Argo: not to mention on X86 you have to compete to some degree with Windows.
You're competing with Windows if you do Windows-like things. The hardware is irrelevant. Microsoft makes many standards used on x86 boards, but they certainly don't own the architecture.
I've said it a million times: there really is nothing to stop Amiga from choosing a single, good x86 board, like an Abit, and using that as the official platform. Why people keep thinking you either have to make proprietary hardware for hundreds of dollars or sell software off-the-shelf is beyond me. Both extremist plans are doomed.
My impression is that most of the x86 Amiga fans have just left after the PPC announcement. Once you go PPC, you're stuck with it.
Bloodline: I would like to point out that regardless of what CPU you OS runs on, you are always competing with windows. But by choosing the x86, you reduce the burden of cost on the user and allow them more options.
Yeah. What ever happened to DE and Java? It's the 21st century... haven't we gone beyond specific hardware platforms? I wanted x86 for flexibility (for Amiga Inc., at least), and not for technical supiriority.
Remember why the sucky PC architecture became so popular in the first place. Choice, features, and value are more important to end-users than raw performance and tech specs, especially in a market where performance changes so rapidly.
Terminator: So the Amiga OS didn't suffer the same fate as the BeOS?
Be made lots of critical marketing errors, and were way too dependent on Apple clones. After Apple squashed the clones, Be really had no choice but to go x86 OEM. Frankly, I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.
DonnyEMU: That's just it, being a programmer I know that endian issues aren't really a justification.
Not for data, at least. Many graphics and audio formats require a decoder to convert the endian order. Older formats like TIFF require you to manually set the endian order when you save files (!), but most modern formats do it automatically.
Many embedded CPUs don't care about endian order, and can work in any mode. x86 and PPC are still trying to fight it out for some stupid reason.
PS - Is it true that 64-bit float math is easier with little endian?
Mr Capehill: Probably a lot worse piracy problem.
At least it would *have* software to be pirated. How anyone expected a software industry, or even a close-knit community, to blossom from a few thousand hugely expensive boards is beyond me.
The Editor: X86 codebase ...?
How would you like to be infected today?
It's sad how Intel and AMD are actually adding new instructions to their CPUs to overcome Microsoft's terrible programming practices -- and people like yourself blame Intel for security issues.
The Editor: If they wanna infect me .. They'll have to burn the midnight oil and re code their anal crap.
Most infections/trojans happen because people are damned stupid and *LET* that crap on their machines. There's really no difference between installing an XPI plugin on Mozilla and ActiveX on IE if people are too dumb to realize that a pop-up that says, "Your Internet connection is not optimal!" is a scam.
I've been using Windows for years and have never had a virus, and the only "spyware" I get on my machine are cookies, which plague all web browsers and must be regularly (and easily) cleared out. How do people end up with five viruses and two dozen spamware programs on their computers? Stupidity, and the inability to read before they click "Yes".
I should offer computer classes for paranoid home users. I'd bet I'd get a hefty number of students with one newspaper ad.
Anyway, I just hope, if anything else, AmigaOS doesn't go out of its way to protect people from themselves. It makes real administration very frustrating. If Ben's "security through obscurity" policies are true, then I guess hardcore Amiga geeks shouldn't worry. :-)
I remember that Garry Hare(CEO of KMOS)...
You mean the Invisible Man, running an IT company without a website?
BigBenAussie: It probably couldn't be forseen that Apple's stake in the PPC meant they get all the newest chips first, and due to the chip shortage would means a PPC Amiga would always be a generation behind Apple, and thus a generation behind x86 too.
Right. Low-end embedded PPC chips are a dime a dozen, but if we want high-end chips, we get Apple's leftovers. Amigans should be more worried about competition from Apple than from Microsoft. Microsoft didn't get rich playing the hardware market -- they specifically avoided it.
Frankly, of all computers, being a generation behind *Apple* is a real embarrassment.
Games sold the Amiga. Amigans wanted kick-ass hardware to run games and we simply haven't got it.
Well, at this point, kickass games are really not possible. It costs millions to make top-tier 3D drivers, and consoles are always hard-coded so expandability is out of the question. I still remember those days when I didn't want to buy a CPU upgrade because all my older software (including applicaions) wouldn't work anymore. I don't want the Amiga to be another game machine, really. There's nothing really wrong with the current fleet of consoles, and they have little to no use for Amiga with tools like XNA over the horizon.
Now, getting rid of the GUI cruft that clogs a typical Linux system... that's what Amiga should be doing! I really wanted a QNX powered Amiga, especially since that company put a lot of effort and money into a new Amiga before Gateway screwed them over.
Oh well. Someone will get it right, eventually.
But I believe the true essense of the Amiga was its advanced hardware, as it was designed as an advanced games console, that could be used as a computer.
Hopefully, Sony's new "Grid" processor will be a real wake-up call to the industry. Game machines have always been far more advanced than PC hardware in all respects except I/O and CPUs -- and even that is quickly becoming debatable these days.
It's sad how a typical GPU has more transistors and performs more calculations than a P4 (by a longshot), and yet the P4 needs a cooler capable of handling 100+ watts of dissipation. My dad and I just put together a 3.2Ghz P4 with that damned "LGA" socket and a monsterous, fully exposed 90mm fan, and it was a sheer nightmare. A far cry from the Northwood P4s, which were truly amazing -- super silent and very easy to install.
BigBenAussie: The problem with the current line, like the A1s is that it is much like a PC, even coming in mobo form, and underpowered at that.
Correct. Take away the PPC, and you have a really expensive four-year-old vanilla PC. It pains me to see Amigans bash PC hardware so violently, because all these motherboards really just use the same standards. You can't shun the engineering genius and value in a typical Abit, Gigabyte, or MSI board with a staight face unless you're still living in the 80's.
