Kronos wrote:
Macs were allways bought based on image and the SW, not the HW.
Really? I've heard all sorts of reasons given for people buying Macs, including plenty of people who like the hardware.
Macs have changed cradually from 68k to PPC running OSX, something that just
didn't happen with the Amiga (a few 1000 PPC or PCI addons by 3rd party don't count).
So "Macs have change gradually and Amigas haven't, as long as we ignore some of the gradual changes in Amiga hardware"? If the small number of them makes them not count, then unless OS4 sounds vast numbers, it won't exist either according to this.
Having said that, changing things to look at why people buy or bought the machines is a good idea - when people talk about "new Amigas" and so on, presumably they're looking for something that does what they currently use their Amiga for, but better.
But unless you've conducted extensive surveys of the Mac and Amiga communities, I don't see how you can say what you say. The only conclusion we can reach is that some people will buy the new machines as if they were new Amigas; some will stick with older machines; some will switch to an entirely new platform; and perhaps some will buy them, but consider it as a platform switch.
Yes, I first bought an Amiga because it had decent graphics and games at a low price, which won't be true of any new Amiga now - but it stopped being true *years* ago. When I stuck with the Amiga through the late 90s, it was because of the OS and the software. So if any new Amiga was to tempt me because of the OS and software, this wouldn't be some contradiction.
For those you now want to yell "but it has the Name and the "true" OS" :
Is anyone actually saying this? Perhaps a few will buy based on brand loyalty, which is not necessarily a wrong thing (not to mention that really, brand loyalty isn't about just the name).
At the end of the day, whatever people think is the answer to the question posed by this thread, AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, Amithlon, AROS, as well as things like UAE will continue to be discussed and covered on "Amiga" forums because they're viable ways to run Amiga software. And no doubt that AmigaOnes will in future, when OS4 is out, be referred to more generically as "Amigas", because that's it's name - referring to it as such doesn't mean that one is stupid and thinks it's actually an A500 in disguise.