The most important question that never gets asked: What can a closed PPC platform do that open x86 can't do just as well?
The only answer seems to be that PPC runs cooler than x86. That's not enough, especially with the new, more efficient Pentiums coming out. Besides, the high-end PPC chips run pretty damn hot, too. Ever open up a G3 Power Mac only to find a 12x8 cm heatsink with a 120mm fan blowing down on it -- and the chip still gets hot? The G5 Macs need liquid cooling. 'Nuff said.
alx (pointing out some counter-arguments):
2) If OS4 was on PC hardware, people would be able to use Windows applications, so there wouldn't be an incentive to develop OS4 applications.
Yeah, I'm tired of that argument, too. People who already use Windows either need it or want to use it. I'm sure there's lots of Linux people who are shaking in their boots, knowing Windows is sipping from the Linux fanbase just because they share the same hardware.
Varthall: I don't see much point in having AmigaOs4 ported on x86, since there's already Aros for that, and better yet it's free.
Sorry to be rude, but AROS is crap at the moment. On my system it crashes and locks up constantly, and the interface gives hardly and useful feedback and information. I've never used an OS before where clicking on an icon caused a lockup. Even Windows will give you some "warnings" that something bad is gonna happen shortly. :-)
gafstu: Would it not be sensible to base the OS design to work on a selected range of x86 mobos, and cards etc, giving the benefit of cheap/common x86 architecture whilst still having a fixed hardware platform?
ID did the same thing with Quake3 Test. They did all their testing on Macs due to the limited range of hardware. Just when the Mac people were pointing out Quake3 and singing praises about how supirior the Mac was to PC, Carmack came forward and said it was a testing issue, and he had absolutetly no respect for Macintosh. Fun times. :-)
billt: Why has Apple gone Intel, but will still only run on "custom" x86 hardware and not commodity PC hardware??
Because Apple can afford to make their own hardware, and do it reasonably well. Hyperion and Amiga Inc. cannot, but they are still trying to fool themselves, useing leftover, outmoded machines built specifically to demonstrate and develop software for chips to be used in embedded hardware.
Paul Gadd: Every single company after Commodore has learned nothing.
That's the short of it. Just about
every OS company save for Apple has learned nothing about how to stay alive.
Rooster: A custom card, be it PCI-eXpress, or standard PCI add-on card.
A computer within a computer, basicly? That's much too expensive and slow, even moreso than the AmigaOne.
Doppie1200: Who needs a true amiga system these days?
No more people than who need a true Windows machine, or a true Linux machine, or a true BeOS machine...
Oh, yeah. Same hardware for all of 'em.
Doppie1200: If you are really determined to get amiga back into everybodies homes you need to look into new markets. Markets where the product can offer something others don't.
Precisely what DE/AA is supposed to offer, though Amiga is not doing anything impressive with it, and Hyperion is still living in 1990.
Noster: The Amiga is much easier to program than a Win#*%&§$ machine. I could do anything on an Amiga, no restrictions by the OS.
I'm not sure Windows is really that restrictive. It's just that it doesn't have a lot of toolkits built-in, and the ones that are there just plain suck.
Noster: Why do everything has to be changed in the IT-world, even the already perfect running things?
I believe people call it "innovation." I wish more people realized that innovation is simply change, and not always progress. The world needs less innovation and more intuition.
NewEgg has redesigned their site, too. It looks terrible and is a pain to navigate, now.
Noster: Thought about big endian <-> little endian?
A non-issue in most cases except emulation if you've designed your tools correctly, much like different texture formats and color spaces, different signing of audio streams, etc.
Noster: Every Linux-program respects this problem and uses according macros to read and write words and longwords (some doesn't do and that ones are hard to port).
Yeah, I forget that. That's one of the many problems with updating an old platform, and why it's so important to have a great set of tools built into your OS.
I wonder if Hyperion is bothering to add this kind of abstration into OS4, or if they're only coding for the limits of PPC.
Amigamia: Why would I spend $700 $800 just for a motherboard and an OS, which is still in pre-release stage, with a future that is still cloudy due to lack of future development plan, when I can have a PC and I can install windows or Linux, or BSD, or many more OSes out there?
At those prices, even the lack of performance is irrelevant. It's just too costly to deal with proprietary hardware until a company gets on its feet.
It certainly prevented me from getting OS4. I'd love to spend $150 on OS4 or swap the motherboard on my Linux box for a hundred bucks to run OS4. I'm not paying upwards of $500 freakin' bucks for a Mac Mini, let alone an updated Amiga that can't even read my old A1200 floppies!
Ironic, isn't it? The AmigaOne is more expensive than the A500 and A1200, the machines that made the Amiga popular, yet A1 isn't even a complete system!
Amigamia: My point here is GET REAL People and if you still attached to the past and keep remembering about old times on Amiga 500 playing games with 512K or RAM, GET OVER IT!!
Open your mind and explore the new possibilities with current and more advanced hardware, which can still be affordable to everyone.
End-users like yourself are much more realistic than hobby fanatics. :-)
Personally, I would have liked to see AmigaOS running on the QNX core. Modern OSes provide a much better base for making a new computer. Apple realized that a while ago (which was quite a shock to the world), but nobody else seems to have learned their lesson.
SryTran: They could have done what AROS did and start from scratch on x86, but that would've taken much more time. How many here can tell me that they have a working, stand-alone (i.e. no Linux) AROS x86 box that contains the functionality of AOS 4.0?
I don't buy that argument.
SO much in OS3 had to be rewritten and a HAL had to be developed from scratch, that getting the OS up and running wouldn't have been a big deal. Stifling the hardware to run old PPC apps seems a bit odd, especially since many of those apps are PPC accelerated, but will still work on 68K (except the games, of course).
Nobody planned a future for AmigaOne and OS4. It's all just a hobby that will continue to wither until a few dozen old farts are still huddling around their 600Mhz machines, complaining that Microsoft still owns more than 90% of the market. Gee, I wonder why?
