The Accidental Expert
Li'l Orphan Amiga needs Daddy Warbucks
ST. LOUIS- The Gateway Amiga Computer Show may have convened under the
leaden skies of a late midwestern winter cold snap, but none of the outdoor
chill was reflected on the event floor.
Inside, the trade in Amiga hardware and software flourished like spice
dealing at a Marrakech bazaar. A festive air pervaded the hall as vendors
hawked products from cloth-draped tables, and old Amiga computers were traded
like rare gems. Meanwhile, a non-stop schedule of workshops convened in
the opposite hall.
By all indications, it was your typical computer trade show. Typical,
but for one minor detail: The Amiga computer has been out of production
for years. The Amiga is an orphan.
The Amiga was originally a product of the late, lamented Commodore Business
Machines, maker of some of the first consumer computers worthy of the name,
the VIC-20 and Commodore 64. These two computers were really little more
than glorified game boxes, with the principal virtues of low price and availability
on the shelves of the local Kmart.
But when Commodore introduced the Amiga in 1985, it was hailed as something
of a breakthrough. The Amiga sported a complete graphical user interface,
only a year after that innovation was first introduced to the public by
Apple, and fully half a decade before anything even remotely similar was
offered by Microsoft.
The Amiga also offered an ingenious system-level scripting language enabling
communications between applications like no other personal computer then
made, and superior, according to its users, to anything available even today.
A unique and powerful hardware design made the Amiga an ideal platform for
video and sound production.
And forget preemptive multitasking - the Amiga was multitasking before
multitasking was cool.
Amiga's trail of tears began when Commodore went belly-up in 1994, following
years of frightful mismanagement. After Amiga spent a year in limbo, Europe's
largest electronics retailer, Escom International, stepped up to purchase
Amiga from the wreckage of Commodore.
The hopes of the Amiga community rose, only to be dashed again a year
later, when Escom collapsed under a mountain of debt. Once more, the Amiga
technology was cast adrift, clinging to the leaky lifeboat of Escom's barely
viable German subsidiary, Amiga Technologies.
So why, at this point, didn't despairing Amiga users summarily toss their
Amigas into their hall closets? And in the years since, why haven't they
abandoned the platform in droves for some industry standard, like Windows?
No less a leading light of technology journalism than Stuart Alsop might
have so advised. A few days after he testified prominently before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, Alsop announced, "we want a single platform, because
the benefits are so tremendous." This, even as he admitted that the
Windows interface makes his "skin crawl."
Alsop's editorial "we" obviously didn't take the plucky gang
of Amiga users into account. These people steadfastly decline to avail themselves
of this mass market wisdom. They refuse to "standardize." In short,
they've proved themselves to be the ultimate rebels of the computer world.
Rebels with a cause. And the cause is Amiga.
Why? Because the Amiga was born swell, and remained swell, even as the
technology landscaped around it warped - or tried to catch up, as an Amigan
might observe.
Patience, like all virtues, deserves to be rewarded. Normally it isn't,
of course, but in the case of Li'l Orphan Amiga, the years in the hard scrabble
wilderness may have finally paid off.
Amiga's Daddy Warbucks could turn out to be Gateway 2000, the PC clone-maker
based in Sioux City, S.D. In an apparent effort to hedge its bets against
Microsoft and Intel, Gateway purchased the Amiga assets out of Escom's bankruptcy
last year.
So maybe Amiga's days of wandering are over. Or maybe not. Gateway officials
addressing the St. Louis gathering were careful to issue diplomatic statements
containing hope, but few promises.
Either way, the Amiga users have been there and done that. Remarked conference
organizer and TWA pilot Bob Scharp, "I and many other Amiga fans intend
to keep using Amigas until we can no longer purchase, find, or make the
items we need to keep our Amigas going."
Scharp expressed guarded hopefulness about the Gateway deal. "If
they do come up with better Amigas, I'll be one of the first to give it
serious consideration."
The message: With or without Gateway, we'll carry on.
This writer was invited to the Amiga Gateway conference to provide an
after-dinner keynote address on the importance of competition in the computer
industry. After wandering the show floor for an afternoon, and chatting
with a number of people, I was struck by the realization that I might just
as well be lugging anthracite to an industrial city in the northeast of
England.
There's nothing anyone can tell these folks about the value of choosing
products on the basis of their personal needs and preferences, rather than
on the basis of someone else's vision of what constitutes a "standard."
They already understand full well that one size does not, in fact, fit all.
With all due respect to Stuart Alsop, these steadfast Amiga devotees know
better than anyone else that the object of a computing tool is not to make
your skin crawl.
The joyous spirit of survival against all odds permeating the Amiga Gateway
conference was perhaps best summed up by the headline of a flier circulating
on the show floor. It read, "You Don't Need Microsoft." |