What are the advantages of the present/future Amiga?

[Beast96GT]

You guys have to forgive me if these questions have been answered elsewhere or stomp on our sacred Amiga heritage.  I've spent the past few days reading (and bad YouTube videos) about nothing but tragedy with the Amiga.  

(I'm a person who knows nothing about the Amiga after the A3000)

If a new Amiga was produced:

1) What would be special about it?  What would make people want to buy it instead of a PC?  

2) How can the Amiga recreate the charm it once had as an inexpensive multimedia computer?

3) What are the hardware solutions for the Amiga considering it typically uses hardware that can be outdated, limited in quantity, generally incompatible with market leader?

[Beast96GT]

Well, first off, I didn't start the thread to become some kind of flame war calling people stupid.  And murple, the thread is for fun and at least keeping ideas fresh.  If we never talked about the new Amiga subject because there are "old threads" about the topic, nothing would ever be done to move forward.  Silly or not, it keeps the idea going and its kind of fun.

Here is my personal opinion regarding the questions I asked.  Mind you, I'm a software engineer, not a hardware guru--so I can't really tell you the problems associated with Motorola vs. Intel vs. PPC, etc.  Maybe that's why I asked the questions in the first place.

Here it is:

The Amiga originally was an incredible machine that could deliver graphics/sound/multitasking at an affordable price (yes, affordable--PCs were thousands of dollars).  The Amiga would need some kind of "niche" to fill that's not being currently exploited.  Of course the affordability would suffer, I would think, but there would a new draw to the Amiga.

I would like to think that the new Amiga would have an architecture that would not be held back by backward compatibility, as the PC seems to be.  Why couldn't backward compatibility be provided in software emulation?

There would need to be incentives for developing software for it.  Maybe a killer app that really fills the "niche"?

On more realistic note, however, I think Hyperion (sp?) has the right idea.  An OS would seem to be the most logical way to promote the Amiga despite the hardware it runs on.  Of course I know nothing about AmigaOS, but it seems to be the only way the Amiga will stay around.  Hopefully Hyperion stays around, too.

In the end, of course, it's a pipe dream, but it's still fun to discuss.  And I think it's good to bring it up, regardless of critics that think it's pointless.  

Thanks, for the silly fun.  

Chris

[Beast96GT]

Here are just a few thoughts/ideas if the Amiga WERE to be redesigned, re-introduced hardware and software-wise:

1) The Amiga should be a graphical powerhouse.  It's an old idea, but it's amazing how much attention is paid to the machine with the best graphics--Hell, it's how the Amiga really made a name for itself (among other things, of course).  

Modern graphics cards are designed to be optimal for typical 32-bit floating point (matrices and such) math.  

The Amiga graphics chips (preferably on a card) could optimize for real-time ray-tracing.  It's not a fantasy by any means;  it's already being done on the PC, but it's limited and requires massive hardware.  The Amiga, if designed with the bottlenecks of doing this in mind, could possibly bring this market and exploit it as its own.  

The Amiga graphics chips could optimize for Quaternions which are much better than matrices (especially for rotations).  

It's amazing what graphics will do to get your platform some attention.  Remember the first time you saw the Amiga screenshots of Defender of the Crown?

2) Support your software developers. A good machine has to be supported by good software.  Good software has to be made with by developers and publishers who think they can make a profit.  On a new platform, help from the manufacturer is a must.

Reusable code is in that equation.  It's time to move past assembly code and support a higher level language like C++ with libraries.  This means a real compiler that supports serious debugging and a optimized machine language generation. Professional code-bases are huge, and require easier to read code.  

3) Have a multimedia solution like no other.  The Microsoft Windows PC has come a long way with multimedia integration, but in my mind it has never taken the next step nor done it right.  The Amiga could have additional inputs for things like HDMI and optical audio.  

The Amiga could have DVR and video editing capabilities.  Make people who own a video camera feel they need an Amiga to make (semi-)professional video of their ugly kids.  
 ;-)

4) Provide a modular approach. Being able to upgrade your computer is a good.  Computer manufacturers aren't always keen on this idea--they'd rather you buy a new system.  At least on your higher end system, it's a good thing.  You need to not be limited by your motherboard with what you can do with your system--especially graphics.

Like I stated in a previous post, this is really a pipe dream, but it's fun to ponder what would be if the Amiga has a serious investment.  
 :-D