AmigaONE X1000 Sale Ends 7th January 2014

[OlafS3]

As I understand it the price of the Cyrrus boards will be not much different (cheaper) compared to X1000. The price will not come down as long as it is not produced in bigger volumes and I cannot imagine that this will happen because it is risky for A-eon. More propably they will produce small batches as it happened with X1000 but this does not make the cost/unit lower. And a volume of thousands for such a expensive device? Trevor should have paid for a port to f.e. ARM or develop a cheaper and better system that attracts more users. New overprized computers make no sense to me. And for which market are the new Cyrrus-Boards? Most AmigaOS-fans who have the money and were willing to spend have already bought one. Perhaps some will replace the X1000 with the new Cyrrus and some will buy it additionally but how many are that?

[OlafS3]

What ARM chips were available in 2009 for them to build a board around and it would still result in an expensive custom board and it might cost more to add things like PCIe which I suspect isn't common on the ARM platform today let alone in 2009.  Would those 2009 ARM chips still be readily available today and at what price?  Would it even be faster than a Sam460?

I do not talk about X1000 and 2009. I did understand to a certain degree that Trevor wanted to create the X1000 as fastest possible AmigaOS system. But I do not understand why creating another expensive successor.

But at the end it is only hobby  :-)

Happy new year 2014 to all

[OlafS3]

I think you miss the point. We have 2013 and there is plenty affordable and good hardware at every corner. It makes no sense to produce custom hardware today as long as it not offers advantages compared to what is available. I understand that you like f.e. X1000 because you can earn money in opposite to MorphOS running on used Macs or AROS running on standard hardware but it still makes no sense if you want to create a market again for amiga software.

What Haywire propably means (saying it a little hard with "greed") is meaning Hyperion is not changing its strategy as long as they think they can make money with the community, only if people would not only moan about it but making it clear that they will not buy new PPC hardware and accept certain things like paying extra for drivers the companies involved would rethink their strategy. Of course rethinking could also mean dropping.

I make the prediction that MorphOS will change hardware in future (I do not know of course if 2014 already), propably to X64. So AmigaOS will finally left behind. I do not think if it is a good strategy to perhaps react if it is too late for a change. But on the other side it would be a really continuation of the past :-).

BTW happy new year

[OlafS3]

I still think the biggest problem for Amiga OS4 on whatever board it runs on (as well as MorphOS) is the software. I've had a Sam (and own a Mac Mini/MOS machine) for a short period of time. It is ton of fun setting things up, downloading software, organizing things and all that. But once the dust has settled there isn't much to do, mostly due to the lack of decent software. I guess if you are a developer you will get the kicks from coding your own stuff, but in the end, as a user, although using an Amiga OS machine is fun, it is an end in itself.

Where is the software? You know, things that make computers productive? And I don't mean ports of open source software which I can already download (and run many times better) on my PC. I am talking about new, original software that would make an Amiga experience a complete one. Things like DTP, office, music, web etc... (yes, commercial).

To conclude, I think that there are the Amiga hardware companies out there are concentrating too much on making hardware while not investing anything in software.

Just my 2 cents.

For commercial development you need a market (big number of users) and to win new users you need a OS that offers advantages (or at least makes people curious) and you need cheap hardware. For example Aeros on Raspberry now slowly comes to a state where it is interesting for Raspberry users (including new software like Magellan and the new OWB hopefully soon). If you force people to buy new expensive hardware without having any advantages compared to what they already use it will not work. The same is forcing people to buy used old hardware to test it. Cheap options and at best offering the chance to use it on existing hardware is the way to go. If there would be at least demo-versions that would run on X86 (perhaps as blackbox) the chances would be higher. At the moment it is a pure retro thing for the few interested.

[OlafS3]

What I think most people miss, is that it would take a massive coordinated investment for an alternative OS to gain any kind of market these days.   A modern example would be ChromeOS.   Even with Google's large pot of gold behind it (and a forward thinking radical concept), it's only just starting to gain some market share.   Another example is Windows, MS is having to sink $$$ into it just to try and stop the bleeding.

If AmigaOS/MorphOS were ported to x86 and given away free as an new year's gift they would still remain an extremely niche hobby OS.  

Everything is going cloud-based and controlled via touch screens (or something even more radical), the OS itself is moving to the background with the Apps taking center stage.

It depends on how you define "market" here. For me "market" means big enough to justify commercial development (means you can live by selling). That is far lower than trying to compete with mass markets like Windows or mobile area. If AROS f.e. could become a interesting option on Raspberry this would propably already multiply the number of users and thus making it interesting for f.e. game developers. It would be far off from Windows (or Mac, Linux...) still.

[OlafS3]

Just stop, Please. x86/arm is not a possible nor viable. You simply don't know what you are taking about.  "zero angineering costs"

It is perfectly possible to manufacture cheap (30-50€) PPC mobo, it would just require big quantity like 10-20 000 boards. Typical life cycle of x86 mobo is short, typically they run just one batch of them.

Luckily you can choose Aros to your hobby OS.

Yes who will do the run and take the financial risk for such a large PPC batch?

[OlafS3]

What I think most people miss, is that it would take a massive coordinated investment for an alternative OS to gain any kind of market these days.   A modern example would be ChromeOS.   Even with Google's large pot of gold behind it (and a forward thinking radical concept), it's only just starting to gain some market share.   Another example is Windows, MS is having to sink $$$ into it just to try and stop the bleeding.

If AmigaOS/MorphOS were ported to x86 and given away free as an new year's gift they would still remain an extremely niche hobby OS.  

Everything is going cloud-based and controlled via touch screens (or something even more radical), the OS itself is moving to the background with the Apps taking center stage.

cloud? You mean "NSA"-certified?

What we need in future is a new desktop for tablets. I do not see iPhones (or similar) replacing desktops.

[OlafS3]

How can AmigaKit be making a massive profit when the costs of producing and distributing them are so high?
AmigaKit make very little out of the x1000. The Cpu and taxes alone account for most of the price tag.

Say what you like about whether you like their strategy or not, but saying they're making a massive profit is doing them a big injustice and moreover entirely wrong.
I really wish they did make a massive profit though. I really wish anyone at all could make a massive profit from the Amiga market.

Propably not. I assume that Varisys makes the most profit from it. Nice little extra business for them propably (and for Hyperion).

[OlafS3]

Did Trevor said that he actually pays every X1000 he sell? So no profit? Was it in Trevor's blog?

he makes certainly some profit. But most is certainly for Varisys. But we will never know. Anyway too expensive. But as I already wrote... its a hobby. So if people really need it and can afford to buy they shall buy it. It is not interesting to me personally.