Positive message!

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I've not posted for a while (getting on with real life and playing with my new Mbed and Arduino microcontrollers), but I thought I would share my view of the tech world right now, a quick look at what is coming our way in the next 12moths is really exciting, and should make you happy no matter what computing platform you prefer!

AROS finally moves on the the 68k as a complete system, very exciting for me as we can then use UAE with no copyright issues! Classic hardware gets an oS upgrade

AOS4 is getting a PPC classics version, again something to look forward to!

MOS is pushing ahead on the PPC Mac platform, so a nice cheap supply of hardware there!

MacOS X is merging the iOS and OSX lines... I guess we should see the next generation of user interfaces grow from this.

Windows, Steve Balmer has gone on record to say that the next version will be the most innovative yet (ok, Microsoft have said that before each Windows release), but with proects like MinWin and the need to get a differential in the OS Market, we could see something pretty cool come from this!

Not sure what the Linux/BSD crews are up to, but the fact that they are still here and major hardware vendors are activly supporting them, this has to be good news!


Obviously the AROS and OSX/iOS news are the big ones for me as those are the two I use/play with... But as you can see there is pretty much good stuff all around

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And queue the who cares about windows/macosx/linux, this is amiga site, posts
 
I for one agree with these thoughts. Computing is getting exciting again

I forgot to mention Hiku and Symbian/Meego etc (I have to my shame perhaps, included Android in the Linux, point)... There is so much happening right now, it does feel a bit like the 70s/80s again

If anyone here took the time look at the hobby microcontroller boards, there are some really powerful devices around to be had for a few quid, with complete cross platform (Mac/Linux/Win) development environments! Ordinary users can write their own RTOS on their own hardware platform... Indeed I have, and it's fun

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They have OSS ATI drivers that are finally worth a damn

No more messing with binary blobs that only worked with very specific configs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinWin basically stripping Windows back to the kernel and using a layered approach to add components... So simply put, making Windows a bit more like *nix

Yeah, I've seen quite a bit of hardware support for the open source OSs of late, and that is a VERY positive thing for everybody

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@AppleHammer

Arduino is just a nice complete development package, it uses C++ and a custom I/O library all wrapped up in a multiplatform package... My attraction to it was the USB link and MacOS development tools. The AVRMega328 mcu is a great and very cheap little microchip, that I have no reservations about using in a project.

The mbed is a bit of a dark horse... The development platform is web based so, no Internet, no development (unless you are prepared to mess around with some of te custom gcc build chains that are floating around). But other than that, it is a very very powerful platform (it is weird using floats on a microcontroller), plenty of IO and a built in USB support (USB is vital for any project )... The standard IO library is all object oriented and quite elegant.

My thoughts lean to using an ARM M3 microcontroller to emulate a 68k, it has enough CPU power and enough IO, and the chips cost about £10...

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I didn't know anyone had good driver for ATI cards - That truly is good news (in keeping with this positive theme ).

I think you mean AMD, ATI as a brand has been dead for quite a while now

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@AppleHammer

Well, I started playing with microcontrollers earlier this year... With a couple of 16F916s and a borrowed programmer, which didn't really work as I had to use a USB->serial dongle (none of my machines have serial ports any more)... It was really flakey, but PIC Asm was fun and I really got into it... So I looked for a Mac/USB system I could use and the Arduino was top of the list, the AVRMega328 Asm is very much more like 68k Asm than PIC too

I have always had a soft spot for ARMs so the Mbed was the perfect choice to give it a go... And I've not been disappointed, the mbed team at ARM are really nice too, and can always be found having a laugh on the forum

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It is positive!!! Think about it, as everyone moves to IPv6 address space... That leaves the entire IPv4 space free for the Amiga to play in... And err talk to itself