Dammy, C-USA is not Microsoft. The idea you'd even remotely compare the two is appalling, regardless of your blind dedication to "the cause". The Kinect (and your facts are misleading about what you stated about the pre-order factor involving MS directly in a funds down deposit with MS directly) is a completely invalid comparison, and C-USA is not Microsoft.
MS has a worth of 44 billion dollars roughly, Dammy. MS doesn't have a pack of insulting, roving fanboys working for free as their ad department.
MS had a revenue of 16 billion dollars, Q4 2011.
==Duce, would you kindly please refrain from using such language? It is this sort of attitude that is getting us nowhere. I have not insulted anyone here or anyone else on any other Amiga site. I would hope that in the same spirit as fellow Amiga fans I offer this to you, would you
please refrain from saying such things (if we are to go somewhere with this thread)?
Honestly I don't know about you, but I could imagine if we at user level, are having such 'heated arguments' about what the next Amiga should be, you could imagine what it was like at engineer level trying to work out the Advanced Amiga. Everyone is running around like a headless chicken. I wouldn't be surprised if
this was the issue that caused Commodore to go down.....
Saying that, you have made some valid points earlier about CUSA that I couldn't deny. Yes we had heat issues with our machines…..at least I did with my early C64x Ultimate. And yes certain members who bought CUSA machines didn't have their questions answered, and I was a little bit annoyed by that. I'm not their staff so I do not know what the status of their support is like, but as fellow user I do try to help others when I can when they post something up on C-A.org.
However I will say that regarding the other unanswered questions, is if they are business-related (such as prior agreements/cancellation of projects with other companies) I do know they are not discussed openly by CUSA - this has been mentioned by Barry and Leo before. In this sense I do understand that CUSA has a right (like any other IT company) and acting like any other IT company, from refraining to disclose such information.
Now going back to the issue at hand (the new Amiga), there is certainly one thing I noticed from the recent Amiga Poll that was very startling that I found (amiga-poll.blogspot.com). And that was…..everybody is a PC user. Over 90% of the folks there who answered (including myself), was using a Windows PC for their day-to-day stuff….
Now if you go back to why the Amiga is/was no longer around…..you could say that is your answer. Because as users we have been in a way hypocrites…..we are loyal to the hardware and what it can do (for us), and not the brand. Otherwise why on Earth would so many have a Windows PC as their main machine today? If the Amiga was useful/successful, surely the poll would have reflected this?
Which brings me back to why I think Commodore failed the last time round…..
To be fair it wasn't Commodores fault…..it was because the majority market decided/realised that the Amiga's design was becoming too limited in the face of the x86 design. One thing that users couldn't do for sure was add/change a new graphics card in their system like you do in a PC. This, and the fact that the CPUs could be upgraded. I think these were the two killer points if you will, that killed off the Amiga, in addition to the PC already having an established software support base then…(which added another blow to the Amiga fan base).
Also one thing that differed the Windows PC with Commodore was this. If we look back at the 'success' of the 'Wintel' duopoly, ie. Intel and Microsoft, you will see that they 'built' upon their foundation, year on year. Every year the software or hardware that was produced by the x86 companies would be supporting the same platform. With Amiga however, Commodore first did it as 16-bit, then decided with the AAA/Hombre chipset to scrap its existing software/user base (like it did with the C64) and go onto completely different 32-bit/64-bit designs. This unfortunately I believe was the main reason why Amiga never survived. If you don't have backwards compatibility with your existing software base you lose market share…..
Going back to the question at hand, therefore I see that it is important that for the Amiga of tomorrow, we need to 'build' upon the foundations that is already here, not start afresh. What we do need to decide now on is, which one? At the moment two chipsets stick out for us at the moment, PowerPC and x86. 68k is not valid anymore because noone is making the chips anymore and it'll be hugely expensive to set up such foundaries again, so it is either one of the two. The question now is, what support base shall we work on?
To me, the answer lies with those who answered what machine they are currently using….(you guessed it, the Windows PC). Since it is now our favourite platform, how about going the full hog with developing AmigaOS/AROS on it? That'll clear up the 'decade old' question for good…..
