Tomas wrote:
Cause then there would be absolutely no exsisting software, and it would take much longer time to both port software and the OS to the x86 platform.
You should take a look at Aros, since it is pretty much a os 3.x clone and is even open source aswell.
Everyone seems to dodge the issue here -- OS4 just wouldn't be as
interesting on PC hardware. Face it -- most of what AmigaOS can do
has been done on those systems, and this leads to "BeOS syndrome;" Nth to market, some compelling features, but not enough to differentiate...
PowerPC gives you the small advantages that help make it an Amiga. Lower power, the endianness is right, code is marginally more portable, you can point to the d*mn thing and say that, even if it's overpriced, "This is an Amiga." There's a lot of value in that if you can manage to make money off it. Then, when you
do take advantages of the differences in hardware (Altivec, extra registers, reduced latencies in places that go over my head
), you have something concrete to point to that can't immediately be reproduced by the competition (well, except for Apple, but these days, they probably already had it anyway)... and you can hope for any other miracles that just
might put you light-years ahead of the competition again, as much of a snowball's-chance that may be.
Hey, Amithlon and OS XL should exist (barring legal issues, of course). The same thing for the PPC OS should exist, if people want it -- this isn't the Apple scene, there should, in theory, be a way to get this stuff done without throwing lawsuits everywhere. Heck, I'll say it: even MorphOS should exist, in whatever incarnations it took (all that, and it comes down to #$%#ing MUI?) -- though the initial EULA concerns and so forth were to be an expected cost-of-doing-business with that. OS5 on x86 should exist, if anyone's still banging away on ISA abstraction -- that'd be light-years ahead, though it seems it'll take that long for Fleecy to get the rest of the design docs beamed into his head from Cygnus A. :-D
...But OS4? On x86? Hey, it's called Windows 98, and I hear it runs Amiga emulators pretty snappily, too.
Where's the fun in that? Demos, hardware banging? There's already
V2...
On the other hand, if you pick a different pony, there's at least that slim, slim chance you'll find an advantage of the sort that can't be co-opted in the competition's next point release... and if you're throwing money down the hole chasing something ridiculous (A new AmigaOS? Are you out of your mind?), might as well do it in a way where there's possibly, maybe, just
hopefully the slightest possibility you can win.
If you didn't read Slashdot today,
there is a snowball's chance. (Hmm, now what scene could be more familiar with coding for bizarre hybrid architectures?)
