The team behind MorphOS has just announced the release of MorphOS 2.3 for the PowerPC-based platforms, the Pegasos and the Efika. This new release comes with a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements, but also packs a number of new features.
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Member since:2006-01-26
Still living from the past and software already available on alternatives like GNU/Linux and BSD. Where are the exclusive and revolutionaire killer apps like in the old Amiga days? Things changed a lot, and Amiga is not more than a nostalgic dream now.
About Ambient, I don't see it so actively developed.
The website doen't work properly and lacks a news section: http://morphosambient.sourceforge.net
And the SCM is not active since... April 04 2009! http://cia.vc/stats/project/ambient
Seriously, I appreciate MorphOS and would love to see more activity. It seems the project is losing fuel.
What about porting Ambient to AROS? Maybe that could reactivate the develpment. AROS needo a proper desktop manager, sorry but Wanderer is not my thing.
What about Reggae? It's one of the most promissing amiga-like technologies, a proper evolution of the great amiga datatype concept like "Translators" from BeOS. Is going to be massively used or not?
What about the future direction of MorphOS? Is going to be simply a (very good) enhaced AmigaOS clone or there is a solid roadmal and WIP effort in making a total great evolution of the AmigaOS concept into something fresh and innovative?
MorphOS Team are more secretive than Apple and Nintendo at same time, that's very frustrating and make users to get bored waiting for the next big thing.
Member since:2006-10-18
MorphOS is...
- fast (beats linux, windows, macos, bsd etc)
- tidy (you know where libs, fonts, tools and utilities is etc)
- instant (programs starts instant. the 4 or 5 seconds you have to wait in macosx etc isnt on morphos)
- configurable (yes, even the end user can change the look, icons and much, much more!)
- programs (aminetradio, titler, owb, songplayer, amigaamp, tvpaint, fxpaint, quake 3, openttd, simplemail, amitradecenter etc... makes morphos great, usefull and fun to use..)
- aminet (one of worlds biggest archives on the net. updated daily)
- community (on amigaworld.net, morphzone.org.. on freenode #morphos +++)
To like MorphOS, you need to like a fast os. An operating system which does what it supposed to do. A nice compliment to daily usage of Windows, MacOSX or Linux/BSD for sure.
Member since:2008-12-21
Ambient is developed on MorphOS CVS server, that's why you don't see changes on Ambient sf, will be synced back again to sourceforge (I was told). They moved development of Ambient to their server for a while, because of syncing code to 3 servers (1 sf.net) is too much. I can't compile daily builds now, so no news on Ambient homepage. I will update some info there.
Yeah, porting Ambient to AROS would be great. I don't like AROS Wanderer too.
Reggae is cool. Bienvenue - MorphOS welcome screen 
MultiView is using Reggae, DigiFilter, Shuffle game... I hope for great future of this object oriented multimedia processing framework, we will see, it's up to developers. MorphOS MUI (Magic User Interface) v4 has many great new futures too, a lot of changes since Amiga days and MUI 3.9! Actively developed too, a lof of public betas.
MorphOS future direction? First target now: Mac PPC platform (I think). I know that it's not produced anymore, but there is many many more pieces of this hardware and more powerful than very hard to obtain Pegasos I, II, EFIKA machines. MorphOS needs more hardware to run now. A lot of people is waiting for Mac PPC port. We must hope, that Mac PPC will bring new people and developers to our platform. There are some innovative things under the hood, f.e. thanks to Ambient desktop - very good and configurable user interface, Enhanced Display Engine, Reggae, MUI v4, faster TLSF memory system... I like Trance (68k -> PPC) for Amiga compatibility.
There is not much news on MorphOS Team homepage, but you can join #morphos IRC channel on freenode.net, cca 60 MorphOS users regulalry online, many MorphOS Team members. You can catch some new MorphOS info or sometimes even screenshots (MorphOS 3.0, Mac Mini version and MorphOS PowerBook G4 photos). Same for community/news sites like mentioned MorphZone.org. True is that they don't tell you release date (except MorphOS 2.0's Q4 2008). But latest MorphOS 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 versions were released in short intervals - 4 versions in last 13 months. Not much time to wait. Mac PPC version is developed in parallel. Good progress, I think
Member since:2005-11-15
Where are the Exclusive and 'revolutionaire' apps for Linux? All the good software for that comes from Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and at a push GIMP work on Windows.
If a Decent Application came out only for Linux, it would soon be ported to Windows/MacOS, and if MorphOS or the like could gain a foothold, to that as well.
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
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"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing."The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
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"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Member since:
2008-12-21
There is a list of MorphOS Software:
It's compatible with many AmigaOS 68k/PowerPC programs - f.e. Lightwave 5.5!
It's nice, optimized and fast OS!
http://morphos.lukysoft.cz/en/
Internet category - 119 programs incl. Apache HTTP server, PHP, MySQL, FTP servers, Samba and other interesting stuff like very good Origyn Web Browser based on Webkit (latest version OWB 1.4 is included on MorphOS 2.3 CD).
Development category - nearly 100 programs in list... There is MorphOS SDK (free, GCC) or Cubic IDE (paid, but often reduction in price). Cubic IDE supports many languages (C/C++, HTML, LISP, REXX, Hollywood, HTML... color syntax, special GUI panels, etc. Big minus is that there is still no Java for MorphOS
Cubic IDE homepage (MorphOS, AmigaOS development):
http://devplex.awardspace.biz/cubic/index.html
Total: 1350 programs, demos and games. But it's not everything of course. I try to update and add new software to the list every day
MorphOS Ambient desktop is fresh new, open source and actively developed - much better than Workbench desktop for AmigaOS 3/4 from my point of view.
MorphOS deserves much better machine for testing than EFIKA 5200B - at least primary Pegasos G3/G4 machine! EFIKA's 1 watt CPU 400 MHz is very slow and limited with 128 MB RAM - not much for todays usage (many tabs in webbrowser, a lot of gfx, etc.) I hope many of you could taste MorphOS soon f.e. on Mac Mini G4
MorphOS has also good community...
http://morphzone.org
Bye,
Luky