North American eyes are on Europe
2 min read
The Canadian Flag
By JIM BUTTERFIELD
To start off this column it might be well to look back at the Amiga’s history over the past two years or so. In the summer of 1985, Commodore announced the Amiga with a big splash in New York City.
The Amiga 1000 became available almost immediately. A few hardy European pioneers obtained North American NTSC Amigas, which were not compatible with European television systems. But users in North America had a head start,
The first Amigas came with an operating system identified as 1.0. It was a system far brave souls, failed frequently and had a penchant for wrecking disc data.
The 1.1 system which followed treated discs with more respect. System crashes – meeting the black guru – still occurred, but much less often, By the time Commodore announced its Enhancer Software (1.2), the Amiga was a stable and usable computer for business and pleasure.
And the now stable operating system provided a base for the launching of two new machines, the Amiga 500 and the 2000.
You may be surprised to hear that we watch Europe closely for new product announcements. Each spring the Hanover Fair brings interesting announcements from Commodore which are flashed over the telecommunications networks.
And then we collectively wonder if we will see those new products over here. Computers such as the Commodore PC line or the 128D appeared in North America years after they were available in Europe.
The Amiga is an amazing computer in many ways. The quality of animation, graphics and sound are the most visible and audible features.
Multi-tasking is astounding and useful, once you solve a few conceptual problems figuring out what multi-tasking is, figuring out how to invoke it, and figuring out what to use it for.
American teens have favourite words that are often applied to the Amiga. Awesome! Radical! They are literally true.
Source : AMIGA COMPUTING
Source of information – AMIGA Computing of June 1988 – Download of the magazine below:
