In yet another set of legal documents in the Amiga-Hyperion court case, it is revealed that AmigaOS 4 was ported to run on the Mac Mini (the PowerPC version, obviously), or, at least, that the port was in a very advanced state. The information was found in an email exchange between Bill McEwen of Amiga and Nicola Morocutti of VirtualWorks, about the latter obtaining a license to sell AmigaOS 4 together with the Sam 440ep board as well as, apparently, to sell boxed copies of AmigaOS 4 for the Mac Mini.
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Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:2007-05-28
I think you're grabbing these numbers out of thin air. As much as I'd like there to be more BeOS users than Mac users, or even *BSD users, everyone knows that's not true. The idea of millions of people flocking to AOS4 on PPC Macs is ridiculous. I'm not going to start a fight over whether or not OS4 is superiour to OS X, but I consider it self-evident that OS X is better than Windows - and you don't exactly see people coming over in droves, do you?
A commercial version of AmigaOS4 to hardware that runs MacOS X would generate very little interest beyond current Amiga users who didn't get hold of an AmigaOne but happen to have a Mac Mini. UAE is probably better for games, and OS4 would hardly be interesting as a desktop OS, lacking a decent browser, office suite, media creation apps.
For play, sure it could gain some popularity, but for pay? I don't think so. I'm sure it'd be downloaded lots, though...
In conclusion, I love your post. 'SIGNIFICATIVE' is the funniest non-word I've seen in a while.
Member since:2006-01-11
Member since:
2005-11-12
There are at least 5 millions of PPC based Macintosh worldwide still functioning and up and running...
If only 100.000, 200.000 or at least 250.000 persons would try to run AmigaOS on their PPC machine this will increase Amiga userbase enormously...
Infacts there is a large part of Apple Macintosh users who were former Amiga users in the past.
There is a large part of people who could buy AmigaOS just to see how it runs a different OS on their machines...
There is a great number of users of PPC Macintoshes who want to keep functioning their hardware even if Apple could cease to produce MacOS for PPC machines...
(all these three categories are potential wannabe users)
Remember that hundreds of thousands former Amiga users switched to Mac just because Amiga hardware they own was too old for modern usage or just broken, and Macintoshes seem the platform which is closer to their old Amiga experience!
Actually if you spot the traffic of the Amiga related sites worldwide, and make some counts, even counting new hardware sold in the past years, then there are at least:
- 2000 users of AmigaONE/AOS 4.0
- 1500/2000 users of Pegasos/MorphOS
(new ppc machines)
plus
- still 3000/5000 users of old Amiga classics models
(who can use only AmigaOS upto version 3.9)
- 300 users of Amiga Amithlon Emulator for X86,
- 200/300 users of AROS project hobby OS for Intel machines
(most of them are developers)
- and virtually about 10.000 users of Amiga emulators such as WinUAE
(but very best part of them use emulated Amiga only for games, so they are not interested in new machines with serious software!
We can count only a third or a fourth of them -2500 users- interested in new Amiga portings)...
While a functioning AmigaOS porting for PPC classic macintoshes will increase userbase by a factor 100 and upto (200.000, 250.000 new users)! This will ensure Amiga a very SIGNIFICATIVE userbase!
(Amiga will became third platform after Windows and Linux...
There will be then more Amigans than BEOS users.
Actually it is BeOS the third platform)
This will really mean millions of dollars of renevues...
More users to buy Amiga programs!
(Again a software market for Amiga)
More and more developers who will return to develop for Amiga software market...!
IMAGINE! New sites... New AmigaOS related newspapers... Software houses... Advertising renevues... Books that explain dummies how to use AmigaOS on Macs!
No wonder Amiga Inc. wants back AmigaOS from Hyperion preventing the belgian firm to sell AmigaOS by themselves...
With a new market and an improved userbase, then there will be enough money running to keep Amiga ALIVE!
This will also justify the development of new Amiga Machines...!!!
With all the new userbase there could be enough money for research and hardware development and the opportunity to realize new PPC machines OR EVEN X86 based new Amigas and AmigaOS for Intel Operating Sustem!!!
(It is only a matter how much it could grew again the Amiga market... But perspectives are really interesting and promising!)
This is why Amiga Inc. does not want just copyrights renevues...
They want to control a market who could became a gold mine...