Terra Soft Ships Apple computers - YDL Pre-Installed

[Seehund]

Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., the leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions is pleased to announce availability of Apple computers with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed."



[...]

"Terra Soft, an Apple Authorized VAR, is able to provide custom configured stand-alone units or clusters while maintaining the full Apple warranty. While installation of Linux on PowerPC has greatly improved, pre-installed systems boot directly to Yellow Dog Linux, saving time with installation and configuration."

Yep, you can actually buy new Macs with another OS than MacOS pre-installed and set to boot as default.

Now imagine this announcement but with "YDL" substituted by "AmigaOS"!

(rant)
The only thing preventing such an announcement (or an announcement about AmigaOS being sold and running on any "unlicensed" hardware at all) from ever appearing are those compulsory licensing requirements. They must go.
(/rant)

[Seehund]

The fact of the matter is that NOTHING prevents anybody from doing exactly the same which is buying Apple hardware and reselling it with AmigaOS provided the hardware is certified by Amiga (which should not pose a problem).

Why should I as a customer have to care about whether Amiga Inc. or anyone else ("Seehund GmbH") has signed any deals with Apple? Why should I not be able to buy my hardware from any of the (thousands, in the Apple case) dealers I prefer and install AmigaOS myself. Sure, I might choose a bundled system from "Seehund Inc." if their offer appeals to me as an individual customer, but I'd hate to see Seehund or other hypothetical VARs (although who would choose to compete over such a restricted market?) being the only available options...

As a personal note I would like to add that Apple hardware is so clearly branded "Apple" (typical Apple design etc.) that I as an Amiga user would not take any particular pleasure in running AmigaOS on a desktop machine when a valid alternative in the form of the AmigaOne is available.

You totally lost me now. You mean that the trademark the hardware is distributed under would have any relevance to the customer? So we'll slap a boingball sticker over that little apple if it means so much, then it's just as much "Amiga" as any old POP-mobo. Or just throw the Mac mobo in your favourite case, paint the Mac tower black or WHATEVER! If someone licensed a Mac model, would it suddenly transform into a more "valid" alternative then? They're all PPC hardware and there are no reasons to why porting AmigaOS would be any particular problems. Luckily (until a SonyATInVidiaIBMMotorola kind of giant takes over) there will be no more "Amigas", and you if anyone should know that by now.
I don't know what to say if you're seriously suggesting this is an argument to restrict the number of available hardware options. You concentrate on making and selling YOUR product and let your customers worry about the trademarks and stickers of THEIR hardware. Then you'll see people buying your product.

Different customers have different needs, and if you want to sell as much as possible you must satisfy as many needs as possible. Most of your market are hardened, knowledgable geeks, comfortable with assembling hardware and installing software. A minority is not. It's easy to cater for both those categories.

[Seehund]

ecause hyperion will not get the information from apple to make amiga os run on macs.

Hyperion's IP-addresses aren't blocked from Apple's dev-site. Anyway, apart from that, everything (even the older models, but especially the "New World" Macs) is well documented and explored by the Linux folks.

Besides, I actually doubt that Apple would have any objections. Why would they? They primarily sell computers, and wouldn't care if someone bought one to run AmigaOS or MacOS or just put it on a pedestal to look at (which I'm sure some Mac users do... ). MacOS is still sold bundled with each computer, so there's no loss anywhere, just extra profit.

[Seehund]

Who's going to provide support?

Software is supported by the software vendor. Hardware by the hardware vendor.
If it's not sold as a bundled system from a licensed VAR, then there wouldn't even necessarily have to be any official support. "You want support? Buy a bundled system from a licensed distributor". It's a tradeoff that I want to be able to decide if I'm ready to do by myself. Many hardware and vendor options, and some of them will give me official support while others won't.

It's feasible at any stage, but one of the most important priorities right from the start should be to offer your customers options and make AmigaOS a more attractive product by having it run on as much hardware as reasonably possible.

Personally I have never ever  used any official support channels during all my years as an Amiga user, neither before nor after Commodore's demise. (Was there ever any?) There's always you guys!

It seems a whole lot of people suddenly got worried about support after it was mentioned on amiga.com...

Why even bother getting the Mac? Yeah Mac has much higher end CPU models available, but at a price. Once the A1XE is shipping it should work out to the same.

Yeah, why bother with alternatives. Things would be much better if we could only buy one OS from one vendor and one piece of hardware from one vendor, and we'd all be driving black Ford Model T cars...

Choice, pricing, competition, development, quality, personal preferences, such irrelevant things...

[Seehund]

If you just buy AmigaOS or MorphOS to you Amiga dealer he won't survive for a long time.

I doubt that, but if so: Tough bloody luck! I'm a customer and AmigaOS user, not a welfare agency for computer dealers. Offer me what I want and you'll get my money. There are no more Amigas, so I'm not going to pay any premium for just a licensed trademark. Didn't they learn anything from the last decade?

Now it is up to Eyetech and Bplan to release hardware that is on the same level (or almost) as what Apple does if they want to avoid users jumping from the ship.

That's just pieces of hardware. I want to use AmigaOS. If AmigaOS will not run on the hardware that users want, then they'll jump ship - from AmigaOS!

So, no I don't believe on AmigaOS4 or MorphOS on Apple PPC at this time. This is not economically reasonnable and Apple may have troubles accepting hosting AmigaOS.

So selling separate copies of AmigaOS (or MorphOS) to an already existing market of widely available hardware plus selling it bundled with and separate from Maitech/Pegasos systems would be less economically reasonable than only selling the OS bundled with Maitech boards? Come on.

So there are what users want on one side and what developers can provide them.

...and what developers are allowed to provide us with. The "can" bit is easy-peasy for something like a Pegasos/other POP-based board or a modern Mac. The "allowed" bit must be removed from the equation ASAP!

"Of course with having the 'AmigaOne' in mind, and as soon as that's finished, I think it would take about one, one and a half week to get the basic functionality ported over to another hardware, so this is not too much of a problem."

- Thomas Frieden about the OS4 HAL.

this is the Yellow Dog Linux commercial

Heh! Well, at least they're trying. But it didn't say why should I use YDL over any other distro, does the brunette do house calls for end-user support, or what?

[Seehund]

yeah, everyone knows software licencing is bad and evil. Software wants to be free.... Why not release it under the GNU or BSD licence... oops, sorry, forgot. Software licences are bad, they limit the use, utility and availabily of the software.

Software licenses? This is about compulsory hardware licensing of third-party hardware by a software company.

Customers want to buy AmigaOS, i.e. a software license, but they are not allowed to do so unless they at the same time buy hardware that has been licensed by a licensed vendor.

[Seehund]

(rant)
The only thing preventing such an announcement (or an announcement about AmigaOS being sold and running on any "unlicensed" hardware at all) from ever appearing are those compulsory licensing requirements. They must go.
(/rant)

There, now the rant is in a comment. Moderators, delete my rant from the news item if you wish.