NEWS FROM NORTH AMERICA (Note: This 'news' column mixes news with editorial opinion. And while this approach is usually distasteful for both reader and writer, I believe that anyone who reads the entire article will l see why I believe this to be best policy in this situation. My apologies to anyone who is offended or disturbed; I shall try to write my next news column more objectively) The Amiga situation in North America is unsettled and unsettling. There is considerable doubt about the future of the machine, even by those who were "certain" it had found a permanent niche in the world market. Consider the following developments that have occurred since the beginning of the year: - On 1 January 1992, Commodore raised the prices for most A2000/3000 models from 50 - 100%. Suddenly, the plain vanilla A2000 that sold for $995 on 31 December 1991 was priced over $2000 -- $2170, in some places! This, for an unadorned model based on a design nearly 5 years old -- and using A1000 technology that was 7 years old. Ancient technology, in the computer world. Yet, here was this old clunker of an Amiga -- 7.16 MHz 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, no hard drive, one floppy drive, and very little else to recommend it -- costing more than '486 PC clones with 4 MB of RAM, 100+ MB hard drive, built-in CD-ROM drive, built-in fax/modem, Super-VGA board and monitor, and bundled software that includes Microsoft Word and Windows. And with Apple offering several Mac models (including one with a color monitor) for less, the price increase appeared to be madness. There was a great hue and cry throughout the North American Amiga community. Some criticized Commodore for sheer greed, trying to rip-off the innocent buyers of standalone Video Toasters. After all, they noted, Commodore's profits were the best in years; there was/is no need for such price hikes. Others believed that it was further evidence that Commodore had decided to abandon the North American market to Macs and PC's, seeking less competition and easier sales outside the brutal market of the States. Still others contended that Commodore was simply following the same pattern of ineptitude they have followed for nearly ten years; that they really don't know what they are doing. These last maintain that Commodore has never been really comfortable with the high- end Amigas, and has been seeking steadily to repeat its success with the Commodore-64 in world markets with the A500/500+/600 series. Since the initial price increase, Amiga prices in the States have declined slightly (a plain A2000 lists at $1600; an A3000-25/50 at $3500), but they are still considerably higher than they need or should be. On the other hand, Commodore recently had a 'clearance' sale in which they unloaded models and equipment being discontinued for bargain prices (I picked up an A3000-16/40 with monitor and AmigaVision for not much more than the list price of the A2000 at the beginning of the year. Thanks, Commodore!). But pricing is still very unstable; model releases are uncertain; and no one knows what Commodore is planning to do in the North American market. They have been making encouraging noises during the last month or so, but positive change is still not on the horizon. - Many of the new Amiga models and hardware Commodore has made available to Europeans still are not available here, for reasons unknown. The pattern is this: Commodore announces a date for the release of the A570 CD-ROM drive, say, and then postpones it. Again and again. So, while you folks across the seas have access to A1000+, A500+, A600 model Amigas, and to A570 CD-ROM drives, and to '386 Bridgeboards, we over here still are not 'allowed' to have them. Further evidence that Commodore is losing interest in the North American market. - Amiga watchers have long held that come what may, the Amiga was secure because of its niche in the video market. Unfortunately, this niche was created by NewTek and its Video Toaster... and Commodore and NewTek are not getting along well these days (consider the price hike of A2000's -- the basis of standalone Toasters -- described above). Multi- tasking computing is advancing so quickly in both the PC and Mac worlds, that NewTek is said to be looking for another platform for the Video Toaster, one more congenial to their pricing, interests and products (another rumor asserts that Commodore deliberately designed the A3000 to be too small for the Toaster; they must not realize that they need NewTek more than NewTek need them). - After wringing its hands for a year or more, Word Perfect Corp. finally ceased development of a new version of the Word Perfect program for the Amiga -- even though it was already at the beta testing stage. The reason given for discontinuing development for the Amiga was that a new version would require an accelerated Amiga... and the installed base of fast Amigas is too small to support the continued cost of developing, supporting and marketing the new version. So, Commodore finds itself where it was five years ago: without ANY Big Name software firms supporting the Amiga. They have wooed Lotus Corp. for years, trying to persuade them to port their software to the Amiga -- but with absolutely no success. - A PC software development firm bought Precision Software, makers of the SuperBase family. They did so solely to obtain the know-how needed for creating a 'Windows'-compatible database program; they wanted SuperBase for Windows... badly. The rest of Precision's programs were jettisoned, and many feared for their complete demise. Fortunately, Oxxi is now supporting the marketing and development of the SuperBase/Plan series; unfortunately, Oxxi is not known as a great marketing and development firm. In any case, another of the Amiga's claims to productivity fame is gone. - Emerald Intelligence, makers of the AI program "Magellan", has discontinued development of version 1.2, as well as support for versions 1.0 and 1.1. Instead, they are devoting their development talents to developing and improving the PC and Mac versions of the Magellan program (Magellan was Emerald's first AI program), called "Mahogany". Similarly, Poor Persons Software, makers of "Thinker", the first Amiga hypertext program, is developing a Mac version -- and the firm's owner, Alan Bomberger, is not certain that he will continue to support "Thinker" if sales do not improve. The writing is on the wall. Amiga developers are abandoning the Amiga community for more fertile fields. Michael Loyacon, head of marketing and distribution at Gramma Software (makers of Nag, Fred, Flo, and Cal productivity programs) said in a letter: "We are building custom G.U.I.'s and systems mostly. There is very little money in software for the Amiga." This is not an isolated trend: it is the direction of the majority of Amiga productivity software developers. If it continues, the Amiga will soon be in fact no more than the 'game machine' its detractors always said it was. - After 49 issues, ".info" magazine, the most honest, iconoclastic and perhaps the best of the Amiga magazines over here, went bankrupt. No further issues will be printed, unless a 'white knight' with deep pockets decides to rescue it. Also folding up was Amiga World's Tech Journal. Now, there are 4 paper magazines covering the Amiga in North America (Amiga World, Amazing Computing, Compute, and AC's Tech), and one disk magazine: Jumpdisk. There are a few other obscure Amiga periodicals in North America, but only these five have widespread distribution. What is sad about this is that LESS than 3 1/2 years ago there were 15 Amiga-oriented magazines with national distribution, some clearly superior to those which have survived. The trend is not good.... - If you look over the list of newly released software that accompanies this article, or if you look over the Fred Fish catalog or the listing of other Amiga PD collections, you will see that the 'news' is that there is very little that IS new. Most of the products being released -- commercial, shareware or PD; hardware or software -- are either improvements of existing products or are products similar to -- and intended to compete with -- existing Amiga products. With the exception of the "Lightworks Graphics Synthesizer" (listed with the Multimedia products), there really is VERY little that is new or exciting in the Amiga world. Others have noticed this decline in creativity: the editor of NewsFlash, Ron Fonteine, wrote in Issue 26: "In our first two years there were many people writing us and sending nice tools, sources, articles etc. etc. but many of the old group have now chosen for the PC or just quitted their AMIGA activities because of different reasons. Also many programmers have no idea what to write now because there are already many utilities made. Also among the new group of AMIGA users there seems to be less creativity and many users just bought their AMIGA for the games. I noticed that the amount of PD is also lower than ever. In the past many slideshows, 1 parted demos and handy tools were released by many European groups. Today the only thing that seems to be interesting to make are megademos and megamusic disks and no smaller projects." For a few suggestions about what to do about this, see the piece entitled "What the Amiga Needs Now".