Clarification from Fleecy

[Crispy_Beef]

After the recent MS announcement, I decided that I wanted a few clarifications from Amiga Inc, as there seemed to be a lot of Amigans shouting about the press release for no real reason.  So here's a transcript of an email conversation I had with Fleecy Moss, Amiga Inc's Chief Technical Officer.


(ITALICS is Fleecy[/I])

"Amiga applications targeted at the Microsoft Windows CE .NET operating system"

The word "targetted" is the main cause for concern, will apps run on .NET specifically, or will they also run on any other supported Amiga Anywhere platform? If they in fact will run on all the supported platforms then may I suggest the wording be altered to something more all encompassing, instead of giving the impression Amiga is looking at producing content for .NET alone. I feel it would be a great shame after all the hard work you guys have done so far, to just come out with something that runs on .NET, seeing as currently the only platform that can access .NET applications is Windows.

It's called Amiga Anywhere, and that's what it is - this is a PR for MS - it's hardly going to say 'and runs on Linux, our arch competitor as well', is it?

It's actually very difficult to write an AA app that can only run on one of the target platforms - it can be done but it would be a lot of extra work to limit your product anyway.

There is nothing in this PR, apart from MS recognising what a great product we have and letting their customers know about it, that wasnt happening before i.e. getting AA to run anywhere.

I would be, and I'm sure a lot of other people would be a lot happier in furthering their Amiga experience if there was some kind of clarifying statement as to which way this is headed. At the end of the day I want to run stuff on my Amiga (AmigaOne, OS4.x), including the Amiga Anywhere content, I don't want to see Windows users enjoying the content that I cannot access.

We are not going to clarify it because it doesn't say anything that is wrong. Amigans are reading the word MS and freaking out without reading the PR itself.

Thank you for your time in reading this mail, if you got this far that is ;-)  And I wish the best possible future to yourself and Amiga.

No problem 8-) The future is indeed very exciting, and the money we hope to make from AA, even more with MS backing will help to move the AmigaOS forwards.

So there you have it straight from the horse's mouth, there is no need to panic, nothing has changed and the plan is still to get Amiga content on as many target platforms as possible.

[Rodney]

Just as i assumed, however, i must admit the wording had me scarred since i thought they would have changed it once they had it on their site!!!

Cool, nice clairifications!!

[Coder]

I really enjoyed the Amiga Anywhere demonstration from Bill. I need that jacket! :-D

The fact is, most people freak out by hearing/reading the word M$. I do to. But we all know that Amiga Inc. is not selling out.

Coder

[Chathurawind]

Hmmmm....

With the money AInc will make from AmigaAnywhere and funding from Microsoft???

So does this mean that MS are interested in the future of AmigaOS and, as such, are investing in it?

Intriguing!

AndyC

[Rodney]

Interesting, ahhh... umm... Anonymous, however i wouldnt look to far into it.

But yer, they must care for AmigaDE if their pump'n money into it!!!

This is exactly what I and  alot of other have been saying for so long, only now will we see its effects. That is, Companies such as Sharp, Nokia and MS giving AInc money for them to use the DE and buy their apps .

Not only that, but the idea of buying one of those flash memory cards or what ever they are, and then being able to slot it into just about any PDA is so very very cool. I always wondered how they would make it seem simple for the average user to use, well, i guess i know now, and i must say, they couldnt have done a better job at it!!!

[Seehund]

> It's called Amiga Anywhere, and that's what it is - this is a PR for MS - it's hardly going to say 'and runs on Linux, our arch competitor as well', is it?
(...)
> We are not going to clarify it because it doesn't say anything that is wrong. Amigans are reading the word MS and freaking out without reading the PR itself.

So, now when fleecy says the same obvious thing as me and 42 million others have already tried to point out, will this make the madness stop?

[Crispy_Beef]

That was kinda the plan behind the email, try and play a bit of a devils advocate, and just show all those who doubt AI that all is fine, hopefully it'll work.

[gnarly]

will this make the madness stop?

LOL!! HAHAHAHAAA!! FANTASTIC!!! Best joke ive read all day :-)

[System]

Thanks for posting this Crispy_Beef.

Facts are a good thing!

Bob C.

[Chathurawind]

you say someone was panic`ing? who was? i WAN'T! IT WASN'T ME! AHHHH!!!! HELP!! HELP! ARGH!

(___Mr_DoN'T_PaNIc___)

[System]

Amigans are reading the word MS and freaking out without reading the PR itself.

This is exactly the same I said few days ago.
It's stupid getting mad, only just the word Microsoft is pronounced.
Why shouldn't Amiga take profit from the M$ platform???
Remember: M$ is toooooooo strong to be beaten. The only concurrent to the Amiga platform (AmigaONE, not AA) could be Apple!

GREETZ!

[Kaminari]

I still wonder why so many people blinded themselves into thinking that MS was corrupting Amiga.

AmigaDE is an hosted OS/VM, remember? When it was announced that it would be available on Windows, Linux and so on, everyone was merry and happy. Now it's made available for WinCE (which is a big, big step forward) and everyone's suddenly freaking out - just because of the way MS formulates its PR paper? Hey, keep cool, guys.

Guess that Amiga.pl and Amiga.hu have played the fools a bit too much... Too bad for them!

[System]

So, now when fleecy says the same obvious thing as me and 42 million others have already tried to point out, will this make the madness stop?

you're right, this is exactly what many of us have been saying all along, and i do hope all the boycotters stop now that theyve heard it straight from amiga, but i have a feeling some just won't, some have this need to always find something wrong in everything, might think that amiga are lying to us just to use us to get ahead for as long as they can, which is ridiculous. but i hope im wrong.

[Chathurawind]

With the money AInc will make from AmigaAnywhere and funding from Microsoft???

It doesn't say that! It says (or atleast I'm pretty sure he tries to say) that Amiga Inc. will earn money from AA sales, and even more because of MS giving it attention (=more mainstream ppl notice =more sales (hopefully)).

 ;-)

[Valan]

Unfortunately I think this will just fuel the fire. 'It shows that AI has been duped big time and it is the exec members who believe the Microsoft sweet talk'.

However it would be wise to realise that Microsoft deals in a number of fields which recquire different marketing strategies. Buy and kill the competition may work in some fields but not, it seems, in the field of PDAs and portables. It seems that Microsoft has learnt from Palm and others that it must actively encourage aliances among competitors.

IMHO the best thing Fleecy said is that it is difficult and recquires additional work to restrict the AA content. The portability of the AA content will not be appreciated until people see that hardware can swapped while keeping the same software.