How about creating a Open AMIGA Consortium?

[persia]

Cool, Natami still looks retro but has a it better resolution, put it in a cool retro box, maybe something that looks like it fits a WW1 theme.  Or maybe there's something in an old Buck Rogers show that would fit the retro-future look.

Natami - Retro for the masses?

[persia]

The retro-future version is more do-able.  The Amiga belongs in the last century, leave it there but allow use to use modern parts, USB keybords, mice and joysticks.  Improve the graphics so they are a little less retro.  A hobby machine that you can tinker with.  Maybe one you can plug a USB camera into and play with video capture.  Part of the charm of Amiga is that it's pre-turn of the century technology.

The hobbyist really has nothing to play with these days, even Amateur radio is being overwhelmed with technology. you used to be able to build your own transceiver and throw an antenna in the tree, now it's digital controlled hi-tech stuff.

All the homebuild gee-whiz kits are gone.  Remember Heathkit?  It's a market that whilst small is wide open.  No competition.

The Amiga, the ultimate Luddite's PC!

:pint:

[persia]

Yah, Natami is realistic and doable, state of the art isn't, and even if state of the art were it isn't what most Amiga users want.

Natami is the hobbyist approach, todays Macs and PCs are too easy, just tick a box, the Amiga makes you think and understand what you are doing.  It's a learning tool to help understand the basics.

AROS has the most difficult role, bring the Amiga to modern hardware but reproduce the outdated system, major mistake, AmigaDos can't be fixed, it makes wrong assumptions, the same wrong assumptions that killed the Dos/Windows XX and MacOS.  You need a new kernel, reproducing the Amiga kernel is a formula for disaster down the road.

Me, I'm buying a MacPro for real work, a Natami for play and getting rid of the 2000 and probably the iMac.

I certainly hope the Natami likes my 3.5 TB RAID when I hook it up to the network... How does Amiga do with SMB or AFP drives?

[persia]

You can't beat PC pricepoints.  With a PC you can buy incredibly cheap hardware that probably won't last, but it will have drivers.

The Mac on the other hand specifies the hardware and is tuned to that specified hardware.  This was the Amiga approach as well.  It's more expensive, limits your choice of hardware but provides a far more satisfactory user experience.  PC crashes are often due to badly written drives or hardware incompatibilities.  The choice is quite simple, support everything to an ok level, or support a limited amount of things and do it very well.

[persia]

Actually Macs are not that expensive, take an intel motherboard, put quality components on it, a nice video card, a glass protected high definition monitor (if iMac) and you aren't very far from the price of a Mac.  You can buy an EEEEEEE machine or some other such cr@p for less, but you get what you pay for...

Apple today has more third party hardware than Amiga could have dreamed about when the company was alive, you can't buy Apple clone Motherboards, but you couldn't buy Amiga clone motherboards either.  Most Amiga users never open their computer boxes back then, the idea of stretching the hardware came about the time of the death of the company.

My original Amiga 1000 and 2000 cost substantially more than a generic PC back in the day, folks at work thought I was stupid for dropping a large wad of cash on a non-compatible machine.

Yes, OS X is based on BSD (not Linux), my point is that Apple was able to make that vchange because they are Apple, they define what Apple is and what Apple isn't.  The AMiga lack such leadership, and so can't really enter the 21st Century technology wise.

Finally drivers, unless you are talking about AROS hosed on Linux or UAE, Linux drivers have little meaning to Amiga, you can't use Linux drivers on AROS or AmigaDos directly.

[persia]

Yeah, there was a brief period of time where, had we known only on (besides MS) would survive, it sure looked like Amiga.  Unfortunately it was not to be.  CBM marketing and research was not behind it.    Hardware updates didn't come, the OS updates were too far between.  The technological advantage was wasted by not maintaining it.

he Amiga had many great accomplishments on it's own without needing them to be sensationalized or embellished - how many home computers were launched by someone like Andy Warhol? I think exaggerating things like that not only makes Ami enthusiasts sound an awful lot like Mac and PC followers of the early 90's, but also cheapens the actual accomplishments the machine made.