OS Enhancement Pack for 68K users - market demand?

[itix]

Warface wrote:

There are many (and we speak about the majority of Amiga users) out there with 68K processors. Still many with no intention or opportunity to switch to PPC. (For many Amiga is just a hobby, and can't spend hundreds of euros/dollars/whatever on their beloved Amiga)

I can't imagine that anyone would spend money on OS3 upgrade especially when that upgrade offer virtually nothing. You are not going to use anti-aliased fonts or gradients on your 020/030/040. FFS2 is quite small improvement and RoadShow... Ok, RoadShow could be nice to have but most Amiga users have working TCP/IP stack already.

Can't imagine that anyone would pay for another Aminet Patch Compilation (if you strip PPC related stuff).

What were the actual sales numbers for OS3.5 and OS3.9?

I don't know about 3.9 but OS3.5 sold 15000 copies. Definitely 3.9 sold even less. Today many top users have Pegasos or AmigaOne, some even have MorphOS beta running on their Amiga (or maybe even OS4).

[HammerD]

Even if it were half the OS 3.5 sales for an OS Enhancement Pack, that would still be MORE than the number of potential PPC purchases Hyperion can expect.  They say, what, approximately 10,000 PPC boards were sold by phase5/DCE.  Now take into consideration the number of dead/forgotten/abandoned boards, then say 50% of existing owners of the PPC boards will get OS 4, you're still looking at an optimistic number around the order of 5,000 MAX potential OS 4 sales.

Now take the number of straight 68K machines still in use and out there...what type of number is that? Who really knows? But probably higher than the PPC numbers.  Take a percentage of that who would get this Enhancement Pack, then add the number of potential other customers (Amiga Forever, Amithlon, WinUAE), and you probably come up wtih a number higher than what Hyperion can safely sell with a PPC-only product.

Now take the AmigaOne people (way less than 1000) and take Pegasos users (less than 600) .... you can see from a market perspective, even if many people don't agree with it, it could be a win-win situation.

Win for Hyperion because basically they already have 68k versions of the modules anyway, and win for the users who have invested alot of time, money and sweat on their 68K machines. Amiga Inc. would be seen as extending goodwill to Amiga Users who have stayed in this market for years...

Plus it also gets MORE people using the new OS - which is a good thing--probably doubling the OS 4 users.  Now these 68K users will get hooked on the OS again and upgrade later to PPC.

It also gets MORE cash back into Hyperion right away...who can complain with that?

To that guy that said 68K is dead, dead, dead.... well it lives on quite nicely and EXTREMELY fast in Emulation, plus Motorola still sells the chips.  AND there is the Amiga Coldfire project (for which the new prototype board was just finished), which is "mostly" compatible wtih 68K....so I disagree.

[redcougar]

I'd buy an enhancement pack for my Amiga if Hyperion would release one.

[mikeymike]

Personally I'd prefer Hyperion to spend their time making OS4 the best it can be for PPC, instead of helping drag the rotting corpse of m68k any further.

I would've thought anyone who wanted Amiga to have a future would want the same, but apparently not.

[Warface]

mikeymike wrote:
Personally I'd prefer Hyperion to spend their time making OS4 the best it can be for PPC, instead of helping drag the rotting corpse of m68k any further.

I would've thought anyone who wanted Amiga to have a future would want the same, but apparently not.

The same applies to dragging the rotting corpse of Amiga any further, yet no one complains :-)

See? There is not much of a difference :-)

[Elwood]

There is a C compiler for Oric Atmos. Will you use it  for all day life i.e. for coding ?
No because :
- it's too slow
- you can't do everything with it (like you would with a modern developer environment)
- you are obviously limited by the computer (you can't display full color images)

This is EXACTLY the same with OS4 for the Classic.
Installing OS4 on the damn slow 68k CPUs is simply a waste of time....

[Warface]

Installing OS4 on the damn slow 68k CPUs is simply a waste of time....

A 060 with a gfx card is everything but not "damn slow"...

[Kronos]

Quick reality check, part 1:

I'll bet everyone that by the end of 2004, there will still be more people using OS3.x (on 68k,
UAE or Amithlon) than OS4.

And yes I mean "using", not just "insert favourite adf-file".

Lots of these people are willing to buy SW, and atleast those who use Amithlon (well
most of them) have prooven that they spend money on SW.

Reality check part 2:

IBrowse2.3 IS 68k and will remain so (till 3.0 is released).
RoadShow is planned to be sold as 68k.
ReAction isn't really widely used, no big loss.
MUI-68k will probraly remain on the same state as the OS4-version.
HDToolBox does the job, no need for that other proggi.
The "optional" MP in OS4 won't be usefull anytime soon.
VM is not needed when you run UAE, and a 1GB Amithlon-sys ought to be enough.
ExecSG and Petunia are completly unusable with those systems.
The rest of the features is either
a) eye-candy,
b) can be replaced from Aminet
c) isn't really that important
d) all of the above.

[mikeymike]

So therefore 68k is great and we should all advocate its use over PPC! YAY!

[mikeymike]

@ Warface

A 060 with a gfx card is everything but not "damn slow"...

Compared to what?  Anything recent?

[Warface]

Kronos wrote:

The rest of the features is either
a) eye-candy,
b) can be replaced from Aminet
c) isn't really that important
d) all of the above.

Don't forget, many ppl bought OS3.5 and OS3.9 despite the fact that most of it's features were exactly fitting into your criterias.

68K users would like a new OS update for their cards, and are ready to pay for it. (They will feel it more up to date, can tell friends they have a new OS, and it's much cheaper than affording an expensive PPC motherboard.)

[pVC]

The most important thing is, that they keep the promise of 68k RoadShow. There is quite big demand for decent tcp/ip stack for classic Amiga, because of the situation of the Miami (and Genesis too). There's all the time someone asking for tcp/ip stack... For example MiamiDX is only solution atm when PPPoE is getting more popular, but what can you do when you can't register it anymore :/ You can't assume that everyone is upgrading to PPC-system just like that. There are lots of active Amiga users, who can't do it in near future and then there have been recently quite much "new comers" with lowend a1200 setup and they want to network their Amiga with their main computer. I know that many of those would have been willing to buy good stack for it. And now when there are many pci-solutions and possibility for cheap nics, there are people who haven't had nic and stack before. Isn't it little embarrassing even for the reputation of the Amiga, that it's that difficult to get decent tcp/ip stack for it?-)

[Warface]

mikeymike wrote:
@ Warface

A 060 with a gfx card is everything but not "damn slow"...

Compared to what?  Anything recent?

Compared to the requirements of any Amiga software and the Amiga Operating System as we know (except some games converted from the PC).

[MagicSN]

Some additional info:

- Not all OS 4 Features are possible (without
  complete reimplementation of these features) on a  
  Non-PPC based System
- Some components which exist already on PPC
  or which are currently in process of moving to PPC
  do not get the 68k part updated anymore. Changing
  this would raise developement time needed, and
  I am sure we agree we do not want this
- As I said before I think that supporting a system
   where Windows can run on the same hardware
  (x86 with Amiga Emulation) is dangerous out of
  the viewpoint of the Application/Game Developer
- licencing issues
- 68k is a dead architecture
- The whole point of the 68k modules was not
  actually providing them to endusers, but to be
  able to Betatest before the system was up and
  running on PPC, nothing more (converting the
  stuff to C where needed and such things)

Steffen

[pjhutch]

I can see the need for a Bug Fix update for AmigaOS 3.9 and possibly an updated TCP/IP stack esp. for LAN/ADSL users. But other than that, I doubt may 68K users would benefit from other features of OS4.

Hyperion have spent a lot of time and effort on OS4, its time Amiga users moved on to new hardware and a new OS4 for the 21st Century. I don`t want 68k stuff to continue to hold us back any longer.

[Warface]

pjhutch wrote:

[...] its time Amiga users moved on to new hardware and a new OS4 for the 21st Century. I don`t want 68k stuff to continue to hold us back any longer.

And what about the existing number of 68K machines and their users? (which is overwhelming compared to either cyberstorm or amigaone numbers)

The majority won't buy PPC boards costing a fortune, yet they'd like to have updates to their platform. And as I mentioned I'm sure they will pay for it.

Those suggesting to dump the existing 68K machine userbase and suggest for everyone to switch to PPC live in lucky places - not somewhere where a shrinkwrapped OS is affordable but a PPC board is not (at least not for everyone).