AmigaUpdate, Objectivity Lost.

[gary_c]

I never knew Targhan works for Genesi... someone should update his ranking

As discussed in another thread, I don't think the ranking is the place to advertise corporate affiliations. Rankings should be forum-related, either based on number of posts or a forum function such as moderator or webmaster. The signature is the place to state company or organization affiliations. This is the practice in e-mail and web forums generally and makes sense. It keeps the ranking system consistent. [end of ranking rant  ;-)]

As for Targhan's "announcement," I agree that it is more opinion than announcement, which a person generally understands to be a statement of fact. I thought Brad Webb's opinion was small-minded but, as pointed out, it's clearly marked as opinion, not part of the show report. And any response to his opinion should also be marked "opinion."

If some semblence of neutrality is desirable for Amiga.org, this kind of thing should be reflected on (have I been in Japan too long?  ;-) ). With Genesi employees and proponents so conspicuous on the staff here, there's already the tendency to think there could be an editorial bias, which wouldn't be healthy, would it? Targhan's opinion, while reasonable enough in itself, should be carefully posted so that it is clear that it is his opinion as a person, not an announcement from him as webmaster. Well, that's just IMHO, for what it's worth, meant constructively.

-- gary_c

[gary_c]

amigaguy wrote:
.

People might fork out $99 to buy AmigaOS or MorphOS, but no one other than a few old and a few thousand of the current Amiga die hards are going to buy a "Special" computer to run it on. No Chance!

**Special Computer: This is what the millions of Windows user would consider the PEG or A1 boards. Just some sort expensive hardware that won't also run their Windows OS.

The typical Windows user is not the target market for either Amiga or Genesi, at least not at this stage of the game. There is no way either of these platforms can offer a product satisfying to general Joe and Jane Sixpack types. These are geek products, pure and simple, and will be for the foreseeable future. But that isn't so bad. There are many people buying geek products these days. By staking out some territory on the fringe, Genesi, for example, can define its own standards. Of course, if, like downix says, the PPC 970 can be brought to market and be cost competitive and some applications made to take advantage of the speed, then the killer platform potential is raised dramatically. No longer just a geek toy, we're looking at competitive tool here. :-)

downix wrote:

x86 is a failed route, you'd be killed due to competition from all fronts

I'm not so sure about that. Imagine this scenario: some whizbang operating system runs on x86, outperforms Windows, is more userfriendly than Linux, maybe can run Windows apps in a runtime environment, is cool enough for geeks and useful enough for mainstreamers. Driver support might not be too broad, but the company could be clear about what's supported. If performance is superior enough, maybe more hardware support would come from companies seeing more sales potential. This'd be a killer product IMHO. Would it be targetted by MS? Probably, but this isn't necessarily instant death. Even if the new OS didn't get a lot of OEM deals due to (now recognized) MS heavyhandedness, there'd be lots of aftermarket and barebones installations, probably factors of ten more than any new PPC product.

Just some ideas.  :-)

-- gary_c