Ok. Now I'm mad, and I've rewritten this about a dozen times, because -- like an argument you know you'll have with your wife when you get home -- I just knew that the moment that someone posted anything about Amiga's upcoming tablet, all the little negative cockroaches would scurry out from the cupboard to do anything they could to trash the idea.
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While I wish there were something more "Amiga" about an Android tablet, and even though I already own a far superior iPad, even *I* think that the move towards supporting Android is the right way to go for Amiga Inc.
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The way I see it, you can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution, and hell, even I'll probably toss in to buy an Amiga Android tablet, if for no other reason than to get in on the ground floor of developing for it.
Wayne, firstly you've jumped the gun a little with your post. There was only one or two strongly negative posts here, which considering the opinionated nature of the Amiga community as a whole is pretty mild. I thought you would have developed a thicker skin by now, perhaps you just had a bad day, happens to everyone.
As for the whole 'you can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution', it's worth taking a step back and examining what we're discussing. What is it that we are looking to develop? Is our attachment to the Amiga computer or the Amiga brand that keeps us here?
It's an interesting question, one that often arises. The obvious answer is that its the Amiga computer that we're interested in, but the brand clearly has it own draw too. It's not as simple as just saying it's the hardware we like, as there were similar devices to Amiga that we don't find ourselves discussing (such as the one home computer that was arguably superior to the Amiga at the time, the Sharp X68000). The draw with the Amiga is the whole experience: hardware, software, community.
What is iconic embodiment of the Amiga experience. Some will point to the OS, and it has been the development of the Amiga-like OS choices that has largely kept the Amiga scene fresh. I'm personally more drawn to the hardware, so the new FPGA Amigas are the most interesting projects for me (as well as AROS).
Maybe this makes me 'part of the problem'. Perhaps there's something I'm not understanding, in that I don't see what's exciting about Commodore or Amiga-branded products that don't have the Amiga hardware, software or community legacy backing them up. To put it bluntly, why should I care? I mean, I already have a decent PC, if I'm buying something else I would like it to offer something different from what I've already got.
If bringing back a higher level of brand awareness for Amiga is what you're hoping for, then I can understand that, but let's face it, the brand will represent something different. It's like what happened to the Atari brand, where the company that originally built up the brand is long gone, and the name is used to enhance the profile of a different company (game publisher Infogrammes changed their name to Atari, SA. in 2009, according to Wikipedia).
It's tricky to separate the name from the experience: MorphOS users had to do it, AROS users too, and now C=USA is indirectly forcing AmigaOS users to do the same. I'd say the resistance is understandable, but hopefully once the dust settles we'll realise the computers we enjoy haven't gone anywhere, and we'd be better off leaving similarly-named but different products to those that enjoy them.
