AmigaONE X5000 (A-Eon Technology Ltd on Facebook)

[spirantho]

If Trevor followed any economic sense or logic he wouldn't be in the Amiga market at all.
The fact that he decided to ignore sense and spend his money the way he wanted to - rather than the way many would deem sensible - is something I and many other AmigaOS 4 users are very grateful to him for.

Basic economics says that it's impossible to make much money in the Amiga market these days. Supply can be made but the demand isn't there. Therefore supply has to be lessened. Less supply means higher prices - economies of scale. Higher prices then means less demand. Getting the balance right is very tricky and I think Trevor did it well with the X1000.

Trevor aimed for the high end of the Amiga market, leaving Acube with the low end, which makes complete sense. That meant using high end components like the PA6T despite the cost, on the grounds that the Amiga users really wanting as fast a machine as possible would have deep enough pockets, and they did.
 
Commodore were in a BIG market but Trevor isn't - hardly anyone wants a platform with very little software, even at a low price. In the 80s, small companies existed to make big games and programs, which helped push demand. Today people expect programs made with budgets in tens if millions of dollars or more.  Not practical on a tiny OS.

Whatever we do, we will never be able to take advantage of economies of scale like Commodore did, it's just impossible. Comparing Commodore to A-Eon is pointless unless you also compare the meerkat that A-Eon and Commodore are in.

Trevor knows full well about economics, but he chose to spend his money the way he wanted to and benefited hundreds of others in the process, and for that I applaud him.

[spirantho]

Why would its being x86 make it easier to port open source software?

Being x86 would, however, break nearly all Amiga programs because of endianness, hence the use of PPC.

[spirantho]

isnt that mantra of small scale economics anything but a self fulfilling propecy? i mean one could even imagine a strategy to address a wider audience and therefore lower entry cost even with some custom system (as its been proven in case of raspi and similar projects that do not even have a legacy to build upon). but i dont think, one should start with developing yet another similar hardware in the particular case of os4. it would be more important to establish actual unique (software) features (not xmos) and secure steady development to attract young users, and this is where the initial investments should have gone. the current strategy instead seems rather to addres exclusively the existing well-off collector user base, where the price point doesnt really matters and the drawbacks are easily accepted as long as the system is not neccessarily needed for actual usage. the minor questions like a naming convention arent going to solve the matter either.

The steady development has to be done on hardware, though - and before the X1000, the highest end Amiga was the Sam 460 which doesn't have many of the features we need to keep up (SMP being the obvious example).
There's no point in just/ throwing money at software, as the hardware will then stagnate. By providing the hardware, Trevor has allowed other people to produce the software; the other way round, though, can't happen - if Trevor were to put money into software, there'd be no hardware to take advantage of it: people can't homebrew hardware platforms like they can software.

I think people have forgotten why the X1000 exists.

The X1000 was created to allow hardcore fans of the Amiga the chance to buy really powerful (for an Amiga) hardware, and to allow Hyperion a platform on which to build new features such as multi-processing, which are a necessity in computing today. It was never meant to be accessible or to gain new users, it was meant to provide the foundation upon which future hardware boards can be made. Without the X1000, most of the advancements that have been on OS4 (which are "under the hood" so non-developers can't see them yet - but trust me they are there) would not have been possible.

We can't move forward by standing still or by concentrating on what already exists, we need to keep pushing, and that requires boards like the X1000 to exist.

As for unique software features, I don't believe that's possible - much as I'd like to. Computing is too big a field, and expectations are too high these days. The RasPi was in a different situation because the goals are much lower (the PI is just a chip on a board with a video and USB sockets really, nothing like the complete system the X1000 is) and was always designed to run Linux so it had an existing semi-mainstream software base.

[spirantho]

The RPi has a huge established market (Linux and/or geek users) and is really just a cheap embedded chip on a board with a few sockets - orders of magnitude less complex than an X1000.

They knew that because the unit cost was going to be SO low, they could produce millions and they would sell, and recoup costs.
Design costs of RPi: Much, much lower.
Market size of RPi: Much, much higher.
Risk of producing 1,000,000 Rpi and taking advantage of economies of scale: Much, much lower.

Making 1,000,000 RPi = make a fortune. Making 1,000,000 Amiga boards of similar spec to X1000 = suicide.

The two cannot be compared.

[spirantho]

I am afraid you are ill-informed. Long-term availability is a crucial concern for many industrial and embedded applications so numerous companies sell x86 mainboards with a guarantueed minimum production life of 5 years.

For example, Kontron sell Mini-ITX mainboards that are compatible with Intel i3, i5, and i7 processors and they advertize up to 7 years of availability after release. These type of mainboards are very similar to consumer mainboards but generally use better components and are specifically designed to last.

It should be noted, though, that a quick Google search suggests these boards start at about £280 including VAT, much more than an equivalently specced "normal" motherboard.
If A-Eon or Amigakit were to use these, they'd have people complaining about having to use years-old x86 motherboards when there are much cheaper brand-new ones out there.

Either way, they can't please everybody, so better to do what they are doing I think - make a design decision (i.e. custom PPC motherboards) and stick to it. Better than to keep changing direction.

[spirantho]

Several beta-testers I believe are running the new kernel, but they're all under NDA, so you don't hear about it.

It's not vapour, though - it's just not out yet.

[spirantho]

They could always tie OS4 to used Intel Macs.

An interesting suggestion I suspect they will choose to ignore.

[spirantho]

So, your argument appears to be that because some people might perhaps object to pay 50% more for extra durable and long-term available hardware, it is better to continue to sell hardware that costs 1000% more (and is notably slower).

The X1000 is the highest end, the Sams are much cheaper than that. Slower, yes, but still enjoyable and usable (I know this because I enjoy and use my little Sam440).

My argument is that whatever AmigaKit or A-Eon do, they will never make everybody happy, and there will always be people complaining - and at least they're doing something.

And regarding the comment above about Trevor doing it out of charity: there is a world of difference between supporting your hobby in a way which benefits many, like he did, and simply giving money away. Amazing that somebody who actually promises something to further the OS, and then follows up on his promises, gets slated so much. Trevor has helped many Amiga fans by his actions and he deserves to be praised for this.

Anyway, this is argument has gone on long enough and is getting nowhere, it's been done to death already in the past. I'm taking no further part in it.

[spirantho]

AmiArcadia is a bad example.... at first AmigaOS 4 versions were included in the AmigaOS 3 archive. Then there was a long period of time when the AmigaOS 4 version wasn't updated but the MorphOS version was. There was also time when the opposite happened, as the AOS 3 version was the master version at first, and it was up to other people to port it to MOS and AOS - which happened at different frequencies.

I'm not saying that AOS4 has a much bigger userbase than MOS - I don't know if that's true or not - but I do know that you can't take one piece of software and if you had to do that, it should be a piece of software that was developed at the same pace on each OS.

Isn't this rather OT anyway?

[spirantho]

Yes - lots of them.

None that have any replies in them though.