Interview with Trevor Dickinson

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No twisting necessary.

Too bad the quote does not say what you say it does.  I'm not here to impress anyone.  And trying for jabs about English as a second language for me and my opinion being worthless, well you have fun with that I guess.  Its more mild than the pig talk at the Moo.  What is your handle there BTW?

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Something that you have singularly succeeded in achieving.

Unoriginal, but expected.

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Would you mind telling us your opinions?   Could you explain the benefits to the Amiga community that you see in the creation of the X1000?

If we are going to say that "Amiga community" equates to MorphOS users, AOS users, and AROS users I suppose it could benefit us to a degree in that it made at least one mainstreamish (geek mainstream anyway) site as news.  I suppose that could clue some former Amiga users into the fact that there are these current options and that a community even exists in 2010.

Give your take on how this plays out as far as the future of OS4?  

I personally don't see continuing on PPC as an overall benefit to the AOS segment of the community.  And hence I don't see the X-1000 as an overall benefit.  In a very shortsighted way (IMO) its a benefit in the sense that since Hyperion is adamant on staying PPC and since they are a commercial enterprise the X-1000 provides the "benefit" that now Hyperion can program for 64 bit and multi-core.  But again, I see that as tremendously short-sighted.

Give your take on how this plays out as far as the future of OS4?

As far as the future of OS4, I see it as dying a slow death.  I see the X-1000 as not making much of any difference in that because Hyperion has been very happy staying PPC and porting to Acube hardware.  The existence of the X-1000 does not seem to have had any impact on Hyperion wanting to offer a PPC based OS.

Can you tell us how successful you think the X1000 will be in terms of sales, ROI for Trev, and how this benefits Hyperion financially?

My guess would be somewhere between 100 and 1000 depending on final price of course.  Since Trevor says they are in for 200,000 Euro so far I see his ROI as very poor, assuming for a second he is the source of most of the money.

What do you think the long term road map should be?

If we are talking about what I think the road map should be to have what I think would be the highest chance of success I'd say go x86.  But Hyperion has been very clear about the fact that they don't care how much they hear that from folks, that they are sure PPC is the way to go and that they will not be convinced otherwise.  The same valid arguments have been presented to them thousands of times at this point, maybe tens of thousands of times.     Who they want to service is the folks who agree with them that PPC is the way to go.  Some may believe as Hyperion does that PPC can succeed (i.e. "its in Xbox!, why not a PC"), others may just enjoy non-mainstream hardware.  And yes some sadly like the exclusivity.  How Hyperion survives on servicing only those folks is a damn mystery.  But they have done it for years, while I might add fighting a lawsuit which also costs money.  Its not up to us to dictate to them how to make their money or who their customer base should be.

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As a short term solution I don't see how Hyperion make their money back, let alone the wasted potential of not investing their time in something more viable and that offer more short term returns.  

We don't know if A-Eon has paid a porting fee or not.  There has been talk in the past that there was one at least at one time.  That could be part of the 200,000 Euro perhaps that A-EON has spent?

And as a short term solution what happens to the 20-50 X1000 users? Will it be worth supporting them in future updates of AmigaOS4? Or will they be thrown to the side like Classic OS4 users with the excuse that there are just too few users to support?

Well I think if they abandoned X-1000 users that would be a major goodwill killer with your most loyal users of the brand.  They have kept up on Peg II and that can not be such a big amount of users.  I think Classic support is not something progressing as much because of the hardware at least.

If in 2012 the price drops dramatically you are left with a very outdated piece of hardware.

That depends on how you view it.  If they still make new model SAMs at Acube at the same rate as they do today whatever the latest SAM is in 2012 very likely would still be below the specs of an X-1000.  And the OS is in no position to support the latest hardware anyway.

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Are you trolling?

Nope, not my intention.  But you are the mod here.  Perhaps this is an issue of semantics.  I see what appears to me to be regular use of proxies there and changing nicks over quite a long period of time.  And my comment related to asking if Trevor deserves such talk for his venture (the insinuations of shady-ness on the part of the company).  If you think my perception of "many" is off thats your prerogative.

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I think the issue is not what Trevor spends his money on, but the limited resources of the OS4 team.  People that currently use it or want to use may not think it is the wisest thing to bend to the whim of a guy throwing money around when all Hyperion gets in the end for a years+ work is 50 sold copies of OS4.

This has been one of the main arguments against x86 by Hyperion and others.  Not enough resources.  If they port to x86 many repeatedly argued that the other versions will get neglected and features will not be added during the time they are working on the port.  Namely because there are so little resources.

Yet, here we have them using those limited resources to port to something that has 0 future and 50+ sales?  Don't you see the irony in those two things?

I seriously doubt Hyperion is "bending to the whim" of Trevor.  And Hyperion has said they believe in PPC, its not just that they think x86 conversion is "too much work" as it were.  For those reasons I suspect Hyperion was thrilled that Trevor came along.

Let me ask you this, your strategies to convince Hyperion otherwise have all failed.  Do you have any new ideas to get them to make the switch?  My bet is that even if X-1000 flops they will just keep along with SAM.  Perhaps they will break down eventually and support PPC Macs like MorphOS.

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Did PPC become viable for the desktop again whilst I wasn't?

The point is the X-1000 is not the stumbling block to have Hyperion go x86.  SAM was there before, is still there, and has a new model on the way even.  And even if SAM goes they could always go PPC Mac.  Hyperion is a business that has decided an odd path.  And they have told people not to hold their breath on them ever changing their mind on this x86 desire.

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Where do you get this crap from? Rouge quite frankly said, on AWN, that he thought AOS 4 on IA32 was a good idea and the only reason it's not under consideration is because they simply don't have the resources to do it.

The user "HyperionMP" at AW.net.

Just a 2 sec search and there was this one (from one year ago):

"we have taken a look at the PowerPC roadmap and there is plenty of life in it including 8 core designs under 30 W.

One of the main benefits of Amiga OS 4.1 is the fact that the geared entirely towards the PowerPC architecture as one of the very few operating systems around. Linux runs fine on PPC but it certainly is not optimised for this architecture in any way."

I'm not saying they hate x86.  I am saying its not just that they are considering the effort to go x86 when sticking with PPC but also that they clearly still believe in PPC.

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That's some selective quoting there.

The later parts are just excuses to make it look like there's a future in PPC for the platform because obviously they're not going to flat out admit they're  running up against a wall. If they actually had the resources to port to IA32/AMD 64 and continue supporting the existing users, they'd do it in a heart beat.

Thats a perception issue.  You perceive they are lying at the end with "just excuses".  You said that I was talking crap as if they never uttered such talk, but I was right, they did.  So on that you are not really making any kind of point.

Personally I don't see them lying per-se at the end of that post with "just excuses".  I tend to believe more that they have somehow convinced themselves that what they are saying makes sense, even though it does not in real world terms and even though they should know better.

Again, they state it as a reason they want to stay PPC and all I said was that according to Hyperion the reason is not just because it will "take too much work" to go x86.  Whether someone choose to believe them on that or not is an entirely different issue.  

As a for instance I personally find the claim of the money spent so far (as of June 2009) more likely to be BS if anything on the "HyperionMP list of reasons not to go x86"

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First off: Citation needed. Both for where this claim came from and the claim itself.

You'd have to talk to HyperionMP about him backing up his claim on the roadmap.  I am merely saying Hyperion has said they believe in PPC, which clearly they have indicated.  If you think thats silly (I do as well) or a lie (I doubt, maybe you don't) is another issue entirely.  One you could take up with HyperionMP I suppose, if you cared to.

HyperionMP, aka Ben Hermans, not exactly a tech guy or known for his honesty.

Be that as it may, Amigaheretic eats up Ben's claim of resources being one issue.  I have merely listed another issue mentioned by the same exact source.  What parts someone chooses to believe from a "guy... (not) known for his honesty" is up to each person.  Either way, Hyperion seems quite set in stone with this decision, no matter what the reals, real, imagined, or made-up

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The justified sticking to PPC by making up weak sauce. In reality, they're sticking to PPC because that's their ball and chain.

Considering they probably hardly make any money I find it hard to believe they don't believe in at least some of what they say.  Is that delusional?  Sure.  But after all whats the difference between porting to x86 for almost no money vs. to just another PPC board for almost no money?

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It's a shame that on more than one occasion moderators at AWN have moderated his posts covering up for Hyperion. When Rouge posts drunk on the site and roasts a user over the coals, y'all should just let to post stand.

Which mods?  Which posts?  Do you think we have conspiracy meetings in the mod forums?  I would suspect if something was removed it was removed for the content being inappropriate for the site.  If someone wanted to hide something they'd delete entire posts and/or threads no?

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They've run into some money and they're blowing it on a last hurrah to net perhaps 100 users for a new platform that uses a chip that's obsolete and out of production. I look forward to seeing that ship burn and sink to the bottom of the ocean.

You make it sound as if Trevor gifted them a ton of money to do whatever they would want with it.  I have seen no evidence of that.

The problem is, they're incompetent and running on fumes.

Well you may still be in for a long wait to see the "ship burn and sink to the bottom of the ocean".  They've ran on no visible income of real substance for years now.

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You say that like AW.net hasn't got a long and well documented history of doing just that.

No I say it asking for any recent examples of that because I am unaware of what he says occurring.  I only joined the site in 2005 and there were long periods I was not on it.  I may of missed something.  Or maybe he is talking about things that happened long ago?  No idea really.  If a conspiracy exists to make Hyperion "not look bad" its not being discussed in the mods forums, thats for sure.  And if that conspiracy exists why are there plenty of posts up with Rogue being "not in friendly marketing customer service" mode?

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I do.  I have had my threads "disappeared" quicker than an American hiker accidentally crossing the North Korean border.

It's really nice when you get an abuse report message that has the link to your "supposed" violating post only to click on it and see your thread is gone.

When PMing a mod that is exactly what you get,  "We moved it to the mod area and are discussing it."  Only for it never to be seen again.

You've started tons of controversial threads at AW.net without them being removed.   Anyone coming to the site from outside the community is not likely to get a super rosy feeling about Hyperion.  It would take years to read all the negative posts that exist about Hyperion on the site.  If a thread got pulled (its very very rare) then ask why it never came back.

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A few months ago Rogue said something nasty to someone and somebody moderated it, and that's not the first time it's happened. And by moderated I mean the whole text was just modified to just *moderated*, you're a mod over there, go dig through rogue's posting history, you'll see it. As a user, I have no good way to dig through posts other than going to google and typing in "site:amigaworld.net 'some string to search for'", hell, you've admitted on the forum that you look at people's IP addresses and look for matches on the moo, so you've got the capability to poke around. No point in denying things here.

As a user, sure you do, its the same one I use:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/search.php

Denying what BTW?

The only mod I have seen do *moderated* is zerohero.  But since when do we not remove nasty attacks?  Why should Rogue be the only one we leave up?  I'd agree he should state the reason in the moderation, that is customary.  But he has done the "*moderated* thing on others besides Rogue.  Maybe he was busy or pissed in having to deal with it.  You'd have to ask him.