1989 presentation by Jay Miner

[Karlos]

I just stumbled across this today: Jay Miner, from 1989

Takes you all the way back, doesn't it?

[GadgetMaster]

That was nostalgic trip.

The Amiga story from the man himself.

Considering what he already went through with Atari and Commodore, I'd say he was lucky not to experience the crap from the era that followed his passing. Jay Miner = a legend.

[Karlos]

Imagine how things might be if C= had actually listened to him?

[GadgetMaster]

Imagine how things might be if C= had actually listened to him?

Probably would have been something spectacular.

Alas the platform missed out on the glory it deserved.

[Akiko]

Man was a genius.

Commodore management sucked.

[Karlos]

Man was a genius.

Commodore management sucked.

Good job the chip layout engineer pointed out the hole in the chip if they dropped HAM

[ChaosLord]

Jay Miner Rules Forever!

[stevieu]

Ahhh, wonderful. I was hooked.

He knew what he was talking about when he talked about Commodore, that's for sure.

[B00tDisk]

Fascinating.  Interesting that he was a "big box" guy from the start.  Didn't want any truck with "cute" computers.  I agree with him about the ads; I never saw them until the mid 90's (they were floating around as Quicktime vids, IIRC, a decade plus before Youtube) and they were cringe-inducing.  Hell they still are.

Also interesting to hear him mention that he was a 50/50 "DOS"/"Windows" user (here meaning the CLI and Workbench, of course).

@21:40 - he wouldn't have gone with bitplane graphics
@22:49 - (and mentioned earlier) he felt C= should have pursued closer ties with MS and Borland for more (any!) of their software on the Amiga.

All very, very fascinating.  I'd rate that a very close second to the Doug Engelbart demonstration in San Francisco in 1968 - he demonstrates and discusses a networked, GUI based desktop for Xerox.  He does text highlighting, internal document linking, etc., nearly two decades prior to Apple.  That video can be viewed here

[terminator4]

Finally a good thread about Amiga on this site :-D
Jay Miner knew. Only if his team stayed around, instead of fewer and fewer folks remaining.

[ElPolloDiabl]

It makes you wonder if any of those 80's companies had a clue on how manufacture and sell things.
IBM made hackjobs. Playstation only arose because the engineer was popular with the President of Sony.

It was probably a 'my way or the highway' approach, with no regards to software developers.

p.s. thanx for the link

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Damn, he puts his finger exactly on the weak spots. A1000 having 512kb instead of 256kb mem, the A1000 being expandable, better PR/advertising, chunky gfx option, memory management being preferable, etcetera etcetera...

[beller]

Thanks for posting that, Karlos!  Jay was quite a guy. Early in the Amiga's history I became friends with Cheryl, the secretary at Amiga Los Gatos.  Cheryl, whose signature is inside the A1000, was living with Dale Luck at the time (Cheryl sold me an official Amiga dev jacket which I picked up early one Saturday at Dale's house!)

On the day CBM ordered the offices closed, I called Cheryl and talked with her.  I asked how Jay was doing with the news and she asked if I'd like to talk with him.  I spent a good 30 minutes talking with Jay about the situation.  He truly loved his creation and was very unhappy with CBM I recall.  But what came through was what a great guy he was.  I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with him.  He is still missed...

Bob

[Karlos]

Jay was awesome. I would have loved to have met the guy.

[bloodline]

Jay was awesome. I would have loved to have met the guy.

So Jay wished he'd used chunky pixels and was looking forward to UNIX... I like the guy