CEO of Amiga Inc, Bill McEwen today unleashed his monthly executive update upon the Amiga Community. Many things were talked about but by far the most outstanding and obvious was Amiga Incs stride to know how many people will be ordering the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 bundle.To figure this out, Amiga Inc have produced a $50 voucher that can be redeemed with the purchase of the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 bundle. McEwen states there is a large need for this as they can not produce too many boards, but they need to be able to supply the current user base. McEwen pridicts there could be as many boards produced as 50,000 (going by current Amgia magazine subscriptions). Several incentives have also been put in place to encourage people to take up the offer, such as Free AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 bundles drawn at certain increments in the order numbers (The higher the number of orders the more Bundles will be given away). Also Amiga Inc have announced a deal between Bernd Meyer and themselves to actively promote and license Amithlon 2.0 to OEM customers looking for an Amiga emulator on x86 platforms.
By ordering the coupon you will receive an Amiga t-shirt and make a chance of winning a board and other prices for free! The more people buy these AmigaOne boards with AmigaOS4 the faster the development costs are covered and prices will be able to drop further.
Also note that you can trade-in these boards for a socketed G4 + board later on.
http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/300502update.php
It is very good news that the licensing difficulties which took
Amithlon off the market for a couple of months have been amicably
settled.
The freely distributable Amithlon demo (out in a couple of weeks) will
allow anyone interested to check out the Amiga OS on modern hardware
without touching the hard drive. You just boot off the CD and the OS
runs from a RAM disk.
A permanent installation on your hard drive will require a key file
and handing over some cash.
I’m not an Amiga fan. In fact, the only time I ever come across Amiga news is on sites like this and Slashdot. In these news articles I only see words like “update”, “expected”, and “soon”. I don’t ever recall recently seeing the words such as “shipping” and “now”. This has been the theme for some time. I don’t mind any of this very much, as I’m not in the Amiga market, it just strikes me as odd. All of the complacency has given Amiga Inc. the sense that they can promise and delay anything with out fear of dissolution or abandon. When in reality, it’ll catch up with them.
Kermit: Bla bla bla **snip** bla bla bla
Why must people who admittedly know nothing continually post misnomers and FUD?
Yeah, the Amiga is sort of a sad tale. Every company who has touched it has made bold promises and then failed to deliver (usually dying a rather unpleasant death). The current owners however, seem to be making significantly more headway than the others did.
The problem all these companies were plagued with was the same from the very beginning — They were all trying to resurrect an aged and severely neglected platform. This isn’t an easy task.
Setting this aside I don’t think you should comment on Amiga Inc unless you know the history of the platform and/or understand the situation they are faced with. I ran my Amiga for many years, and I have seen many of the ups and downs which have shaken and rattled the platform.
I no longer run my Amiga but I can only wish the best of luck to Amiga Inc and those who are still using their Amigas. If it fails, who cares? I’m not going to lose anything — and neither will anyone else on the outside.
In the future lets try and keep negative or counter-productive comments to ourselves.
Please let the amiga go it is a relic that serves no purpose!
I think I agree with kermit. I’ve never had a chance to use Amiga, although I really wanted one when I was in high school (circa 1989). But one doesn’t have to use a platform to be able to tell when people are living on pipe dreams. It’s clear whenever I read stories about the Amiga that some of the people following it are semi-delusional. They’ll say things like, “Microsoft is going to be running scared from this Amiga Anywhere development platform.” BeOS users sometimes say these same absurd statements. I like BeOS though. Of course, it will always remain a hobbyist’s OS, like the Amiga.
Jim, Kermit is just describing his impression which, if you actually take an objective look at the promised release dates and delays, etc., isn’t far off. Your overwraught reaction is inappropriate and only confirms the stereotype of an Amiga computer user as a paranoid fanatic. Considering that Amiga, Inc. might like to actually grow its user base beyond the current hard (really hard) core, it might be good to work on a more accomodating response to people’s comments.
— gary_c
Some troll wrote:
“In the future lets try and keep negative or counter-productive comments to ourselves.”
Rather, in the future maybe Microsoft and Linux buttholes should stop presuming to instruct others on what opinions and observations they are “allowed” to have, espescially if they don’t happen to be the moderator of the list.
Amiga f*cked me when Commodore ran themselves into the ground and never could make up their minds being passed from owner to owner.
Then I pay cash for Amithlon, to find out that there is a big fight going on and no updates for the users because of b*stards like Amiga and H&P.
Then they f*ck me again and officially say they have worked things out and a new version is in the works. Which I will have to (again) pay for.
Think I’m getting off this ship, the rats can sink with it!
RJW wrote:
“It’s clear whenever I read stories about the Amiga that some of the people following it are semi-delusional. They’ll say things like, “Microsoft is going to be running scared from this Amiga Anywhere development platform.”
There are loonies in every camp. Please don’t assume that the loonies represent a majority of users. Even Wintel has its nutters who think the sun shines out the CEO’s anal orifice. I’ve seen them at work on here and it cheered me up no end 🙂
First of all Amiga Anywhere is already shipping from Amiga Inc for PocketPC powered devices like:
=> @migo 600-C, Audiovox Maestro PDA1032, Audiovox PDA1032C, Casio GFORT, Cassiopeia E-100, Cassiopeia E-115, Cassiopeia E-125, Cassiopeia E-200, Cassiopeia E-2000 (Japan), Cassiopeia E-700, Cassiopeia E-750, Cassiopeia EM500, Compaq iPAQ 31 36 3700 Series, Compaq iPAQ 3800 Series, HP Jornada 560 Series, HP Jornada 720, NEC MobilePro P300, O2 xda, Toshiba E570, Toshiba Genio-e
Also Amithon has shipped as a part of AmigaOS XL before. AmigaOS4 however have gone through many unfortunate delays just as Windows releases always significantly delayed. Only Amiga Inc does not make billions of dollars in their pocket. So I believe they should not be blamed in the same way as Microsoft can be blamed.
.. that 95% of the people always just say, MS is bad and I would like to have something better. And when a new OS arise the first question is ‘does it have office ?’, no ? then I wait, but I like the OS and will support it when there is some software.
So, how do these people think that anything will change ? As long as they buy and use MS stuff, nothing will ever change. It’s just not enough to say I like this other OS but I can’t (probably it’s I don’t want) use it because this and this is missing. At the end of the day I think these people don’t deserve a better OS than MS Windows 😉
Thomas
Guys,
Can someone tell me why we should bother if Amiga is still around? I took the time to check their new (planned) offering – OS4 – and it is sooooo passé! At least, take a look at OS X or the latest Gnome, KDE developments. You’ll realize that Amiga is dead. period.
I can understand people enjoy old cars, or even collect stamps, but Amigas ?!?!? At least, I can go around with a vintage WW to visit some friends, etc. What can you do with Amiga other than playing 13-year old games?
Arnaud
> You’ll realize that Amiga is dead. period.
There still is a rather vivid AmigaOS fan base, so the platform is not dead yet. Also there are many aspects to like regarding the way classic AmigaOS does things. The most important aspect regard to perceived multimedia performance (Something badly understood when you’re only AmigaOS experience is through UAE on top of a fat host OS like Windows).
Even on very lowly powered Amigas the end-user experience is solid and realtime. Amigans clearly see the contrast with WindowsXP or MacOS X which even today, with over 100 times the raw processing performance and memory available to them react non-realtime to user input.
Clearly both these OSes have become more Amiga-like with 32 bit pre-emptive multitasking and good multimedia abilities but somehow the overal elegance of classic Amigas still can’t be matched.
Sadly the fast majority of people never had the oppertunity to really use a well configured Amiga computer/AmigaOS. Most more curious people only tried WinUAE. I think I should write an article showing people what was so special about the classic and why computing lost its elegance (Next to coevering the new hardware of course!). I believe videos would do a better job than just pictures and text as people always seem to mis-understand unique features like multi resolution/color depth (workspace) screen dragging and such. Currently I’m very busy but I would like to finish such an article as a tribute to 10 years of A1200 computing within the next couple of months!
> What can you do with Amiga other than playing 13-year old games?
Almost everything you do today. That’s an important reason why AmigaOS4 still is viable. Too few things have changed (OS-wise) since the downfall (unrelated to the Amiga branch itself) of several corporate Amiga owners. You can burn CDs, browse the internet, FTP, IRC, ethernet, TV cards, standard TV output, etc. The most important thing AmigaOS lacks is modern hardware support (modern CPUs and Graphic chips). This and many more features will be found in AmigaOS4.
Jeeze guys, lets get something straight here
Amiga is not hurting anyone!
So who cares if it never ammounts to anything?
This is what I was trying to say before. It’s not causing you any harm so keep your pot-stirring BS to yourselves.
I don’t care if you think it’s a pipe-dream. The guys who are involved with the Amiga likely _already_ know this. It’s more of a hobby than anything else — A passion maybe. Sort of like model railroading — but I guess that’s completely pointless as well eh? Not much point in hauling a few handfuls of peanuts accross your living room — right?
To those who were quite happy to insult & label me: You know exactly where you can shove those words. I’ve taken a completely unbias stance on this issue and I maintain my previous opinions. I’m not telling anyone how to think. I personally think Amiga Inc will fail and I couldn’t really care less if it did. I’m _not_ however going to go out of my way to rant and rave how everyone involved with the Amiga is stupid.
‘Nuff said.
>>Guys,
>>Can someone tell me why we should bother if Amiga is still >>around? I took the time to check their new (planned) >>offering – OS4 – and it is sooooo passé! At least, take a >>look at OS X or the latest Gnome, KDE developments. You’ll >>realize that Amiga is dead. period.
Why bother? Because no company currently has made a quality multimedia OS. In your above example you talk about KDE and Gnome. You got to be kidding me! Those run on X which makes them slow, crash prone, and the font display is plan ugly. I tried moving to running Linux and KDE full time, and moved back to Windows very quickly. Linux (Unix) and Xwindows is a JOKE when it comes to a desktop OS. What are the postive parts of those two? They are free and open source! Do I know what I am talking about? Well I have used Linux and many Window managers (Enlightenment was my favorate) for years, and I write this message on a Sparc box running Solaris 9, CDE and Mozilla (using this enviroment for work purposes). X is also a pain in the ass to config.
I will admit I do like OS X. This is a better example of a Unix that actually is going in the right direction as far as Desktop Systems and GUI’s. The problem is that OS X is still running on 20+ year old technology (Unix) and still is lacking in speed and being efficent. They are making great progress on speeding things up and cleaning up the code. They also have a lot of very smart Unix programmers working for them. The only major problem with OS X (but is getting a bit better) is the price of the hardware. Things have changed lately, and prices are becoming reasonable. If Amiga fails, this will be the next Desktop computer I buy personally. I would like to wait until faster G4’s or the G5 are released.
The closest thing to a quality multimedia OS recently has been BeOS. It was a shame Microsoft stepped on it. I think Amiga can pick up and expand where BeOS was going. Actually I think BeOS was created with Amiga in mind.
I do think Microsoft is finally starting to try to do some new things, and we will see what they have to bring to the table with the longhorn release. Mac is also kicking things into gear and imporving their OS.
So I do believe Amiga can be a quality multimedia OS if the things they are working on are finished. It will of course be a niche OS, just like Mac OS is as compared to Windows. But even a niche OS can make money and be a great OS, and do 90% of the things you do on a daily basis.
So what extra can Amiga offer? First it has a fast response time when using the GUI. Do you ever use Windows and it seems to lag, or seem like it gets stuck even on a 1.5 ghz system? Happens to me in Win2k all the time when I open network functions and it is doing network operations. It also happens when I am burning a CD or scanning and trying to do other things at the same time. I think the way Windows handles multitasking is a joke. Linux/Unix does a much better job at doing mulitasking operations then Windows.
Another sad thing from modern OS’s is boot time. I think a OS should boot within 10 seconds max, if not almost instant. We went from a instant turn on system (example: C64), to a Windows 2k system that can take 5 minutes to boot (even Amiga’s booting from the floppy drive were just as fast). Linux is bad also if you load the standard services at boot plus extra OS addins (XFS for example). I am not sure on the boot time of OS X, but I am guessing it is not much better then Linux would be. I would expect the new Amiga OS to boot very quickly, like past versions of the OS (and BeOS). I know Windows Xp improves things somewhat, but from my tests it seems it tries to get the desktop up faster, and continue loading stuff in there after. So you get the effect of having a faster boot time, since the desktop screen comes up quicker. I know it also doesn’t load as many drivers as Win2k.
So yes I believe a really good multimedia OS still is not available and would be welcome. I think for a multimedia OS to be good, it would have to be almost developed from the ground up (not building on a old Unix or a old NT kernel). I think people mock Amiga because they didn’t use the system when it defined the word multimedia and was 10 years ahead of its time. What makes Amiga users drool is the prospect of this OS that ran fast on a 25mhz system, running on todays modern hardware. Amiga users have gotton a taste of this with Amithlon, and the result is a VERY fast Amiga OS.
>> What can you do with Amiga other than playing 13-year old games?
Games? I think today most people are starting to play games on consoles, since they are as good as desktops no in days. So if people are playing most of their games on consoles, then games become less of a requirement for a desktop OS. Things like browsing (Internet), Office apps, burning cds, email, etc are more important to the desktop.
A major advantage to Amiga as compared to a new OS (like BeOS was), is that it has a bunch of old applications as a starting point until new ones become available. This and the small userbase still around gives the Amiga a opportunity to go somewhere. The name itself is important also. The problem is that it needs to go somewhere, and all the rumors and dreams need to come true.
Sorry for the long message, but just wanted to try to clear up things for people that don’t know the thoughts of past Amiga users. I myself have experience with about every OS out there. I spend most of my time at work with Windows NT/2k and Solaris/Linux. I don’t use my Amiga anymore I will admit. I will buy and use an Amiga that is brought upto date and does the 90% of things I need to get done. I gave up holding on to the past Amiga, but would enjoy the chance to play with a future Amiga, and once again enjoy using a quality multimedia OS.
Those run on X which makes them slow, crash prone, and the font display is plan ugly.
Wait, you are comparing with Amiga OS, right? In that case, your argument is really flawed.
And if you are comparing with Windows and Mac OS, I find KDE 3.0 and GNOME 2.0 font rendering via FreeType quite nice, though not as nice as Windows and Mac OS. Why? One word: patents.
… and I write this message on a Sparc box running Solaris 9, CDE and Mozilla (using this enviroment for work purposes).
Amazing how you use an OE/OS that isn’t released…
The closest thing to a quality multimedia OS recently has been BeOS. It was a shame Microsoft stepped on it.
If you didn’t notice, it was Be fault mostly. They lack the marketing skills, and they even lost in competition with a company that was then dying (Apple)
Do you ever use Windows and it seems to lag, or seem like it gets stuck even on a 1.5 ghz system?
Nope, unless I’m using some kind of resource hungry app like Photoshop (which I uninstalled and gave to my friend which would have much better use with it) or CorelDRAW.
I think a OS should boot within 10 seconds max, if not almost instant.
I had configured my Linux box to boot in 2 seconds, no counting X startup (I don’t start it by default as I’m planing to start developing for Fresco, and I’m getting used to it’s architecture).
And I got a laptop, 1.1ghz, which boots in 3 seconds on a 1.1ghz Pentium III. I got BeOS to boot 5 seconds on my 120mhz Pentium MMX…
But anyway, Palm OS is considered a modern OS (Amiga point of view) and loads up almost instantly… (kidding).
is bad also if you load the standard services at boot plus extra OS addins (XFS for example).
The main reason why I hate most of the distros out there.
I am not sure on the boot time of OS X, but I am guessing it is not much better then Linux would be.
Actually, if you use a fairly new Mac, it is much faster than Linux loaded on that machine. Reason: it doesn’t install stuff the user don’t need, and lets users add things which they need.
I know Windows Xp improves things somewhat, but from my tests it seems it tries to get the desktop up faster, and continue loading stuff in there after. So you get the effect of having a faster boot time, since the desktop screen comes up quicker. I know it also doesn’t load as many drivers as Win2k.
It loads up all the drivers for the hardware which is connected. Also, for the desktop loading (which if you have a multiuser system), it is not considered as the boot up time. But Windows XP loads the desktop quite fast, and it is stuff like Mozilla Quickstart and OpenOffice.org QuickStart (well, I use them often) and ICQ that slows it down. But then, if you had Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and ICQ loaded up when Amiga OS launches…. well 🙂
Games? I think today most people are starting to play games on consoles, since they are as good as desktops no in days. So if people are playing most of their games on consoles, then games become less of a requirement for a desktop OS. Things like browsing (Internet), Office apps, burning cds, email, etc are more important to the desktop.
If you didn’t notice, the PC gaming industry is a very big business, even bigger than console games. It is also one of the biggest software industry.
As for consoles, the big problem with them is that they don’t evolve as fast as PCs. So while when a new console comes out and matches the graphics capablities of a PC, a few months later, the PC outshines the console with stuff like pixel shading…
Sorry for the long message,
I don’t mind long, but seperate paragraphs with a line, and split up most of your paragraphs into 2 or 3 paragraphs, it would make reading much easier.
>>Wait, you are comparing with Amiga OS, right? In that >>case, your argument is really flawed.
Nowhere in my message did I compare it to the old Amiga OS. Yes I am a Amiga fan, but then again I know it is old and lacks many modern features. The thing I am sticking up for is that a updated Amiga OS can offer just as much if not more then todays modern OS’s.
I do think a modern Amiga OS can offer more then KDE 3.0 or Gnome 2.0 when it comes to a desktop experience. I do think the Amiga OS 4.0 being worked on, is the modern Amiga OS every old Amiga user has wanted and still wants.
>>And if you are comparing with Windows and Mac OS, I find >>KDE 3.0 and GNOME 2.0 font rendering via FreeType quite >>nice, though not as nice as Windows and Mac OS. Why? One >>word: patents.
From my experience, the font rendering is terrible with any setup or windows manager in X. I think it is just as bad as the old Amiga OS’s font display.
When I spend 9+ hours a day working on computers, I am willing to invest in patents that make those hours easier on my eyes. Currently when I use X I usually increase the font size large to help with the terrible font rendering.
>>Amazing how you use an OE/OS that isn’t released…
Wow its funny when I type “uname -a” I get this message:
“SunOS workstation 5.9 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-100”
You really should go to the Sun website and download Solaris 9 binary images for free, before you mock me.
>>If you didn’t notice, it was Be fault mostly. They lack >>the marketing skills, and they even lost in competition >>with a company that was then dying (Apple)
I thought I read that Microsoft put a little pressure on them also, making it hard for them to get BeOS pre-installed on computers. I have also read a majority of Windows OS sales and installs are from pre-installed configurations (OEM’s). So doing so would of hurt Be’s future progress.
>>Nope, unless I’m using some kind of resource hungry app >>like Photoshop (which I uninstalled and gave to my friend >>which would have much better use with it) or CorelDRAW.
It seems like a majority of Windows applications are resource hungry then. Yes I do use Photoshop, and a lot of Macromedia software packages. Does that give it a excuse to be slow? NO! My old Amiga proves that running ImageFX or Photogentics. Even GIMP runs very well in Linux when doing multiple things.
If you don’t get other hangups (like when scanning a domain for systems when going to Network view) then maybe we don’t do the same things. We have over 2,000 windows systems here at work, and that seems to be a quite common problem. I have also had to deal with enough Windows problems (every Windows OS) to make me sick of Windows in general.
>>I had configured my Linux box to boot in 2 seconds, no >>counting X startup (I don’t start it by default as I’m >>1.1ghz Pentium III. I got BeOS to boot 5 seconds on my >>120mhz Pentium MMX…
Like I said in my previous message, if you load a standard install (distro) it will boot much slower. Yes Linux (Unix) boots fast if you take everything off and don’t load X. But then again what type of desktop or even serious server enviroment is that? Once you load a few services, then maybe add a journaling filesystem, and then actually run X (with provides the desktop enviroment), then that time increases greatly.
I guess you can always have the illusion of a fast boot by strippping everything off, and then once it is up, load it all in. It seems we both agree BeOS was quite fast for booting up the entire desktop OS.
>>The main reason why I hate most of the distros out there.
But that is what a majority of people use. Not everyone knows Linux/Unix well enough to compile their own stripped down kernel, and shutting off services (having to remove init files from Linux/Unix distros).
>>Actually, if you use a fairly new Mac, it is much faster >>than Linux loaded on that machine.
Nice to hear they are doing that. So how long would you say it takes for OS X to boot on one of these new machines? I personally don’t know, since I only play with them in the store and they don’t like you rebooting them : ) Heck even if you go to a shell prompt they start watching you : )
>>up time. But Windows XP loads the desktop quite fast, and
Yes, but considering the imporvements in hardware, the bootup time should be at least 5 seconds or less, and no Windows XP system I have booted (new install) even comes close to that. Yes Windows XP is a big improvement over previous Windows OS’s, but I think a modern OS like Windows could do better. We both seem to agree that this is possible with a stripped down Linux or BeOS.
>>If you didn’t notice, the PC gaming industry is a very big >>business, even bigger than console games. It is also one >>of the biggest software industry.
I totally agree the gaming industry is very HUGE. I think this size comes from not just the PC gaming, but the combined gaming as a whole. If you find any figures as to how the PC gaming compares to the console gaming, I would be interested in seeing them.
My point was that a computer is not a requirement anymore to play quality video games. In the past PC games were far ahead of the consoles, and also online gaming were not available on consoles. Both of these things have changed with the latest consoles.
>>As for consoles, the big problem with them is that they >>don’t evolve as fast as PCs.
Some consumers don’t like to have to buy the newest and greatest video card card every few months to have the ulimate gaming experience. Doing so costs money, and not everyone has the money to spend on simple additions they will never notice on a television display.
Lets look at a console’s advantage over a PC. The consumer does not have to worry about a OS, driver issues, if the game will play on his or her system, if you have enough harddrive or memory for the game, if it will be fast enough to play that game,hooking up to a TV (which more people have and at larger size) etc etc. I think those things will attract more people to consoles for playing games, rather then going to a PC for pixal shading.
>>I don’t mind long, but seperate paragraphs with a line, >>and split up most of your paragraphs into 2 or 3 >>paragraphs, it would make reading much easier.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried to improve on this in my reply.
I hope you understand in my message I do think the current Amiga OS is very outdated, and something I don’t use anymore. I do think a NEW modern Amiga OS, on modern hardware could be a great OS. I also don’t think the current OS’s out there are as good as they can be, considering the hardware available. I think MAC OS X is probably the best OS to come out lately. It provides the Unix functionality, and a nice GUI (that dumps X). It is not the best out there yet because it is still a young OS, but things look very good for it.
I don’t think Linux and KDE/Gnome (or anything running on X) makes a good desktop enviroment. It does make a CHEAP (free) desktop enviroment. If given the choice, I would pick OS X over a Linux KDE/Gnome setup. If given the choice currently I would pick Windows 2k or Windows XP over Mac OS X, because OS X is still young. My current main system at home is Windows 2k, and to get the Unix enviroment I run VMware with Linux and KDE within it (runs very well).
Most likely my next system will be a MAC and OS X if I don’t like what Amiga can offer. I tell you this so you know I am not a crazy Amiga user that is still living in the 80’s and not in todays computer reality.
>I’m not an Amiga fan. In fact, the only time I ever come
>across Amiga news is on sites like this and Slashdot. In
>these news articles I only see words like “update”,
>”expected”, and “soon”. I don’t ever recall recently seeing
>the words such as “shipping” and “now”.
Amithlon v1 was shipping for several months. I believe the PPC hardware from Eyetech is shipping (developer version running Linux). Updates to the OS have already been released also; whether OS4 will make it out the door remains to be seen.
>Can someone tell me why we should bother if Amiga is still
>around? I took the time to check their new (planned)
>offering РOS4 Рand it is sooooo pass̩! At least, take a
>look at OS X or the latest Gnome, KDE developments.
I don’t know how well Gnome and KDE have progressed recently, but about two years ago I found Linux rather basic when it came to a GUI/desktop point of view (yes, including compared with the Amiga). The point is that people continued to use Linux (either because they thought differently to me, or they preferred Linux for other reasons) whilst it improved; they didn’t give up on it because someone told them that, say, Windows was better.
I’ve yet to use OS X; but then I’m reluctant to switch to an OS I’ve never used (along with completely new hardware), where as on the other hand I know AmigaOS (from both a user’s and developer’s point of view).
What it comes down to is that people have different preferences, needs and experience. Perhaps *you* shouldn’t bother, but others may choose to.