Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Dandy on October 23, 2006, 07:45:33 AM
-
On the DiscreetFX - news page (http://www.discreetfx.com/News.html) it is said that they want to try to buy AInc next year.
What do you think of it?
-
My first though it "here we go again..."
--
moto
-
My thoughts exactly moto. It's nice to see that companies believe in the Amiga, but I've got a feeling of "another year, another owner".
-
And good luck to them I say. At least we'll get regular updates.
As you'll no doubt know, DiscreetFX's boss is frequent contributor to this and other Amiga forums.
JaX
-
And the best way to do that is anouncing it in the press.
No, I don't think they are serious about it, or they are bad strategists.
greets,
Staf.
-
@Fats
Not my idea, the investors insited this be made public to keep the Amiga community in the loop. If it was up to me I would have not announced it yet.
-
The Investors.
Who would that be.....and why on Gods earth would they want the community to know about it. The community has never been considered by an Investor before and I am sure that an Investor would not even know what an Amiga is/was.
-
Amazingly in the current console business, you have alot of developers mentioning old Amiga development and porting of old Amiga games.
So while "this" Amiga community, that refuses to get with the times, is irrelevant to any potential new owners, the development community as a whole has a long and fond memory of the Amiga market.
That's where the value lies. In re-establishing a brand. And if they were smart, they would drop the bane that is "back-wards compatibility". IMHO. Just throw in a port of UAE and forget about it. Heck throw us a bone and maked all classic hardware and software knowledge public domain so that alot of these "garage" hardware projects can take off.
The future is in OS 4 and beyond on as many platforms as possible, not the ancient hardware.
-
Magic-Merl wrote:
The Investors.
Who would that be.....
A famous celebrity from Chicago. (http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3387&start=60#44909)
:roflmao:
-
@Pyromania: and what 'size' of investment this celebrity is planing ? 10, 20, 50, 100 million USD ?
-
The community has never been considered by an Investor before and I am sure that an Investor would not even know what an Amiga is/was.
From what i understood, atleast one of these investors have been into amiga and newtek videotoaster in the past, so it is simply not true that they dont know what an amiga is.
-
A famous celebrity from Chicago.
Is Ted Danson from Chicago??
-
out of comments are we? , i wonder why on earth people here (and other forums) is mocking what discreetFX just did, yes they said they where interested in buying AmigaInc.
i would say good luck to pyro and the investors and i know i will back it when and if it happens but until then i rather just stay quiet.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
-
I bet its Michael Jordan.
-
@lempkee,
i wonder why on earth people here (and other forums) is mocking what discreetFX just did
Well, the OP asked "What do you think?", so apparently these responses are what people think. Not everyone feels that a direct question like that is a reason to keep quiet.
But aside from the pointlessness of announcing a plan to maybe try to buy AInc. (hey, maybe *I'M* going to buy AInc in TWO months!), I think what really put the announcement over the top were statements like the following.
"I want to help bring the Amiga back to it's former glory in new IT markets".
Even the original Amiga never made inroads in new IT markets. Obviously there was no IT niche there in the past, and there especially isn't one today when practically every IT niche has already been filled. This is a good sign that the whole thing is hooey, or would just turn into more hooey. New boss same as the old boss.
"If an agreement can be reached between Amiga Inc. and DiscreetFX the return of Amiga will be amazing."
As someone else on these forums said, amazing how? On a more fundamental level though, WHY does there need to be a "return of Amiga"? What is it that's so wrong with the original Amiga that there has to be a "return"? Can't anyone appreciate the Amiga for what it is: the best computer of it's day?
-
lempkee wrote:
out of comments are we? , i wonder why on earth people here (and other forums) is mocking what discreetFX just did, yes they said they where interested in buying AmigaInc.
i would say good luck to pyro and the investors and i know i will back it when and if it happens but until then i rather just stay quiet.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
My only problem is that they announced this before even getting a reply from amiga. Normal practice for companies is to first make the deal and then afterwards make a press release.
I also wish them good luck and i believe the guys at discreetfx are okay.
-
Can't anyone appreciate the Amiga for what it is: the best computer of it's day?
I see nothing wrong with having high plans for it. And i personally would like to see Amiga being the best computer of the present even though i think it is highly doubtful. I have never been satisfied with either a pc or a mac and i want again feel like i did when using a amiga during the peak. I do not care so much about wether it is called Amiga or not though.
The Amiga is just not the hardware either, but also the OS. The only OS that came close"with exception of amiga clones" in my opinion was BeOS, but sadly it never took of.
-
I think we know that what made the Amiga special and successful in its niche was the hardware/software compatibilty with an ordinary television.
The Amiga was a very advanced computer for its time ;it suffered from poor mangers who failed to push it in its own strengths and insisted on trying to stuff IBM or Apple compatibility in a rather pointless exercise.If only all the money and talent had been spent pushing the unique Amiga video/gaming and making busines software that would exchange data with the others if needed we might have seen the A5000 with AAA chips etc.
We don't expect every tool to do every job;we even have sports cars for pleasure driving,trucks to haul heavy loads and the do-all vehichles always turn out to do a less than satisfactory job. Do we watch TV on a toaster oven?
So why must ONE computer do everything?
Why not a business machine AND a totally different fun machine?
Since the U.S and other major television markets are being forced to digital and great advances in other computer platforms video have been made,there really is no advantage I can ascertain.
As for multi-tasking,the PC either does it or simulates it well enough to fool most people.
My Amigas are an exercise in nostaglia and stubborness.
I really don't see how Amiga can be anything unique hardware but may have a future as an alternative OS.
I wish whoever owns the Amiga success and hope SOMEBODY will PUT OUT SOME PRODUCT.
-
I think that is great! Maybe they will do *something!!!* with it and we may actually see AOS 4.x lol
What needs to happen is a company with ambition and $$ needs to buy A Inc and then hire Dave Haynie to develop the next Amiga!
:devildance:
-
@Pyromania
There is alot of potential in this opportunity.
I was in the process of leaving Amiga just currently........but you have renewed my interest :-D
I might stick around for a few.
My services are at your disposal should you aquire AInc.
-
"I want to help bring the Amiga back to it's former glory in new IT markets".
Even the original Amiga never made inroads in new IT markets. Obviously there was no IT niche there in the past, and there especially isn't one today when practically every IT niche has already been filled. This is a good sign that the whole thing is hooey, or would just turn into more hooey. New boss same as the old boss.
The hell it didn't!!! I'd most certainly call video editing, titling, 3D effects and such a massive leap forward back in the early 90's... Any TV studio with half a brain used Amigas... Special effects shops like Foundation Imaging used them (without whom Lightwave would not be the 3D powerhouse it has become). I dare say ALL of todays multimedia has roots on the Amiga.
No IT niche?? Better look again.
DiscreetFX is rooted in our community, thus even *I* have high hopes for what could happen should they gain control of the Amiga IP. NO ONE who's touched it since the death of C= has had any kind of roots in Amiga... This would be a welcome and hopefull change.
WHY does there need to be a "return" you ask? For the same reason we still use our Amigas, and even emulate them. Because back in the late 80's and early 90's we considered our computers (Amiga, Mac, PC, Atari, et al) to be FUN...
How many of us out there with our modern systems find them to be ANYWHERE NEAR as much fun as it was back then? I certainly don't. Even the wonders of dual-core 64-bit processors, clock speeds into the GHz range, hard drives approaching the 1TB capacity mark... It doesn't compare to my time spent tinkering with my 8088/12MHz with an AMBER SCREEN, and spending my days at the TV station playing with Video Toaster.
Makes me wanna dust off one of my 486's and play Duke Nukem and Commander Keen, while listening to MODs on my A4K.
One suggestion I would make to DFX is considering some form of partnership with AMD and nVidia, in the hopes of creating a totally new and innovative (RISC based) computer with multimedia capabilities worthy of the Amiga brand, and full cooperation with Hyperion for the future of our beloved AmigaOS.
-
What needs to happen is a company with ambition and $$ needs to buy A Inc and then hire Dave Haynie to develop the next Amiga!
I doubt Haynie would get envolved, again. If he did, it would be something very specific for the AV market, or continue on his interest in robotics. At this point in the desktop computer business, why reinvent the wheel when you can already buy high performance tires, today?
Dammy
-
why reinvent the wheel when you can already buy high performance tires, today?
Because always there are a better way to make the things
-
@Thomas
Personally I think the amiga is the best computer of today, but not for any delusional belief it's going to take over the world (which would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath). It might not have the power or capabilities of your average modern PC or Mac but somehow I never got any pleasure out of those systems.
I know it's just sentimental nostalgia but I find PC, macs et al just tools for a job. There's no fun to be had in using them at all, usually quite the opposite I've found. But bizzarely, when I get the chance to actually use any of them, I still get a blast from using my amigas.
-
One question that puzzles me is how currently Amiga Inc does make money ?
A company must have profits for keeping itself alive, right ?
Is Amiga Inc having profits ?
I ask because I don't know :)
And if true, I don't know how.
If it doesn't, why another company would buy it ?
-
JaXanim wrote:
And good luck to them I say. At least we'll get regular updates.
As you'll no doubt know, DiscreetFX's boss is frequent contributor to this and other Amiga forums.
See how long that lasts after the whackos on here and other forums start pestering them.
I seem to remember that, once upon a time, Fleecy was a regular contributor to the forums, as were the Frieden brothers, who now only occassionally post on AW but have long since been scared away from here.
-
dammy wrote:
What needs to happen is a company with ambition and $$ needs to buy A Inc and then hire Dave Haynie to develop the next Amiga!
I doubt Haynie would get envolved, again. If he did, it would be something very specific for the AV market, ...
In case you mean "audio/video" with AV, DiscreetFX is in this market, if I got that right.
dammy wrote:
...or continue on his interest in robotics.
Back in the early ninetees when I was trained as an CAD-Organizer I had to deal with robotics as well.
Really interesting stuff!
Back then an x86 PC with an reasonable 3d-CAD program was much too expensive for me to buy just to be able to exercise myself in constructing at home after school, so I ran DynaCadd (best 3d-CAD app for the Amiga ever) on my trusty old A500.
It was slow, but it worked.
As I also had an Vortex ATonce286 classic fitted to my A500, I was able to run a tool on Windows 3.1 (monochrome) that could convert the data of the 3-d models I constructed
into an CNC-file.
If I only had had an possibility to connect to an CNC-lathe or an CNC-milling machine, I could even have used my A500 for manufacturing the parts I constructed!
Just imagine:
A unaccelerated A500 driving an FMC (flexible manufacturing cell) back in 1991/92!
At school - on our UNIX workstaitions - this was most fascinating: You constructed e.g. an shaft in 3-d, pressed the button - the data was converted to CNC data and sent to the CNC lathe.
A robot took a moulding blank from a magazine, clamped it to the maschine, choose the apropriate tool(s) for the lathe and two minutes later the readily manufactured shaft fell off from the back end of the maschine...
And I was fascinated that I could do nearly all that on my unaccelerated A500 - I was just missing a way to connect to CNC-maschines and the software to operate them...
dammy wrote:
At this point in the desktop computer business, why reinvent the wheel when you can already buy high performance tires, today?
Quite true, but - to stay with your example - I'm still looking for a way to fit those "high performance tires" to my Miggy (a A4000 with CSPPC meanwhile)...
-
@Dr_Righteous,
The hell it didn't!!! I'd most certainly call video editing, titling, 3D effects and such a massive leap forward back in the early 90's... Any TV studio with half a brain used Amigas... Special effects shops like Foundation Imaging used them (without whom Lightwave would not be the 3D powerhouse it has become). I dare say ALL of todays multimedia has roots on the Amiga.
No IT niche?? Better look again.
The things you mentioned aren't related to IT, or perhaps your definition of IT is at odds with what IT actually is. I didn't say that the Amiga wasn't the start of what we call multimedia today, nor did I say that it wasn't embraced by video production shops. DiscreetFX said that they would be aiming for IT markets, not video production or other creative markets which have traditionally been the focus of Amiga.
-
@Dandy,
I'm still looking for a way to fit those "high performance tires" to my Miggy
If that's a picture of you in your avatar, I'd say you know a thing or two about performance tires!
-
@jorkany
When we say IT markets it includes all Tech, video editing, cell phones, animation, titling, Etc.
-
@jorkany
jorkany wrote:
@Dandy,
Dandy wrote:
I'm still looking for a way to fit those "high performance tires" to my Miggy
If that's a picture of you in your avatar, I'd say you know a thing or two about performance tires!
Yes - it is a picture of me and my "dreamcar" (since 1966, when I was a nine year old boy)! On September 19th in 2005 I had the unique chance to drive one out of the 101 remakes of this legend for Europe here on our testing course at Ford`s "John Andrews Research and Development Centre" here in Cologne-Merkenich (where I work as a SysAdmin/Application Programmer)...
On this page (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=23530) you can find some more info on this:
Dandy wrote:
...
Too sad that I can't have the original size of the photo as avatar - you would be able to see the big grin on my face after I got out of this rocket on wheels...
Well - I put the photos on my website:
GT40-1 (http://www.angelfire.com/de3/piecemaker/album/GT40-1.jpg)
Note the barriers at the gate in the background:
There was no need to open them - the GT is flat enough to pass them
closed - a *real* "Low Rider"...
GT40-2 (http://www.angelfire.com/de3/piecemaker/album/GT40-2.jpg)
GT40-3 (http://www.angelfire.com/de3/piecemaker/album/GT40-3.jpg)
GT40-4 (http://www.angelfire.com/de3/piecemaker/album/GT40-4.jpg)
[/quote]