#I would think
12 messages in this thread
Right you are….
I've owned an Amiga since early 86. I've owned PC's since 84, and a Mac
since 91.
People scream when a developer moves to "the other platform". Whether
they broke into the market with the Mac, the Amiga, or whatever, people
seem to feel that the developers "owe" the platform.
Wonder how many folks here over the age of 25 still work for their
original employer… If the job didn't get phased out, or the company
didn't go out of business, then they essentially left the job for the same
reason that most developers do, a greener pasture.
The only way to attract and keep developers with the Amiga, is to make it
worth their while. Sure they might be able to make a profit, but do any
of us really want to work for minimum wage?
I don't have easy answers, but I would think that plenty of good tech
support from ESCOM/Amiga would be one inducement. If you have good tech
support, then it will make it easier to develop a product. With less
invested in developing product, then it makes it more enticing to produce
for a smaller volume market.
One thing that still bothers me, is Lattice having withdrawn support
for Amiga C. They do still sell copies of the product, however they
no longer develop nor provide tech support for the produce. Lattic
C, is _THE_ development platform for the Amiga. To attract new
developers, means that we will have to get people to buy and use a
product that no longer has technical support.
Personally, unless Lattice reverses their position, or there becomes
a professional level alternative prodct available, I'd sure hesitate
to jump into the Amiga development arena, were I an outsider.
Lattice? Oh, you mean SAS. Yah, that's a point I'd forgotten all
about. Otoh, maybe SAS could be persuaded to start support back up if
Escom sweetened the pie a little… oh, who am I kidding. It was
good while it lasted, but that von Tiernen guy sounded like a fake to
me.
Well, I'm sure that Lattice dropped support for Amiga C to go to "greener
pastures"…
Lattice lost their huge market share in the PC market (they were once
about the only player in town) and in the Apple market. They were
purchased years ago by SAS. The only "greener pastures" they went to
was the ownership move from Chicago to North Carolina.
They did not move to anything, so far all they ever done is drop
platforms were sales were not up to standards. I beleive the only
thing left is compilers for mainframes.
Their main product is SAS, not compilers. They use their own
compilers internally for developing SAS. They've figured out that
also selling and supporting the compilers for so many platforms was
not the best focus except in those case where they was a really good
market — like on the mainframes.
Well, I'll put it this way… They only time I've seen support
dropped for a product falls into one of two categories.
1. There is no money left to be made supporting the product. (You'd
have a hard time supporting a family of four on sales of new TI99/4a
software, though the machine was at one time the most widely sold,
and still has a few user groups, and a small following. (Why I don't
know.)
2. You have a fixed amount of resources, and you can make more money
applying those resources elsewhere. Much like you and me… We can
only work so many hours a day, so we try to get the best job
possible.
I don't know what SAS has as a maint focus these days…. However you
can bet your paycheck they didn't drop the Amiga to purposely lower
their incomes,
Like I said, they moved to greener pastures…
Yeah, and one thing that bothers ME is that you have to support
three bus standards to support the whole Amiga line (A600, 1200,
4000). Cards that plug into one will not plug into the others,
forcing developers to make a choice and split up valuable R&D money.
I'd like to see them engineered to take the same processor cards and
buss cards across the line. That way both the end users and the
developers could benefit. (If I had a tricked out 4000, I could just
buy a 1200 and drop the spare '040 card (after my warp engine
upgrade) and toss the AD516 card into its belly-Zorro III slot.) That
opens up a single, bigger market for developers on a tight budget for
R&D, and lets them recoup their investments a bit quicker. It also
provides a pretty good incentive for end-users to upgrade.
No problem in making 1200's that will accept 4000 parts, or 600's for
that matter. Except for the fact that it would make it more
expensive for the factory to produce 600's and 1200's. The idea was
to make them cheaply as entry level machines.
However, you have a bunch of people who buy a 1200 and want it to be
a 4000.
There is also some incentive to make the buyer of entyr level
machines find it difficult to upgrade. It helps keep the sales of
the higher priced machines going. After all… C= didn't make any
money off the Warp boards.
Lattice? SAS, you mean? Yah, that's a point I'd forgotten all about.
I imagine that if Escom was serious about restarting the Amiga, they
could sweeten the pot a little…
Btw, Hank Teller just told me that that Bernard von Tiernen character
is actually *Escom's LAWYER*!!!! Can you believe that?