@ Defender of the Faith
>I think your post illustrates quite clearly why Amigas will never be a success again.
I might argue the same for your reply. I thought you were a Defender of the Faith.
> Far too many people are stuck with the 1985 mentality, and believe that attempting to turn
> the clock back will bring back success. The idea that there will again be custom
> microcomputers that revolutionise what is available on a desktop at low prices is
> laughable, as is the thought that people would once again get tied to the custom hard to
> expand system mentality of 20 years ago.
Far too many people?? So you're saying that people that will back me up on this and this is a bad thing.
I think you're missing the point of my post. Its not about the hardware, its about the feeling of the platform that is the differentiation to new CONSUMERS not the current userbase. The reminiscence to the microcomputer era when computers were fun and exciting are a MAJOR draw. Its what the market has lacked for quite some time.
The stagnation of the PC market I believe counters your point in that people aren't as interested in going faster as they were before(at least until MS releases its next version of its bloatware). We've reached a speed usability threshold.
Power users care about speed, but not everyone else does if the speed of the processor is irrelevant to the thing they want to do. My whole point is that provided a system is usable and looks like the latest thing I don't need to upgrade. Tell me what the average user needs speed for these days? I know it sounds like a dumb question, but the fact of the matter is that speed has reached an acceptable level where everything is possible. AOS will be zippy enough even on hardware that is behind. The natural advantage is that the Amiga doesn't have bloatware slowing it down.
Apart from 3d games why do I need to upgrade?
That's the PC mentality you're falling into. The Amiga should not be trying to be a PC, it should be trying to be a leisure computer. A multimedia device that hides the fact that it is a computer. It should hide all its geek stuff except for those that are interested. I was discussing a consumer device, the quad G5s are for the current userbase, we can't expect newbies to fork out that much, without giving them a taste first.
> The success of 20 years ago was to a large extent due to the favourable conditions and lack > of real competition. PC's were a joke in terms of gaming or animations and they cost an arm and > a leg. Elsewhere there was only the ST or the 8-bit micros to worry about. A market ripe for
> the taking.
An Amiga branded slick multimedia consumer box does not exist at the moment. It is a market ripe for the making too.
> Not so today. You won't beat PCs for price, and most likely not for performance, software or > games either. Without massive investment in R&D, you won't beat them on technology either.
You have missed my obvious point. WE DON'T NEED TO!!! We need to combine the various features into a single unit that are seamless in a way they aren't on PCs.
> Living in the past won't make Amigas great again. Something fresh, visionary and innovative
> is needed, and the need is to look to the future for answers, not the past.
You have to face facts. The Amiga is a famous retro platform and you need to cash in on what it did best. There are new innovative things we can make it do, in terms of what I already discussed, which are harder to implement on a PC desktop. The complexity of the PC desktop is what we should be avoiding in a consumer version of the Amiga. We can play games like the consoles too, but provide much more in terms of usability. The consoles are always going to undercut us as does the PC hardware. The answer is not to compete in their markets. There is a niche market opening up, and along with the goodwill towards the Amiga it is ripe for the taking, and its a pity you can't see it.
