Amiga vs. Hyperion - Any updates?

[Wayne]

PPC is far from dead.
Mind you, the Cell processor of the PS3 is PPC based, (as well as the processor of the Xbox 360, which is essentially a slimmed down Cell processor).
And AFAIK a new Cell processor has been released very recently.

Sorry to disagree, but as a DESKTOP processor on a commercial scale, the PPC is, in fact, quite dead.  

Commercially speaking, no one will run out and buy a sub 1ghz desktop machine when they can run out and buy a 3+ghz Intel or AMD for the same price.  

Besides, neither Amiga nor Hyperion are building a game box like the wii or xbox, so your point in this conversation seems rather moot?

Wayne

[cv643d]

I could be wrong, but it seems that Amiga Inc have been working on AmigaAnywhere 2 during the last years. Also Bill is a great guy, according to the person working at Amiga inc (Jamie something IIRC?). There is a fairly big thread on amigaworld.net about this.

[JC]

Sorry to disagree, but as a DESKTOP processor on a commercial scale, the PPC is, in fact, quite dead.  

Commercially speaking, no one will run out and buy a sub 1ghz desktop machine when they can run out and buy a 3+ghz Intel or AMD for the same price.  

Besides, neither Amiga nor Hyperion are building a game box like the wii or xbox, so your point in this conversation seems rather moot?

Wayne

Well I guess I'm no one then because I just ran out and bought an 800mhz Sam with OS4.1 from Amigakit and am really enjoying it so far.

[Wayne]

Well I guess I'm no one then because I just ran out and bought an 800mhz Sam with OS4.1 from Amigakit and am really enjoying it so far.

One purchase, or even 100 (which is about all the sales left in this community) does not a "commercially viable" product make.

People still buy C64's and Jeri's Joysticks.  Doesn't make them commercially viable either.  

Makes it a hobby niche computer at best.  I truly wish I still felt the internal need to own one, but my money is better spent on the bike.

Wayne

[Wayne]

I could be wrong, but it seems that Amiga Inc have been working on AmigaAnywhere 2 during the last years. Also Bill is a great guy, according to the person working at Amiga inc (Jamie something IIRC?). There is a fairly big thread on amigaworld.net about this.

I can't say "great" guy.  I don't know him well enough for that, but yeah -- despite what will become the cries of others -- Bill McEwen is a good guy.  I'll attest to that in my book, as he's always been a decent bloke with me.  

I know all the stakes are being sharpened and the torches lit, but unlike a lot of you, I don't think McEwen ever woke up and said "let's screw everyone over for the fun of it".  I just think that he was a little short-sighted and got screwed over by both circumstances and people through the years.  

He's also tried -- unsuccessfully -- to keep the company alive through the years when I'm sure it would have been easier to simply walk away and say the hell with it all, so I give him full marks for that.

Yes, there's the $50 t-shirt and all sorts of nightmares that have come about due to the circumstances around it all (mainly the dot com bust) but ask yourself this:  

If McEwen had instead come out and said "we've lost funding (or whatever happened) and need to pay rent, so we'd like to arrange to sell private stock to the community" you guys would have jumped at the chance without hesitation.  

Some of you still would..

[persia]

Wayne,

So do you know what's up with Amiga Inc?  They seem to have had their phones disconnected and I suspect their world headquarters above the Amish furniture store may be closed, is there anything left of Amiga Inc besides the Website?

[Wayne]

Wayne,

So do you know what's up with Amiga Inc?  They seem to have had their phones disconnected and I suspect their world headquarters above the Amish furniture store may be closed, is there anything left of Amiga Inc besides the Website?

I have no first-hand knowledge, sad to say.  It seems that Bill stopped talking to me about a year or so ago when I expressed my general disinterest at a ping he made as to using Amiga.org to support the cell-phone gaming community.  

In fairness, he didn't ask me that directly, but wondered if I was still interested in working with them as before.  I said "yes", but then stupidly offered (without being asked) my rather negative opinion of their direction towards cell-phone gaming.  Never heard another word from him after that, so that's all my bad.

Hmmmm.  Thinking back, it might have been more than a year ago because the iPhone 3G hadn't been released yet and they still stood a 1/10 of 1% chance.

Come to think of it, he didn't even respond to a Merry Christmas e-mail I'm afraid, which I find very unusual.

Wayne

[Nlandas]

One purchase, or even 100 (which is about all the sales left in this community) does not a "commercially viable" product make.

People still buy C64's and Jeri's Joysticks.  Doesn't make them commercially viable either.  

Makes it a hobby niche computer at best.  I truly wish I still felt the internal need to own one, but my money is better spent on the bike.

Wayne

Hi Wayne,

Didn't Jeri sell like over a  million of those C64 Joysticks on QVC? I think we might all be surprised the number of lurkers that hold Amiga fondly in their hearts who would buy a new computer if it was released. A lot of it depends on price point that they can achieve and if they can get a modern web browser on it. Why is porting Firefox so hard?

-Nyle

[persia]

An Amiga in a joystick might sell.  

But getting back to Bill, the shell game with K-Mos was shear genius, Amiga Inc would have not survived bankruptcy.  But the crazy press releases, the whole Ice Hockey arena thing, the non-existent new hardware, the ridiculous "bigger than iPhone" letter.  If I could ask him one question it would be what the #### were you thinking?!?!?!?  None of this engenders the kind of confidence you need in IT.  You can bluff, but you have to deliver once in a while or your bluffs don't work.

On porting Firefox, could be done, but you need programmers, and they are in short supply.  This is a direct result of the community being ignored for so long.  People leave and there are no financial incentives.  I could spend 10 times longer developing a sucessful Amiga application than a failed iPhone one and be financial rewarded far more for the iPhone app!

It used to be fun when the Amiga was cutting edge, but it isn't, to borrow from another thread, the whole idea of snapshots in 2009 is a bit like film cameras.  In order to build apps for the Amiga you have to start from scratch, iPhone gives you all the tools, if I want to add a browser bit to my App calls to the Safari  api are right there.  And the OS doesn't help you and without memory protection it actually fights you at times.

Sorry about the rant...

Hi Wayne,

Didn't Jeri sell like over a  million of those C64 Joysticks on QVC? I think we might all be surprised the number of lurkers that hold Amiga fondly in their hearts who would buy a new computer if it was released. A lot of it depends on price point that they can achieve and if they can get a modern web browser on it. Why is porting Firefox so hard?

-Nyle

[Wayne]

Hi Wayne,

Didn't Jeri sell like over a  million of those C64 Joysticks on QVC?

It was some good number, but you're forgetting one very important point.

Jeri didn't build a computer.  She built a way to play all your old favorite C64 games in a joystick form.  

I think we might all be surprised the number of lurkers that hold Amiga fondly in their hearts who would buy a new computer if it was released.

Unless that machine is comparable to what is currently available in the PC and/or Mac world both on a price and performance level, then I'm afraid you'd be in for a bit of disappointment.

Most people cannot fathom paying $2k (or even 1k)+ for a desktop machine with an unsupported OS that runs slower than their $399 laptop from Dell.  Dedicated hobbyists, sure, but they're not "normal" where the average computer buyer is concerned.

Build the Amiga on a joystick, add in the top 50 games and/or a way to import them off of SD memory card and yeah, it'd sell a few hundred thousand at best, but that's still not enough, because it's sales/impact would be a short-lived event and there's not much to follow that up with...

Everyone these days wants real computers, or wants popular and expandable game consoles (XBox PS3, Wii, etc) but no one wants an underpowered, overpriced desktop solution with zero software support.

Sorry to be so brutal, and yes, you'd think as "the Amiga.org guy" I'd be a little more supportive, but I've been fighting this fight to no avail for 15 years now and still no one (except maybe Dammy and AROS) "gets it".

Wayne

[beller]

Wayne,

I think you've nailed it, at least you completely reflect my opinion.  I get scowls from the OS4 developers when I've seen them at Expo.  They're not happy when I tell them I'm only interested in Classic items.  I won't shell out the kind of money being asked for an OS4 system.  

I bought one of Jeri's C64 joysticks, and it got me back into retro computing,  It DIDN'T send me out looking for an UBER 64 and it doesn't appear to have had a lasting impact on the 64 market.

Bob

[cecilia]

didn't somebody die recently

Pentti Kouri? I don't recall any more recent.

Pentti Kouri, chairman of Amiga inc.

aka, the guy with the money.

yup, that's who I was thinking of

well, I haven't paid any attention to this sage and frankly don't care.

[cv643d]

IMHO Amiga needs vision, not negativity and not a public view of the Amiga that the best it can be is simply a Walmart-joystick preloaded with 50 sh*tty games from 1989-1991.

So what if it costs a premium to be part of the exclusive next-gen Amiga club today right now?

Cant afford it? Lost your job? Economy in crisis? Wifey wont let you blow 1000 on pathetic PPC clocked at 533 MHz running an obscure OS that does not auto-snapshot icons?

Turn negative into positive, do not say it is bad, not good, not interesting, needs to be intel, does not have Photoshop bla bla bla.. it is what it is and it may lead to great things in the future such as a better price point, a better OS, auto-snapshoting icons and growth in the community (which everyone will earn on, Hyperion sells more OS, Acube more hardware, Amiga.org gets more clicks on ads and more donations and overall it is going to be a fun ride when software development explodes again).

Keep a positive attitude, and just wait two more weeks.. .  (sorry could not recist)

[Methuselas]

The problem lies in the fact that they just didn't listen. When asked, we wanted X86 and they gave us PPC. When we *FINALLY* got a board, it was way underpowered and *WAY* overpriced for what it was. The majority, just couldn't afford it. Many of us have old machines that are just now getting parts we wanted 15 years ago, but couldn't afford. I didn't really get into Amigas again, until Amithlon. I even bought a new A1200 from Software Hut which I didn't need, just to support Amiga, Inc. even though I know they really wouldn't get anything from it.
 
Fact of the matter is, Hyperion should have ported the OS to X86 and said "Hey, you want to use it, you need to get *THIS* mobo, *THIS* gfx card, *THIS* CPU, *THIS* Soundcard, etc., instead of having a crappy PPC motherboard made that was too expensive. Think about it.....if you could have just purchased the parts at your local store and then bought OS4 from your local Amiga dealer, everything would have worked out. Instead, the powers that be wanted to bleed us all dry, from every facet they could find, to collect money. *EVERYONE* dropped the ball on this one, not just Amiga, Inc. To make matters worse, the OS4Depot would have been *FILLED* with drivers that what few coders we have left coded for new hardware that they wanted to use. It would have had a better chance of bringing in other coders from the X86 platform. Look at the Hackintosh Phenom.
 
Instead, we got PPC, empty promises and talks of "dongles" and "piracy".
 
Stupid.

[cv643d]

I agree, but as I said. It is what it is. Either you accept it and have the time of your life with Workbench running natively on a next gen CPU or you do not. Simple as that.

I think Hyperion is a weird company since they seem a bit quiet with no public roadmap or vision other than developers responding now and then on forums. I hope I dont get an angry reply from the said developers now, (sorry if I hurt your feelings about your company). If it makes it easier for you I think Amiga inc is weird to.

If they would go for x86 right now, they had to freeze development of os4.x and invest a lot of money into AmigaOS again. They stated they are not made of money and have already invested quite a big sum of money into AmigaOS already, if money was no object we would all be running OS4.x on x86 in 5 years I think, but sadly business is all about money and if they were going to port AmigaOS to x86 where would the money for that development come from?

A company needs to make money to be able to live, so the big question is, how is Hyperion going to make big money with AmigaOS? Think about it for a while, I think we are going for very exciting times in the Amiga world!

[Nlandas]

An Amiga in a joystick might sell.  
It used to be fun when the Amiga was cutting edge, but it isn't, to borrow from another thread, the whole idea of snapshots in 2009 is a bit like film cameras.  In order to build apps for the Amiga you have to start from scratch, iPhone gives you all the tools, if I want to add a browser bit to my App calls to the Safari  api are right there.  And the OS doesn't help you and without memory protection it actually fights you at times.

Sorry about the rant...

Wasn't someone working on an IDE for Amiga? I thought I read something about it being good and that Amiga, Inc. hired him to continue developing it. He seemed like a really good guy.

With a quality IDE for new new AmigaOS it might be easier to port/develop applications for it. No?