Why AmigaOS 4.0 is going to be successful…

[Valan]

I think the general users(the sales or office clerks, internet surfers) I know will not notice much difference between AOS4 and the desktops they currently use.

The enthasis, I feel should change from being seen as a competitor to WIndows/MacOS to more of a desktop PDA style OS.

In these systems the OS is hidden away from the user so they feel there is only them and the task they wish to do.

In a sense the OS is now getting in the way.

The idea of moving the OS to be more innaccesable to the user will upset a lot of people here. But computers are now a consumer product and should be marketed like a phone, car, tv or even an appliance like a fridge or a washer. These are all computerised yet we do not see their OS.

The Amiga 500 sold becuse it had cool games. The Amiga 2/3/4000 sold becuse it could do get great products that could be sold to clients. Not many machines were sold because of what the OS could do but what the OS helped users to do.

Valan

[bhoggett]

@Valan

There is a place for the "consumer" computers you describe, and also a place for the "traditional" computers. They serve differents needs.

The consumer appliance approach does simplify things by hiding everything away, but it removes choice. You get the appliance and use it exactly as it was set up to work. If you need something else, you will have to get a different appliance.

The traditional desktop computer approach is more complex. yes, but it gives infinitely more choice and freedom, neither of which are available from the appliance.

At the end of the day, it depends on whom you are targeting with the product.

[Cyberus]

@ Valan

True - and this is probably why Windows will be in the ascendency for years to come, simply because it has the applications no other OS has

[aardvark]

And OS4 will automagically run all their old Windows apps??

That's why we need some kind of version of WINE, so that windows apps could run on our amiga OS.  Of course there is a binary problem, when running on PPC processors. :-D
I thought that was one of the ideas of Amiga DE; that programs should be hardware independant and be able to run anywhere.
Once Amiga OS is ported to Intel/AMD processors, that is the point at which idle curiousity will bring vast numbers of new users to the Amiga OS.  It's pretty hard to tell if it's an improvement until you try it.

As far as program development goes, it's a lot easier to program for game machines when you don't have to worry about which video card, which audio card, what controller are installed in all of the machines.  That was an advantage the Amiga hardware had as well, but will not have any longer when it is designed to run on a wider range of machines. :-(

[Hammer]

jeffimix wrote:
I always feel that. Well come on, where was Linux ten years ago? Amiga has just as much a chance as Linux. It's different but so what, it's got a long way to go but so what. At one point so did Linux, BSD did pretty darn well too.

Linux/GNU’s main succuss is due to X86 bandwagon (i.e. *nix like OS for i386 clone boxes back in the early 90s. It also leveraged the same boat anchor as MS). The two dominant OSs (i.e. Linux and Windows) originated from X86 world.

In summary, the Motorola factor has bitten all of 68K vendors.  IF Motorola has AMD/Intel’s fighting sprit then these 68K vendors could have flourish.  

[mnoldoj_rowq]

I believe you on EVERY point why the Amiga is better. But being the best isn't why computers sell. IBM was never the best, but the masses wanted one. The public these days think there is now only and has always been only Windows and the Windows Wannabe Macintosh. Some of them like Macintosh better. Fine. Windows is in the public eye. Bill Gates is in the public eye. The Amiga can be super stable and super fast and super everything. But right now, if you tell a guy it can't run Windows, he wonder's what the heck good an Amiga is for. If Amiga is ever going to take it's RIGHTFUL place on top, it's going to have to 1. Amaze the masses and 2. Advertise MORE than IBM and Microsoft and Intel and all them.  People don't shop for the best brand. They shop for the NAME brand. And Amiga has a NAME among some fans who happened to own computers longer than since 1995. Microsoft has reached out to people who don't know A THING about computers but now can use them anyway. Such people will NEVER understand what it is about Amiga that makes it better. Amiga is going to have to amaze the natives cuz right now they think Bill Gates is a god.

[Lo]

I guess we are a sad lot now, but I still love that little AmigaOS, its so...uhh sexy? :-o

[that_punk_guy]

mnoldoj_rowq wrote:
Amiga has a NAME among some fans who happened to own computers longer than since 1995.

Interesting point. Commodore went down just before web access became available to the masses, and computing started to become something everybody and their grandmother did. I wonder how many people think PCs were invented in 1994. It was all internet this and multimedia CD-ROM that, and the machine you bought simply had to be an IBM PC compatible, 'cause the magazines said so. It was the first thing you asked the dealer, even though you didn't know what on Earth it meant.

Amidst all that hype, it's no wonder that traditional home computers like the Amiga got buried, out of th sight of the public. It's generally said that we'd have been screwed without the web pages and forums to help each other out and stay informed, but did the internet really save the Amiga, or did it kill it off once and for all?

[odin]

Just what is it with all of these ppl starting useless threads lately? Fatman, doommaster, the Shawn clone.....

:roll:

[that_punk_guy]

There was me, thinking I'd just made an incredibly insightful and thought-provoking post.  :-D

[odin]

Erm; that wasn't aimed at you punk_guy :-D.

-edit-
Perhaps I should edit that to 'ppl starting threads which are useless in the beginning' ;-).

[smerf]

Hi,

Don't want to be negitive here but

 Amiga OS 4.0 runs only on a PPC type processor. Windows machines are pentium instructions so OS 4.0 won't run on a PC machine.

I really don't think that in todays market a 800 mhz machine is going to raise many eye brows,  or do I think that a new OS  for this 800 mhz machine is going to cause much stir.

Best bet for Amiga Inc. is to develope Amiga OS 4.0 for PC clone machines so that we can take winblows off our PC's and put on Amiga 4.0.

The day of the PPC is over, by about 3 years, only chance for Amiga to survive is OS crossover to another platform.

smerf

Amiga 3000, Amiga 1200, Amiga CD32, Amiga 500,  and Amiga 1000.

Amiga 1000> supra 2 meg memory,  supra hard drive card, midi, 5 1/4 inch drive, 2 3.5 880K drives, supra modem 68000 at 14 mhz accelerator.

Amiga 500 stock with 512 memory.

Amiga CD32, with SX-1 and 8 meg memory, and 250 meg hard drive, switches to turn on & off memory, and hard drive.

Amiga 1200, 603e 210 mhz ppc card with 40 mhz 68040, 2.2 gig hard drive, 52x cdrom, 32 meg memory, external PC power supply.

Amiga 3000 > Picasso II card, GVP IV 24 card, 18 meg memory, 68030 at 25mhz, 68040 25 mhz accelerator, 2.2 gig scsi, 330 meg scsi, 850 meg scsi,  250 meg scsi, yahama cdrw scsi , GVP color splitter and genlock, ami gen,  sometimes sound digitizer,.

Amiga is more then a computer, its fun, what do you want to create today.

Smerf :-P

[IonDeluxe]

For a new system let alone an OS the become successful in this climate requires a few things in my opinion.

The hardware must be competative in performance.
The hardware must be at least as reliable, or more so than current hardware.
The system must be competative in the pricewars, unless it holds an advantage of some kind to offset the price disadvantage.

The OS must be capable of running most of the software available, and darn close to running all the "essential" software available.

That being said what an OS/system need to have a chance at carving out its own niche is a full office suite that can read and work with all the major document types.
It must have full network capability from the server down to the user(average Joe)
It must be stable, easy to use and forgiving of user error with a good backup/support progam behind it.
It must have good security features.

Where are we with Amiga?
Well the hardware is competetive in performance.Most computers in use in the world are not 3GHZ x86's they are closer to 1.5GHz at best.

As for reliablity....yet to be proven but thing look cautously optimistic...

 Pricing...only really competative with the Mac at this point...we shall see if pricing will come down as promised, the Alite may be a good step in that direction

Running software big failure here.
 
full office suit...another failure here too

Networking capability this area looks promising, yet I believe this area needs much more development

The OS is not out yet so stability issues are still to be seen.

All that being said:
The machine will run linux so that is an advantage for many things such as server farms and so on, if the price/performance/ongoing costs become competitive.
Amiga DE and OS5 have the potential to bring much of the software to the Amiga, and attract developers.OS5 will be hardware independant removing the hardware side of the equation, it is also supposed to be a 64 bit OS.

My conclusion is that Amiga has the potential to make it back, especially with the TCPA thing making alot of people worried about the future.In my opinion is is Amiga DE that is the key here, it is the vehicle to bring software to the platform, new developers and they key to making OS5 hardware independant.One of its big advantages is that it can attract software developers because it will run on windows Mac and Linux and hence leverage that userbase for itself.It is very very risky though.

In my opinion, if Amiga Inc. do go down the Amiga has lost its chance to become a mainstream system again, though it will likely succeed in becoming a niche market machine.

IF Amiga Inc can somehow stay alive, then Amiga has the CHANCE to become a mainstream machine again, but only if it can hijack enough developers from windows Mac and Linux.

The hardware between Peg and Amiga is kinda a non issue, they are very similar.The OS's will eventually seperate into two different machines, and the community will have completed the split.I suggest this will happen about 1-2years after OS4 is released.

Like it or not Amiga Inc and its solution IS the inheritor of the Amiga Legacy, and even if Amiga Inc goes under and Genesi get the chance at all the IP etc, they have already stated they have no intrest in the hardware, the OS they will farm out to open source GPL.The only thing they are interested in is Amiga DE.This is provided what they have stated in public forums is in fact true and accurate.

Anyway I have rambled long enuff, but I really dont hold much hope for the Amiga platform if Amiga Inc goes down unless some truely benevolent company picks them up.The Pagasos to me is not a replacement to me, merely another machine and I thinks its only hope is in industrial applications at this point.

[DoomMaster]

To fatman2021:

Since at least 79% of the planet Earth runs on PCs Will there be a version of the Amiga OS 4.0 that runs on PCs?  I think not, so we are stuck using Winblows, I mean Windows.     :-o

[DonnyEMU]

Windows is not a terrible operating system, it hasn't been since Windows 2000. I have 3 Amiga computers 2 Macintoshes and 2 PCs. The idea that Windows has problems is unrealistic.. The fastest Amiga out there is an emulated one running WinUAE..

The reality of the truth here is my Windows XP box hasn't crashed or blue screened in two years..

As far as machines go I routinely use different operating systems every day. I really think the Amiga would get further if it's users didn't attempt to slam Windows all the time and focus on what makes the Amiga cool, which used to be it's cool graphics and now it's just it's unique operating system concepts. The amount of mainstream software for Amiga has shrank and over 80% of the people doing development for it have moved to the PC and Mac.

As far as the Mac goes, OS X is based on something called OpenDarwin (a flavor of BSD unix) with a new interface over it that looks nothing like the original Mac OS. Emulation of Mac applications on it seems to work thru a layer (similar to the way old NextSTEP computers could emulate old Mac 68k apps) nothing really new there (just run a copy of the OS).

I would also make the point that more people in the USA know that MorphOS exists than  they do Amiga Inc even in this short amount of time..  At least the genesi people are "MARKETING"..

Most people in the USA are suprised to know that Amiga.COM exists still and the video folks who were using the Amiga (it's only nitche market) will only return if the toaster moved to it, which it probably won't.

Let's be realistic here and say things about the Amiga on it's own merit. Europe hasn't forgot about the Amiga but the USA has, and even Amiga Inc has to re-educate folks about what it is..

When the Amiga was in it's hey day there was little PC software development for Windows or Mac that were "must have" software. People have learned that computers are tools for getting work done and aren't religious about them anymore.

The Amiga is getting a re-start but the applications just aren't on par to make someone choose it over a PC or a Mac yet (maybe in a few years) and what was there left the platform with Commodore.

ImageFX, PageStream, and the two or three other programs just don't compete anymore and the hardware on the PC and Mac is plentiful, affordable, and available and doesn't compete anymore.

People's expectations are higher, and I think with the next versions of MacOS and Windows in two years you will see an even greater disparity of functionality. The Amiga is very lightweight and cool, but then again so was BeOS and it worked on PPCs and Macs and Intel PCs and was very Amiga-like..

Why didn't it gain marketshare? The unix people love linux, and the Mac and PC folks don't want to have to learn something and are very loyal cause they like the software that's there and it's functionality.

There is always a backlash against a dominant computing platform, but that's not gonna make the Amiga win out..

Good cool stable easy to use software (not games) is gonna do it, and unique stuff to the Amiga (though no one here so far has talked about just what that is yet). The Amiga certainly doesn't have cutting edge graphics any more it's just equal and loosing ground there if you look at 3D hardware from Nvidia and ATI..

What is Genesi marketing too? It's unique qualities.. Amiga Inc. needs to do the same thing but unfortunately now AmigaOS has a competitor in it's own community which is split and too small..

Why does Amiga Inc show in Europe and the UK and not in the USA it's stuff.. We here already know that answer.. The Amiga is still supportable just not in the US.. So much for the "world market".. The Amiga platform support here died here with Commodore and hasn't really come back..

It comes from a company that doesn't even maintain offices with regular business hours. The Amiga was the cool hardware, the OS was redesigned 3x to catch up and the move ahead of it's competition of the day..

Who here is really betting on Amiga Inc.'s success with OS 4?? Maybe they will get it out the door someday and I wish them success, but so far I don't see Amiga Inc. (an American company) doing what it needs to survive and be successful in it's own country..

So please no more pipe dreams about the Amiga's superiority. It needs a solid company behind it It also needs applications that draw people to it. Where have they all gone..

[IonDeluxe]

@donnyEMU

Ever consider that you may be one of the lucky few?

Windows....I just cant say enuff about it, I prefer dos to windows.Windows is the Master Control Program as seen in TRON.Actually, I think the MCP could learn a thing or two from windows lol.

In my opinion an OS should be nothing more than an interface between the user, the hardware and the software you use.