Amount of MorphOS copies sold

[takemehomegrandma]

In a user base as small and fractured as ours I'd suggest that being able to sell a product at all is quite an achievement.

Indeed.

[takemehomegrandma]

@takemehomegrandma
You believe MorphOS is doing great.

No, I don't think ~700 users is great in any way, nowhere did I say that.

[takemehomegrandma]

No, I don't think ~700 users is great in any way, nowhere did I say that.

This would give around 700 MorphOS users, which is a pretty decent number actually!

Doesn't matter anyway

Again (pointing at your own quotes) I said that 700 is a pretty *decent* number, and I think it is, given the fact that it descends from a 25 year old platform that people forgot about one and a half decade ago, given that it's tied to PPC in a world where no new viable desktop motherboards has been produced since 2007, and given that it's being developed on a hobby basis, obviously with no commercial ambition (yes, I mean that despite the fact that they are charging money for the licenses, I mean that see no ambition to build a commercial context, a commercial purpose, a product). And it's an OK number for a hobby OS, no-one can expect miracles from these conditions, and it's probably a very good share of the total remaining people in this community who actually *uses* Amiga, and not only spending time in the social clubs *talking* about it.

"Doing Great" would have had a couple of trailing zeros to that 700 figure...

you're not listening

I've been listening to you the whole day. I don't agree however.

[takemehomegrandma]

i rest my case.

Look, I understand that some things are taboo, that you "can't" talk about it, at least not without being crucified. Like OS4's obvious quality problems and shortcomings. Like the insanity of the OS4 HW route, and the platform-death it leads to. Like the amount of OS4 users, that probably is a result of the first two. To name a few things, there are more. I understand that.

But you see, talking about it isn't the actual problem. The actual problem is OS4's obvious quality problems and shortcomings, the insanity of the OS4 HW route, and the platform-death it leads to.

So I will continue the talk. Maybe some day, someone will listen, maybe something will change if problems are discussed. Probably not, since a lot of people seems to be of the opinion that the problem is actually highlighting the problems. "Negativity" is baad, mmmkay? Not talking about the problems would be "positivism", and that's goood, mmmkay?

You obviously are one of the people who can't stand this, but I don't really care about what you think of me. I have understood that you don't like me "and people like me" as you put it. You must also understand that a lot of people doesn't like when "ssolie" takes a field-trip to morphzone.org on a crusade against MorphOS charging money for their work (almost trying to bring the impression of some kind of "robbery"/not delivering the promised features, lecturing the MorphOS team on what they should do with the money, etc), a lot of people doesn't like when OS4 users groups MorphOS together with Linux and whatever alien OS's and discards it as being totally irrelevant to the Amiga community (hey, it's not MorphOS that's introducing .so objects and other POSIX crap into the OS, and Hyperion games runs fine on MorphOS), or when the Friedens has their regular primadonna-rage-tantrums as soon as they get a legit question about their views on Open Source.

We don't have to love each other. Do yourself a favor and focus on the problems instead.

[takemehomegrandma]

1100 Serials Sold.

That was a year ago, you'd have to add 200 registrations since then...

Quote of the thread: "What you think of people is highly subjective."

My vote goes to: "How active are the following forums:"

[takemehomegrandma]

So from the MorphOS team POV only interesting graph should be number of MorphOS licenses sold.

Indeed that's interesting, the MorphOS Team has absolute statistics of this (also connected to individual users e-mail addresses (read: users), so they won't have to "divide by 2" or such either), and that is interesting to outsiders as well, hence the effort of collecting the registration data and making that graph over at morphzone.org, and the original post in this thread a year ago...

[takemehomegrandma]

There a simple way to measure activity... the software-base. When you call aminet "recent" page and count new entries. There is 68k alone more than all others combined, second is mostly AmigaOS or MorphOS (when I remember right) no big difference between both (f.e. 6 new entries versus 3 or 4) but a really huge gap to 68k and then Aros (but it is now speeding up and developing faster). So when takemehomegrandma is happy about this second place let him have the joy. I am not and are investing my spare time to merge the 68k and Aros communities (what is the logical next step for me). And i see only stagnation in both AmigaOS and MorphOS.

What, are there MorphOS software on Aminet? Did anyone know this?

:p

(Note: I knew there was, but you must understand that most people downloads their MorphOS software from other places. And isn't there something for OS4 as well, "OS4 depot" or something? And whether you download or not at all, what, and how much, depends on your user pattern. For example: If you mostly want to browse the web, Odyssey is already bundled (no need to download, and new versions comes on the developers own space), Yam has its own site, Simple mail has sourceforge AFAIK, AmIRC has its own page. UAE is on Fab's page, so is mplayer, etc, etc. Do you get the point? )

[takemehomegrandma]

@hooligan

Oh sure, morphzone.org is full of productive threads, like a 28 page thread slagging off the X1000. Yes, you're all so superior...

On that thread, someone brought up the idea of porting MorphOS to the X1000, but then it was discussed how this would be pointless, and would never happen anyways given the people involved in the project. It's way too expensive, to uncertain, too small volume, etc. There isn't anything viable about it. This is what was discussed, to sum it up.

What's so wrong about that? Discussing/considering things like this, is what made MorphOS go the current Mac route (bringing 100 new registrations per half year, and probably a visible bump when the PowerBook support is here), it's called realism, not "negativity", and *NOT* discussing/considering these things, is how you end up having your platform tied to a $3,000 anchor on a chain that won't do one single thing to develop the platform, probably the opposite, it may push people away from it, as they see how it prevents the boat from moving.

But by all means, go back to the "Happy La-La Land", where cold-hearted facts are forever being suppressed because of their "negativity", so that lunacy can grow freely and *prosper*. And then you will wake up some day (some two years from now, when the Friedens releases the final version of the Timberwolf) and you'll be shocked and wonder why it was only downloaded by 350 people in total, when the community is so live and active at amigaworld.net, discussing Windows 8, CUSA Amiga's, and x86 vs PPC...

There is *nothing* wrong with the thread over at MorphZone, maybe it's the beholder that is the problem...?

[takemehomegrandma]

@TMHG

Grunch ftw ;-)

Yeah!

Hope they will integrate the MorphOS itself (with all its components) in Grunch in MorphOS 3.0...

[takemehomegrandma]

That's funny. When I read it I see a well thought out discussion about future direction and the concerns expressed about that future.

Was that supposed to *contradict* in some way what I just wrote above? I just commented on the X1000 part of it. Again: It started with a suggestion to port MorphOS to the X1000, the idea was rejected (hordes of reasons were given, in summary it would be even more of a dead-end than used Mac hardware), what makes most sense at this point is supporting Mac hardware. Then various aspects of various CPU architectures was discussed, pros/cons, etc. In fact, not a great deal of all the posts in that thread was even mentioning the X1000. How this can turn out to be "a 28 page thread slagging off the X1000" in someones head is beyond me. It must be someone having their "actively-searching-for-"Negativity"-to-get-upset-about" glasses on. Maybe your comment was really directed to HenryCase?

[takemehomegrandma]

Do you know why I made that earlier statement? Please feel free to take a guess.

You have made *quite a number* of strange statements in this thread, like forum activity on amigaworld.net etc sites would have anything to do with the amount *users* of various platforms, like "MUI OWB" download statistics during a 6+ months period of time of turbulence, two OS updates, re-installations and injection of a few hundred extra systems to existing users, would give a good picture of amount of users, like when you claimed I have said "MorphOS is doing great" when I hadn't, like suggesting that MorphZone.org threads would be "low quality" and giving an "example" of "a 28 page thread slagging off the X1000" (a thread that hardly even speaks of the X1000), like trying to draw conclusions about amount of MorphOS users from Aminet *uploads* (heck much MorphOS SW doesn't even reach Aminet, but that's not even the point, the point is that this is equally hilarious as "user statistics" as your "website activity" were), etc.

I find your behavior very strange, almost obsessed (and no, *I'm* not the one pushing some case here, I have merely been replying to a post you did as a reply to a one year old post from me). Maybe MorphOS doesn't have more users than OS4, there is no certain way of knowing. I don't know, and *you* don't know, you have actually no idea, but you are quite desperate to discard it as "wishful thinking" though.

What we *do* have, however, is statistics of MorphOS registrations. And we *do* have DL statistics of *the single most anticipated and hyped piece of OS4 software ever!* (please don't insult everyone's intelligence by suggesting that only a few people would download this, not when the browser situation is so dire on OS4 as it is, not when it's "Firefox" from "the Friedens" we are talking about). I have never claimed that this could be considered absolute facts, I stressed that several times, in several posts. But put together, it all surely builds a *plausible* case. *Plausible*, not a fact. But it's funny to see how this obviously is so darn completely inconceivable to you, and in your desperation to prove it to be impossible and "wishful thinking", you come up with one "proof" more hilarious and ridiculous than the other.

Again, MorphOS had a head start of almost half a decade and it actually had employed/contracted developers in the beginning (not hobby based development like today), it has all the best Amiga standards *integrated*, it has the best performance, the best features, the best stability, the best Amiga compatibility, the best Internet SW, etc. And it has always had the much better HW situation, both more powerful and cheaper than OS4, and a much better driver support in the OS to go with that. These are quantifiable, measurable facts, not subjective opinions. But even if you *don't* agree with that (which I just *bet* you don't), you are incredibly naive if you can't conceive that there *will* have been an effect in amount of users (for *both* platforms) during the *many years* of a situation where the threshold of getting a MorphOS system being *extremely low*, while the threshold of getting an OS4 system being *extremely high*. Read my lips: "I-T W-I-L-L H-A-V-E A-N E-F-F-E-C-T", the difference is *way* too huge to be ignored! Being tied to a $3,000 system (that offers very little over a $250 MorphOS system) *won't* result in a platform growth for OS4, it will result in a *platform decrease*, at least over time! And this *will* show in various statistics, like for example how many downloads has taken place for the *holy grail* Firefox/Timberwolf software that you *safely* can assume at least 99% of active users will download (*at least* once)...

[takemehomegrandma]

@Iggy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo9AH4vG2wA&t=16s

[takemehomegrandma]

@takemehomegrandma
If you find my behaviour strange, then you still haven't grasped why I am doing what I'm doing. Please at least TRY to answer the question below

By all means. Your view is that *even the thought* of MorphOS could be having a larger user base than OS4 is "more of wishful thinking than anything based in reality", it being "Extraordinary claims", obviously totally inconceivable to you. While not claiming with certainty that *it is* this way, I have during my posts put up at least 6 facts that combined gives a plausible case how it *could be* this way. Since you are so desperate to show how this is nothing but "wishful thinking", you have been using all kinds of strange arguments, really grasping for straws, like pointing at Aminet Upload Statistics(!!) and your perceived activity in selected forums(!!!), I mean come on!

Since I posted the last graph the other day, it has now been updated. Well, well, well, the trend (that *is* based on reality, like it or not) continues!



This definitely covers *some* old "classic" Amigans, curious about the "NG" thing, it covers some still active OS4 users wanting to have and use MorphOS as a complement to OS4, and possibly some *formerly* active OS4 users that simply can't afford/won't think it's worth the money to replace their dead-by-age AmigaOne XE system with what's currently being offered by A-eon and Acube.

What these people (in the blinking part above) did do during the very last month, is they have obtained a MorphOS compatible Mac computer by paying money in the range of $20-$300 (probably a hundred or two), they have downloaded MorphOS for free, they have used it and evaluated it for a couple of days, they have installed SW, they have been configuring it in various ways, they have browsed the web, they have played with it, they have been doing a lot of things trying to answer the question: "is this a good Amiga for my needs? A license will cost some money, will it be worth it?". And then *they have* taken the step and paid the €111 to get a key file, some have reported their serial numbers in that MorphOS Counter thread over at MZ, thus they ended up in this statistic. A similar amount is undergoing the same process as we speak. And yet a new group will show up in the statistics for the month after. And you know what? All these people will probably *continue* their social club activities, they will continue casting their votes in the AW.net pancake polls, start IRC-style chat threads, etc, even together with people not even having come close to anything Amiga in a decade but posting there anyway, thus keeping that site "active"...

Again;
The threshold of going MorphOS is *extremely low*.
The threshold of going OS4 is *extremely high*
This *had*, it *has*, and it *will have*, a direct impact on amount of users, for both platforms, as statistics shows...

I don't know why this would be so darn inconceivable, so much of "extraordinary claims", and so much of "wishful thinking" from "the other side".

I find this interesting that you bring this up as a quantifiable fact. As far as I know, there has been no in-depth study of 68k Amiga software compatibility

Well *I did bet* right on your reaction here, didn't I? No, I don't think anyone have bothered with *a complete* Amiga Compatibility comparison, and there are other areas as well where you could do such a comparison as well, like in features and stability. It's very much possible to put together these kind of comparisons, and MorphOS would win them all. I have been playing with the thought many times of producing these comparisons myself, but have been a bit reluctant to do so, because: 1) It would require a lot of time and effort, and 2) As soon as anyone dares to put up a public comparison of MorphOS and OS4 in any way, it's bound to cause uproar and riots, this is something you simply aren't allowed to do, it's taboo, and it will cause the same type of people come crawling up from under their rocks, spewing out their mantras about "negativity", "trolls", "what's the point in all this", shooting and ridiculing the messenger, trying to belittling the whole subject by making casual jokes about it, etc, we have actually seen some lesser examples of this in this very thread (like eliyahu, gertsy, Pyromania, smerf, etc).

There *are* a couple of factual comparisons in existence though. A very thorough performance comparison was made a few years ago (in that french web mag I currently can't remember the name on). MorphOS won, hands down, and as a result we saw countless of thread and unpleasant posts from people condemning the effort per se. Comparing HW performance, HW availability, HW price and HW bang/buck ratio is also a no brainer, there is no need to put these facts side by side in a table, everyone simply knows these facts anyway. A brief feature list comparison (based on publicly available information) could easily be put together (but is it really needed? Doesn't everyone already knows this?), it would take more time to create a comparison table with more in-depth listings. But as soon as you do, there comes these "why all this negativity" people creeping again...

[takemehomegrandma]

@HenryCase

We have a fixed number of MorphOS registrations. This is number is not a guess at all.

We also have a fixed number of Timberwolf downloads, no guess at all there either.

There have been discussions on MorphZone.org about what would be a reasonable assumption about number of users (since some (but far from all) may have more than one computer registered). A consensus about a plausible number, is the amount of registrations divided by two. It's a very fair assumption, not a fact, but also not something taken completely out of the blue.

There have been a very extensive discussion on Amigaworld.net about the Timberwolf DL numbers as well (eight pages!). Many were shocked that the numbers were so low, and obviously having difficulties conceiving that. It is, after all, the single most awaited, hyped, anticipated etc piece of software *ever* on OS4, Firefox, coming with a possible result of solve the terrible browser situation on the OS4 platform, and completely free of charge to download. It's a safe assumption that close to 100% of all active users downloaded this piece of SW at least once, but these turned out to be only a few hundreds in total (it's only fair to divide the number by *at least* two, due to multiple machines in the OS4 world as well (not unique to MorphOS), notorious DL problems/errors with some OS4 browsers, etc). So this is also a fair assumption, not something taken completely out of the blue.

Putting these two variables together, it gives a picture (*with* big margin for errors) of a MorphOS user base far bigger than the OS4 one. And unlike what you are saying, this is *not* "guesses" (as you want to picture it), but *educated guesses* based on reasonable assumptions and estimations. Nothing taken out of the blue, nothing made up, nothing imaginary; just a reasonable, discussed, motivated extrapolation from the data we actually *do* have.

I have tried to put up a possible explanation to how it *could* be this way (MorphOS being bigger than OS4), where the common thread/key words in the context are: probably, I'm not claiming to be sitting on a complete set of statistics, I'm *not* claiming with certainty that things are this way, in no way could be considered as facts, *could*, *Plausible*, not a fact, While not claiming with certainty that *it is* this way, I have during my posts put up at least 6 facts that combined gives a plausible case how it *could be* this way. MorphOS was here almost half a decade before OS4, it has always had the better qualities, features, performance, amiga compatibility, etc, it has always had better, cheaper and more powerful hardware since the beginning, and for the last couple of years it has been cheaper than ever to run MorphOS on HW more competent than ever. The threshold of going MorphOS is *extremely low*, while the threshold of going OS4 is *extremely high*. All this *will* have an effect on amount of users for both platforms, you must understand that. And you must understand that not all people sitting all day *chatting* away their life on Amigaworld.net *about* OS4, are actual OS4 *users*, and only the OS4 *users* (not "forum activity") will download Timberwolf, the single most anticipated piece of software since Commodore went bankrupt...

[takemehomegrandma]

For starters, anyone running OS 4.0 can't run it.

By all means, let's add MorphOS 1.4 users to the picture as well then...? :rolleyes: Honesty, why start counting nickles and dimes in a discussion based on approximations in the hundreds, keep it in three digit figures, or at least two digit, no need to pay attention to the one digit figures...

you have to get a new registration for each new mac you have if you want to use morphos. so these morphos users have a lot of old macs laying around the house

Uhm yeah, "morphos users have a lot of old macs laying around the hose", you know, that post was so retarded that I will let it speak for itself without furhter comments...

Niko's AspireOS had 181 downloads since friday.

That's great, all the power to AspireOS! While not really comparable to neither MorphOS nor OS4, I downloaded it myself, I take a look on those distros from time to time to see who things are going, but that doesn't make me no more "AROS" user than HenryCase's AW.net buddies *talking about* OS4 could be called "OS4 users"...


@thread

I fully understands how talking about user numbers in the hundreds (or below) is provoking to some, but the key term is *user* (not participator in the AW.net social club), and to quote myself from *a year ago* in this thread: "If the numbers seems disappointing to some people, I think they may have had an unrealistic view of the overall 'state of the nation'."

[takemehomegrandma]

I fully understands how talking about user numbers in the hundreds (or below) is provoking to some, but the key term is *user* (not participator in the AW.net social club), and to quote myself from *a year ago* in this thread: "If the numbers seems disappointing to some people, I think they may have had an unrealistic view of the overall 'state of the nation'."

Fine. No how about you present a plan to correct that situation, now that we've completed the 11 page adventure to reach that obvious conclusion.

The only ones who would even bother trying to *use* (as a *desktop* system) MorphOS, OS4 or AROS are the old Amiga enthusiasts that are already here. As a desktop system, it simply won't offer anything to anyone else that established OS's won't do better, so no-one will bother even if given away *for free*, like we have seen with AROS. It can't attract users from the outside using the current model (read: the 1992 "desktop" model, remaining here from when the computer world looked completely different), so the amount of users each of these OS's have is a zero-sum game within the existing (and rapidly shrinking) "Amiga Community". All the OS developers knows this and has probably come to peace with this fact half a decade ago or more already, and none of them really cares, *they are all* (MorphOS, OS4 and AROS) developing their OS as a hobby, and they are developing it into something they would like to use themselves, with no thought about potential commercial applications for the OS outside the community.

Heck, not even Commodore thought of the Amiga as a PC. Had they had the resources and ambition to put up a fight with Microsoft (and Apple) back in the early 1990's where it could have mattered, then Amiga *could* have mattered on the desktop market today. I'm talking about a situation where the Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, etc, etc, etc would have been running on Amiga OS today (which would probably have been completely different by now anyway), not because someone put up a bounty and donated a developer machine to Apple or Microsoft, but because of Amiga's significance on the desktop market, much like they do on Mac OS. A high single-digit market share could have been enough. But Commodore never had that ambition (they were exploring their own PC line AFAIR), and they for sure didn't have the vast financial muscles this would have taken anyway, as became obvious to everyone in 1995, if not before.

You can say what you want about Bill Buck (and many does :lol:), but nobody can say he isn't constantly pursuing possibilities on new (or at least "new-ish") markets. His plan (through VisCorp) was to buy the Amiga bankrupt's estate and utilize Amiga technology in non-desktop context (while still providing a desktop "on the side"). While I don't think the ED ("Electronic Device", its development code name) would have been a great success back then (the real market for STB's wasn't there yet, at least not in Europe), I think it's a proper way of thinking about Amiga in a commercial context - use its strengths in real, commercial products for *other* markets than the desktop market, while still providing some kind of desktop configuration for developers.

So what are Amiga's strengths?

I think the most prominent strength (the only one) worth anything, is its tiny footprint, its leanness, it's efficiency. This can make really low performance (even "under-performing") devices feel fast, my Efika is a proof of that. And speaking of Efika, the LimePC (which was about to be far more than the netbook the OS4 crowd is talking about now, take a look at the pictures in post #3) can be considered an extrapolation of that one; and again: Here is Bill Buck, and again: Here is the Amiga (in the shape of MorphOS, in a non-desktop form (or at least: *Could* have been, had it been ported to the Efika 1.5 years faster, and then adapted to the needs accordingly after that)). And again: it fell through! :p

There are many areas where Amiga's strengths makes sense, many kind of devices that aren't desktop (and aren't tablet or smartphones either, those ships have also sailed), that benefits from ultra-cheap (virtually no cost), ultra-lean HW. SCALA (Hollywood?) type of applications, In-shop displays, Info Kiosks. In car/in flight/on train info systems/"infotainment", etc. 64-bit, SMP, Memory Protection, resource tracking, etc, etc, won't be needed, not really wanted either, since it will destroy the simplicity by making things complex. Those are desktop kind of things, something Amiga isn't.

And how do you harness these strengths in a commercial context? Well, the first step will obviously to decide that this is what you really want to do, that your primary goal is no longer a desktop for the vanishing Amiga community. You should then carefully *keep* it lean, simple and clean all the way, you don't arbitrary bloat it by throwing .so crap or desktop stuff into the picture in an ad-hoc manner. You should start putting together a package that could meet the demands of the market or market niche you are aiming for.

STB's got itself a real market half a decade past the "ED". I actually think Amiga would make sense in that context. And STB's are moving into TV's now, making them more than "just a TV". Amiga would make sense in a TV, but it would need development to do so. This is still unexplored territory, virgin estate, go claim it! In a few years, the "Apple TV" would have evolved and taken the full step into a 50" iTV you can put on your wall, and Android will as well, both having a new set of media (iMovies, instead of iTunes, oh wait, it's already here!) and a new App-store tuned for this new platform. Do it now, with the right partners, like electronics manufacturers, Spotify, Voddler, whatever (this is nothing you do as a five person, part time cellar company) and who knows, maybe you just might have a chance of claiming that single-digit market share you never got on the desktop market, by the time it becomes relevant to measure market shares on this yet to be developed market...?

But the thing is, those ultra-cheap and low-performance devices aren't made from PPC's, they are made from ARM, which disqualifies both MorphOS and OS4 before even getting to the starting line. These kinds of discussions are utterly pointless as it is.

The Science of Marketing isn't about how to put together an ad for a news paper or magazine, it's about identifying and satisfying needs on a market. And here is the shocker: There is no need on the desktop market for what MorphOS/OS4/AROS has to offer. The problem isn't about lacking promotion or advertizing, it's about completely lacking a commercial context.

But again, in any way, under any circumstances, *nothing* will happen as long as it's being tied to the PPC. The PPC is an Amiga killer, not an enabler, *especially* those costing $3,000...