[replying to the original post]
The mythical Amiga of the future... I wouldn't mind seeing it happen. IMO...
1/ Graphics powerhouse. Possibly. Real time Raytracing is seriously in beta stage on the PC. It'll be at least 2 years before you see something in the market and I think that is being optimistic. Everyone will need to upgrade their video cards and and machines to play with real time raytraced programs. That will be a hard pill to swallow for many.
Compared to the current 3D rendering, raytracing is super computationally intensive. You need some beefy hardware to support it. I'd be content with a more normal and current board from nVidia.
Quaternions is just another tool in the box, it won't replace euclidean transformations; so they aren't exactly necessary IMO.
Personally, I'd like to see a good OpenGL implementation instead of a roll and Amiga flavour of a 3D library. This will make porting 3D games and programs over quite a bit easier and make the Amiga a platform that serious developers might consider.
2/ Developer Support. No argument here. I do suggest being ruthless in native library functions. I don't know enough about the Amiga libraries but I know enough about the Windows libraries to say that functions should be simple and easy to understand and use. Trim the unnecessary fat. Make them work logically. Make them work.
3/ Multimedia platform. Amiga could have had this market tied up back in the Babylon 5 days. If only... But it's one of those niches that a computer needs to carve out for itself. It will be difficult to claw that back from Windows, Mac and Linux. Also with all these new video formats you need some beefy hardware just for encoding the video. You also need, for serious work, RAID support and very large file systems.
Audio production was also somewhat a field that the Amiga could have dominated. Also a field that will require some clawing back of the other platforms.
4/ Hardware Modularity. I somewhat agree. Partly what killed or limited the market for SGI, Sun and MAC was the fact that they used proprietary stuff. And that proprietary stuff had some serious markup. Users look at the cost of a drive/monitor/keyboard/etc. and look at the similar PC generic device and wonder, what they hell am I paying for. It was a reason why at my work we dumped SGI and SUN support because the reason to go with them was no longer compelling enough. PCs were good enough, fast enough and half as costly. You can buy off the shelf components when certain components failed. Whatever this mythical Amiga becomes should just use off the shelf components as much as possible.
This brings up an comment I saw someone else make. Low end should look like an A500/A600/A1200? What are you smoking? I never understood why people liked that all in one look. Keyboards fail. Replacing a keyboard in an all in one design is far more difficult, especially for the average gumby, than buying an off the shelf keyboard and plugging it in. I would rather see something like a mac-mini or iTV form factor in a low end device than the computer in the keyboard idea.
I would ideally like to see digital outs. HDMI (video and audio) or at the very least DVI with digital coax/optical audio. The trend is going that way and it would make hooking up the stereo system so much easier. With 7.1 or more signals and analog out is a bit clumsy. Multi-head capable is needed as well. When doing 3D, software dev or maybe even video editing, having multiple heads is a godsend.
I would ideally like to see at least a Ghz machine, but closer to 2 Ghz the better. There are a few PCs that still come with sub 2GHz range. Multi-core would be nice but for a first go, not necessary. 64 Bit as well. When working with big audio and video or even 3D, a lot of companies are hitting the 4GB barrier and are wanting more. For a serious solution, you need to be able to give it to them.
So as a minimum
Motherboard:
- 64 bit
- GHz level CPU
- >4 GB capable using off the shelf RAM modules
- PCIe expansion capable (if not all in one.)
- Built in video capable of at least 2 heads. HDMI preferred.
- Built in audio. Digital coax/optical out preferred.
- USB for perriferals. (Keyboard, mouse, webcam)
Software:
- Development tools available and free. (Like Linux and Mac)
- OpenGL libraries.
- Sane OS libraries.
- A nice sane looking interface. All these 3D enhanced UI that Vista, Mac and some Linux window managers are offering are nice and all but really aren't needed IMO.
- A program that will recognize when I wave a certain finger at the computer that the computer will feel shame.
