Macintosh - the Breakfast of Champions

October 4, 1996

A few people have commented that I should cool it with the Macintosh stuff here on the Amiga Page. "It just isn't right," came one comment. And admittedly this is supposed to be an Amiga page.

But.

The Amiga and Macintosh are sisters. They were born a year apart, born with the same processor, similar interfaces, similar technology (high-capacity 3.5" floppies, mice, custom graphics chips), and in many ways a similar spirit. The Amiga did right everything the Mac did wrong, and the Mac did right everything the Amiga did wrong. (That's why the BeBox feels like a combination of the two.) Apple and Commodore engineers alike were notorious for codenaming machines and putting Easter eggs in software and on motherboards. Even ten years of independent development had the odd habit of producing similar systems - the Mac IIcx and Amiga 3000, the Quadra 800 and Amiga 4000, the Mac II and Amiga 2000, the CD32 and Pippin, the Mac LC and A1200, and yes, the Quadra 660AV/840AV and Amiga 3000+.

A quick visit to Always Apple will prove that Macintosh users are a breed much like Amiga users - primarily graphics and multimedia people with a fierce loyalty to a platform they KNOW is better. Apple last year was financially where Commodore was in early 1993 - of course, Apple is rebounding where Commodore failed, but the situation did look pretty grim during the Spindler days. And the Macintosh is now where the Amiga needs to be - a hardware-independent RISC operating system running on the fastest processors in the world, a technology synonymous with multimedia and ease of use, and the "recognized leader in technology" byline.

Quoth the Dave Haynie himself: "The Mac OS isn't the enemy - you know who is."

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Put it like this: in 1985, who had the better GUI? No Macintosh would be caught dead in orange-and-white-on-blue. The Mac and Amiga have been one-upping each other for years now - thus making both platforms better. It will not kill us to be friends with Apple at this stage of the game, technological advances one platform makes will benefit both, and we can work together against a common threat.

I know this is an Amiga page, but it's also Squid's page, and therefore since I am the administrator, editor-in-chief, and sole author, I can talk about whatever the hell I feel like. You won't (too often) see me on here talking about my car, or about my women troubles, or about school, or any of that - unless I can make a case for it somehow being technology-related. But I will continue to write about the computer systems I consider interrelated - the Amiga, the Macintosh, Be, and possibly certain Unixes and 8-bits, not to mention general industry rumors (fast processors, Microsoft moves, Netscape factoids, etc). And of course, if I find any cool new stuff on the Tandy Color Computer, that goes here too - the greatest 8-bit computer ever made, the C128 be damned.

On a slightly Macintosh-related note, I'm sure some of you have seen this:

"Some things were a bit startling to me at this point because of sales starting to decline. Ads were placed for products that did not exist yet (like SYBIL), based on assumptions. I did not voluntarily create these ads.. I was told to. When products would be late (a natural thing in the software world), lots of excuses would be given... we even had a fire one time that never really happened. I had never done business this way before, although I did not like what was going on, I was only 24 and did not own enough of the company to be counted and the idea of working at McDonalds was not too appealing."

"Before I left, I started getting phone calls from Joe Fenton, who was living in Texas at the time. He was very helpful, giving some suggestions to some quirks he had with SYBIL. After talking with him quite a bit, I explained what had happended with ReadySoft, and I was really out for revenge.. to write a full color, multitasking MAC emulation. Joe said he had a pretty decent knowledge of the MAC OS, and that he thought there would be no problems.

Once I got to Lake Havasu (April of 1992), I talked the owners into hiring Joe. Joe came in the middle of May, 1992. Much to his surprise, I was the only person at the company (that did anything). He was under the impression (like thousands of customers) that Utilities Unlimited was as large as GVP, having dozens of employees.

This is where things went really sour with Utilities Unlimited....

The owners wanted ads placed immediately for EMPLANT (which by the way was just a name I thought up one day, and then turned it into an acronym after the fact). I could not believe that they wanted to advertise such an elaborate product that had not even existed yet! I knew that they had faith in my abilities, but this was a bit much. So, a list of 'features' was made based on what Joe and I thought we could do. Joe worked on hacking the MAC OS, and I worked on the circuit board layout. We both worked on the custom logic equasions and the features the board would have (we had lots of ideas, some of which were implemented on the EMPLANT board, but have NEVER been used!)

...

Sometime in early November, we saw our first MAC screen appear! (I don't recall the day exactly, but I have it on video tape! We had a party that day!) Hey, we did it! Only 3 months late, but we were successful. Upon hearing this news, the owners instantly cashed checks and ran credit cards.. even though the product was in no way ready to ship! It would be almost a full month before the first version was ready to go. Lots of angry people! Where is my product!? The product shipped, and wow was there a ton of problems (which we expected). Joe and I were working 20+ hours a day, sometimes in 30 hour shifts. Not only did I have to help debug, I had to make new advertisements, handle dealer sales, do magazine interviews (try doing that with a straight face when you know what REALLY is going on), etc. It was a nightmare. The only good thing about the entire situation is that I had beaten ReadySoft, which was my only intention in creating EMPLANT. The first release of software was reportedly in October (according to the history)... this was faked! It was not until mid November did we actually release the product for the first time.

...

At the World of Commodore show in Pasadena (1993), sound support and 32 bit clean operation was shown for the first time. John DiLulu (Commodore's cheif marketting manager) and Alex Amor (Creative Equipment, Inc.) had a meeting with me to discuss an AMIGA/EMPLANT bundle deal. An agreement was reached, but as usual nothing came of it. One thing that was requested by Commodore engineers was our chunky to planar routines. These routines were given to Commodore (through John DiLulu), but apparently never reached engineering. By the way, we did spend a great deal of time getting licensing agreements with Commodore for reverse engineering the multitasking code. Commodore stated that if we were not using the code in its entirety, then no licensing agreement was necessary, but they would like a copy of the code for reference. I still have the letter from Commodore's managing division (John DiLulu's office) pertaining to this."

"Things were going pretty well for EMPLANT.. AMAX IV was no competition, and it was funny to see them with a full color, multitasking MAC emulation after spending several years stating that it could never be done! I do have to say that I have a great deal of respect for Simon Douglas. Joe and I checked each new version of AMAX IV to see if anything had been 'borrowed' from EMPLANT's MAC emulation, and we never found anything even remotely similar between our code. This made it a good, clean, competitive game.

We wanted to make a PowerPC based Pentium(tm) emulation. I even met with IBM and Apple to discuss a technology buyout because our ideas were so revolutionary. We decided to first make a PC emulation on the Amiga, and then port the code to the PowerMAC platform.

Business was starting to slow down, so the owner asked what was next? I told her that we could start working on the PC emulation.. great, time for new ads... remember those 'e486DX coming soon!' ads? How about the ads showing Windows running?.. the Windows screenshots were faked!"

The whole "revolutionary" bit - along with the claims of emulating a 486/66 on a 040/25 - made the rounds on Genie while Commodore was still alive. IBM already uses most of the techiques Drew was bragging about - real-time recompilation, etc. I was, and still am, perfectly willing to believe claims of emulating a 66Mhz chip's speed inside a 25Mhz chip with a different architecture - mostly because the Intel chip's guts are, to be crass, fucked up bad. Besides, there's more to system speed than clock speed (how else do 225MHz PowerPC 604s beat the pants off the 300Mhz-and-up DEC Alpha 21164 series, or how an 0.8MHz 6809 could kick a 4.77MHz 8088's ass with cycles to spare?) so who's to say a 68040 couldn't do a better job at being a 486 than a 486? Motorola always did have a speed edge over Intel - a 50Mhz 68060 will beat a Pentium 90 just as well as a 6809 could beat an 8088 just as well as a 68020 walked over a 286. The problem here is that Drew failed to deliver - and whether his ideas were sound or not will not matter in the annals of computer history, the point is it didn't work.

"At this point I was being told what to say and do. Neither Joe nor Mark had a clue as to what was really going on behind the scenes. It became so bad that Mark didn't even know when we released the PC emulation for the first time! He was not to know, fearing he would try to convince everyone it was not ready (which it wasn't)... it did not run Windows, DOOM, or anything else it was suppose to. It worked in simple DOS mode, supported the x87 style FPU, and had the Pentium(tm) Processor instruction decoding. For the most part, it did work well for what support it had (missing ALL of the protected mode and MMU mode support). I went to the World of Amiga show in London, and showed it for the first time. People were impressed at the speed of things that I showed, but I could not show Windows because it simply would not work.

About this time ShapeShifter was released. After Joe and I looked at it, we were pissed beyond belief. The majority of the code came from AMAX IV, with some of our code, and even Apple's code. I immediately starting documenting the code, and the changes that the code went through after several releases (especially after making it clear that much of the code was 'borrowed'). After going through the lawsuit in the UK, the owner did not want to attempt to go after 'some kid in Germany', because it would cost too much money, and we would get nothing back."

I'll probably eat this later, but if anyone's stealing code, it was Utilities Unlimited. Drew brags about how good he and Fenton are at disassembling 68000 code. Emplant has ways of making the 256K ROMs run 32-bit clean and with 68040 systems - which would require some serious patching, possibly with pieces from 512K and 1MB ROMs. Shapeshifter doesn't seem to have much use for Apple code - that's why it has such strict ROM requirements - and also doesn't appear to borrow any concepts from Emplant or Amax, other than the idea of Mac emulation in the first place. In any case, Drew later one-upped Shapeshifter with the software-only stuff, Emplant Lite, MacPro, and Emplant 1200, none of which seem to work particularly well.

One way or another, if Christian Bauer is stealing code, it's the first instance I've seen in the computer industry where anyone can steal code and produce a superior product than the people he stole the code from. Look at Microsoft - conquer and cripple. Shapeshifter is a much better product than Emplant Lite - it's more versatile, more stable, is cheaper, is more well-supported, more compatible (remember I couldn't even get System 7.5 to boot on Emplant!), better documented, nicer interface, and of course, cheaper. I honestly don't know if CB is stealing code - I might do a binary compare of Emplant and Shapeshifter to find out - but if he's ever caught red-handed, I hope they just release the damn thing on the Net for free, instead of forever chaining us to the inferior Emplant. That's a controversial thing to say, but the proof is in the pudding - after I got a 512K ROM at long last, it took half an hour to get Shapeshifter's happy mac. Shapeshifter communicates with my modem where Emplant does not. Shapeshifter runs System 7.5 where Emplant does not. Shapeshifter supports external video drivers (for cool things like HAM8) where Emplant does not. Shapeshifter gives my Mac 14MB of RAM where Emplant leaves it something like 11MB. Shapeshifter has a home on my Amiga for the foreseeable future, while Emplant goes in the disk box alongside Filemaster and Excellence 2.

"I sent two registered letters to the author, and each letter was returned undeliverable. I just wanted him to stop while he was ahead. Joe and I are probably the best 68K reverse engineerers in the world. We have gone through gigs of code over the last 4 years, figuring out why certain MAC applications do weird things with our MAC emulation. We can tell which Apple engineer wrote any part of the ROM or OS code, based on their programming style. We knew AMAX IV well too. It was easy to document what code came from where inside of ShapeShifter.

At this point I really can't do much about ShapeShifter, although there are a couple of legal councils in Germany willing to take 80% of the earnings of a successful lawsuit. Personally, I think that when judgement day rolls around, the author will wish that ShapeShifter was just a character in Archon..."

In any case, Mr. Bauer isn't bragging about his reverse-engineering skills like Drew is. Drew has just admitted he and Fenton have the technical skills to do exactly what he's accusing Christian Bauer of having done.

"After a few months, we started working on the PowerMAC version of the e586DX emulation module. But because the company's revenue was slowing down, we were told to make something in the mean time. So, MACPRO was created as a means to produce income. We continued to work on PowerCLONE, and once again, the company's revenue was not up to par, so we created Mac1200 and MacLite. These emulations took several months to create and debug. The company was in bad shape, although it had several considerable assets (a new 10,000 sqft building, cars, etc.) On August 23rd, (one day before Joe's birthday) the owner decided to shut down Utilities Unlimited. We had absolutely no warning. I had been repeatedly told that the owner simply had too much money invested in the company to ever shut it down, so this was the last of my worries. Utilities Unlimited International, Incorporated is officially bankrupt. Even though there were no creditors, a bankruptcy was filed to prevent any potential lawsuits in the future, and to null and void any commitments (like the lifetime warranty on products)."

"Since together, Joe and I did *everything* (except write paychecks), it makes sense for us to try to form a new company ourselves.. one that is honest with what is going on, since we will have no pressure from any outside source.

We have decided the name of the company will be "Persistence Software".

We will provide the same technical support that we provided to the customers in the past (I think you will find every review of our technical support to be outstanding). We will also still provide support for EMPLANT customers, and I am going to make the information about EMPLANT hardware publically available.

Since November of 1995, Joe and I have been working on the PowerMAC version of the e586DX module. That emulation is about 80% complete at this point. IT IS NOT DONE! ...and I am happy to be able to say that! (Well, maybe not happy.... just glad I can be honest about it!)

During this time, we have also been working on a completely new Amiga based PC emulation. We have re-written the emulation from scratch (yes, again). And instead of releasing bullsh*t specs, we are going to odopt a new (read as REALISTIC) approach of hyping our software... we are going to release a crippled demo version. If you like it, great... order the full version. If not, you didn't get screwed and left with something you can't use."

I did finally get Imagine to animate, and am currently (and will be for several days) rendering an anim of the old Allen Hastings Porsche running a racetrack with the camera following it. It'll be kinda cool. After that, I've got some other ideas in mind - I'm starting to like this, once I figured out how it works I got the hang of it REAL quick. I'll be doing my own demo reels and short spots in no time flat (well, not counting rendering time... field rendering with antialiasing and raytracing and shadows all on can take a significant chunk out of your Amiga's nap time). I'm having more fun with Imagine than is allowed by law... and it will only get better. I'm hoping to throw together a demo reel I can start shopping around in a few months - maybe get a job doing 3-D animation, now that this Web thing has lost its fun.

Hey, talk to me, guys - do we like the new Amiga Page and Rumor Mill look? If you don't like it, I can change it - it's beta software, after all.

I had a couple more ideas for Amiga things that oughta exist:

• A HAM8 RTG driver. Programs using a "15-bit" or "18-bit" screen mode would write in chunky true-color format to a Fast RAM offscreen buffer, and a special driver uses the MMU to watch that buffer for changes and convert them to HAM8 in real time. The primary Workbench colors would be directly mapped to the first 64 colors, so things draw quicker and look better - but colors outside it would get HAM8 mapped. This is what certain Shapeshifter drivers like Savage do now - and believe me, having to use those sucky 256-color Amiga modes when HAM8 is a much better-looking alternative feels like I'm being cheated out of something. Think about it - IBrowse in HAM8 with 24-bit datatypes in fast RAM.
• A true shut down option. This is for anal retentive people like me who like making sure they've saved everything before turning the computer off - a "shut down" option (rather than "quit workbench") would go through each running application in sequence and send it a "quit" signal, and the application in turn (if properly written) will pop to the front and say "xxxxxx is not saved. [Save] [Cancel]" until all that's left are the programs that refused to acknowledge the "quit" signal - the system pops up a list of these faulty apps and says "Shut down anyway? [OK] [Cancel]".
• An A1200 video card with slot pass-through. You'd have a special frame the A1200 would sit on, giving you 1" extra clearance underneath (which the poorly ventilated 1200 needs anyway). The video card would sit in the belly bay, you'd leave the bottom panel off, and a special bracketed pass-through port sits 1/2" below the bay, into which you plug your 68060 board.

Somewhat ironic, isn't it? For all this technology, for the Amiga's proud ten-year legacy of graphics and artistry, until I got Imagine, the biggest contribution my Amiga made to my artwork was a piece of plastic removed from its case. Some would call that blasphemy, but I think it's a testimonial to humanity and the nature of technology itself - that no matter how funky our boxes get, no matter how many MIPS we clock, how many Seagates we stack inside the case, how much we blow on software, how much Microsoft tries to sell us a technological utopia, there will always be someone with a pencil and paper - because despite all a computer can do, it cannot give me the infinite resolution and the unique texture of a pencil's lead on paper.

So till next time.