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Author Topic: AmigaOne is out of my budget league  (Read 14393 times)

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Offline spirantho

Re: AmigaOne is out of my budget league
« on: December 05, 2012, 07:51:00 AM »
The reason the price is so high is because it costs so much to make.
The X1000 was designed from the start to be the fastest new PowerPC hardware for AmigaOS, and that meant using very expensive components. like the pa6t. This was deliberate because the Sams already covered the low and mid range of the hardware range.
Trust me, they're not getting rich off this.
Luckily it's been selling better than expected. :)
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Ian Gledhill
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Offline spirantho

Re: AmigaOne is out of my budget league
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2012, 11:25:21 AM »
Quote from: Digiman;717578

The only choice for X1000 was the Xenon CPU from IBM, everything else was going to cost way too much.


The Xenon isn't a desktop CPU - it lacks some important features like branch prediction.
--
Ian Gledhill
ian.gledhill@btinternit.com (except it should be internEt of course...!)
Check out my shop! http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/shop/ - for 8-bit (and soon 16-bit) goodness!
 

Offline spirantho

Re: AmigaOne is out of my budget league
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2012, 12:38:10 PM »
Quote from: Digiman;717588
Still codes up games faster than an any i5 setup money can buy or even Core2Duo 64bit so for pushing a mouse pointer around a screen full of icons it's fine IMO. If the 360 can stream video and run IE 9 it is good enough to run OS4 on for sure, hardly a cutting edge OS any more.


Yes, it can run games faster than a Core2Duo, because that's what it's designed for. Equally, a Core2Duo running an OS would run rings round the Xenon, because that's what it in turn is designed for.

Console CPUs are designed for two things only - Gaming and Video. Yes, they can run other stuff, but as anyone who ran Linux on a PS3 will say, you don't get anywhere near the speed you'd get with a similarly clocked desktop processor.

If it was possible to run a Xenon instead of a very expensive PA6T, I'm fairly sure they'd have taken it. They're not stupid, and they're not a charity trying to lose money either.
--
Ian Gledhill
ian.gledhill@btinternit.com (except it should be internEt of course...!)
Check out my shop! http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/shop/ - for 8-bit (and soon 16-bit) goodness!
 

Offline spirantho

Re: AmigaOne is out of my budget league
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2012, 09:39:24 PM »
@swift240

Quote from: swift240;717663
I have always said this about the Amiga, what it comes to an Amiga the price is realy sky high, when it comes to a PC the price is reasly afordable to every one.


It would be, though, wouldn't it? Millions of people buy PCs, hundreds (at best) buy Amigas - not because they're more expensive, but because there's no software for it.
Basic economies of scale: PCs = high production run = low unit cost; Amigas = low production run (owing to low demand) = high unit cost.

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Is it the case of well if they want it they will bloody well pay for it?
Or a case of ohhhhh well you see, we have to do this and then we gota do that, then we gota do the other thing then we gota................. so the price will by HIGH like it or not.


Do you really think the makers of low-volume hardware want the computer to be this expensive?

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Why not a affordable CPU that will not cost the earth that will handle an Amiga OS?


There already is one - the Sam 440ep. The X1000 isn't designed for this, it's designed to be the fastest computer possible at that time for people with enough cash. It's not for people who want "affordable" it's for people who want "the fastest for AmigaOS", and that meant at the time the PA6T. It's the same anywhere else - on a PC if you want the fastest you pay through the nose for it. Same on Mac. Same on everything.

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Or will this be another excuse ohhh well we cant do that.


It's not an excuse. It's simply that the Amiga market is very small, and there's not much money in it. We're lucky that there's anybody at all doing anything with it.

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Sorry I dont belive a word of it, there is enough technology out there to do that.


But not the right technology. Sure you can get cheap x86 CPUs but not cheap PPC CPUs (and that's an argument for another thread :) )

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And the price dont need to be sky high either.  But its the same old thing if its Amiga then the price will be lovely and high if its a PC then it wont.


Yes, the price does need to be high - at least if you don't want it to be a PC.

The Amiga is a niche market. It doesn't run 99.99% of software that people want to run, therefore most people don't want it. Demand is comparatively very low, therefore production runs also have to be very low.
If you're going to sell 10 million units in the first month like an Xbox or something, you can afford to produce 10 million components, but if you're only going to sell 50, you can only produce 50. That raises the unit cost for each part massively.

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To hell with this I am runnig in circles here, its cheaper to use my AMD and Amikit.


I agree with that! Using commodity (i.e. PC) hardware will naturally be much cheaper because the market is so much bigger.

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But I wont get rid of my Amiga 1200 no matter what, so its either AMD and Amikit or pay a price thats so high I will need a jet plane to get to the top of it.


You're right about the A1200. :) If you don't want to buy an AOS 4 machine then no-one's forcing you to.

The way you wrote your post you make it sound like the people making OS4 machines are choosing to make it expensive? Yet it's well documented that in the case of the X1000, Trevor is actually subsidising the production!

Low volume hardware will always be much much more expensive than high volume commodity hardware, that's just the way of the world.

High prices are the sacrifice you make for being in a hobby that involves low production volumes - this isn't just for Amigas, it's for any hobby which involves low volume production runs.

The alternative is to do it the CUSA way - just take a cheap PC and stick an "Amiga" sticker on it and call it an Amiga.... but I'd much rather pay more and get something that is designed for and runs AmigaOS.
--
Ian Gledhill
ian.gledhill@btinternit.com (except it should be internEt of course...!)
Check out my shop! http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/shop/ - for 8-bit (and soon 16-bit) goodness!
 

Offline spirantho

Re: AmigaOne is out of my budget league
« Reply #4 on: December 06, 2012, 08:08:38 AM »
Dropping Moana was nothing to do with price.
If they'd let Moana out then we'd still be stuck with Macs with stuff like PCI and AGP,  as there'd be NO new hardware, even for those who wanted it.
It was necessary to stop Moana as it was in the wrong direction... that of new Amigas in hardware as well as software.

Why would they want it to be expensive? It's not in their interest to be expensive, they make very little money off it. They want it to be cheap so that more people buy it to increase numbers of users.

When you see the OS4 people driving Ferraris, then you can accuse them of deliberately pricing high, but I assure you... it's not going to happen on the small profit margins these guys have.
--
Ian Gledhill
ian.gledhill@btinternit.com (except it should be internEt of course...!)
Check out my shop! http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/shop/ - for 8-bit (and soon 16-bit) goodness!
 

Offline spirantho

Re: AmigaOne is out of my budget league
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2012, 03:26:28 PM »
@Blinx123

AmigaOS 4 is my favourite platform for coding by far. The advances made to the API since 3.x are very useful, and really help. They've done some very good work under the hood that the average user doesn't see, but as a developer I definitely see. I've also coded for Windows (gurrrrgggghhhh) and Android (not too bad, but a bit idiosyncratic at times - and you have to use Java). Not used iOS.

If you like developing stuff, I can thoroughly recommend OS4, but you may want to get a little Sam as a taster before taking the plunge on the expensive ones.
--
Ian Gledhill
ian.gledhill@btinternit.com (except it should be internEt of course...!)
Check out my shop! http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/shop/ - for 8-bit (and soon 16-bit) goodness!
 

Offline spirantho

Re: AmigaOne is out of my budget league
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2012, 11:18:21 PM »
Quote from: zylesea;717848
But that's also true for AROS or MorphOS. All these systems go far beyond 3.1. I don't say OS4 is a particular bad choice, but it isn't the only choice. There are actauilly alternatives. The Amiga (in the sense of 68k Amiga by Commodore) heritage consists of OS4, MorphOS and AROS.


When I coded last for AROS and MorphOS, I did find things were missing that I took for granted in OS4 - and it made me realise how much OS4 had improved on things.

However, I have a lot more experience with OS4, and I didn't have the time to look into other options for MorphOS and AROS. Hence my own experience isn't a fair judgement. Therefore I say that OS4 is an improved OS only in comparison to OS3, not to AROS or MOS. In other words, I'm not trying to "one-up" against MOS and AROS, I'm just commenting on what I know better, which in this case is AmigaOS 4.

I think that's clear now? :)
--
Ian Gledhill
ian.gledhill@btinternit.com (except it should be internEt of course...!)
Check out my shop! http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/shop/ - for 8-bit (and soon 16-bit) goodness!