Quick Gary Hare IRC report, no more 3rd party AmigaOS after OS4.0.

[MskoDestny]

My interpretion of the comments made in the IRC chat is that Gary Hare's primary interest in Amiga OS is for some Internet enabled set top box or something of that sort.  Clearly, Amiga on the desktop is not a priority.  However, it would seem they have an interest in supporting the Amiga desktop as a platform as long as it doesn't cost them much.  Since modern set top boxes have a lot of the same OS needs as a desktop this isn't unreasonable (of course my set top box speculation could be entirely wrong).  This does mean that there will probably be very few advancements that benefit the desktop unless they benefit the set top box (or whatever market Mr. Hare has in mind) or they come from Hyperion.

Hyperion's role in the future of Amiga OS is not entirely clear.  The details of their agreement with Amiga Inc. have neve been made public.  Comments made in this thread and in the IRC chat seem to suggest that they have some legal ability to enhance OS 4 beyond the initial release.

[MskoDestny]

bhoggett wrote:
Everything about the Amiga scene - including AROS - seems frozen in time. Nothing has changed, nothing's moved on or evolved at all.

Saying that AROS is frozen in time is a little harsh.  Comparing it to molasses in January might be appropriate, but it is moving.  It finally has a TCP/IP stack and a working browser, the lack of which really limited my interest before and surely others were in the same boat.

[MskoDestny]

Waccoon wrote:
I'm the opposite, because architecture like OS4 is obsolete, and the idea of AA is promising, even if what they are doing with it is complete crap.

Are you saying that OS4 is obsolete compared to other operating systems or that natively compiled programs running on natively compiled operating systems are obsolete and we should all just move to Java or .NET?

I would disagree with both assertions.  While OS4 lacks some modern OS features (comprehensive memory protection, journaling file systems etc.) it's certainly not stuck in the stone ages.  It's unfortunate the new amiga.com site doesn't have those articles on the steps to modernize Amiga OS for version 4, they were a rather good read.

As for device independent stuff like Java and .NET, natively compiled programs will never go away.  Large applications  like Adobe Photoshop or OO.o take an unacceptably long time to start even on a 1.8GHz machine.  The Eclipse IDE is noticeably slowed by the fact that it's not a native application.  Java and .NET are great technologies and they have their place, but I don't see them taking over the world.

I don't see how AA is promising.  I don't see anything it can do that can't be done as well or better by its competitors.  At least OS 4 has a few competitive (lean, fast, runs system friendly 68K apps quickly and seamlessly, etc.) advantages even if they are overshadowed by other shortcomings.