magazine so boot-
licking as to be named "Windows" to review a computer that makes the
fastest Windows-based computers look like slugs?
Tell you what: Next time you see a "Computing Magazine" by any name
with an overly-fawning review of a MicroSoft product in it, flip through
that particular issue and see how many full-page MicroSoft ads are in it,
and then think about whether or not MicroSoft bought that glowing review
by pumping a few hundred thousand bucks into the advertising coffers….
"News? Who cares about news? We're here to make a profit." (attributed
to Rupert Murdoch)
Mr. C (Amiga: Muerte O Suerte?)