Glaucus:
>Oh give me a break, the A500 wasn't all that
>exciting either but they called it an Amiga and it
>sold like crazy! Aside from it's OCS chipset, it had
>nothing really going for it
But that's the point. The OCS made the Amiga 500 insanely exciting at the time. It was far better than anything else on the market, hardware-wise (affordable home computer market). The Amiga was synonymous with excellent hardware as well as an excellent operating system. It was truly innovative and "ahead of its time".
Are you really claiming that the Amiga 500 was not an exciting piece of technology when it came on the market? Insane. This is exactly what the Amiga was about. Excellence and elegance. It had the best technology and "therefore" the best software. And that is why it sold.
The AmigaOne, on the other hand, is not particularily excellent or elegant. Compared to the current computer market, it is expensive and underperformed. Since this clearly is the case, the point I was trying to make was that perhaps we shouldn't try to associate the name Amiga with this mediocre hardware anymore and instead rely on its strengths such as the operating system and perhaps, if one chooses to think so, the AmigaDE.
Calling a mediocre piece of hardware (and I do appreciate their work in creating it) Amiga just to make it a bit more interesting is, in my opinion, potentially harmful for the trademark in the long run. Short-sighted thinking. Why not just have different names for various standard PPC boards and then have an AmigaOS run on them - and if we must use the name Amiga on hardware, reserve it to some special designs that excel in other merits such as things like the new iMac or many things the Apple does - they use standard hardware too, but at least they preserve their trademark qualities by making it unique in other ways.
The AmigaOne, well, even if it has been created with the best of intentions is a mediocre piece of hardware that is expensive and full of yesterdays technology compared to other competitors in the home computer market. Associating the name Amiga with that may help it in the short term (since the hardware is nothing interesting at least it has an interesting name), but may hurt the name Amiga in the long run...
Do we really want people to think yesterdays expensive hardware in a standard PC box when they hear the word Amiga?
Unlike AmigaOS, which clearly needs to go through its natural progression and that will take time and certainly they need to release something in between until they reach something competetive with modern operating systems, there is no need to call the Teron board an Amiga other than to make a selling point. The problem is, it also means that people will perceive it as the new Amiga and judge it as such - and I'm afraid that won't do the name Amiga any good.
Please re-read my post on page 1 of this thread and try to understand my point. It is not meant to discredit any of the people working on these products, but to discuss the potential implications using the name and how people will perceive it.
