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This article includes many exclusive pictures, 5 new AmigaOS4 screenshots and some exclusive AmigaOS4 information. Within the first section of this article I will try to give some relevant background information about the history of new Amiga products. Then sections will follow regarding the new PowerPC based Amiga hardware platform, the new AmigaOS4, how users can contribute and finally I will write about the potential niche markets for new Amiga systems.

According to a brief paragraph on MacOS Rumours Apple may be switching to IBM POWER4 CPUs instead of the Motorola G5 for future Macs.

libferris is a virtual filesystem (VFS) that runs in the user address space. This means that applications using libferris will use the shared libraries API to access the filesystem which may then delegate to the kernel using libc to perform the desired actions. Operating in the user address space allows libferris to mount things that one would generally not want the kernel to mount. For example libferris mount Berkeley database files, ftp sites, XML files, rpm files, sockets, sysv IPC, mysql databases and remote computers using ssh as a filesystem.

Six Degrees is a remarkable new piece of software for Mac OS X and Windows. This article describes my experiences with the application and discusses some of its implications for the future of all software.

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.

You may have heard of Sun Microsystems' StarOffice which is being offered as a viable and cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office. Openoffice.org is the open source (or, free indefinitely) cousin of StarOffice. Staroffice used to be free as in you can freely download and install in as many computers as you like but Sun Microsystems has recently decided to charge for Staroffice. However, please do not fret as Openoffice.org will always be free and we are going to show you in this article how and why Openoffice.org instead of MS Office and StarOffice is for you.

One of the early GUI operating systems for the PC, that is still being developed today, is GEM, an operating system that was originally created by Digital Research in the early 1980s. GEM was described as providing a Mac like GUI for the PC – long before Microsoft Windows 3.1 or 95. Today GEM continues to be developed as FreeGEM and old and new versions of the GEM OS and GEM applications can be downloaded for free (see links below). The history of Digital Research and GEM is quite interesting, as GEM had the potential to become the "Windows" (or Mac) of the PC world.

The software-only company Amiga Inc. has published a marketing document outlining how it will sell AmigaOS4, which will run on third party POP-based (PowerPC Open Platform) hardware. Now, however, the open hardware seems to become artificially closed.

"A group of self-proclaimed civil libertarians have launched an effort to create an OS and a set of applications that prevent computer eavesdropping and data collection, even by government agencies. The new open-source OS, dubbed "M-o-o-t," will ship in the form of a single CD_ROM that you can boot on popular PC hardware platforms. The CD-ROM will contain the OS and a set of applications that includes an email client, word processor, spreadsheet program, graphics program, and other unspecified software." Read the news at WinInformant.

"Does anyone really know what "object oriented" means? Does the phrase signify anything, or are the words just strung together because of an historical misnomer? One thing is clear. No one understands what the phrase "object oriented" means when they first hear it. While it does appear to be a juxtaposition of two ordinary words, its meaning does not jump out at you." Read it at CobolReport.

Kyocera are hard at work to release their first PDA product. The Pocket Cosmo runs Personal Java 1.2 on top of the Elate operating system from Tao Group Ltd. This will allow it to run programs written in Java faster and using less memory than other PDAs, which usually run on a Windows, Palm, or Linux operating system, according to a statement.

The release of Apple's latest hardware offerings this month has caused quite a stir among Apple loyalists. This is only Apple's second foray into creating a truly dedicated server machine, the first of which being the "Network Server 500/700", which Apple sold in 1995 running AIX. The question on everyone's mind now is going to be what this means for Apple's prospects as a server platform. Certainly everyone agrees that the new machine looks nice, but how will it on the duties it will be required to perform. Furthermore, what kind of price/performance ratio is Apple offering when compared to the current group of servers.

There have been rumours spreading regarding a new graphics chip being developed at Matrox, which will put them at the forefront of State-of-the-Art 3D graphics technology once again. Recently this specs sheet leaked out on Matrox' website, according to TechNation. Interestingly Ben Hermans, the manager of the AmigaOS4 project stated, that they have seen this new technology at work and it severely outperforms nVidia's current top offerings. It is expected it will still take around two months before "G1000 graphic card" solutions become available to the general public. My Take: Together with ATI they might be able to finally break down the current anti-competitive nature of the graphics industry, regarding alternative OS driver support.

In a Suite101 editorial John Chandler writes about Eyetech's upcoming AmigaOne PPC motherboard and that these will be open to alternative operating systems other than AmigaOS4 as well. The hardware design and availability should be as open and non-exclusive as possible. Hopefully many alternative OS developers/supporters will view the PowerPC Amiga platform as a safe heaven out of reach of current OS monopolies.