swoslover wrote:
In a utopian amiga society what could os4 have achieved?
If we are to imagine it being accessible on x86 hardware.
Do you think it could have brought some semblance of a return to the mainstream for the Amiga, admittedly not the late 80s early 90s glory days but something more akin to the late 90s perhaps.
I know its probably going to be shot down. However, I do feel that amiga as a brand name has more legitimacy amongst the casual computer user than even linux, but then those people are probably content with windows. Do you think this area could have been exploited even in small numbers?
Secondly is it too late for os4?
OS4 never had a chance at the mainstream. It was an idea that came way too late, and with the death of the PPC as a mainstream desktop, or laptop CPU, OS4 became even more of a dead end.
OS3.1~3.9 and beyond has more chance of a return using WinUAE, or E-UAE than OS4 does and that return will not be mainstream, it will be a retro movement.
As stated by others, an OS must have applications and basic items like a decent web browser. No users = no money for developers = no applications. Hundreds of interested users is just not enough. But if it ran on thousands of devices already out there and was released at a small cost then at least it would be in the hands of enough people to generate perhaps the kind of numbers that make developing for it cost effective again in a small way.
As for the Amiga brand name meaning anything anymore, you must be kidding. Almost everyone using a computer today in their home has heard of Linux, but probably less than 1% know what an Amiga is. You need to get out more me thinks. :lol:
And lastly "is it too late for OS4?", probably, but like I said above, if it were released on all PPC Mac models and maybe the PS3, it might generate enough sales of OS4 to pay for further development to port it to x86 and x86-64. If not, I think it is essentially dead.
