A cautionary warning note for anti Amiga, AROS & MorphOS trolls

[Amiga_Nut]

I have no issue with people who want to use OS4, MOS or AROS. I don't believe MOS is Amiga as such, but AROS is a great project and OS4 still has features Windows would be wise to implement. But then again I don't count any of these as actual next gen' Amigas.

I would love someone to make something at least remotely value for money AND fast to run OS4 today. I would love for something mass produced in this category to appear and be an alternative (I don't like Apple...any company who thinks iPhone and iPad that can't access Flash based websites is acceptable is stupid) and we all know Windows is bloatware. Windows is a 3 tonne GT cruiser, what the world needs is a Formula 1 style 600kg 1500bhp/tonne agile machine as an alternative. PS3/360 get by quite happily using a less powerful CPU than the fastest i7 based PC gaming rigs but they don't do anything better at 400% of the cost of PS3. This is the kind of niche you want, intelligent design giving you more bang for less bucks. That's what Amiga always was and that's where her immortal soul will always rest as far as I am concerned. I am sad to say there is no hardware for sale that I would consider buying today.

Call me mad but even a few years ago had the right geek met the right entrepreneur with money to burn met we could have got something really amazing and still PPC compatible. I just wish some people as talented as the VIC-II/SID or Paula/Agnus/Denise designers would just come along and glue together certain bits of certain disposably cheap console and just make something a bit more 'special' out there in price/performance terms than Macs (no games) and OTT PC gaming rigs spending 50% CPU just executing the Win7 kernel for people to go 'wow' over that's all. Call me negative if you want for that but I think that's what all old skool Amiga fans who lived those days want too.

And for the record Amiga 1000 launch was the only time I ever really dropped my jaw over a personal computer's specs and the reality of owning it in my life...you can't get more enthusiastic about classic Amiga than me.

[Amiga_Nut]

I'll bite.

Is MorphOS a great project, too?
Do you believe AROS is not Amiga as such?

So you consider the Apple stigma to prevail even if the original company no longer gets any profit from the sales?


Call me a realist but that's just not going to happen. Commodore designers had it easy in comparison to has to be done today. HW designers do remarkable things today, you can't even remotely compare it with VIC-II/SID or Paula/Agnus/Denise stuff.

Yes MOS IS a great project, I am glad all three OS choice exist and hope all continue to flourish with further development. The worst thing that happened to the computing world is we went from Acorn/Atari/Commodore/Apple/PC compatibles to today.

Apple hardware -OS and BIOS/bootstrap = PPC generic hardware....give me a boing ball sticker to cover that Apple logo and it's fine most of the time. I don't like Apple mice or keyboards but they're easy enough to change on USB machines thankfully so OS4 ported to fast PPC Macs is fine with me still. My comment about iPad and iPhone's lack of ability to use flash based sites/technology was more to show they do have quite moronic moments...web enabled devices that can't access flash sites...what were they thinking

My point was more about taking what exists ie Xenon PPC compatible CPU + ATI GPU + 400mhz SDRAM and an engineer creating the logic to assemble a motherboard for it. I too do not ever envisage a small company doing what IBM do on a yearly basis for the console manufacturers (making a better price/performance CPU for their customers). I know that you won't make a better CPU than IBM or a better GPU than ATI/Nvidia in your garage but that doesn't mean you have to purchase hugely redundant and expensive tech based on G5s as in the case of x1000s. Little bit of savvy and talent in engineering can go a long way, the pieces of the puzzle are their for a fantastic new OS4 machine if someone really tries, and at less than 1/2 price of your average* PC

(ie not the bargain bucket cheap crap netbooks/laptops/towers with Intel GMA graphics hardwired on motherboard that can't even run games from 2001 with Transform and Lighting missing from the GPU)