Comment From behind the Purple Wall... (Score 1) 181
As an ex third party developer for SGI, and as
an ex SGI employee, I just have to comment on this. What most people miss when talking about SGI is (quite apart from market forces), the extent that they have done damage to themselves over the years.
As a third party software developer:
The following was a typical encounter with SGI:
- SGI would come to town to talk about the plans for new desktop machine XXX. They would happily present how it would do a bunch of neato things like stream video or texture map with color cubes.
- We would tell them that what was REALLY needed was faster line drawing in 3D, and in color mapped mode. The other stuff sounds neat, but is pretty useless commercially.
- They would tell us that what we were asking for was too boring. Not sexy enough.
- We would tell them that it was what customers NEEDED. Otherwise the PC's would catch up.
- They would ignore us.
My favourite instance of this was the Indigo 2 Impact. It supported lots of new features, but in some cases was actually SLOWER doing the operations performed by ALL 3D packages 90% of the time (3D lines in color mapped mode).
Guess what happened? The PC caught up.
From a customer perspective:
SGI was the only game in town for 10 years. The sales force new this, and treated customers with disdain. How SGI was screwing you was a pretty typical topic of conversation around the graphics watercoolers. Waiting 2 months for replacement parts is a good example. Funny how the loan company would never wait 2 months for payment on the machines.
Finally, as an ExSGI employee:
All I can say is that 95% of the talent has left the company. Once the ship starts sinking in the Valley, the rats leave really quickly. Most SGI'ers are happily working at internet startups and graphics startups. Few good ones remain.
It's all very sad.
an ex SGI employee, I just have to comment on this. What most people miss when talking about SGI is (quite apart from market forces), the extent that they have done damage to themselves over the years.
As a third party software developer:
The following was a typical encounter with SGI:
- SGI would come to town to talk about the plans for new desktop machine XXX. They would happily present how it would do a bunch of neato things like stream video or texture map with color cubes.
- We would tell them that what was REALLY needed was faster line drawing in 3D, and in color mapped mode. The other stuff sounds neat, but is pretty useless commercially.
- They would tell us that what we were asking for was too boring. Not sexy enough.
- We would tell them that it was what customers NEEDED. Otherwise the PC's would catch up.
- They would ignore us.
My favourite instance of this was the Indigo 2 Impact. It supported lots of new features, but in some cases was actually SLOWER doing the operations performed by ALL 3D packages 90% of the time (3D lines in color mapped mode).
Guess what happened? The PC caught up.
From a customer perspective:
SGI was the only game in town for 10 years. The sales force new this, and treated customers with disdain. How SGI was screwing you was a pretty typical topic of conversation around the graphics watercoolers. Waiting 2 months for replacement parts is a good example. Funny how the loan company would never wait 2 months for payment on the machines.
Finally, as an ExSGI employee:
All I can say is that 95% of the talent has left the company. Once the ship starts sinking in the Valley, the rats leave really quickly. Most SGI'ers are happily working at internet startups and graphics startups. Few good ones remain.
It's all very sad.
