a bootloader for all the main chips,328,644,1284,etc that work...then i wouldn't need a incircuit proigrammer....my rant is done
The policy so far for the Arduino developers is to only directly have the IDE support AVR chips that are used with boards that the Arduino company have developed and sell. They have been good at keeping compatiblity for older boards that they use to sell but no longer do (example mega8, mega168). Chips (like the 644, 644p, 1284, tiny series, etc) have never been used in a Arduino designed and sold board. However they have made it so the IDE is easily modified to support other AVR chips and many 3rd party companies that build such boards often supply the files and instructions for supporting non arduino supported AVR chips. Also many forum members have posted about how to go about modifying the IDE to support such 'non-standard' chips.
So does your rant still apply to this chip support issue? Or do you really expect that the Arduino company would spend time and resources directly supporting chip types that they don't even use in their products?
Lefty