MorphOS Milestone: 2000+ licenses sold

[vox]

Some notes:

Congratulations, even numbers aren`t exceedingly high, they show MorphOS team ability to survive in times left with no hardware company beneath. It would be natural to seek good, reliable and widespread hardware and Macs were great choice. For many reasons, from people simply still having them, to reliable and well designed hardware for its times.

On its price: Its great users can try it and then buy it. However you :should have a boxed one, with manual and a bit preconfigured for the machine (even its seen as weakness :-) - SAM 460 port could be first one for team to do so?

That will give presentable MOS product as such - not just Amigan geek thing. SAM 460 is not bad platform at all, limited in expandability but yet quite modern, quiet and fast for its class. How much SAM 460 Lite based system will cost depends on user and doesn`t have to be 1000 euros, specially if you do have most of components at you home.

Having cheaper Acube products needs only higher volumes - something MOS can contribute
 (hopefully not only in case Macs or Pegs die?) or eventually introducing some dual core
high end replacement (like it was speculated several times) that would bring SAM 460
as total OS4 low end, effectively replacing 440 (kind of what Flex did to integrated  EP niodel).
Eventually it might become only cheaper, it can hardly be more expensive (for end users).

It will end blue - red war in nice fashion, OS4 port for Peg2 did.
Enable people to use both if they want. In such regards until x86 or ARM transition is done also SAM 440 (not to hard to derive from SAM 460 port since CPU is same) and even X1000 should be kept as viable targets.
Even those systems are expensive, they already have some customers (250 OS4 users) that could be added, and offer PCI-E, SATA and other modern standards often beyond Mac and there aren`t 2005 performers. Test declassifying SAM 440/460 and X1000 to Macs in CPU performance clearly show way better performance in memory and disk drive transfers, as well as there is PCI-E as expansion that offers unlimited possibility to make drivers you could use later on in transition.

Not everywhere like in US PPC Macs are widespread, offered a lot and thus low priced. At least in East Europe there way few users (I kind of have seen them twice in life) and they still cost quite a lot. Pegs are history and Efika simply ins`t it.

Hope MorphOS can also have a great future, even its not official, nor has hardware vendor behind. In such battle, even OS4 users are somewhat allies that do know what do you talk about :-)

Hmmm ... which will come first (or ever?) MorphOS 4 or AmigaOS 5? :-)

[vox]

As does most OS's, except perhaps MacOS.

I am not aware any OS had such long as difficult history as AmigaOS/MorphOS. That is our specialty :-)

As I tried to discuss above, going the Acube/Aeon route would have put MorphOS in a much worse position than what it is today. The problem isn't lack of HW, the problem is PPC and a dead architecture. But the MorphOS team surely made the most out of what was available. Soon there isn't anything more worth supporting
Completely unnecessary. Only makes it more expensive and doesn't bring any real additional value.

Its not dead, just not price/performant and would not be even if PPC Macs were new and avail HW (do people remember how these used to cost when they were new?)

I agree taking Mac route was better choice seen in user numbers, but why not exploiting only availiable route until PPC is left behind, and that is AEON/ACube? Especially if its well known these companies do support it (not in paying for port but would be in promoting it and giving hardware)

The fact that OS4 users are prone to pay sh!tloads of money for OS4  stuff (HW, OS, boxes with boing balls etc) doesn't automatically mean  they are willing to pay similar amounts for an expensive cardboard box  with printed manual for MorphOS. After all, it isn't "teh reel!!1!" and  doesn't have a boing ball slapped on it.

Your choice in digital age, but again, having actual physcial copy does not hurt either. Its not gonna mass sell, but surely users would buy it together with SAM460 or for collectors / having physical copies.

Call me old fashioned, but I still do buy CDs/Vynils and not mp3s. If I do need an mp3 I ll encode it on my own. Same goes for software avail in physical copies.

Amiga geeks are the only ones interested in MorphOS in its current incarnation.

And that would be the reason more to go for those 250 OS4 users.
Most of them would try it and likely most of those who try would buy it if it would be avail for their SAMs/X1000

Volumes are so low in Acube products anyway that a MorphOS port couldn't  do a thing to improve economy of scale. To be able to lower price  thanks to economy of scale, you need mass production in China and bulk  purchasing of components in tens of thousands. I don't see how a MorphOS  port could have that kind of result on Acube sales.

True in overall, but having more 50 or 100 orders could create another volume that would cost a bit less, even in present low scale economy.

Amiga is single core only. It can't be anything else (except through  asymmetric multi processing, which isn't really that useful for general  usage). If MorphOS would introduce true SMP, then Amiga compatibility  has to be broken anyway, so why bother with PPC at all at that point?  Why not go to a HW architecture that still has a pulse?  Besides,  MorphOS already runs on dual CPU HW (single core, of course).

Wasn`t that (breaking away AmigaOS chains and SMP) one of original MorphOS goals that would eventually be met with x86/ARM transition?

Surely most effort should be put to it, but its a long road to go.

Everything "Sam" is very low end...

Well its a system on chip concenpt, never ment to be a killer.
But is in between Efika and Peg2, which most of users would find
satisfactory (as well as they do work OK on less optimized OS4)

That's what I and most people thought as well a few years ago. Then came A-eon and proved everyone wrong! :lol:

No, but even MOS users could agree it gave a new pulse to OS4 community. Trevor is doing great job there, sadly OS4 development is not on pair with his efforts.

Funny that they only released OS4 for Pegasos 2 after it had reached EOL  (I know for a fact that OS4 was running on the Peg2 long before it was  released), when it could no longer help sales or grow the Peg2  community. Anyway, OS4 users could only buy Pegasos 2 as second hand HW.  Think about that, you "but-it's-not-new-HW" crybabies! :lol:

Well, you may take that perspective, but do remember AOS4 had big hustle and almost prevention of release for SAM by Amiga Inc strict AmigaOne/PowerUp license and restrictions in AmigaOne branding - something MOS team never had (not that Genesi played great, but ...)

The CPU is absolutely not the same, and neither is anything else.

Not in full SOCC/board terms, but in CPU terms they are.
Its basically 440 with better northbridge and higher clock and cache.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of those 250 OS4 users  also has a MorphOS system today. Running on a cheap Mac. There are a lot  more "dual users" than many seems to think. They aren't always making a  lot of fuss about it though.

I do know only of Trevor - presumably people that already had PPC Mac.
I was tempted to buy G5 Mac just for that cause, but it slipped me on auctioning.

SATA isn't anything magic or anything "milestone"-alike, and MorphOS  already supports a SATA card for those who need one. And PCI-E is just a  freakin' bus, there is no magic or "milestone" there either! The  day the MorphOS team decides to support a motherboard that is using a  PCI-E controller, then they will simply write support for that  controller, just like they always do with all the other controllers on  all the other motherboards they decides to support. No magic involved,  no "technology milestones". And certainly no X1000 is needed for  anything.

Surely, but all Macs but last G5 models and PegsII (mainly g4 processors) were tied to north/south bridge combination that provided only
AGP/PCI/IDE. This kind of expandability is performance step forward in same way as CPU class is.

Why not starting with that high end G5 and SAM 460?
RadeonHD route seems to be natural route for MorphOS too.

The PA6T is the most powerful of them all, and it performs on par with (or slightly below) 2005 level G4 Mac's.

As far as I do remember, G4 2Ghz was faster then PA Semi 1.8Ghz single core (a bit on 20% higher frequency anyway) and decent test on Linux that would use both cores, were never presented. I will try to do some when I do get my paid X1000.

I`m not saying some of the choices were wrong - in fact they aren`t, but your most likely closest market is actually OS4 one. Why not taking a bite there too?