Some new Amiga OS 4 screenshots are here while session 13 with Fleecy is up too.
More Amiga OS 4 Screenshots; Fleecy Moss Q&A
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
My first computer was an Amiga 500, and GOD I loved it! But now I see only screenshts and stuff like that. Will there be a final version of Amiga OS 4? When? I would love to have an Amiga again!
Various well known classic Amiga titles including SnoopDOS and DirectoryOpus are shown running in these screenshots using the new highly customizable interface and anti-aliased fonts. 🙂
For today ‘AmigaOS 4 on Tour’ events are planned for Austria and Sweden.
http://www.oase.at/amigaos4ontour.html
Earlier this week I wrote a report of last week’s Swiss event.
http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=1&rev_…
Mmmm.
Looks tasty. Big improvement over the last couple of screenshots. It looks like they actually take people’s criticisms seriously
…but these screenshots of Amiga OS 4 look better than Zeta OS.
(or
if you’re an Amiga fan!)
Jared
Certainly seems as if Hyperion are taking notice of what people are saying and making efforts to improve. Maybe the tour was part for that? To get some final ideas on UI design/appearance before releasing it on the community.
Nice to see some of those gadgets are getting a once over. I seem to remember teh checkbox looking a little underdeveloped. Almost all the gadgets now look very nice.
one gadget i did have a problem with was in the first screen shot. Was a little large and clunky. Seemed as if it needed to be a bit smoother, but appart from that execelent job once more Hyperion.
Congradulations to the boys.
Why are they just cloning the UI of the old Amiga? I mean it was usable in 1987 but things have changed.
> Certainly seems as if Hyperion are taking notice of what
> people are saying
Certainly, although I believe it should be noted that the look was still said to be a ‘Work in progress’ at the time. Matthew Kille (GUI/Graphics designer) and Massimo (coder) deserve alot of credit for designing AmigaOS4’s new default appearance however. Note that it was important to create a default look as consistent as possible with the classic AmigaOS 2.x and 3.x’s default appearance.
I have interviewed Matthew @ AmigaWorld and his answers will give much insight regarding the issues he has to deal with while designing AmigaOS4’s default appearance.
http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=3&rev_…
> Almost all the gadgets now look very nice.
I like them too, although if some people don’t like them (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) note that all the gadgets, textures, buttons, etc, etc can be customized. The includes the width of Windows/Title bars, rounded/square/transparent/etc Menus, color gradients (gradient for any side) etc.
yeah it really starts to look good.
but i noticed BIG inconsistency:
On snap1.png, focused window, on the left side there is a list view and under it 4 buttons: Add, Remove, Up, Down. Up and Down are disabled, but in really ugly way (i mean gfx look of those two is ugly
. On the righ side of window, there’s Publisher popup list disabled, but in a much nicer way.
Well, it doesn’t matter which way of showing disabled widget i like more, what’s matter is that IMHO widgets should be showed disabled the same way.
also some buttons are gradient while others aren’t, but i don’t know their functionality – maybe it’s ok on Amiga to have some buttons look totally different way than others.
> Why are they just cloning the UI of the old Amiga?
Because it has been the default look for over a decade now and there a great legacy of very useful Amiga software. For the sake of consistency and as an effort to please current AmigaOS fans, something not radically different but much better looking nevertheless was chosen to be the default. Nearly everything is already customizable however.
For example many software titles use 3rd party solutions to draw the various GUI elements. For example the Triton GUI is used by MakeCD:
Triton: http://szeiger.de/amiga/triton.html
MakeCD screenshot: http://amigaworld.net/images/features/snap1.png
And for example AmigaOS4.0’s default webbrowser, IBrowse, uses a new (much improved) version of MUI.
MUI: http://www.sasg.com/mui/index.html
Earlier Ibrowse screenshot: http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/os4/shot4.html
So the GUI designer had to take into account the different appearances of 3rd party solutions as well.
@ Shard
Read my message above.
It’s because they use 3rd party solutions which (for example) do not support gradients yet. The designer has tried to enhance Amiga’s native GUI as much as possible while creating as less as possible inconsistency with 3rd party GUI kits.
I believe that in time most software titles will fully use AmigaOS4 to their advantage.
Dang… that was one helluva UGLY GUI! Looked primitive and amatureish! It’s any reason I stayed with an Atari ST, even though the system wasn’t as powerful or capable as an Amiga. GEM and the system case just LOOKED better and more stylish!
But AmigaOS 3.5-4.0 seem to have made AmigaOS look a LOT more professional and polished! Far better than GEM, nowadays, that’s for sure! 🙂
Screeenshot 2 was nice, but the other screenshots was too much like the old Amiga. The big ugly arrows on the drop down lists and the square buttons has to go.
The gradients are nice, but the shape of the widgets should be more like this: http://www.sasg.com/mui/index.html
> The big ugly arrows on the drop down lists and the
> square buttons has to go.
Newer versions of these software titles will probably use AmigaOS4’s GUI. The big arrows aren’t AmigaOS4’s default.
@ Luposian
IMO AmigaOS1.0 was rather nice for it’s time (i.e. in 1985 many OSes still used a CLI only). Although I agree that GEM’s deafult GUI looked more polished, but as an 80’s Amiga and AtariST user, I have always found the AmigaOS GUI to be much far more powerful and flexible.
Moss: “However, the most important reason is because a brand new, world class HTML rendering solution is one of elements of AmigaOS4.1.”
Hmm.
What is this beautiful font?
It’s Geneva of course. Unless they aren’t serious about bringing back the true Amiga….
My first Amiga 1000 … wooooooow!!! … I work hard to earn it with my 12 years… and I was the first in our town 😉
Yes, this was and will be the best times in my computer-life… hacking the phone line and browsed through mailboxes with my Amiga 1200 all over the world… installed my first 3.5inch harddisc into the 2.5inch bay of the A1200… coded in assembly Paula, Agnus and Denise with my Seka…
Haven’t had much applications because I was alone in town… but Marble Madness, DeluxePaint, A1000, Seka and the Hardware Reference Manual was my best friend…
But now, with Linux I have also a lot of fun… but never have this fun I had in the 80ies…
Love ya 4ever Amiga 1000, Lorraine and Jay Miner!
I agree. The computer experience has never been the same as my old Amiga 500. No computer system gives me the same feelings.
Heck, even KDE 1 or Windows 3.1.1 or something of that sort looks better than Zeta, no offence.
While the whole UI looks really nice, I just hate to nitpick on the icons. It looks nice too, but it doesn’t have much contrass with the background because they all a big dark shadow (those on the desktop at least). I also don’t like the dock (or whatever they call it) because it uses the same scratch metal look. It may be nice but its bevel effect is totally off plus it is generally inconsistent with the rest of the OS.
AmigaOS might have been the most brilliant open source OS, capturing the spirit of the original Amiga.
This current thing just doesn’t seem to have “the magic”.
The iconsystem in OS4.0 is unfortunately not very flexible. The icons are mostly designed for a grey background (as in the older shots), which is why they appear so dark. They don’t work well on black backgrounds either. The iconsystem allows only bitmap icons of a maximum of 256 colors and are stored in a proprietary format and can’t do alphablending.
This should however improve in OS4.1. Hopefully with 24 bit icons with alphablending or SVG icons. The specs aren’t known yet.
I look at OS4 as the first version of something new, like the very first MacOSX was. MacOSX has moved alot forward today since its birth and hopefully so will OS4.
@Michael:
So you want to make a contribution? 🙂
Contact Hyperion or Amiga Inc. about that.
Anyway, I don’t think so. Linux doesn’t have “the magic”, as you call it, too, even it _is_ open source. The people behind the OS4 project are all pure & true Amigans since years.
> AmigaOS might have been the most brilliant open source
> OS, capturing the spirit of the original Amiga.
AmigaOS has never been open source and I believe never will be. If you prefer something AmigaOS3.1-like, non-commercial and free (so without full time professional programmers, having families, needing to get paid) AROS would be the nearest thing. However if something innovative or extraordinary will ever be developed for AROS, there are no good reasons why this could not find it’s way onto AmigaOS as well, considering it’s open sourced.
The OS4 team could do only so much at a time and the internals deserved much priority. The icon system therefor has been left largely unchanged. The used glow icons are only slightly enhanced compared to the previous 3.9 release.
Note that there are many alternative icon sets available for AmigaOS with good icons up to 256 colors. More colorful icon formats will have to wait for future AmigaOS releases.
http://www.amiganet.org/NewIcons/
http://www.amigagames.com/gameicons.info/
http://zapatopi.net/icons.html
http://www.nowee.org/overshaker/
http://www.aminet.net/pix/gicon/index.html
@ rajan r
> also don’t like the dock (or whatever they call it)
> because it uses the same scratch metal look.
The texture is easily removed or replaced.
If that’s the case, why bother having shadows? Shadows only look nice with alpha blending, if there isn’t alpha blending, no shadows looks 100 times better. If 4.1 have support for alpha blending icons – then have light shadows for icons.
The texture is easily removed or replaced.
In that case, why not keep the whole UI ugly as it was half a year ago. I mean, it is customizable… Default is better off simple (like the rest of the UI) without any fancy textures, widgets and whatnot. If people really like brush metal, isn’t it easy for them to customize it that way?
> In that case, why not keep the whole UI ugly as it was
> half a year ago.
I don’t think keeping things “ugly” is a good idea.
Keeping things simple would IMO be a better choice of words and personally I often prefer to have no distracting textures (like i.e. MacOS X). For example I removed the default AmiDock (old version, far less advanced) textures when I did my AmigaOS XL review:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=604&page=6
The Dock also allows fully transparent backgrounds, so solely with thin borders or no borders or dragbar at all. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I was lamenting Amiga not being open source as there are many developers who might have contributed to one central effort vs. going off and making their own thing or doing something else.
Open source is not the requirement… but it does help get everyone involved as it opens up the playing field. Open source provides a real view into what is happening. Otherwise, most of what you get is spin and marketing.
As an outsider, I cannot even see what hardware there is to run AmigaOS. Some sites say a dongle will be required to run the OS which doesn’t sound very “Amiga” or “good karma” to me. Other sites say “G1” hardware. And there is talk of “G2” hardware as well.
When it comes to looking at the OS on the “tour”, there is no information easily seen on the Amiga website on US dates and info. There is only Europe and the main focus seems to be on selling t-shirts and mugs.
http://www.oase.at/amigaos4ontour.html
Only by remembering one of Mike Bouma’s earlier posts was I able to dig down to the Sacramento Users Group and find the dates for the Sacramento OS 4.0 tour:
http://www.sacc.org/amiwest/index.html
I also notice from the Amiga website, the “OS 4.0” page has not been updated since 1/15/03:
http://os.amiga.com/os4/
On the OS itself, it seems like there are many great features being put into it. If they all make it, OS 4 will be a big step towards bringing the AmigaOS up to date with the hardware of today. It is difficult to tell what is in or out from the OS, though. Some of the stuff on the features list says “OS 4.X”.
Overall, it seems that Amiga could benefit from people who can organize material and put it up on the website in a timely manner. If Amiga were to put up a visible “help wanted” advert, it may work wonders.
At this point, I can only hope AmigaOS 4.0 is doing well and will be as interesting as the Amiga 1000 was, so many years ago.
smurf975 wrote:
> Why are they just cloning the UI of the old Amiga? I mean it
> was usable in 1987 but things have changed.
You obviously don’t remember the 1987 look.
Looking good
> I was lamenting Amiga not being open source as there are
> many developers who might have contributed to one
> central effort vs. going off and making their own thing
> or doing something else.
If developers want to do work for free on developing an AmigaOS-like effort, then there’s already AROS. If you look at other open source efforts (apart from only Linux) they are generally far less productive than commercial efforts. For example the AROS project was started a decade ago and still isn’t on par with AmigaOS3.1, the OS it intends to clone.
IMO for many reasons, including the system security ones, I greatly prefer closed source development of operating systems and other security sensitive software. I believe having many part-time hobby developers normally results into a less quality product than those developed by fulltime developers. Sadly with Windows vs Linux this isn’t always entirely true, but I believe that has more to do with the devotion and dedication (or better said a lack of) by developers working for this company. (better examples are the huge scala of commercial applications and games)
> As an outsider, I cannot even see what hardware there is
> to run AmigaOS.
Like can be found at the Amiga website.
Initially classic Amigas equiped with PPC acceleratiors (first Cyberstorm and much later after the AOne version, a Blizzard version is planned) and AmigaOne motherboards will be supported. Any PPC hardware company wanting AmigaOS for their hardware (and capable of proper support) can acquire an Amiga license.
> Some sites say a dongle will be required to run the OS
> which doesn’t sound very “Amiga” or “good karma” to me.
You will not notice anything of any dongle as its fully transparent (and not present for classic Amiga systems). Similarly as classic AmigaOS, AmigaOS will only run on Amiga licensed hardware. However the new AmigaOS is now far *less* tied to its hardware and this opens up alot of 3rd party possibilities and also does not require a special kickstart ROM anymore (although this will still be an option). For the rest, AmigaOS4 and beyond based systems will use ordinary off the shelf components.
The reason for the transparent dongle for AmigaOne systems is simple. Later unlicensed (by Amiga) Mai boards will be sold in addition to licensed AmigaOne boards and will not include AmigaOS nor license payments bundled. The boards will be cheaper as a result (no Amiga royalties to pay to Amiga developers for their efforts) and piracy could become a concern. To deal with this concern a hardware dongle is present to make sure that AmigaOS interested individuals will actually buy licensed hardware. This intends to make sure AmigaOS4 developers are being paid the cash they have worked so hard for (feeding their kids, paying for housing, paying pension funds, etc).
> When it comes to looking at the OS on the “tour”, there
> is no information easily seen on the Amiga website on US
> dates and info.
The ‘OS4 on tour’ events are currently only planned for Europe and is organised by usergroups and Amiga dealers.
> Only by remembering one of Mike Bouma’s earlier posts
> was I able to dig down to the Sacramento Users Group and
> find the dates for the Sacramento OS 4.0 tour:
The show was announced by Amiga as well. When the actual show date comes nearer more information will become available.
> I also notice from the Amiga website, the “OS 4.0” page
> has not been updated since 1/15/03:
> http://os.amiga.com/os4/
You are looking at the wrong page. That’s the feature-list and if you look closer you will notice even this page has been recently updated. For the latest AmigaOS4 *news* turn to:
http://os.amiga.com/
Feature lists normally don’t get updated every week or so.
> Overall, it seems that Amiga could benefit from people
> who can organize material and put it up on the website
> in a timely manner.
A new better organized and more easily to navigate website will be launched when the new Amiga products are launched. No outside help is required, stay tuned.
It costs $1400 in round numbers ($1395) for a G4-based Amiga.
AmigaOne G4-XE
Custom Configured System @800MHz
* 256MB RAM
* Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM drive
* 52X24X52 CDRW
* ATI Radeon 7000 64MB and TV Out graphics card
* Sound Blaster Live audio card
* 2 USB Ports
* 10/100 Ethernet Built In
* HD Floppy drive
* 3-Button Mouse and Keyboard
* Debian Linux and UAE included with free upgrade to OS4 (while supplies last)
http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=ca…
It makes Apple machines look cheap! For $1300 in the Apple world, you get a G4 Powermac:
1.25GHz PowerPC G4
1MB L3 cache
256MB DDR333 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
Maybe it would make sense for Amiga to port AmigaOS to Apple machines, do essentially what Yellow Dog is doing. It would give Amiga easy access to great hardware — and at cheaper prices than what the Amiga hardware world can offer. Imagine AmigaOS on the G5… 🙂
With some luck, I’ll get over to the show next month and see what’s really going on. I hope there are cheaper G4 machines to be found.
I believe it’s hardly a surprise that Amigas will initially be alot more expensive than Apple hardware. It’s simply because of economics of scale. A product sold in millions (like Mac) will have it’s development costs covered earlier than a product expected to be sold in thousands initially (like the AmigaOne).
But upgrading a classic Amiga to PPC specs, like many thousands of Amigans did in the past is even far more expensive, with much lower resulting specs! So this is already a great step forward for the platform.
> Maybe it would make sense for Amiga to port AmigaOS to
> Apple machines, do essentially what Yellow Dog is doing.
YDL is Linux and the development costs for this very small company isn’t really that high and not really an important competitor to Apple. For AmigaOS4 more than 25 manyears have been spent on advancing the OS to the next level and the companies involved do not want to become dependent on Apple. Apple isn’t very receptive towards potential competitors, especially one which would ephasize some of MacOS’ weaknesses. I believe AmigaOS4 would demonstrate how slow and bloated MacOS X (and Linux) really is and I don’t think Apple are too anxious for this to happen. 😉
They still remember the past when Amigas ran MacOS faster than real Macs, while AmigaOS totally outperfomed MacOS on the same hardware while offering more powerful features including pre-emptive multitasking.
Former Apple engineer/Be Inc Founder Jean-Louis Gassee, reminiscing about Apple in the mid-90s, said, “When the Amiga came out, everyone was scared as hell.” (Interview with Mr. Gasse in Amazing Computing, Nov. 1996)
Keeping things simple would IMO be a better choice of words and personally I often prefer to have no distracting textures (like i.e. MacOS X)
I would say I agree 100% with you (oh look, outside the window, a pig is flying!)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
True. However while some (okay, a lot of) people would like brush metal, having it inconsistent with the rest of the UI is IMHO a stupid idea. If they want to keep the AmiDock (is that the right name?) brushed metal by default, then change the rest of the OS into brush metal. Of course the more preferable solution would mean removing that texture and having the same grayscale look elsewhere in the default UI.
Looks very good already. 🙂 Keep up the good work folks!
Isn’t it funny though, Bouma, that the Pegasos is so much cheaper than the AmigaOne, despite having more features?
> Isn’t it funny though, Bouma, that the Pegasos is so
> much cheaper than the AmigaOne
No we must use a different definition of funny.
The development costs of the Pegasos1 haven’t been covered by a long shot, else the prices would have been alot higher (especially considering the low sales), that’s for sure.
bPlan was in financial difficulty before they decided to fuse with Thendic, thus I guess the resulting company Genesi sees the current loses as an investment into the future.
However what could be considered “funny” is that *many* more AmigaOne motherboards have been ordered than Pegasos motherboards, even while including the ones which have vitually been given away for free (or at very little cost) in exchange for demos, reviews and other kinds of press coverages. In total little over 600 have been sold.
> despite having more features?
The AmigaOne and Pegasos motherboards are roughly very similar, the AmigaOne has some features the Pegasos does not have by default and vice versa. The cheaper 600 Mhz model AmigaOne motherboard, similarly perfoming as the current top model Pegasos board isn’t being sold anymore.
http://personal.inet.fi/cool/pekosbil/a1benchmarks.htm
Judging from the amount of sales one could say that most of the current customers consider the AmigaOne’s future ability to run AmigaOS4 legally as its most important feature!
Its funny that the Pegasos is not made anymore.
Any way well done for being the first to bring the Other side into a clean thread.
Its funny that the Pegasos is not made anymore.
Thats not exactly true, a batch was produced *very* recently – and they’ve gone already.
In total little over 600 have been sold
In total little over 600 were made…
The next version is due in September in rather more substantial numbers. in the mean time G4 upgrades are on the way.
@Mike Bouma
> In total little over 600 have been sold.
Actually not *really* sold to end-users. There are still a few of them which are still to be sold in the “Pegasos blowout”. Some of them are even pre-April2 unfixed & buggy boards.
At least all AmigaOnes have revised versions of the ArticiaS.
Many of the Pegasos boards have been given away for free to OS Groups like BSD etc. or to sites like OSNews.
There is literally tons of Mac hardware out there that is not moving, is not adapting, is sitting there for use by something good.
At this count, for all the Macs ever sold (over 25 million, maybe as high as 35 million), only 7 million of them are on OS X. Certainly Apple is having their problems.
Just as Linux made a name for itself by letting people use old PC’s for something useful, why not AmigaOS for Mac?
I would much rather buy a Mac and run AmigaOS on it rather than deal with specialized hardware that has no “fall back” to MacOS or a better-known Linux distro (YDL).
While I appreciate Amiga’s desire to remain independent, supporting the development of world class hardware is exceptionally expensive and Amiga does not have the resources to be both a software company and a hardware company.
It would make sense to utilize a large source of G4 machines — and that’s millions of new potential Amiga users. Amiga will not sell millions of AmigaONE motherboards… ever.
So with AmigaOS on Mac hardware, you get access to already built millions of machines. Access to many developers who already own a Mac. What’s not to like? Apple is not going to go to any lengths to stop AmigaOS from running on old Mac hardware. It’s the user’s hardware anyway. Apple has not made problems for YDL. They wouldn’t make problems for AmigaOS.
Hey Nicholas 😎
> In total little over 600 were made…
Isn’t it correct what Giovanni states, that the boards aren’t even sold out yet at the dealers? I guess the original statement made some months ago regarding that all boards had been sold out completely meant sales or shipment to dealers (or something similar) at that time, right?
Maybe with the recent price drop ‘extension’ to non-Phoenix Consortium members the boards are now actually all sold out?
> I would much rather buy a Mac and run AmigaOS on it
> rather than deal with specialized hardware that has
> no “fall back” to MacOS or a better-known Linux distro
> (YDL).
YDL already runs on AmigaOnes as well. And MacOS X can be run (currently only through Mac-On-Linux) legally (AFAIK) in European countries on alternative hardware, if you own a Mac already (i.e. a PowerBook).
> Amiga does not have the resources to be both a software
> company and a hardware company.
They partner with 3rd party hardware manufacturers. Sadly Apple is unlikely to want to become a viable hardware partner for AmigaOS4 (they will also need to take care of support), else I believe Amiga and their software partners would love to work with them and significantly enlarge the potential market.
> Amiga will not sell millions of AmigaONE motherboards…
> ever.
I believe that’s a premature statement. For example most people originally would never have imagined what has become of Microsoft nowadays. And with some luck our Earth will still have a lifecycle of another 5 billion years before the Sun swallows it. So who knows what is going to happen in the future.
Seriously though, I believe there’s still alot of potential for quantity sales (with the new AmigaOne higher volume boards planned) for server farms, the STB market, Kiosk systems, entry level AmigaOne homecomputers and for other niche markets:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=355
> Apple is not going to go to any lengths to stop AmigaOS
> from running on old Mac hardware. It’s the user’s
> hardware anyway.
There are various old Power Mac configurations out there and it will take considerate effort to properly support all this hardware, even if Amiga and their partners get access to all the full hardware documentation.
Before going on such adventures Amiga and their partners need to know if there is enough interest to cover the development costs or better yet to make a profit.
Personally I would like to see Apple Powerbooks supported as well and therefor I recently started an interesting poll:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/xoopspoll/pollresults.php?poll_id=16
It seems that only a very small minority of potential AmigaOS4 buyers are interested in seeing the Apple PowerMac / eMac / iMac supported… So IMO, unless there will in the future be evidence of a significantly viable market for AmigaOS4 here, this is not a good road to follow…
>YDL already runs on AmigaOnes as well. And MacOS X can be >run (currently only through Mac-On-Linux) legally (AFAIK) >in European countries on alternative hardware, if you own a >Mac already (i.e. a PowerBook).
This is good for AmigaOne. At least there is some confidence that the board will not become worthless in a year.
>They partner with 3rd party hardware manufacturers. Sadly >Apple is unlikely to want to become a viable hardware >partner for AmigaOS4 (they will also need to take care of >support), else I believe Amiga and their software partners >would love to work with them and significantly enlarge the >potential market.
Again, I hope the Linux model can be used. Linux runs on a well-established hardware platform and support is available from many sources, not just the hardware vendor.
Even with the AmigaONE, I don’t believe there is any real support from the manufacturer(s). And outside of the motherboard, it’s all PC generic hardware anyway. I doubt ATI is supporting Amiga users on the Radeon 7500.
>I believe that’s a premature statement. For example most >people originally would never have imagined what has become >of Microsoft nowadays. And with some luck our Earth will >still have a lifecycle of another 5 billion years before >the Sun swallows it. So who knows what is going to happen >in the future.
“Man” or those in control of “Man”, will fuck up the earth far before the Sun. But this is a rather big tangent… for another time.
I’m not trying to be negative, just realistic. Accprding to the link you posted, there are only “max” 10,000 Amiga A1 people out there. To grow this number, I would assume you’d want to do the work to support more hardware. And supporting existing hardware is far easier, cheaper, and faster than making new hardware. It’s putting pragmatism ahead of creative ego which is difficult for most techie types.
>Seriously though, I believe there’s still alot of potential >for quantity sales (with the new AmigaOne higher volume >boards planned) for server farms, the STB market, Kiosk >systems, entry level AmigaOne homecomputers and for other >niche markets:
Server farms require more and more sophisticated designs these days. And lots of fancy support software. I wouldn’t focus on that market first unless I had a super good price/performance/cheap to run chip. Apple is phasing out their G4 servers as G5’s are coming soon. So the G4 will have a taint on it as “old”.
I don’t know what the “STB” market is, but kiosk systems may be something that an AmigaONE-style system works well in.
>There are various old Power Mac configurations out there >and it will take considerate effort to properly support all >this hardware, even if Amiga and their partners get access >to all the full hardware documentation.
Again, it is far easier, cheaper, and faster to support existing Apple hardware than it is to build all new hardware. Maybe if you switched off of PowerPC and onto AMD or Intel, this wouldn’t be the case. However, with PowerPC you don’t have many choices.
>Before going on such adventures Amiga and their partners >need to know if there is enough interest to cover the >development costs or better yet to make a profit.
Open source… would have handled this. Just like YDL on Mac. It would have never happened in a closed source environment. You have no idea how many interesting possibilities are passing you by because of Amiga’s insular approach.
>Personally I would like to see Apple Powerbooks supported >as well and therefor I recently started an interesting >poll:
Ha, finally the truth be known 🙂 Yep, the Powerbook would make a great Amiga platform! 🙂
>It seems that only a very small minority of potential >AmigaOS4 buyers are interested in seeing the Apple PowerMac >/ eMac / iMac supported… So IMO, unless there will in the >future be evidence of a significantly viable market for >AmigaOS4 here, this is not a good road to follow…
I find this hard to believe. Most potential Amiga owners would rather pay more money for significantly worse hardware? I am stunned. If you have such a fervent market segment, by all means, just increase prices even more as they will buy it, right? You don’t even have to do anything except increase the frequency of the G3/G4 50Mhz or so every year. You are set!
The current eMac and iMac are both superior to the AmigaONE. The G4 Powerbook would be a great Amiga platform. And the G4 and G5 Powermacs are miles ahead of anything Amiga will turn out for a while. Dual 1.25Ghz G4’s? Dual 2Ghz G5’s?
Why not run on modern/good/better value hardware? Especially when Mac buyers could boot into AmigaOS for fun stuff, leaving the slow bloated world of OS X behind for a while?
An OS is only as popular as the hardware it runs on. If you make something good, why cripple it by supporting only a small custom expensive motherboard? It took Apple many years to realize price is important. Hopefully, Amiga won’t have to learn this the hard way as well.
>Judging from the amount of sales one could say that most
>of the current customers consider the AmigaOne’s future
>ability to run AmigaOS4 legally as its most important
>feature!
When is this actually going to happen? November 2001? First quarter 2002?
Moss: “However, the most important reason is because a brand new, world class HTML rendering solution is one of elements of AmigaOS4.1.”
I sure hope there’s something real behind this statement, because it’d be a shame to dampen enthusiasm for the AmiZilla project unless Amiga, Inc. really does have its own browser on the way. I suggest that, lacking specifics, fleecy’s statement deserves skepticism. It’s curious that in spite of its clearly limited resources, Amiga, Inc. would choose to reinvent the wheel with a “brand new … solution” behind closed doors rather than just go the most direct route with support for one of the current open-source options. As Don Cox said, the Amiga platform doesn’t need “a world-class solution,” it just needs something that supports current standards.
— gary_c
It’s really funny that Amiga makes such a big deal over wasting tons of time, energy, and money on the AmigaOne motherboard when they could have picked a standard popular Mac model and gotten millions of working computers instead — for LESS time, LESS energy, and LESS money.
They could have leveraged work the YDL people have done to adapt Linux to the Mac platform and gotten AmigaOS running on excellent hardware. A long time ago.
The same “we’ll do it all ourselves” thing is happening with AmiZilla. Amiga could get a good browser for less time, less energy, and less money than writing the whole thing themselves. It is a major effort to make a browser, even if you did what Apple did and copy some source code from KDE. Instead, AmigaOS has to wait for a browser. How long? We don’t know. Amiga management is busy killing off enthusiasm to get a good, standard, working browser with their vaporware announcement of “OS 4.1” and the “FleecyWeb 1.0” AmigaHTML browser.
It seems to be very clear Amiga has a massive NIH complex and it is like a brain tumor, growing like crazy, intent on killing the host.
It’s the OS that matters, not doing everything else yourself! Open it up and let the ashes of the Amiga community have a chance to one day turn into a phoenix.
Thank you, I’ve been saying the same thing for ages.
I guess that’s why I like Genesi’s MorphOS/Pegasos solution. Genesi is actively recruiting solution providors to cover the various holes that one will find with any new platform. From games (EPIC) to the web browser (Voyager) they looked externally in order to get things going sooner rather than later.
@ Micheal
> At least there is some confidence that the board will
> not become worthless in a year.
Worthless? Why? Many people don’t consider their classic Amigas to be worthless after over a decade of usage and few improvements and even few support.
> Even with the AmigaONE, I don’t believe there is any
> real support from the manufacturer(s).
Of course there is. Full hardware documentation from Mai is available to the AmigaOS4 team. Eyetech (takes care of the hardware support) and the AOS4 team work in very close relationship with Mai (with Mai even hiring Hyperion to write the AmigaOne BootROM, port linux to the hardware and introduce them to potential partners).
> I doubt ATI is supporting Amiga users on the Radeon
> 7500.
Again the hardware documentation is available to the AmigaOS4 team. (Hyperion [3D], Forefront Technologies [2D drivers for classic PPC equiped Amigas], SciTech Software Inc [2D AmigaOne systems])
> I’m not trying to be negative, just realistic. Accprding
> to the link you posted, there are only “max” 10,000
> Amiga A1 people out there.
That an initial *home user* estimate for the current line of AmigaOne boards only.
> Open source… would have handled this. Just like YDL on
> Mac.
Open source isn’t some miracle cure for everything. What works well for Linux does not per se have to work for AmigaOS, else AROS and the dozens of other non-Linux based open source projects would have all gotten alot further.
One reason why Linux does relative well is because there are big companies like IBM and Sony investing lots of cash into Linux development and research. Other open source OSes incompatible to Linux (i.e. largely non POSIX compatible) generally don’t benefit that much from this fact (i.e. AROS, OpenBeOS, etc).
> I find this hard to believe. Most potential Amiga owners
> would rather pay more money for significantly worse
> hardware?
I believe people are just being realistic regarding the future of AmigaOS. If the AmigaOS4 team would focus too much on Apple hardware, they will become more and more dependent on what Apple does. If you remember how Microsoft was able to crush most of the competition without much effort in the past, then it’s not hard to imagine that for Apple this would even be more easy, because they actually own the hardware platform (unlike Microsoft).
Michael wrote:
> They could have leveraged work the YDL people have done to adapt Linux to the Mac platform and gotten AmigaOS running on excellent hardware. A long time ago.
People said the same thing about BeOS on Macs and the response from Be was that they couldn’t base a commercial product on undocumented hardware. Yes, noncommercial group of coders could get Linux running on Macs and not be targetted by Apple, but apparently Be thought Apple would have a different reaction if Be tried it (maybe especially in view of who was head of Be, Inc.). I don’t know if Apple would have any legal recourse if Amiga, Inc. tried to sell an OS for Macs, but it’d be easy enough to kill Amiga-on-Mac technically if Apple wanted to. This isn’t the sort of dependence/vulnerability that companies like to build into their products, or investors like to fund, so it’s easy to see why Amiga, Inc. wouldn’t pursue it.
That being said, Genesi staff have talked about a “MorphOS trojan horse” in the form of a CD with that OS and a game or something, that boots on a Mac. I’m just mentioning this to point out a contrasting approach. I’m not sure how legal things compare, but it’s interesting to see the difference in attitude.
> Amiga management is busy killing off enthusiasm to get a good, standard, working browser with their vaporware announcement of “OS 4.1” and the “FleecyWeb 1.0” AmigaHTML browser.
Fleecy mentioned how supporting AmiZilla would amount to support “a competitor” since the browser produced would be available to both OSs. It’s odd that Fleecy would find the situation threatening when the Genesi people don’t, but that’s Fleecy’s call, I suppose. My opinion is that at least one reason why Amiga, Inc. isn’t publicly supporting the AmiZilla project, which is a fund drive, and instead talks about unnamed “brand new solutions” is that the company simply doesn’t have any money. It’d be embarrassing to say they support the idea but can’t afford to contribute anything to it, so one way to save face is to talk about some future alternative instead.
> It’s the OS that matters, not doing everything else yourself! Open it up and let the ashes of the Amiga community have a chance to one day turn into a phoenix.
I guess they’re hoping to receive income from the OS by licensing. If this doesn’t pan out, and if AmigaDE is still considered the company’s real cash producer, and if the company is still in business if and when the present course is proven to be a dead-end, then open-sourcing AmigaOS might be an appealing option. But by the time these questions are answered, there might be different people to talk to (Hyperion Entertainment) about the future of AmigaOS.
— gary_c
> I sure hope there’s something real behind this statement
Of course! 🙂
As with all current Amiga projects there are 3rd parties involved and thus goes beyond the development force of Amiga Inc alone.
That’s one of the strong points of the Amiga community! I do support the AmiZilla effort however as IMO having more quality options available to the platform is better.
> I guess that’s why I like Genesi’s MorphOS/Pegasos
> solution.
LOL, that hears so amazing coming from a Genesi employee!!!
> Genesi is actively recruiting solution providors to
> cover the various holes that one will find with any new
> platform. From games (EPIC) to the web browser (Voyager)
> they looked externally in order to get things going
> sooner rather than later.
And the Amiga team will not when their product is available? BTW the list of planned games for AmigaOS4 greatly outnumber those planned for MOS. Also IBrowse is currently considered to be the best overall Amiga webbrowser available and will be the default for AmigaOS4.
@ gary_c
> Fleecy mentioned how supporting AmiZilla would amount to
> support “a competitor” since the browser produced would
> be available to both OSs. It’s odd that Fleecy would
> find the situation threatening
He doesn’t state that he finds this threatening at all, that’s like putting words into his mouth!
Maybe he thinks it does not make good business sense considering Amiga will have a good solution available for it when AmigaOS4.1 is available already and this will thus be of more benefit to rivals.
> It’d be embarrassing to say they support the idea but
> can’t afford to contribute anything to it, so one way to
> save face is to talk about some future alternative
> instead.
It’s simply an issue of conflicting interests. BTW, you act as if Genesi has invested truckloads of money into the AmiZilla project! AFAIK the Genesi team has invested a total summ of 0 dollars so far!!
Mike wrote:
>> Fleecy mentioned how supporting AmiZilla would amount to
>> support “a competitor” since the browser produced would
>> be available to both OSs. It’s odd that Fleecy would
>> find the situation threatening
> He doesn’t state that he finds this threatening at all, that’s like putting words into his mouth!
Fleecy does in fact say:
“We will not contribute to the cause because it is a third party effort and also because if the rules of the project are correct, then we would be supporting potential competitors as well.”
http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=14
This is what I mean. Genesi doesn’t mind “supporting competitors” by funding third-party applications but Amiga, Inc. does. Which position reflects confidence?
— gary_c
Mike wrote:
> Maybe he thinks it does not make good business sense considering Amiga will have a good solution available for it when AmigaOS4.1 is available already and this will thus be of more benefit to rivals.
Yes, maybe so. If there are capable coders willing to work for love of the platform alone, to produce something that already exists for the porting, then it’s possible.
> BTW, you act as if Genesi has invested truckloads of money into the AmiZilla project! AFAIK the Genesi team has invested a total summ of 0 dollars so far!!
You’re right (re: “so far”). I’m afraid I can’t comment publicly about any plans for support.
— gary_c
You seem to interpret Fleecy’s full answer in a different way than it was intended:
Fleecy: “I think it is another great example of the Amiga community in action and putting its money where its mouth is to improve and extend the platform. We will not contribute to the cause because it is a third party effort and also because if the rules of the project are correct, then we would be supporting potential competitors as well.
However, the most important reason is because a brand new, world class HTML rendering solution is one of elements of AmigaOS4.1.”
IMO the folowing can be interpretted from the statement above:
1) He gives moral support and credit to the Amiga community for the effort.
2) There are conflicting interests.
3) Amiga has its own solution in the pipeline, which of course deserves priority at this stage (including funding).
It does not mean they don’t support 3rd party projects, in fact there will be a contributions directory on the AmigaOS4 CD where 3rd parties can i.e. contribute demos of their commercial applications and games.
It goes without saying that funding of the AmigaOS4 team’s efforts has priority above anything else.
Mike wrote:
> It goes without saying that funding of the AmigaOS4 team’s efforts has priority above anything else.
Amiga, Inc. has no part in the funding of AmigaOS4, as you know. This is Hyperion’s project, which Amiga, Inc. has authorized via license. Since Amiga, Inc. was funded AFAIK to pursue AmigaDE-related projects, it’s unclear to me what part the company can play in anything related to the desktop. I don’t recall Fleecy actually being specific about this in any of the questions-and-answers, though he has made references in general, future-oriented terms, with the browser statement being a good example. Public records make it pretty clear that the company is in no position to offer anything beyond moral support to any project development, given its current financial situation. This is partly why I am skeptical about the things in the works that Fleecy alludes to.
— gary_c
> Amiga, Inc. has no part in the funding of AmigaOS4, as
> you know.
Again you have no access to factual data.
I want to point out the following statement made recently by Hyperion’s managing partner, which may caution you with regard to your personal opinions formulated as facts:
Q: What happens if the IP that Amiga, Inc. owns fall into others hands … will you be able to create an AmigaOS beyond OS 4.0?
“Yes. Our contract is very clear about that. Having said that, there is very little chance of that happening. Certain parties are hoping for the demise of Amiga Inc. but Hyperion has tangible evidence that this is not going to happen any time soon.”
Ben’s reaction a troll regarding this tangible evidence:
“You are making a fool out of yourself, only you don’t know it yet.
Rest assured that I would never make such a statement without firm evidence.”
Topic: New Screenshots and Fleecy Q&A
Not “my competing product or company is so much better” stuff, unless truly directly relevant.
Mike wrote:
> > Amiga, Inc. has no part in the funding of AmigaOS4, as
> you know.
Again you have no access to factual data.
I want to point out the following statement made recently by Hyperion’s managing partner, which may caution you with regard to your personal opinions formulated as facts:
Are you suggesting that maybe Amiga, Inc. *is* funding AOS4? Surely not, because you know they have other more pressing obligations. True, I don’t have access to Amiga, Inc.’s books, but their debts and payments in arrears are a matter of public record in the State of Washington. So please don’t imply that my speculations are groundless. The alternative would be far more problematic for Amiga, Inc.
And yes, I believe I am on topic here since I am responding about Fleecy’s latest questions session. I mentioned another company only to illustrate a constrasting approach.
— gary_c
gary_c, people know you are one of the main cheerleaders for that company. This thread is not about that company, I find your behaviour and that of Nate childish.
Now, I imagine this AmigaOS 4.0 is able to run the old Amiga apps? Like “Pipes” etc? (you know, the Amiga sequencer, it was excellent..)
BTW, what’s the matter with that “steel” background? Does anyone even like that crap? I saw it in Gnome, and I know exactly 0 people who like it.
> gary_c, people know you are one of the main cheerleaders for that company. This thread is not about that company, I find your behaviour and that of Nate childish.
I mentioned “that company” to illustrate an attitude that contrasts sharply with that of Amiga, Inc. in regard to AmiZilla support, which is directly related to the news item — the question to Fleecy and his answer about AmiZilla support. See the connection now? There’s nothing childish about using contrasts for analysis, which I hope you realize. Most of what I’ve written here, if you look back at it again, directly speaks to Amiga, Inc., activities and attitudes, so I’m afraid your attempt to silence by insult is inappropriate.
OK, sorry again to neutral parties for having slogged through this mire again.
— gary_c
>> Genesi is actively recruiting solution providors to
>> cover the various holes that one will find with any new
>> platform. From games (EPIC) to the web browser (Voyager)
>> they looked externally in order to get things going
>> sooner rather than later.
>
>And the Amiga team will not when their product is >available? BTW the list of planned games for AmigaOS4 >greatly outnumber those planned for MOS. Also IBrowse is >currently considered to be the best overall Amiga >webbrowser available and will be the default for AmigaOS4.
Games are not apps nor utilities, last time I checked.
And the IBrowse included is a shareware browser. To actually use it for more than 30 minutes at a time the person that has already shelled out cash for their OS will have to shell out more to simply web browse.
I doubt that Hyperion are going to include the time limited version of IBrowse Nate. Yes it won’t be the full version but it will not have the 30min limit of the plain shareware version.
> Isn’t it correct what Giovanni states, that the boards aren’t even
>sold out yet at the dealers?
The Pegasos 2 was announced but there were more in the channel than we thought, the result was the infamous “Osbourne effect”. The Summer sale is to fix this and it’s working. Apple are doing much the same thing with the G4s right now.
>I guess the original statement made some months ago regarding
>that all boards had been sold out completely meant sales or
>shipment to dealers (or something similar) at that time, right?
Probably orders.
>Maybe with the recent price drop ‘extension’ to non-Phoenix >Consortium members the boards are now actually all sold out?
I think there’s a few still left but they’re dropping rapidly.
Why? Thinking of ordering one 😉