Sorry for being long-winded in this thread, but I'm very sensitive to the x86/PPC, commercial/free software, and technology/marketing comparrisons.
Hammer: It will have a future until its main backer walks away from it.
Well said. The computer industry is a fickle business. Plan appropriately.
Didn't Amiga plan to use the Parhelia as their next-gen video card? What would've happened if they had used it? Even today, the Parhelia is wicked expensive, has no future, and is only barely competitive with the GeForce4.
It happens.
Do you think that the desktop market is shrinking because of lack of desire or demand? No, it is shrinking as a direct result of a lack of competition. I talked to artists that wouldn't touch a PC because "it didn't talk to me." The lack of choices is killing the market.
Only when it comes to the OS. PC hardware is loaded with competition.
How many motherboard manufacturers are there? How many companies are made and broken by their drivers, not just the hardware? If you don't like the service from Gateway or Dell, how many other choices do you have?
Mikeymike: He should be sacked. What is the point in competing if you're going to act like you've failed before you even start.
Agreed. That should be the excuse you use after a corporate reorganization and product redesign, not a casual comment.
Bloodline: I always wondered where SUN got their cash from
My homepage runs off a 1U Sun server. I don't remember what OS it uses, though... Linux or Solaris. I think the choice belongs to my ISP.
Minator: How many companies have sitched to x86 / Windows expecting big rewards only to find a whole heap of competition and promptly go bust?
So, you're saying it's harder to use vanilla x86 hardware, made by lots of different companies, than to buy a desktop version of the PPC, which are given to Apple by default under contract? How many G5 Amigas are there? How'd you like to see an Athlon64 Amiga? No waiting lists or availability problems, there.
Because Be lost $200 per machine. Pegasos makes money and I expect the A1 does also.
So they say. They are private companies and can say whatever they want. Pegasos might also "make" money by other means. If Be lost money selling computers, how did they make any money at all? Hardware sales alone is not the end-all of making profit. All speculation, of course, but it never hurts to think about an entire product line instead of one piece of a project.
Keep in mind that the BeBox was also made at a time when PPC chipsets were not easy to find, and x86 was a hugely inferior machine. They didn't have the huge availability of "do it yourself" hardware we have today, and today's x86 chips are very competitive with PPC.
Marketing, Conservatisim and low Costs.
So, there are companies where these three principles do NOT apply?
The best technologies rarely win.
Ah, the old Beta/VHS and QWERTY/Dvorak argument. A business is competitive because they master ALL fronts, not just technology. The sooner people realize that and stop acting snobish becase, "our technology is better", the better a chance they have at surviving in the real world. Computers really don't have much to do with technology. Computers change, customers don't.
Ok we have MorphOS so we coulds sell it as an OS. Firstly we'd lose all compatibility due to the little / big endian issue alone, that could be fixed by an emulator but there's pretty serious performance isses there.
Well, they should have thought about that earlier. You can change your college major as many times as you like, but don't expect to have an easy time finishing school.
Then of course we'd be in the same boat as Be. If we don't do our own hardware we have to get someone else to ship the OS with theirs, and if they sell Windows thats a big goodbye from them.
Why do people have this idea that you have to ask Dell or Compaq to distribute Amigas? Most of the workstations I used at my last job were sold as packages. Digital Now, Inc. didn't sell you a Dell, they built their own machine off an ASUS motherboard and preloaded their own software with a hardware key. That's the price you had to pay for the ability to use their software. I'd rather pay $800 for an Abit board with a rippin' Athlon and the latest standards like gigabit Ethernet and SerialATA, instead of an ancient PPC with USB 1.1 and bulky, frustrating, parallel ATA.
Is that so hard?
What you are advocating would destroy the companies serving the Amiga market.
Heh. What's left of them. AmigaOne went on sale long before the OS was ready! The Amiga community is shrinking at every moment, and for a reason.
PPC may be a niche desktop wise but it's one we can at least survive in.
So long as Apple doesn't do something stupid, or we'll have to deal with the embedded version of the PPC, and we'll be in the same boat as Acorn: paying thousands for a 1Ghz processor. Hey, they might even have a dual CPU Amiga in a few years, to do the work a PC can with one CPU.
Not being able to use a standard PC part for the NorthBridge is a problem now but that'll be solved when the 970 gets HyperTransport.
It'll be a long time before Amigas can use the 970, and if the 970 is a disappointment in Apple's arena, you can bet we'll suffer from the throwback.
Hammer: Define "it didn't talk to me."
It's an artist thing. Don't expect to understand.
Of course, a lack of logic would be the reason why you won't. ;-)
Downix: The thing is, over time by turning the PC into this digital-hub you also get an opportunity for eventual replacement.
That depends who controls the hub standards. Hardware will change like mad, but if content will only play on THIS standard, you'll still have to have the same software. Isn't that the way the PC industry already works?
Has He actually failed his mission?
I don't know the exact situation, here, or anything about Tivo, but if he admit defeat without a follow-up plan, then he certainly has failed.
"A plan! I MUST have a plan!"
Hammer: On same token, consumers expects compatibility.
There are other products that complicate matters for "average users" i.e. Linux/GNU.
Precicely why I tend to favor commercial products over free products. They have a financial obligation to support their products, write accurate, understandable documentation, and preserve logical legacy support.
I tried to install Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl on my Windows machine for testing my scripts before uploading them to my webserver, and getting these free technologies to work was like pulling teeth. Forums were filled with strangers than gave a hundred different solutions to the same problem (where none were actually correct), and the documentation is incomplete, inaccurate, and incomprehensible. "Read the F***ing Manual" is hardly an effective war cry of the free software zealots, if the documentation is wrong, as it usually is with Win32 ports of Un*x software. This is the information age, but people are still obsessed with the quantity of information, not the accuracy. "Average" users don't give a hoot about technical jargon. They just want the products to work as advertised or promised.
Citing Microsoft's practices of chaging the MS Word document format every version, to support switching to free software, is hardly effective. When you're as big as Microsoft, you can afford to screw around with your customers. Small companies can't pull those kinds of stunts. If you think small commercial developers don't support their products, I suggest you get away from Microsoft and Apple and try some small-time publishers. You might be surprised.
