What Amiga Inc. and Hyperion NEED TO DO (IMHO)

[rbsfou]

I can't buy an AmigaONE any more, the SharkPPC may not come out (and my a1200 is quite overburdened as it is and what if rare parts of the steup go pop), i have several PPC macs, and loads of people out there loved amiga mes, SO:


0. Get something like UAE / WHDLoad that is under the LGPL and integrate it into the OS to allow running of metal banging games (from images) and apps (from executables). Petunia as i understand would not work with metal banging apps, but could easily provide the CPU emulation. Make sure it allows multitasking.

1. Release an "Amiga Classics" title for the Wii, Playstation, and XBox 360 (all ppc i think) to milk funds from those who loved the Amiga in their youth, but treated it as a console. Such compilations (e.g. Atari, Midway) have done well before, as Retro-Gaming is quite chic. Give a percentage of the royalties to Team 17, Bitmap Brothers et al.

Provide the user with an OS4 desktop and hard drive / flash persistance if a USB keyboard and Mouse is attached, else display a nice menu. All these systems have copy lockouts of some sort, so piracy probably isn't a concern. If it is, only allow use of the desktop with a USB dongle attached.

If needs be, don't bother with this step until later to get some cash roll in (just make sure to identify the desktop enabled version clearly on the packaging, and maybe jack the price accordingly).

2. Release OS 4 for the "new-world" G3/G4 Macs (especially for laptops!). Provide a (small!) USB encryption lockout dongle (which could be sent back when the user wants to upgrade to future major releases), a protected OS CD-R (tied into the specific dongle in the package). Do similar for Pegasos, Efika etc.

Provide well printed packaging, install notes, and some stickers in the package. Sell it for 150 GBP (i'd DEFINITELY buy it!)

Sell image conscious geeks custom lids with a (glowing) Boing logo for their iBooks / Powerbooks (free advertising for them for people like me on trains etc)

3. Do a deal with Opera to supply the browser (to keep Nintendo happy if this is a concern). Also do a deal with nintendo to allow sale of Amiga Games for the virtual console.

4. Make sure the geeks get their X11 server, VNC client and server, SSH client and VPN client to keep them happy.
Don't bother with multi-user extensions to be more UNIXy; pretty sure most people would be happy with the idea of a Personal OS. Add a JVM with native GUI hooks (like in OSX) if possible. Other software such as a widely compatible media file player (sell it as a PVR?) would be highly desirable.

5. Continue to supply support to the "faithful" users of Blizzards, AmigaONE and Shark PPC's (give them a Cheaper OS, especially for AmigaONE owners who have the encryption hardware built in i think).

6. Don't bother with X86, too much work has been done on PPC, and most of the target market would have the hardware (be it a console, a possibly-now-spare-PPC-Mac as they've gone intel, or a specialized amiga system).

7. Once your "brand" is back to where it should be and you have loads of $$$, quit messing around with those lame phone and wince games!!



Anyone else have anything to add / pooh-pooh / flame about?

[koaftder]

ROFL ROFL

[koaftder]

LOL DONGLES!

OMG AMIGA NEEDS DONGLES

NOBODY CAN BUY OS4, PIRATES SHOULDNT HAVE IT EITHER

LOL DONGLES!

[koaftder]

ArghhhhhC and arggggggggv mateys. AOS4 needs dongles.

[Tomas]

0. Get something like UAE / WHDLoad that is under the LGPL and integrate it into the OS to allow running of metal banging games (from images) and apps (from executables). Petunia as i understand would not work with metal banging apps, but could easily provide the CPU emulation. Make sure it allows multitasking.

Agree fully..

1. Release an "Amiga Classics" title for the Wii, Playstation, and XBox 360 (all ppc i think) to milk funds from those who loved the Amiga in their youth, but treated it as a console. Such compilations (e.g. Atari, Midway) have done well before, as Retro-Gaming is quite chic. Give a percentage of the royalties to Team 17, Bitmap Brothers et al.

Again i agree.. Either that or they should launch something similar to the c64 in a joystic.

5. Continue to supply support to the "faithful" users of Blizzards, AmigaONE and Shark PPC's (give them a Cheaper OS, especially for AmigaONE owners who have the encryption hardware built in i think).

I dont agree so much about this one though.. I think it is about time we move ahead from the classic. Though we need a stable and modern platform to be able to do that and also like you said we need some built in hardware banging emulation, so that we can still play the good old classics.

6. Don't bother with X86, too much work has been done on PPC, and most of the target market would have the hardware (be it a console, a possibly-now-spare-PPC-Mac as they've gone intel, or a specialized amiga system).

Here i must say that i totally disagree with you. There is no affordable and modern PPC hardware available. If we continue in the ppc, we will most certainly see another amigaone tragedy with hardware both being full of bugs, underpowered, expensive and then eventually be out of production.
You could lock OS4 to just one certain specs in the x86 world as well. The difference would be that the hardware is more available, cheaper, more horsepower and mature which means more stability.

[GreggBz]

Rather then doing all of these little things, I think they just need to deliver the complete package. You know, good hardware tied to OS4 in a reasonably affordable package, with a little strategic marketing and some style. A unique and sexy case would be nice. Just uhh.. FINISH and deliver!
The resuts might be surprising, or they might sell 15,000 of them and that's all, but I don't think there are going to get anywhere with these half hearted deliveries.

But, the devil is in the details and there are a lot of incomplete details that need to be finalized before OS4 could become viable to more than the Amiga community.

That's my opinion, and you know what they say. Everyone has one.

We can talk about all of this until we are  :-(

I try not to invest to much emotion or interest into these threads. Amiga endeavors will have at least some of my support always, but I tend not to get to exited anymore.

[rbsfou]

Wow a sensible post at last! Thanks Tomas! Hope someone from Amiga Inc scrolls past all the crap above

Tomas wrote:
Here i must say that i totally disagree with you. There is no affordable and modern PPC hardware available. If we continue in the ppc, we will most certainly see another amigaone tragedy with hardware both being full of bugs, underpowered, expensive and then eventually be out of production.
You could lock OS4 to just one certain specs in the x86 world as well. The difference would be that the hardware is more available, cheaper, more horsepower and mature which means more stability.

My point was that there are a lot of Amiga fans out there who went to the Mac, and even if they didn't, there's plenty of G4 Macs out there on ebay. In this case, there are no worries in the short term about hardware supply, and usb dongles could reduce piracy.

x86 could become the long term plan (not ideal in my mind, but hey, each to their own!), however my point was that all the work has been done on PPC so far, and there is a lot of PPC hardware available in other forms. The console thing seems like a good way of getting Amiga Inc to get off their arse and sanction a port.

I do take your point about x86 being widely available, but i kind of always liked the fact that my iBook was a machine i couldn't choose to run windows on. Apple have just shattered that one of course, so running AmigaOS would be a kind of nice way of flipping them the bird - plus ever since i bought the iBook i kept thinking "if only commodore had made something like this"...

Emulation is fine, but yes it needs to be embedded in the OS if amiga inc do pursue some kind of console compilation idea, we need them to remember there is an OS too, else the whole thing would be a bit pointless (apart from a being a nasty money grabbing exercise)

[rbsfou]

GreggBz wrote:
Rather then doing all of these little things, I think they just need to deliver the complete package. You know, good hardware tied to OS4 in a reasonably affordable package, with a little strategic marketing and some style. A unique and sexy case would be nice. Just uhh.. FINISH and deliver!

I agree - just looked at the Troika Amy 05 and it looks nice, but was a bit horrified to not see an AGP slot, or even any mention of onboard graphics!

Dunno about the unique case bit, everything seems to have been done in the PC world (partly thanks to the original iMac's influence, sadly apple seems to have gone the other way in this regard).

Given the fact everything has been done on PPC, i think allowing the use of Macs or Pegasos etc would allow a l

The resuts might be surprising, or they might sell 15,000 of them and that's all, but I don't think there are going to get anywhere with these half hearted deliveries.

My point was that the idea of porting to compilations would accomplish two things:

1. Spread the word amongst former Amiga gamers that the platform is returning

2. Allow Amiga Inc. to raise some cash to invest wisely (in AmigaOS of course, not the crappy phone games)

That's my opinion, and you know what they say. Everyone has one.

We can talk about all of this until we are  :-(

I try not to invest to much emotion or interest into these threads. Amiga endeavors will have at least some of my support always, but I tend not to get to exited anymore.

Me too sadly - childish reactions like the one from @koaftder@ above seem to prove that their are too many people thinking what they want to see or do with AmigaOS is the only way.

Amiga Inc. are in a position to change all that - just make peace with Genesi, get some money in, and let the os bounce on...

[koaftder]

rbsfou wrote:
Wow a sensible post at last! Thanks Tomas! Hope someone from Amiga Inc scrolls past all the crap above

It doesn't matter. Amiga Inc doesn't want to sell computers. They would rather give Wayne a hard time for selling mousepads .

Hey everybody, the future of amiga is in poker games in virtual machines and dongles.

And on the topic of dongles.... What the F is wrong with yall? In a world full of people fed up with DRM only the deluded people in the amiga camp beg for it in their wet dreams.

[rbsfou]

Tomas wrote:
Again i agree.. Either that or they should launch something similar to the c64 in a joystic.

Fanatastic idea - how about this:

1. Amiga Inc. sanctions the construction of a chip containing a full classic 000/020 OCS/ECS/AGA KS 1.3/2.0/3.1 Amiga needing only flash rom chips with ADF images and some kind of "profile" to run the games.

2. Said chip could be made into the Joystick and sold abundantly.

3. Said chip could be sold to TV (etc) manufacturers as a nice gimmick to include in their equipment - i guess moving from traditional video standards to DV / VGA resolutions would be a plus here.

I dont agree so much about this one though.. I think it is about time we move ahead from the classic. Though we need a stable and modern platform to be able to do that and also like you said we need some built in hardware banging emulation, so that we can still play the good old classics.

Fair enough - i just feel a bit guilty about not being able to support the platform by buying a Blizzard PPC and expanding more a few years ago - think these guys deserve to get the PPC port - after all, the work seems to have been done.

Here i must say that i totally disagree with you. There is no affordable and modern PPC hardware available. If we continue in the ppc, we will most certainly see another amigaone tragedy with hardware both being full of bugs, underpowered, expensive and then eventually be out of production.
You could lock OS4 to just one certain specs in the x86 world as well. The difference would be that the hardware is more available, cheaper, more horsepower and mature which means more stability.

Ok, well how about this? The chip that i mentioned before could be made into a PCI / Express card, and made to do overlay video with the AGP card. If you buy AmigaOS to run on Generic PPC (Mac,Pegasos) or x86 hardware, the fact you have this card present means you have a licensed copy. This would remove the need to jump through hoops regarding emulation (such as rewriting Petunia for x86) and remove the need for the dongle that @koaftder@ seems to hate so much. Perhaps it would make running semi-system legal apps like Deluxe Paint 5 easier too.

This of course wouldn't work on my PPC iBook, and x86 laptops though. For this maybe the USB dongle thinggy would be needed, or perhaps a cardbus or mini pci version could be made.

For 'true' PPC and/or x86 amigas, the chip could be embedded on the board (much like the extra crap that makes an intel mac more than a generic PC).

I don't pretend to know the technology that would make all this achievable, just think this would be quite an awesome idea

[rbsfou]

It doesn't matter. Amiga Inc doesn't want to sell computers. They would rather give Wayne a hard time for selling mousepads .

Sad but true. I also hate the crappy software they seem to churn out - the name means far more than some two-bit java midlet outfit.

And on the topic of dongles.... What the F is wrong with yall? In a world full of people fed up with DRM only the deluded people in the amiga camp beg for it in their wet dreams.

Yes DRM annoys me too, but it's a sad fact that piracy will kill the platform. I still don't mind ripping off redmond or cupertino (they have enough enslaved masses in between them), but now i'm a bit older and wiser, i would like to buy a decent OS from a decent outfit. Open Source is a great idea, but there aren't enough fans of the OS out there to achieve anything like what i have proposed or hyperion have done with OS4.

All i was initially proposing was having a dongle match a copy of the OS. You wouldn't even need to register it. If anyone starts piping up about that being unrealistic, the disc you get shipped could be tied to the dongle you get with it by being burnt onto a CD-R. After all, the kind of quantities it's going to sell would probably make this viable.

And what the F is wrong with you posting multiple copies of the same lame GIF animation, potentially removing all possibility of anyone from Amiga Inc or Hyperion possibly listening in and appearing to give a damn about their userbase by following some of these suggestions?

I guess maybe i'm not l33t enough to be allowed to post here or something

[koaftder]

AMIGA IN JOYSTIQ, PERHAPS ONE COULD SIT ON IT?


Ding ding ding. I present you with this fine animated gif. You are teh winner. You have managed to post crap that gets posted every single day for the past 3-4 years. What the hell to do with amiga inc, joysticks and of course dongles. mmmmmm dongles. have fun with your sock puppets.

[Dr_Righteous]

Again with the dead horses...

Look, to everyone screaming about OS4 on X86 hardware... WE ALREADY HAVE IT!!!!!! It's called AROS. Look into it.

AmigaOS 4 and higher will, and should, remain on PPC processors untill the EOL of the architecture. Period.

What I don't understand is why it seems to be so hard to get OS4 running. Hardware for it has existed for YEARS. There are numerous manufacturers of PPC motherboards out there. Pick one. Pick several. In fact, pick them all! Forget this product licensing BS. We don't need dongles or any other anti-piracy crap. Anyone who would even consider buying a PPC board for the purpose of running OS4 would buy it legitimately. But if that's a major concern, force registration. That'll solve most of it. Anyone else who wants to run it bad enough WILL circumvent ANY form of anti-piracy scheme. There is nothing that cannot be cracked.

The long and short of it is, OS4 is not meant for joe user. It's meant for US, the Amiga community. It should be opened up to what WE want to run it on... Like the cheap and sexy Efika.

[koaftder]

Props to aros. Regardless of whatever A INC does aros will be there for us. It's open, it's free and nobody can take it away. It runs on everything from a lowly 60MHz pentium pulled from a garbage can to a bleeping fast core duo.

[rbsfou]

koaftder wrote:
AMIGA IN JOYSTIQ, PERHAPS ONE COULD SIT ON IT?

The C64, Atari 2600, and Megadrive joysticks have obviously have done well enough for someone to consider making them in first place. By taking this route, Emulation headaches could be solved as the cost of do a production run of the chips (also targeted to real amigas) could be justified by the sale of the thing as a novely.

Ding ding ding. I present you with this fine animated gif. You are teh winner. You have managed to post crap that gets posted every single day for the past 3-4 years. What the hell to do with amiga inc, joysticks and of course dongles. mmmmmm dongles. have fun with your sock puppets.

Been out of the world for a spell, am trying to get back into it - just trying to say what i would like to see done, and proposing semi-realistic business strategies to spread the word and get people buying. Sadly, we aren't going to have the luxury of having professional geeks writing quality software that runs on dirt-cheap slave-labour produced hardware