Quantum Leap has written a small report regarding VirtualWorks and Soft3’s presence at the Italian Webb.it show. The report includes some pictures of the AmigaOne and AmigaOS4 modules running with classic hardware. A lot of Amiga interest in Italy is being reported and PPCNUX.de recently reported that the AmigaOne is selling very well in Germany. And this week’s Q&A session with Amiga’s CTO covers various topics at the AmigaWorld community portal.
Please note that this isn’t the final look of AmigaOS4 or the demonstrated modules.
Hans-Jörg Frieden, a fulltime AmigaOS4 developer comments on the Amiga Network News:
“As has been said before, there is only one chance to make a first impression. This first impression should be “Wow” not “ow!”. Therefore we decided to put a bit more work into it before we actually do a public demonstration of the real thing.
Still, what the news in the coming few days.”
Regarding the show Stefano Guidetti reported at ANN that the amount of interest was astonishing:
“At this very moment our stand is the most crowded one!
More than Altavista, Adobe, Macromedia an M$ all together! 🙂 Seriously!!! Many non amigans and ex-amigans are astonished by our presence! They were very interested about the upcoming AmigaOS4, but also for AmigaDE demoed on an IPaq.”
Sweet
Another much awaited OS has been presented yesterday at webb/it: Zeta. (which I hope will be available before AmigaOS4
)))
Another close-up photograph can be viewed at:
http://lnx.istage.org/webbit/gallery/2_Amiga_booth_may_9/Os4-2.jpg
The icons shown are normal AmigaOS3.x icons.
> http://lnx.istage.org/webbit/gallery/2_Amiga_booth_may_9/Os4-2.jpg
The photograph shows both AmiDock and AmigaInput, of both AmigaOS4 these components Amiga Inc recently released some detailed Club Amiga Magazine articles:
AmiDock and application.library in AmigaOS 4 by Stefan Robl
http://os.amiga.com/cam/index.php?i=2&p=12
AmigaInput – The new Gaming API for AmigaOS by Steffen Haeuser
http://os.amiga.com/cam/index.php?i=3&p=6
It seems like Amiga has been around the corner for a long time now. I wish it would hurry up and get released. While I don’t really like Amiga of BeOS, I hope they both do well. I just think it’s good to have several platforms. If a bunch of small operating systems take 3 or 4 percent of the desktop market, eventually that will all add up and break Microsoft’s monopoly. Lets hope all this works out.
This question has been asked many times, however a definitive answer can only be given when the OS is actually finished…
Much of the AmigaOS4 team’s work was consumed by completely re-implementing and preparing the foundating technology (mircokernel, seamless integrated emulation and also Firmware BIOS) for future planned features and uses. Many of the higher level modules have been laregly finished for months already. As AmigaOS is extremely modular, these components could be extensively tested with classic AmigaOS and hardware already.
The low-level work has been finished for quite a while and currently Workbench and programs are already functional. The remaining work includes further integration of PPC native modules, ironing out bugs and enhancing the default OS appearance. In all over 25 manyears worth of development time and effort has been invested into the project.
A actual public demonstration of AmigaOS4 is expected to be announced soon and a summer release seems most likely.
The AmiWest 2003 show is expected to become an highlight event and will be held on July the 26th and 27th:
http://www.sacc.org/amiwest/
You watch – it won’t be linux that topples MS, but AmigaOS!
have i missed something but i thought the amiga died along with the spectrums when the pc came?? so is this one of those fan things ?? or is there mnew amiga hardware ??
Snake
(just curious)
History repeats itself. If memory serves the Amiga was very popular in Europe. The US howver may be a harder market.
I can’t wait to purchase an A1 and OS4. I am making doubly sure that all my closest employees of my 40,000+ workers buy 10 copies of OS4 each! and two A1 machines for each family. Maybe this will aid Amiga’s resugence!
Viva La Resistance!
Great to see the Amiga getting some exposure.
BTW, another aussie here soon to order an A1.
i am curious because I loved my old Amiga to death. Years beyond anything else. I dunno about the new Amiga yet.
first impressions:
The screenshots are a major turn-off (especially for anyone who has never used an Amiga before). They look dated and toyish. I am still quite interested to see if the “amiga spirit” is still there, or if this thing is just another boring PC/OS.
It seems like Amiga has been around the corner for a long time now. I wish it would hurry up and get released. While I don’t really like Amiga of BeOS, I hope they both do well. I just think it’s good to have several platforms. If a bunch of small operating systems take 3 or 4 percent of the desktop market, eventually that will all add up and break Microsoft’s monopoly. Lets hope all this works out.
Well, I’d like to think so too, but unfortunately it seems to be the same 3 or 4 percent of the desktop market that expresses an interest in an alternate platform.
What most interests me about the new Amiga isn’t so much the revamped OS, but the fact that it’s an alternate hardware platform to x86. In theory, PPC should be a more cost effective alternative to x86, but the benefit has never materialized since PPC has never enjoyed the economies of scale x86 has. Mostly due to the fact that the one volume PPC manufacturer, Apple, uses a proprietary architecture.
Since the various permutations of the Amiga themed computers seem to use more or less open architectures, PPC might eventually become competitive if these things start selling at a significant volume. Time will tell, I guess.
I’m a PC/Mac/RISC user. I have also worked with Amiga for years, still even owning couple of them. However, in the current situation, I really can’t see, what or who could be the target of the new Amiga?
RISC machines are nice servers. As well are PCs and Macs, which also are the best alternatives for a “desktop” computer. But Amiga? Besides retro gaming and hacking the HW/SW for kicks, I really see no market.
This whole on/off saga of Amiga feels like robbing Titanic. Not good, that is.
> However, in the current situation, I really can’t see,
> what or who could be the target of the new Amiga?
I would recommend to read or watch Alan Redhouse’s recent AmigaOne presentation. He explains very well where the involved companies expect to find profitable niche markets:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=355
These first solutions are mainly targeted at Geeks, AmigaOS fans and developers. Later new models are planned which should sell in much higher volumes and thus the price could come down significantly.
AmigaOS should offer a relative well performing, small memory footprint, modular and flexable solution. Such an OS could have many uses, i.e. for embedded uses as well.
@ Joe
The default appearance of AmigaOS4 is yet to be revealed and is being designed by some very competent graphic artists.
have i missed something but i thought the amiga died along with the spectrums when the pc came??
The PC came in 1981. The first Amiga in 1985. It can’t have died before it even existed on a prototype stage, can it?
so is this one of those fan things ??
Yes.
or is there mnew amiga hardware ??
Yes.
Oh, I want to believe. But I don’t think the new Amiga will be anything more to me than a hobby OS. Whereas, back in the day, the Amiga was light years ahead of the PC. (I feel very sad for you Americans and others who don’t know the Amiga).
If not, its not in the spirit of the Amiga at all, and a complete waste of time.
You can’t write decent games or multimedia apps on a non-accelerated framebuffer, and I imagine the lack of accelerated driver support for the consumer video hardware that people will expect to be able to use with their PPC-based Amigas will make the platform useless for anything you can’t already do just as well with Linux on an x86 or Apple box.
Maybe I’m wrong and Amiga has some custom graphics hardware ready to ship with their boxes, and maybe they have accelerated drivers written for NVidia,ATI, Matrox etc., but I doubt it.
Amigas strength was it’s hardware, the OS was useful but never it’s strongest feature.
Build an SMP-capable graphics workhorse based on 1GHz+ CPUs from commodity manufacturers with a 3-6GB/s crossbar-switch ed bus ala SGI Octane and OpenGL 1.4/2.0 implemented entirely in hardware with a desktop OS using this hardware accelerated API, multiple AGP graphics slots,Firewire and dual/quad-channel component Video/Audio I/O with hardware MPEG-2 compression, and make it cost less than $US1000 and you’ll have a ‘New Amiga’.
Anything less means they have nothing whatsoever.
“Maybe I’m wrong and Amiga has some custom graphics hardware ready to ship with their boxes, and maybe they have accelerated drivers written for NVidia,ATI, Matrox etc., but I doubt it.”
SciTech’s SNAP solution provides hardware accelerated support for 182 different graphics chipsets. So Amiga Inc. (or Hyperion’s) efforts in providing 2D accelerated graphics will be minimal. 🙂
http://www.scitechsoft.com/news/press/amiga_partnership.html
>
> Amigas strength was it’s hardware, the OS was useful but never it’s strongest feature.
>
I don’t agree. Amiga’s hardware became a boat anchor that
weighed the entire system down. The OS was great, but it
was locked inside a digital dinosaur that couldn’t be
easily upgraded (i.e. Zorro system bus, custom graphics
hardware).
“Amigas strength was it’s hardware, the OS was useful but never it’s strongest feature.”
I disagree with that. The OS is why I am still using Amiga.
The problem with the hardware is that its great strength was in analog video, which is now more or less dead technology. I don’t think any company smaller than Sony has the capital to produce a digital video workstation that is equally far ahead.
However, a good OS in conjunction with the best current hardware does have potential. Let’s see how the convalescent stage goes. It all depends on the availability of drivers.
If somebody does come up with some hardware that is well ahead of the pack, it will probably be easier to adapt AmigaOS to run with it than most OSes.
It is well documented and very modular.
The Hardware is what made people come to the Amiga…
The OS is what made people stay with the Amiga…
Now, there is almost nobody left on the Amiga…
Draw the conclusions…
Leo.
Yes, it most probably will. The OS4 developers are game developers. They’d probably like to sell games for their platform in the future.
have i missed something but i thought the amiga died along with the spectrums when the pc came??
Amiga came out after the PC, actually. Indeed, it came out about a year after the Mac, even. Amiga was a 32-bit system; you’re thinking 8-bit systems. Yeah, those died.
so is this one of those fan things ?? or is there mnew amiga hardware ??
Yes, to both questions. 🙂 But if you’re meaning to ask, “is there new custom amiga hardware ??” the answer is no.
Once there is a working system on modern hardware, the plan is to try to expand the market from there & make it not just a “fan thing”. 🙂
I think anonymous from tiscali.com is right. Amiga’s strength was it’s hardware. That’s why games often came first on the Amiga before other platforms (contrast with Mac and linux where pc games rarely come to those platforms). And the Video Toaster was a major selling feature of the Amiga. But the innovation died out and the first sign that told me Amiga would die wasn’t Commodore’s tax records. It was a picture of an Amiga 3000 in Byte magazine with only 16 colors running Unix. Macs were able to display 16 million colors. And of course now we have PC’s with radeons and geforce fx’s.
No doubt the original Amiga was a revolutionary system in 1985, however IMO both in term of hardware *and* software.
In term of hardware features including 4096 simultaneous colors, stereo sound, autoconfig, 2-button mouse standard, variety of screenmodes which are switchable without re-booting, etc.
And in terms of software/OS features like 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking, color GUI, long filenames, Y2K compliant, etc.
But if you think about it, the hardware is only as good as the software allows it to be and vice versa! In 1985 there were no Off-The-Shelf components good enough the fulfil the potential for a multimedia platform (i.e. for viewing a life-like photograph, having text read to you, genlockable graphics, etc), thus using a revolutionary new custom solution was the only option.
However today graphic (or sound) card manufacturers are highly specialized billion dollar corporations and offer very satisfying solutions and so it’s not wise or viable for companies like Amiga or Apple to try to compete with these highly specialized and powerful companies. IMO trying to work together with such manufacturers makes alot more sense. Mainly the OS will differentiate new Amigas for other platforms, so it’s needs to do better where other mainstream solutions fall short. IMO these areas include performance (lots of performance is often wasted by the OS)/software bloat/efficiency (also in terms of memory usage), flexibility/modularity, customization and transparency.