Pegasos - MorphOs Review on Osnews.com

[amigamad]

This is an honest review from someone who does not use amigas, and could be a good help to help win people over who have never used an amiga compatable computer . Im sure it will  help them to get some points in the software changed to make it apeal to more people who use windows or linux pc,s .Hyperion should do the same with os 4 this way there is no bias towards any software and hardware and you gain info that will also improve ethier machine and software .Top marks to bbrv to giving them a machine to try and review as time goes on software will improve to, after all its still be written and updated by the time of full release all problems will be sorted out .

And i like osnews more than slashdot i go there every day. :-D  :-D  :-D  :-D  :-)  :-P

[greenboy]

Indeed, the attributes of the Pegasos as a platform is that already several OSes have been ported to it - and many more are in process! This was considered very attractive to the Phoenix Developer Consortium, as we have tried to find a way to leverage a larger talent pool of alternative-platform developers but always there have been collisions between the platform's owners making collaboration or cooperative mindsets tough to come by.

When Phoenix saw what the Genesi roadmap was like for multiple OSes and spinoffs of the original Pegasos I design we felt that perhaps we had found a solution for our problems with platform owners, and we liked what we saw for the hardware future. With Pegasos II coming soon, and Eclipsis for tailored delivery devices, with Satellite TV and settop boxes... we feel that regardless of OS there are opportunities for developers of many OS preferences to do something on an alternative platform that has financial legs, and coincidentally a fledgling OS called MorphOS as well.

MorphOS is progressing rapidly in its ability to provide AmigaOS backwards compatibility transparently, and is designed for the future to provide - as you said - some really cool geek space. Anyone who appreciates an extremely fast and responsive, small footprint OS can easily design applications for desktop or OEM tailored platforms NOW!

So for the Phoenix Developer Consortium, Genesi seems to be the ideal partner: someone who appreciates the use of many OSes, allowing projects to come from many community mindsets, with room for innovation, entrepeneurship, and initiative. I would invite any interested developers with interest in any alternative OS to email me (see Phoenix website linked above) to get involved!

As far as pricing: expect this to be realistic as next-gen Pegasos II begins to ship sometime this summer or fall, and to be responsive to decreased manufacturing costs as higher volume kicks in. It may have been an early adopter and developer small volume unit with the first generation, but the intention is to be not only attractive from a geek toy standpoint, but to also make inroads for alternative computing : }
 
 
<--greenboy---<<<<
coordinator & facilitator-at-large
Phoenix Developer Consortium [http://phinixi.com]

[bbrv]

OK, just a quick couple of responses now...more later.

It is true  --   /. does have a broader following.  For example, the greatest number of hits we have ever experienced on any of our sites was after Slashdot coverage (all three times).  OSNews drives less than half the hits, but we do think OSNews has more "thoughtful" readers and it is focused on what it is, OSNews.  Slashdot is everywhere.  You cannot really channel Slashdot coverage.  In this case, we were able to work with OSNews.  The idea today is to begin to build up credibility outside the Community.  We thought OSNews was the best place to do this for now.  Remember,  you need hardware to start with, then an OS, and then great applications.  In the end, the applications are what drives everyone back to the hardware.  There is a delicate juggling act to manage.  Of course if someone sends the link to Slashdot we will not complain....:-)   That is how it happened last time.

What we feel some have missed in this process is that in the end the Pegasos supports many operating systems.  This associates more developers to the platform and more "brands" at the same time.   This gives credibility and creates an environment for innovation and cross-OS pollination.  For example, we already have some neat BeOS features being ported to MorphOS.  When you have the hardware, OS, and applications conveniently interconnected things can happen faster and more closely coordinated.  That is the secret here.  In the end, MorphOS benefits because it is the "smallest" common denominator for each Pegasos through Genesi.  There is no one else in the market that can do this...;-)

We think the First Computing Revolution of the 21st Century is about to begin.  The Pegasos will be what kicks it all off -- freedom, flexibility and value!  For more, read the comments on the OSNews thread: Pegasos: A New Interesting & Sexy Platform (cool title!).

BTW, greenboy is right...we hope you did not miss this:   "(the) Pegasos is the geek's ultimate platform and geeks like cool stuff."
   
Ultimate is a very good word....;-)
   
With the world's OS gurus attracted to the Pegasos, there is a BIG shift for Phoenix, as Phoenix now moves into a much, much  broader and ultimate role...;-)

Have a great day!

Raquel and Bill :-)

[Hooligan_DCS]

@BBRV

>What we feel some have missed in this process is that in the end the Pegasos supports many operating systems.
----------------

Well naturally the reviewer would concentrate on MorphOS, which (IMHO) at the moment is not 100% ready for a review. I would have expected You to know this when you sent the board for evaluation.
Especially to someone so little knowledge of pretty much ANYTHING relating to MorphOS and AmigaOS.
We got what was expected: a review of MorphOS.
Not review of Genesi's history, relations and similarities to AmigaOS. Add to that, some points which seemed to be very unclear to reviewer. In other words: she didn't know what she was reviewing.

It's like me doing a review of FreeBSD after two weeks of use with no background information what so ever. Result would probably something like this.

[Hooligan_DCS]

Sorry to be so negative .. I also find positive points and the idea was good. Somehow I feel the good intention went a bit off this time.

[bbrv]

OK, Hooligan, we will take your thoughts under consideration.  Thanks.  We do value your opinion.  That is why you are the leader of the Phoenix DemoScene mailing list!  Just keep this in mind: we had to start somewhere to reach outside the Community.   We set the bar at a hieght we could clear.  The bar moves up with time and MorphOS will become progressively better and better.  Eugenia did say:

I don't see MorphOS ( in its current shape) as the main attraction for this platform, unless Genesi puts a number of engineers to work hard to bring this OS up to speed and usability levels that other OSes today like OSX, Linux or Windows have. It seems that this is happening though, as this new screenshot of Morphos 1.4-alpha shows, now with AA fonts. I will definitely be following the development of the OS closely.

Well, that is  exactly what is happening and it will be quite logical for Eugenia to say it did happen in her next  review...;-)

Sincerely,
R&B :-)

[bbrv]

P.S. Did anyone pick up the possibility of extending the potential market for people developing applications for the platform... :-o

[System]

>I just *don't* understand why you give away a Pegasos to a site like Osnews instead of a site like slashdot

I will tell you why:
Slashdot does not always care about such reviews. They don't write almost anything themselves, they outsource their articles, and the are based exclusively on what people submit.

Also, you questioned the size of OSNews. I have an answer about this too: OSNews serves more than 3 million web pages per month (this is impressions, not file hits).  In fact, for April 2003 we landed on a 118,000+ web pages average PER DAY. According to Alexa, OSNews is the SECOND BIGGEST community news web site that covers alternative OSes, after Slashdot (actually, ./ has a more broad news selection than just OSes). NewsForge, MacSlash, Amiga.org, ann.lu are all _way behind_ OSNews popularity and traffic-wise (I checked Alexa so I have researched their rank with some online stats). The fact that you get many comments here is because, since forever, Amiga users are very talkative. Even on OSNews.

I hope this clears it out.

[greenboy]

Not only does the platform have opportunities for applications development, but on multiple OSes it allows business plans to be formed around supplying tailored devices with bundled applications, for service providers, onsite stations, and various OEM markets.

So not only is there a geek toy here for demo coders and coders in general, there is a platform that can support entrepreneurs. if you have a business plan in the making, Phoenix and Genesi can help you take it to a realistic state and get it into the market!

[bbrv]

Hi Eugenia, thanks for stopping by...:-)

We appreciated the coverage and hope you continue to appreciate the Pegasos!  

R&B :-)

P.S. Eugenia, could we get you interested in starting a user group in Foster City?!   :-D

[greenboy]

Hi Eugenia,

Thank you for the review, and thank you for being here to share those stats for OSNews. Speaking from a personal perspective, I feel that OSNews is a way better place to be right now - and in the future.

/. is a place to think about as progress is made on many fronts, hoping that slashdot readers/posters themselves will generally raise the level of discourse to the level OSNews generally enjoys. Right now I shudder when I think slashdot ... though it may have a primacy in numbers, the comments section generally reveals very narrow and antagonistic concerns.

Congrats for hanging in there and taking OSNews forward!

[System]

>Thank you for the review, and thank you for being here to share those stats for OSNews.

BTW, here are our monthly stats:
http://66.181.171.71/2/42699/7/
Also, the story is now featured on Slashdot anyway (and also on 6-7 more big Linux and Mac sites that we normally syndicate our news daily).  ;-)
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/19/1820203&mode=thread&tid=137

[cockney_dave]

It's interesting to see the opinion of soemone outside Amigaland, even if they are a bit narrow-minded in their approach. The most annoying thing I felt was them missing the point of the project when they effectively suggest Genesi should concentrate their efforts on making a Linux Box and forget MorphOS.

Rant... Why is everyone so obsessed with Linux - I don't see what's so great about it, other than its "free". Linux is complicated, dull, and looks and feels much like Windows. I'd rather use Windows than Linux.

Something I feel needs to be addressed is the "it's just for geeks" tone of the review, hopefully that isn't what either the MorphOS or AmigaOS teams are aiming for. I never felt Amiga was a geeky platform and I hope it doesn't go that way - I think its safe to say most computer users aren't 'geeks', i.e. they're drivers, not mechanics. If you build an OS to appeal to souly to 'geeks' you're never going to reach the level of market penetration and 'greatness' Windows has (think Amiga users want this), no chance.

Hopefully the AmigaOS team (and MorphOS of course) have taken note of this review - their clearly are lessons to be learnt.

[System]

You have some misconceptions here:

> they effectively suggest Genesi should concentrate their efforts on making a Linux Box and forget MorphOS

No one said that. MorphOS is PART of the geek factor and should remain part of the business plan. But MorphOS *today* is not ready to *lead* a whole platform into commercial success. What I suggested was to also concentrate on marketing the platform as Linux or BSD or (better) Darwin until MorphOS is ready to fit the bill.

>Why is everyone so obsessed with Linux

if there is one person that is _not_ obsessed with Linux, that is me. I don't quite like Linux as a desktop machine. My favorite free Unix (for servers of course) is FreeBSD while Solaris and IRIX are my favorite commercial Unices. However that doesn't mean that Linux doesn't "sell" to others and Genesi shouldn't take advantage of this fact. They should.

> I never felt Amiga was a geeky platform and I hope it doesn't go that way

Surely, in the past Amiga was a great home computer. But what Genesi sells today is a motherboard and a CPU. Obviously, this doesn't appeal to my mother. She will electrify herself if she tries to put the computer together herself.
Until Genesi provide a full solution, this product remains geeky (or at least "technical"), you like it or not. ;-)

[cdfr]

While I liked the outsider perspective from Eugenia I also think that her article miss one important point:
The first aim of the Pegasos/MorphOS is to provide an AmigaOS evolution in order to get enough developers to move further and then attract new users interested in the alternative platforms.
I agree that some progress need to be done to achieve this goal. MorphOS is still in Beta and it has to be enlighted. Also MorphOS runs existing RTG Amiga application extremely fast and native applications even faster.

I have a Pegasos since early April and I was planning to migrate from my Amiga PPC + Gfx card to it slowly but since I got it and transfered my software data I did not use my Amiga anymore.
I did not get any problem with the applications I was using on the Amiga.

Of course slashdot srewed up completely with puting a little quote in the Mac section where everyone wonder why a G3 600 at 500$ would make sense to run OSX  :-?

Maybe it was a bit early for going to OSNEWS .
I hope Eugenia will test newer versions and try to think partly with an AmigaOS perspective.

I guess that Nicholas can not do the review anymore since he his a Genesi employee. Too bad as he has a good insight of AmigaOS but also similar niche market OS such as all the BeOS derivatives.

[greenboy]

hey cockney_dave,

I have to agree with Eugenia's appraisal here that the business plan is not entirely focused on MorphOS - nor should it be. All evidence of working with Genesi as providers of custom hardware about to enter its second-generation product is that early adopters, aka "geeks" may enjoy MorphOS, and former Amiga users may like the fact that it leverages their existing software collection... but many projects and products in the near-term and even the mid- and long-term can and should be driven by other OSes.

Contracts with, and the teams assembled to provide OEMs with tailored solutions sometimes depend on OS choice/specification. So selling them with other OSes on this efficient, clean small-footprint hardware we are coming into soon will still provide the development drive and funding to improve MorphOS and increase the baseline services and applications for MorphOS.

Which takes us back to the SuperBundle, in an odd roundabout fashion.... ; }

 
<--greenboy---<<<<
coordinator & facilitator-at-large
Phoenix Developer Consortium [http://phinixi.com]