| From: | Alastair M. Robinson |
| Date: | 19 Oct 2000 at 20:06:54 |
| Subject: | AmigaDE run-time environment [was: Amigactive website down?] |
Hi Gary,
> First, to succeed, we need to bring back some of our more prolific
> developers so that we have quality applications on the new Amiga. While we
> are doing this, it never hurts to bring into the fold, developers who may
> not have been Amiga developers, but who do have some nice applications ...
> ie, Agent is a good example of an Amiga-like mailer/reader.
Mental note: Find out more about Agent ;-)
Quality is definitely the key here. I was playing with WordPerfect Office 8
at work the other day (which let's face it, has a pretty good pedigree and
*should* be rock steady.) I'd been trying it out for about three minutes,
and thinking "Yeah, I could live with this", when it crashed. "On second
thoughts..."
> By utilizing the AmigaDE as a run time, binary compatible system for
> developers, they can literally code once and not worry about whether the
> user will want to run his programs on a Linux box or a Windows box or as a
> stand alone application on the new Amiga. Sorry, no details, but very
> doable and we have proof of concept already in house.
I think I get it... Amiga by stealth! I.e. the "general public" user just
installs the application, and if it's not there already the
run-time-environment is installed "behind the scenes" like it's just a
collection of support libs. All the user notices is that the software
actually works properly ;-) (Plus a Powered by Amiga logo?)
Have I got the general idea?
> For the more technical here, allow them to dig down into the system and
> make a mess of things on their own system if they so desire.
That's not really what I meant by complex-but-powerful. I was thinking more
about the ease-of-use trend in PC software which actually makes it harder to
use for experienced users. As an example, take the PC software which comes
with many scanners: The old Mustek Paragon 600II we had at work until
recently came with a PC program called IPhoto+ - an old version with a
spartan user interface, but plenty of power accessible through the menus.
We recently bought a newer scanner, which came with a newer version of the
same program - only it's not the same program. It's got a tarted-up
user-interface, most of the useful functions are either gone or buried
within huge gaudy button bars, and polluting the screen real-estate is
all this calendar-making crap, which isn't much good if you just want to
adjust the image's colour-balance, or airbrush out a telegraph pole ;-)
My original concern, which up to a point remains, was that what I (perhaps
unkindly) term "Fisher Price user-interfaces" seems to be what mainstream
(non-technical) consumers want. They don't want to make the investment
of knowledge to user flexible software efficiently, they want the machine
to do everything for them, and then complain when they find themselves
limited by the program's presets.
I suppose this little rant is aimed at the software industry (or consumers)
in general, rather than at Amiga's plans, but it's the reason why I still
have some reservations about the undoubtedly necessary move from our
current quiet little software backwater (which *does* have a unique
approach to many things) into the mainstream.
All the best,
What if the universe is just a rigged demo?
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