What the hell does Android mean? Oh, it's from Google. Yeah, I recognize that.
Seriously, brand names are becoming played out. People don't give two shytes about whether it runs Windows, Windows Mobile, Android, Ubuntu, Safari, Symbian, Palm, whatever, just so long as the damned thing works.
On this I would wager a portion of my reproductive system: you produce a smart phone that works, has usable, important, and friendly features, and crashes less than once a day, built on the AmigaOS and even branded as Amiga, and people will buy it. My only lament is that I do not have the money to wager on such an endeavor.
Dealing with mobile devices day-in and day-out as I do, I have a pretty hard list of features and functions users want. I have a semi-keen idea of what developers want (really, general but a GOOD SDK.) And so on. It is possible.
OS4.1 for ARM? Too bad the XScale is pretty much dead, my Palm LifeDrive is pretty peppy with its apps (especially for the numerous reboots,) -- or is that reborn as a mobile Atom? (hrmmm, come to think of it, OS4.1 or MorphOS or AROS on an Atom-based netbook would be pretty sweet.)
Anyway, I tire quickly of the pessimistic views which immediately decry anything new with the Amiga branding as commercially DOA. Sorry if I sound like a fanboi.
The Amiga was only ever a computer, and one of the best at the time (although sadly technically got it's ass kicked by the Sharp X68000 series.....which was also constantly improved unlike Commodore peddling the same 16bit chipset for years and years in new casings)
So IF someone made a phone and branded it Amiga so what..it is nothing to do with Amiga....ditto a Netbook with standard Acer/Asus motherboard with Amiga logo and Linux skins on the GUI to make it look OS4.
Amiga initially was this....
A kick ass computer, superior to Apple AND IBM's finest by using completely alien technology not seen in an IBM or Apple Mac. Mac had no Copper/Blitter...IBM didn't even have 4mb contigious memory or a proper GUI.
BUT
Also this computer happened to be better at playing games than the best consoles of the time for not much more.
So...in 2006...an Amiga would have been OS4 running on a PS3 motherboard with Blu-Ray a proprietory Commodore format superior to DVD (just like HAM images shat all over IBM EGA however much PC loving idiots wasted on their PCs in 1985). Games as good or better than xbox360, less cheap and tacky build than a 360 or dirt cheap PC and massively more powerful in raw CPU rendering power than a Dual Core or whatever.
But...those days are gone...and we will never see 'Amiga' rise again because even Sony almost bankrupt themselves getting such esoteric and OTT hardware as PS3 to market....and that's before people bothered to port 360 games properly to the PS3....shades of 'ST port' crap of 1986 with Amiga games....hmmmm it's the same thing all over again.
The best we can hope for is someone makes a portable Amiga for $50 in a Gameboy Advance form factor...and even that won't happen as nobody will spend money on developing the required miniaturisation of the ECS/AGA chipsets or to achieve the economies of scale required.
So yeh....those yellowed old computers on ebay you see...when they're all dead and no longer work Amiga is over...sad but true.
funny thing is though now more than ever you don't need a specific Intel/AMD CPU or a Mac/Windows OS to do 99% of what people do on their computers.
OS4 with Torrent client + Yahoo/MSN + Google Chrome + email client+MP3 playback + MP4/AVI playback + Open Office + Quality paint program = viable platform for use.
Only a handful of people play (or can play) PC games anyway...and Mac's don't get any games ever anyway. So there you have it...had Amiga wanted to make a dent in the market they could have....they failed.
