I wasn't totally sure what I was going to write this month. I knew I was visiting the World of Amiga show, so would hear the latest information on the Amiga's future... but I knew that I had to avoid the subject. Everyone would be talking about it, most with better ideas and thoughts to offer the world. The last thing you want to read is yet another report on the show and the next generation of Amigas...
Oh, what the heck. I went on the Sunday, heard nothing about the announcement, bought a 2.1 Gb Quantum hard drive, joined ICPUG fifteen years after I'd first wanted to join, bought a Wordworth 7 manual, confused a German guy from Islona games about an Amiga T-Shirt Epic Marketing owed me, watched a guy use IRC on the Amiga Inc. booth, and wore the only "MetalJoe's Amiga Pages" T-Shirt in existence. After reading other reviews of the show, I think I managed to miss every single bit of action. Or maybe I went to a different show. Something like that, anyway.
This was my first post-Commodore show, so it was interesting to see the huge contrast between then and now. It wasn't the people, they were just as full of enthusiasm and dedication as ever - more so, in fact, just that the whole affair seemed so low-profile. Had Amiga Inc. really presented the future of the Amiga? Or had it been some cunning plot to entice weary Amigans?
At the last Amiga show I went to, I was drooling over A4000s running EGS and GVP Spectrum graphics cards. CD32 systems were demonstrating flawless FMV. Commodore were really showing off the Amiga, and you had plenty of staff to talk to about anything Amiga-oriented. Amiga International have always come across as being a dozen steps ahead of Commodore, and I've always felt the Amiga has finally been placed into comfortable hands. So, there I was at WoA and they must've been eager to dish out the latest information on the new OS and hardware... right?
Well, you could buy the Amiga song for a fiver. Not my sort of music, but quite nice anyway - particularly the dancers. IBM and Microsoft just don't inspire people to write songs about them, that's what has always made the Amiga something special to me - the inspiration it has given to people. So anyway, there were a few leaflets on the A1200 and demos for a word processor, Internet package and, I think, an image processing package. No problem, Amiga International are the marketing and sales division. Amiga Incorporated do all the hardware and software tricks. They'll have the full details...
Amiga, Inc. featured a fantastic projector system so you could watch someone use IRC. Not a staff member in sight, certainly no one who looked like they wanted to answer any questions. They could have been running OS 4.0 on a quad-604e Amiga, but there was no way to tell - so I gave up trying to get any information from them and wandered about for a while trying to find several of the companies I had wanted to buy things from...
The guy from LH Publishing was cheery, and sold me the manuals to Wordworth 7 and DrawStudio - which are worth every penny, though I wish Digita would ship manuals with their software. Golden Image sold me a gorgeous 2.1 Gb Quantum - its so damn quiet, and much faster than my old 200 Mb Seagate. I couldn't get the 15" monitor from White Knight, but they'll be getting a phone call soon.
Anyway, enough of my shopping habits. What else took my interest? Well, bored and disappointed I sat down in the middle of the Siamese demonstration. I have to admit, Siamese was always something I'd disliked (the product, not the company). It always seemed like a way to keep users who had switched to the PC from totally ditching the Amiga. I have no interest in ever buying a PC, so it offered nothing to me. It still offers nothing to me, but it's actually a wonderful piece of kit. If you have the misfortune of owning a Windoze machine, grab a copy of Siamese and link it to your Amiga... you won't be disappointed. If I'd owned a PC, I would've parted with my cash there and then - then nipped off to buy a cheap set of Ethernet connections.
Speaking of Siamese, Paul Nolan stole the show for me. Photogenics Ng is absolutely brain-frazzlingly gorgeous! I can't wait to upgrade. The user interface is an absolute joy, the effects are fantastic and the whole system is so powerful and modular. I haven't seen anything close to it on other platforms... if ever an application made me want to get a 68060 and a full spread of RAM, this would be it. The version wasn't even an alpha test... just a proof of concept. Paul: concept proved. My cash is at the ready...
Siamese were the real innovators of the show. They have ideas, and they know how to make them tangible. We need more companies like them, more people who share their enthusiasm and energy. My thanks to Steve Jones, Paul Nolan and the rest of Siamese.
So, did I find out about the new Amiga? Nope. Not a bit of it. I didn't even get to talk to any of the Amiga International or Amiga Inc. staff. It took me a quick scan of the WWW the day after to find the information. Even then, the material is surprisingly vague. But full of promise. If all goes well, the Amiga is going to have a fine future, far beyond every prediction I've seen.
So there we have it. I don't know what the Saturday was like, but Sunday was a bit of a disappointment. I felt like I was at a bargain sale rather than a major demonstration of cutting edge Amiga technology. Where were the Amiga Inc. people? Where was the big announcement? Why did it take me 15 years to fill out the ICPUG application form?