@mikeymike,
Well, saying that a product has now hit 'release' status', then not doing anything about shipping it would certainly be a new business tactic
For this "market" and product, I'm afraid it's not really new. In practice, nothing has really changed with this announcement, I'm sorry to say. It's the decision to stay exclusively dependent on "special" licensed hardware that has held and still does hold back a real release and actual sales of the OS.
(aka. Seehund, your cynicism knows no bounds - pressing CDs or even just ripping them is a lot easier than mass-producing hardware... christ, I could do it).
I don't think that anybody needs a particularly well developed sense of cynicism in order to see how ridiculous the situation is. By "actual delivery" I wasn't just referring to pressing/shipping CDs or uploading an ISO image -- so far all they can do is just that, and only as a Christmas gesture to those few who have already bought and paid for their product together with an "AmigaOne".
Kudos to Hyperion, it looks like they actually finished it. I'm a little surprised myself.
Yes, my kudos too! Though I'm not surprised they finished it. It's been basically "Done" for a couple of years now, and could have been done even earlier if they hadn't had to waste time on working around the... ahem... peculiarities of the chosen target hardware, firmware, and the dodgy hardware vendor. Some commercial motivation would probably also have helped speed up things, if their product had (also) been made for sellable hardware. Futility isn't the greatest of motivators. Now it's sorta-kinda out, but from a commercial and survival-of-AmigaOS viewpoint, this achievement is rather pointless.
Of course, hardware yadda yadda yadda, but now that apparently there's a ready-to-sell OS for it, a proposal to sell hardware for it looks more rosy than a proposal for hardware without an OS other than Linux.
Will this version run on anything but an "AmigaOne"? If not, then there's still no ready-to-sell OS for anything else. And that can't happen, no matter how small a development effort would be required, unless someone gets that idiotic licence.
Like some others, I wonder about the motive behind calling this release "Final". An "OS4-DPR Update 5" would probably have worked equally well as a Christmas present to existing customers. The Hyperion guys have stated the obvious so many times; that a final "release" without hardware would be pointless, nothing will come out until there's someone selling hardware that the OS is allowed to run on, the pomp & circumstance needs to be carefully planned, et c.
I smell lawyers.
