Final thoughts
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Final thoughts
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Murphy's Law (by Christian Aichinger)
Or: If something can go wrong, then it will
Apart from the fact that every computer owner has experienced this Hibernian shibboleth more than once, it sums up very well the recent happenings around the AMIGA WORLD [1] planned for this year. The maxpo 2001 [2] has been cancelled due to unwillingness by companies active in the Apple sector, and not the least Apple Germany itself.
But how is maxpo concerned with Amiga? Quite simple: Falke-Media Editors, known to Amiga users through their periodical AMIGA Plus, and furthermore offering cover of two other niche systems ("mac life" for Apple Macintosh and "ST-Computer" for Atari users), wanted to stage at the said show AMIGA WORLD 2001, certainly not quite unselfish. With high probability the bulk of the hard- and software manufacturers and distributors established in the Amiga market would have been quite content with this solution, because most of them meanwhile, due to the bad situation of the Amiga market, have cast a glance at the "fruit bowl", to keep the balance. For those distributors displaying on their Internet storefronts a BoingBall and a bitten apple side by side would have been a good chance to strut their stuff to Mac users, and the PowerMac emulation "iFUSION" certainly would have been fascinating for some or many Mac users.
But where does "Amiga" fit into this picture, basically this is the center of interest at an AMIGA WORLD? If you take a harder look at the past three quarters of this year you see that there is not much that AMIGA really could boast of or that would in any way justify an Amiga show. Most of it, the releases of several PCI extensions or iFUSION: the end of the odyssey, are much too late to thrill an earnest Mac user, nor could they bring back the "Classic Amiga" to the limelight. iFUSION only can simulate a PowerMac with a clipped down G3 CPU, which does not impress a Mac user very much - on the contrary, After hearing the purchase price for such a vehicle (Amiga - PPC + iFUSION + ...) he would quickly turn away. On the Apple platform PCI for years has been a quasi-standard, while even mundane things like USB cannot be had on the Amiga platform. Even the improvement, or better the announcements, which Mr. McEwen and Mr. Moss have made this year have no concern with Macintosh computers in any way and are completely out of place at an Apple/Amiga show. Or is there an AmigaDE running under MacOS X? I for myself haven't heard anything about it.
In my opinion the primary purpose of a show should be to present the latest technological progress of a special product as cool as possible. But Amiga shows of latter years more or less remind of a second-hand market and a sales fair, where technologies were displayed or sold which only served the purpose of ironing out the worst deficiencies of the unfortunately still recent "Classic-Amiga" generation. For the leading group in Snoqualmie such shows additionally were a good occasion to upset all previously announced roadmaps, to make Amiga enterprises and users feel confused. It is clear that the Amiga community cannot keep up to date with the technological standards of other platforms, or even partly, with such an approach. The "AMIGA WORLD" urgently needs something new. But if those "novelties" do not mean anything more than crash-happy prototypes (or empty cardboard housings with TFT monitors plugged in) and beta or even only alpha versions, than an Amiga presentation at an Apple fair only can be called a joke.
To refer to Murphy's Law: Is it really so bad, if sometimes something goes wrong? I don't think so. An AMIGA WORLD delayed for several weeks could save the Amiga some trouble and the last devoted supporters quite a lot of mockery.
With this until the next edition.
Christian Aichinger
[1] http://www.amiga-messe.de
[2] http://www.maxpo2001.de
