“Hyperion Entertainment VOF is pleased to announce the immediate availability for download for registered customers of another service update of Amiga OS 4.0 which addresses some outstanding issues and introduces substantial new functionality.” There’s a new kernel, better POSIX support, a new Python port, newer USB stack, and more. By the way, the promised hardware still has not arrived.
The best operating system that can’t run on anything.
Theres some AmigaOne hardware and the lucky few with PPC accelerator boards for their classic Amigas can run it
Couldn’t help but remember the little old woman in the ‘Where’s the beef?’ advertisements. Where’s the hardware? I’d love to get an AmigaOS 4.0 based system, but if there isn’t any hardware, it’s making it a bit hard.
It seems to me like Amiga Incorporated is trying to go the Apple route — hardware lockin. However, hardware lockin almost killed Apple in the 90s once Microsoft made it obsolete, and unlike those days, Microsoft is now well-entrenched, and even Apple is coming back (iTunes + advertising as creative as their old 1984 ad).
by going x86 and diversifying into a general tech corp…
That used to be the problem, but unfortunately the hold up now is the question of the legal ownership of OS4 + Amiga trademarks. There’s plently of (potentially) compatible OS4 hardware available right now.
The secret legal wranglings seem to be what’s really held up the system for the last few years, but it’s mostly out in the open now. The only thing we can do is wait for the current court case to blow over, and then see who really owns and/or has rights to what.
My personal opinion is that once it’s all sorted out, if Hyperion win, I expect we’ll see a release of OS4 for the SAM440EP almost immediately. If Amiga Inc. wins, then who knows. My guess is that they’ll either sell everything wholesale to the highest bidder, or it’ll sit in a filing cabinet for the next 20 years.
>> However, hardware lockin almost killed Apple in the 90s <<
NEVER happened. Apple is still in business today and always has had a large cash reserve.
People love the rumor that Apple is about to die, and spread that fud for the last two decades in opposition to the fact that Apple has always been a healthy company.
Gimme a break!
Can you talk about AmigaOS 4.0 without taking a cheap shot at Apple?
That’s not a cheap shot. Apple’s corporate decisions, its financials, and its sudden fall and slow climb back are all well-documented.
Wasn’t it the other way round with Apple? They had trouble after they opened their platform to other hardware vendors, clones on the PPC platform cost Apple sales. They got back on track pretty much after killing the clones and locking their OS to their own and only their own hardware.
This is correct. Apple licensed the OS to vendors they believed would enter the server market instead of the desktop market. When it was clear that the vendors were cannibalizing the desktop market and threatening to broadly diversify the hardware standards, Apple pulled the plug.
It seems to me like Amiga Incorporated is trying to go the Apple route — hardware lockin. However, hardware lockin almost killed Apple in the 90s
Whether or not lockin is what almost killed Apple, you go on to mention Apple’s comeback. The comeback they pulled off while still utilizing hardware lockin.
That’s hardly going to do a good job convincing me hardware lockin is unfeasible. It has its distinct advantages: ensuring you have drivers for your OS and that they are of good quality being foremost in my mind.
Granted, running on generic x86 opens up a larger potential audience, but “running on generic x86” is a huge undertaking, and for a small company with an alternative OS (especially one that can’t take advantage of GPL code) is certainly less feasible than targetting a limited set of hardware.
Whether or not it is possible for a small company with an alternative OS to establish itself by either method is not something I can say, but if Hyperion fails it will be from causes other than hardware lockin (there seem to be enough).
No no no. The hardware lock-in never almost killed Apple. It only limits their marketshare (don’t like the config? Tough luck).
Apple’s obscene markups on their PCs in the 80ies were what almost killed Apple. At that time, Apple was pretty uncompetitive in the marketplace. This is something Jobs fixed when he came back. That and the numerous projects that weren’t bringing in new revenues were hurting the company of funds. By 1999, Apple was running in the red. Gates had MS invest into Apple to help Jobs get Apple back into gears. Anyway, this isn’t new stuff.
hmmm, they have enough time to develop OS4, but not enough time to return my Cyberstorm PPC card which THEY HAVE!
I think the one thing Apple is getting right now is that they build their own h/w. I think it’s good that there is a lot of competition out there with MS and Linux to keep h/w prices down and Apple more honest with their prices however.
The problem Linux and MS have is that their OS’s have to run on a lot of different h/w now. You can see MS is starting to cull that with Vista and will continue to do so. So going that route is a mixed bag, both good and bad. Apple is better able to manage it’s due to that control of h/w. The advantage is the OS “just works” for the most part, the disadvantage is a I can’t run it on my PC laptop sitting over there…
Amiga has decided that this is a path they should go down too. Perhaps for the smaller companies, this is a better road to be on. I personally think Alan Kay was onto something when he said those serious about s/w would build their own h/w and we are starting to see MS doing this with the XBox, Zune, that cool table thing and others…
The other route is the one Java has gone down, and the one Amiga DE was going as well, shame we never saw the promise of that (is that still a going concern?)…
linux have less of a issue running on all kinds of hardware. the issue for linux is the lack of information about how some hardware works, making it hard to do proper drivers for them.
more often then not, windows blows up because of some driver thats playing around. and finding out what driver that is can sometimes be a quest all its own.
the only way vista culled that is by breaking the existing 2k/xp driver system, and creating a new one. not a ideal solution when relying on third party drivers (but can work wonders for hardware sales as people have to update hardware or go elsewhere. most will select the former as it appears as the simple choice).
“I think the one thing Apple is getting right now is that they build their own h/w.”
Yeah… Apple builds their own hardware…which is nothing but a PC that runs MacOS X. Seriously! Don’t believe me?
Get on a modern Intel Mac with all the updates. Insert a Windows XP/ Vista CD or DVD. Reboot. Hold down ‘C’. It will boot!
From here, you can DELETE the entire MacOS X partition and everything else and then install Windows XP/Vista.
No BootCamp required. No Parallels. No nothing!
Apple has gone from making Macs with MacOS X, to makes Apple PC’s that run MacOS X.
How far of a stretch is it, til they simple remove the tiny hinderances to making MacOS X run on any ol PC hardware you like? No much, as far as I can tell.
Sorry for this slightly off-topic rant, but at least an Amiga (in whatever form or deisgn it’s in), isn’t a PC! An Amiga is still an Amiga. And AmigaOS is still AmigaOS.
At least SOME things don’t change… thankfully.
How far of a stretch is it, til they simple remove the tiny hinderances to making MacOS X run on any ol PC hardware you like? No much, as far as I can tell.
The hindrances are kernel panics from having to support as wide a variety of devices made by companies who didn’t consult with the OS vendor as Windows. Apple’s been experimenting with this (google Marklar) since before the PPC existed, and consistently unsatisfied with the stability of the user experience. If Microsoft could legally produce their own hardware without attracting DOJ attention, they would too: both the iPhone and the XBox 360 run only managed, encrypted code.
There’s a lot more at stake than just which CPU you support and whether the firmware can emulate BIOS at startup.
AmigaOS is a very amazing OS, but all the politics and bureaucracy that are around it are fully unacceptable for people that just want to run their favorite operating system and applications and develop software on that platform.
There are some alternative projects to AmigaOS that deserve more attention than this (www.aros.org). We, the users, deserve more respect from Hyperion than that.
look i love the amiga too, i do. but some times in business you have to learn when to cut your losses, even if its a project you were passionate about, and move on. os 4.0 was delayed more times then vista, is less stable, less user base, less profit margin (i would imagine at this point), and above all depended on a platform that is generaly unavalible to even your above average person. at this point the amiga community should be looking to aros and hopefully still MorphOS. i had high hopes for OS 4.0, but the party is ending. time to move on
If you release a piece of software, but nobody can run it, does it exist?
Yes.
Whether or not it can run somewhere doesn’t matter. The same goes about the sound in a forest-issue, which is also a moot philosophical waste-of-time
No-one knows
There is hardware that people own that does run this, well over a 1000 people infact. There is just no new hardware… I was one of these owners.
Never dared to say it before, but I think it’s about time I’d say it: yawn.
Not on x86 therefore not interested, simply put. Wake me up when they go under, and finally port it.
1. How much would it cost to just plain everything Amiga. The (c), the source, the patents, everything really. I could imagine putting in let’s say $50-$100 towards buying it and putting it into public domain. Just so I don’t have to hear these stories anymore:)
2. Is there a way to run this on an emulator? Let’s say something like Qemu? Same goes with Morphos. I just want to try it out for <deity’s> sake..
Promised hardware? whats wrong with porting to x86?
I hear the port of Duke Nukem Forever for Amiga OS4 is almost complete.
Heeeh
Unfortunately I cannot mod you up above 5.
But I did see a flying pig earlier today
I assume their revenues must be close to nil, the CEO is supposed to be some sort of con artist…because it just doesn’t make sense to me how a company with nil marketshare, nil products, and a nonexistent platform can still be in business.
Amiga was a failed platform, so that would be the kiss of death from any possible investor.
So the question remains, where is Amiga Inc. getting the money to stay afloat?
That is great that they pushed an upgrade. Nobody even had to use yum or type root’s password.
Now, if they released a .mkv (movie) of stuff in action and/or asserted their prior art on 40 out of 50 iPhone-related patents (which are a definite case of ‘they will take all our ideas and we will never hear from them again’ thanks) then I could be a happier gardener and get a break from wondering whether the package would be more valuable than the good (OS4.x)
Perhaps if they settled on an architecture; ARM stuff, an implementation of OpenPower for FPGAs of some sort, something more like the -way- the rest of the industry parametrizes things: Will it run on RFID tags licensed by Philips? Perhaps avail itself only as an add-in to 400lpi color ePaper displays (on a fixed edge)? Only ship in kitchen scrap composter/fridge side-by-side combos and send XSessions (ZigBee) to portable displays? Perhaps go the console way and announce it with 4 peripherals and a CPU/architecture (23nm Cell licenses or such) which will be ready at a projected ship date.
Just let us know where to send the Yerba Mate and chard/flax salad recipies.