The $500 000 Question: How much is Amiga *worth*?

[stopthegop]

How much money are we talking here?  Five hundred thousand, fifty thousand, or five thousand?  Didn't follow the line about corrections and correcting the corrected corrections, etc..  Also, dollars or euros?

[stopthegop]

@Stoned:

I totally agree with your point about the corrosive effect defeatism is having on the community and the future (yes, future) of Amiga OS.  There is a way out of this hole;  whats lacking is the collective will to make it happen.  I see the word "can't" in the forum way too often.  Usually when someone write's "can't", what they're really saying is "won't".

[stopthegop]

stone wrote:

nowadays since windows, linux and macos all have grown into unhandly mastodonts it holds even more value as a lightweight scaleable system.

So true!  Preach on, 'brutha stone!  

[stopthegop]

snowman040 wrote:

...Lightweight scaleable system can get you 50 000, 60 000 hardcore users (BeOS, MorphOS, etc, etc)....

You have a point.  In fact, I can think of two more to add to that list:  MacOS and Linux.  You don't consider these operating systems failures, do you?  Both, at one time, were ridiculed as instruments of the lunatic fringe.  Apple in the early 1990s was a basket-case on life support until Uncle Gates came to the rescue with a timely infusion of cash.  Linux was an exclusive club for many years.  Its only had real growth in the last 3-5 years.  So if Linux and Crapos can rise from the dead, so can Amiga.  

[stopthegop]

And who will do this and on what hardware? How will it get marketed?

The marketing is easy.  Hire the experts.  Bill Gates, more than anyone else in history, has demonstrated the power of good advertising.  Marketing is best left to the professionals.  Regardless of what it costs, a good marketing strategy is worth it.  Sign up for the old platinum account at Ogilvy & Mather (or other top firm) shovel a truckload of cash into a "flood the airwaves" style marketing campaign, and you're set.  You could be peddling total garbage (Like Gates) and it would still reap 7 figure sales.  The public (especially American) have proved this time and again.  

You ask on what hardware a new Amiga might run?  I myself favor completely redesigned hardware made to look and "feel" like a classic Amiga -- not some stock, "me too" vanilla PPC board with an "Amiga" bios.  A radical new design, something totally outside the box -- so much so that the it would be impossible for the inbread technology press to ignore it.  I would seek a totally scaleable, modular design.  Something you would instantly recognize as an Amiga (elegant, responsive, intuitive...ability to multitask instead of just make the claim, etc..), yet futuristic.  Not "modern", but years ahead of its time, just like the classic Amiga was for the better half of the last two decades.  

This is just how things would proceed if I was in charge.    I'm by no means "rich", but I do save, and have got a pretty tidy amount built up..  Plus a couple of well compensated friends...  If indeed you see Amiga, Inc. go up for sale for, say, 5 or 10 grand?  Maybe we'll see some movement.            

[stopthegop]

For those who think different, please, please, morgage your house a second time and max out those credit cards and open Amiga shops. There are Billions to be made, right?

There's a name for people like that.  They're called entrepeneurs.  btw, your post could have just as easily been written about Apple in 1993.  

[stopthegop]

MacOS/Linux EASILY trumps any incarnation of any Amiga OS out there currently. Linux is as bloated as the user makes it...and it runs great on my powerhouse X86-64 machine. Tell me something AmigaOS does now that Linux cannot. (something worthwhile, not silly like dragging the wb screen down to reveal a seperate screen). I can name plenty the other way around.

I can name one:  
*The ability to boot from ROM right out of the box.

I can name several things that Amiga is that Linux/Macos are not:
*elegant, intuitive and graceful.
*easy to understand and use for non-technical users.
*Fun.  Linux is a chore.
 

[stopthegop]

You dont boot from a rom. You still have to load workbench.

no, not normally.  but you can if you want to or need to, whereas in Linux you can't.    That was your question, "What can AOS do that Linux can't".   The ability to access files on a disk if the the os decides to quit working because an index file somewhere got corrupted or because of a virus is one of the Amiga's many virtues.  

Its not a chore but thats because I know what I'm doing.

Thank you for proving my point.  If you have to "know what you're doing" to make it useful, then its not useful.  In fact its a direct contradiction to the first statement in the same paragraph;

"Linux and MacOS are as elegant, intuitive and graceful..."

Not if you have to "know what you're doing" to "make it", it isn't.  A DIY kit is the antithesis of elegant.  How big is the user documentation for Linux?  Probably up to about a terrabyte by now..  If not, it will be soon.   Either way, its frigg'n huge.  You call that fun?  In no perversion of the term can it be called "intuitive".      


 


 

[stopthegop]

Clarification:  First line above I meant to say "No normally you do NOT boot from ROM", but you can if you need to..  

[stopthegop]

Please stop that 'Amiga OS rulez' nonsense, yes it RULED some 20 years ago, but try connecting to internet out-of-the-box or try reading modern web documents. Amiga OS today needs a lot of work to be done, and that is almost as rewriting the OS from scratch.

Thats assuming you're goal is to transmutate an Amiga into a Windoze box.  

[stopthegop]

Too bad that proved out to be badly overestimated by the sales of A1s and Pegs. Clearly there USE to be millions of Amiga users, we judge that by number of units sold world wide. Now that Eyetech has headed for the hills with pathetic sales and Genesi had to go to *nix groups to make any sales numbers, it's plain to most rational folks, there is no market left. There are thousands (in the four digits) of customers out there, not tens of millions nor one million like so many would like to believe.

The A1 is an uninspired piece of junk and it, too, was poorly marketed.  It used a canned, off-the-shelf PPC board (probably the same boards Apple was using at the time), totally unoriginal and uninspiring; just nothing there to get excited about.  Plus it was a CLEAR transparent attempt to exploit the Amiga name uing stock "ho-hum/yawn" technology. OF COURSE it was going to fail.  It was doomed before it hit the starting gate.

[stopthegop]

There are some established methods of determining value:

1. Let the tax assessors do it,and appeal if not happy.


2. Offer the item/company at auction.


3. Hire professional appraisers familiar with the market.Complain if their judgment differs from yours.


4. Have a bunch of people with no access to relevant information engage in wild speculative arguments.Ignore them.  

What if a person in category 4 has several years of professional experience pertaining to the professions listed in categories 1-3?  

[stopthegop]

The whole concept of the unholy trio was doomed from the start with piss poor business plan. Say they took a x86 mobo and rebadged it. Who the hell is going to pay nearly a grand for it? As horrific of a disaster the project it was, if there were really million(s) of Amiga fans out there waiting for the resurrection of the Amiga, they could have gotten atleast 10% of that market just by slapping the boingball on the case.

You're first three sentences are right on the money.  The fourth is incomplete.  They failed to get even that "diehard 10%" because of a total lack of ADVERTISING.  Period.  

No, there are no millions of Amigians awaiting for Amiga5000's release. There are no millions awaiting for the next AmigaDE. Wake up and smell the coffee, economic viablility of the Amiga Market died years ago.

You're right but your analysis is again incomplete.  Millions of people HAVE at least heard of the Amiga name and, if given a reason to do so --via marketing-- would spend money on it.  A differentiated, unique and inspiring product would also help.  

[stopthegop]

That's the reason I keep tell people to put their money where their mouth is.

I know I have.  2 A1200s, one in a tower with PPC and mediator, another w/ stock case with a P5 1260 and BvisionPPC.  And one totally loaded A4000T with every conceivable upgrade you can imagine.  No warez, all legit software.  Almost all of it I bought new from Dealers.  

If when you say "put your money where your mouth is" you mean toward actually buying Amiga Inc. and starting work on a new hardware design?  For one thing, I don't think its even officially for sale, which makes this whole discussion kind of polymical, doesn't it?  Secondly, I really wish I had that kind of money because if I did, I would.

[stopthegop]

Thats certainly true.