Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!mintaka!geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu!rjc
From: rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Subject: Re: Toaster news
Message-ID: <1991Apr18.170916.19905@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: news@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
References: <1991Apr17.134058.4503@grebyn.com> <1991Apr17.213337.3693@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1991Apr18.121236.404@news.iastate.edu>
Distribution: comp
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 17:09:16 GMT
Lines: 115

[why is it, that Marc always pops up when the Mac is mentioned.]
In article <1991Apr18.121236.404@news.iastate.edu> xgr39@CCVAX.IASTATE.EDU writes:
>In article <1991Apr17.213337.3693@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>, rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes:
>>In article <1991Apr17.134058.4503@grebyn.com> ckp@grebyn.com (Checkpoint Technologies) writes:
>>>In article <1991Apr16.060721.4531@neon.Stanford.EDU> torrie@cs.stanford.edu (Evan Torrie) writes:
>>>>
>>>>  There's an interesting tidbit of news in this week's MacWeek magazine.
>>>>Quoting from an article about the National Association of Broadcasters
>>>>show, to be held in Las Vegas next week:
>>>>
>>>>"NewTek Inc.  The maker of the popular Video Toaster, a Commodore
>>>>Amiga-based video editing system, will announce a standalone Toaster
>>>>that can read Macintosh files directly.
>>>>  Price at $3,995 and due in June, the new Toaster no longer requires
>>>>users to buy an Amiga.  "We've taken the cool parts of the Amiga and
>>>>put it together with the Toaster into a single box," said Steve
>>>>Hartford, NewTek product manager.
>>>
>>>It seems that NewTek has decided that betting their company's future on
>>>the Amiga platform is not a good idea.  And I think they're right.
>>
>>  I think the Amiga will be around for a long while, especially
>>in Europe. In Europe the Amiga is selling like C64s used to, and
>>C= sold more 64's than Macs (almost 3x as more).
>
>   Keep in mind that most of the Amiga's sales are in Europe, while
>NewTek is a U.S. company.  NewTek is reliant on the strength of the
>Amiga market HERE, and large sales of Amigas overseas will not help 
>them.  

  It would if the there was a PAL version of the Toaster.

>>>This now seems to be a common occurance.  Take a successful Amiga
>>>product, migrate to a different platform (or in the case of NewTek, no
>>>platform at all), and sell it for a lot more.
>>>And succeed in selling it.  ByteByByte did this with Sculpt-4D.
>>>It cost $250 on the Amiga.  The Mac version, not as powerful, sells for
>>>$2500. The Mac magazines gave it favorable reviews.
>>
>>  This is the underlying reason. I don't think NewTek is in danger of
>>going bankrupt. They just want more $$$. Porting to the Mac market
>>is going to yield more profit. I don't blame NewTek for wanting more money,
>>I just wish they would have waited longer before porting the Toaster.
>>The Toaster was an incentive for people to buy Amigas. There's nothing
>>wrong with people who already own Macs purchasing a toaster for the Mac,
>>however, I don't like the idea of the Toaster generating Mac sales or
>>helping the Mac to become _thee Desktop Video_ platform which is the
>>Amiga's niche.
>
>   The MAC is already becoming "_thee Desktop Video_" platform, by
>default.  In the past couple of weeks, Apple has held no less than
>three seminars on MAC video at Iowa State, all of them advertized in
>in the Iowa State Daily.  Last Fall, there was a big broadcast video/
>multimedia convention held in the Union, with representation by more
>MAC systems than I could count.  The Amiga was represented by a sign
>reading "Ames Amiga User's Group", right next to an empty table.
 
  So what? As if Iowa State seminars have anything to do with the market
at large. How about when the Amiga steals the show at the National
Broadcaster's convention, or when almost everyone one of my local
cable channels uses the Amiga for their titling. Why don't you check out
Camcorder or Video magazine? I hardly think the Mac has the desktop video
market when they don't have the software, hardware, and price advantage
the Amiga has. Compare the quality and amount of Amiga paint, raytrace,
animation, and titling programs to the Mac. The Amiga has been building
on this market since 1985 just like the Mac has done with DTP.

>   People around here have been glorifying in the increased Amiga 
>sales in Europe to the point that they have been blind to the fact 
>that the Amiga market in the U.S. is dying.  The U.S. now accounts 
>for less than 8% of Commodore's world-wide sales, and this will likely
>get worse as Commodore focuses more and more on Europe.  With this in
>mind, I have been quietly predicting for many months that NewTek 
>would find the MAC market totally irresistable, and I was right.

"99.7 percent of statistics are made up." Marc, please don't quote
meaningless %'s or make blanket statements about the Amiga market. The U.S.
market is not dying, it has been increasing.
  Why don't you join the procrastinator's prediction club so you can
predict events after they happen. In case you haven't read, NewTek's
M*cToaster is really an A20000+Toaster.

>> 
>> Perhaps Commodore should make a NuBUS card with the Amiga chipset on it
>>and sell it as a Mac video card.
>
>   Who would buy it?  I don't really see why an MAC owner would want to
>pluck down $1500 for a video card that has 640x400 interlaced graphics with 
>12-bit color, when that same MAC owner would purchase a card from Apple
>that gives them 640x480 non-interlaced graphics with 24-bit color and a
>high-speed RISC graphics coprocessor to boot.

   Because with those 'horrible interlaced' graphics you can do cheap
genlocking and encoding, not to mention nice animation. Add a DCTV
to that package and the 12bit screen becomes a NTSC full color frame.
BTW, stop calling M*c adapters '24-bit' cards. They are 8bit, not 24bit.
The 24bit ones are expensive, and can't do animation. I remember some
Mac company released a device 1 yr ago that could do switching like the Toaster
with framegrab and animation. It costed $100,000 and contained 32megs of
ram to do animation.

  Also Marc, the Amiga screen can also do 480 vertical resolution. You
can overscan up to 768x480. Further more, Flickerfixers cost
near $200 now, and the ECS Denise has non-flicker modes.

  This is bound to start another M*c vs Amiga war, but I don't think
the Mac is a desktop video platform. I'm also tired of hearing
these sissy arguement about flicker, somepeople must have weak eyes. :-)


--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu   |   //  The opinions expressed here do not in any way  |
| uunet!tnc!m0023      | \X/   reflect the views of my self.                  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
