Will there every be another computer like the amiga?

[Hell Labs]

CPU Intensive like what? And sell them. G4s make decent computers still. Hell, my stereo system in my bedroom is a G3, and handles itself just fine with word processing, photoshop, even a bit of 3D in sketchup from time to time. The trick is to use software from roughly the year a computer is made, excepting web browsers.

[tone007]

Like, compressing massive amounts of data or video and running virtual servers, or curing cancer.  It'll take forever to cure cancer if people keep using G4s.

..and if people are having a hard time giving them away working for $100 or less around here, I can't imagine trying to sell one with no hard drive.

[m4rk1z]

Well, while there won't be an Amiga again... there is something else starting to take hold.  Yes, Linux has not won the desktop - but the desktop is slowing becoming less of a factor.  Most people I know now put more money into their Cell Phone/PDA - like iPhone or other Smartphones - than they do their pc.  I am still using the same PC I built 3 years ago - but I just got an iPhone and over the next 2 years will put more money into it than I have spent on PC hardware over the last 3 years.

The next generation of users will not care about powerful boxes at home - it will be mobile with digital distribution.  If you own stock in Gamestop - sell it now - the day of buying anything in a store that is digital content is coming to an end very soon.  Who buys CDs, DVDs, etc?  People who want to waste money.  Music is cheaper on iTunes.  Netflix makes movies way cheaper to rent/stream and most TV content can be found legally free to view on the net (So who even needs cable TV?)

Microsoft has just released a new Xbox Elite with 250GB drive- why? Because they realize there is more profit to be made with digital distribution. Download Content (DLC) is where the real profit is for Microsoft and game developers.  It cuts out the cost of physical media creation/distribution, it cuts out dealing with companies like Wal-mart... and it kills the hated (and non royalty paying) used game market.  I remember an article by the people who made Left 4 Dead - there where upset that there where over 2x the number of unique Xbox Live accounts played their game than bought it new - used sells was huge for this game and it hurt there market potential cause people like me always wait for a used copy.

If I can get it cheaper used, I always do, but under Digital distribution that is not even an option so I will have to buy it new or skip it - and most games won't skip sequels to their favorite titles.  Plus, its harder to pirate cause they have to hack the distribution source - not just the install program.

If there is to be another Amiga - it will be a media intense, gaming, mobile device that has great connectivity to web based applications.  Microsoft has been reporting working on a web-based office - they see the writing on the wall - so they can sell service - not media/install/support headaches.

 The war for the desktop is moot since the real money will be in other places.  Don't believe me, get an iPhone and see how much you really need your desktop.  You could argue the iPhone is the spirit of the Amiga. It went against conventional wisdom and showed much larger phone makers like Nokia and Motorola that there was more to a phone than talking and text.

Amiga showed me there was more to computing than a command line and poorly written dos programs.  If you want to see another Amiga - get the guys trying to make a desktop OS - like AROS - make an OS for a smartphone.  Then the Amiga could be truly reborn.

The BEST you can get today for GAMING is the
xbox360 and for everything else you have iphone
and htc (android) <---- that's the real Amiga spirit!

I m playing with my kids xbox games and using my
android every day more andmore - i can say "more
than my extra mega giga build pc that's lately only
good for HD movies" at home and at business, in the
future i see only smartphones, maybe they will soon
be using ext. mouse, keyboard and lcd to!

There will NEVER EVER be an new Amiga or c64 !!!
Sad but that's reality!

[ElPolloDiabl]

Re: iPhone and spirit of Amiga

This is an example of how people can look at the same thing and see something completely different. I could pick apart the hardware and the software, but I won't.

[Hell Labs]

Like, compressing massive amounts of data or video and running virtual servers, or curing cancer.  It'll take forever to cure cancer if people keep using G4s.

That's great, really. Thing is, most people don't do that.

[tone007]

True, most people are n00bs and don't need much in terms of power.

[paolone]

No, sorry it isn't anything like it. I've used AROS and since my first try i have stayed FAR away, its so unpolished. Also, any X86 HW available is nothing close to an Amiga, nowadays, taht belongs to the SAM and G4 macs, since MOS has better compatibility than OS4 or AROS.

Sorry, but I can't agree on this. There's nothing but the processor to distinguish a SAM or a Mac motherboard from a plain PC one, and from the hardware point of view you will find the same BUS, ports and connectors on any modern machine, being it x86 or PPC based.

We can argue the X1000 will have a programmable logic on board. A-Eon is struggling to convince us that this is a real heritage of the Amiga custom chips. You don't need a degree in Hardware Specialist to understand that's not the case.

Let's be more philosophic: Amiga was great thanks to its awesome multimedia performances opposed to a cheap price. There's absolutely nothing of this in SAM or X1000s. And any comparison between used Macs and new hardware is quite unfair. A long ago, playing at the edge of bitmap graphics, color animation and sound were attractive keypoints, but today needs are changed. Now people needs communications, weareability, lightness and autonomy. Computers (and not smartphones, or MIDs) that satisfy those needs at cheap prices are netbooks, and that's why IMHO my Aspire One is the heir of my old Amiga 1200. It's cheap and fullfits my needs.

About AROS, in the end, I can only invite you to try the latest releases, since they are much more polished than, for instance, one or two years ago.

And, not for you but for the one immediately after: netbooks hardware may be crap, but they give you much more than you pay for. I don't know if you can tell the same thing about any AmigaOS-compatible PPC platform. And you should really give a try to AROS on singlecore Atoms to believe how good they can be with a light operating system.

[tone007]

singlecore Atoms

Single core, but with hyperthreading!  Pretty nice for low power processors.

[Hell Labs]

About AROS, in the end, I can only invite you to try the latest releases, since they are much more polished than, for instance, one or two years ago.

The problem with aros is that it's been made completely randomly.

"So we still haven't got 3.1 source compatability fully worked out? who cares! we got someone with utterly no taste to make a skin for it!"

[paolone]

The problem with aros is that it's been made completely randomly: "So we still haven't got 3.1 source compatability fully worked out? who cares! we got someone with utterly no taste to make a skin for it!"

Sometimes I can't get a clue about people's criticism. You said AROS being made "randomly" but, in the end, what does this mean from a end-user perspective? If it works, it works, no matter how this result has been accomplished. If it doesn't work, there's the bug tracker and, believe it or not, when something get posted on the bug tracker, generally will also be fixed. AmigaOS 3.1 source compatibility is almost done and, if you spot bugs, you should file them to the bug tracker, instead of spreading fud here.

[Hell Labs]

My point is, they seem to have worked more on eye candy than the actual goal of the project. Why did they go apeshit making an ugly theme BEFORE finishing the 3.1 apis? That's stupid.

[koaftder]

My point is, they seem to have worked more on eye candy than the actual goal of the project. Why did they go apeshit making an ugly theme BEFORE finishing the 3.1 apis? That's stupid.

You need to get on the aros developer mailing list, then you'd have a clearer picture of what's going on development wise.

[the_leander]

Not my point at all, just pointing out that some older applications look at a new CPU, and freak out or don't run at all.

With the possible exception of programs hard coded to a given CPU at a given speed that would "freak out" if they found anything else (which would also often break with faster variants of the same chip btw), most programs worked within the APIs supported by the OS. As such, so long as the APIs and such are still present, a program itself generally won't give a damn. See Bloodlines visicalc example for more.

maybe I was a little harsh with that last post, but If I use my friends iMac G5, I can run an OS 8 app in classic without having to about it freaking out or crashing,

You are aware that classic app support is supplied via emulation similar to that which you seem to be complaining about on x86, right?

you are right in saying the x86 CPU is a very good and successful architecture, I just don't and won't use it because I hate using monopoly HW that is so low quality compared with my PPC machines.

That of course is your choice and right. The rest of the world simply wants to get the job done.

And as I said, in terms of architecture and OS, MorphOS and the PPC macs and Pegs are the closest relatives to the Amiga.

Err, no, they're really not. The Peg, A1 and all post nubus PowerMacs are essentially PCs with a customised northbridge and different cpu running the show. Architecturally they are PCs. They have little or nothing in common with the OCS/ECS/AGA architectures.

Of course there will be innovations that fit their bill, but if PPC ever dies, it will mean the end of the Amiga's life in terms of HW.

Actually it could be argued legitimately that PPC was the cause of the death of Amiga hardware.

And as long as the X1000 is a good HW piece, I will buy it, run OS4 and MOS if it gets ported, as well as linux with Mac-On-Linux if I can

Good luck with that.

[the_leander]

That's great, really. Thing is, most people don't do that.

With things like youtube and similar becoming ever more popular, having the grunt to encode video is a lot more common. Now that Youtube amongst others are offering high def video, the need is greater still.

Sure, they don't need that maybe 90% of the time, but when they do, they want it done in a reasonable time frame. With the introduction of high def, the G5 and especially the G4 based macs are really starting to show their shortcomings.

[paolone]

My point is, they seem to have worked more on eye candy than the actual goal of the project. Why did they go apeshit making an ugly theme BEFORE finishing the 3.1 apis? That's stupid.

No, that`s freedom. AROS is a open source community effort where different people contribute as far as their competences and fields allow. Development of different parts of the system proceeds in parallel, so it`s normal some areas will be ready before, and some others after. Do you think creating a theme is simplier or more difficult than getting OS3.1 source compatibility, without even seeing a line of original OS3.1 source code? And do you think artists should wait for coders to end their work, to start their own? Why? Just because you are accustomed to priority lists? That`s stupid, my friend.

[dreamcast270mhz]

No, you're wrong, all post-nubus ppc macs are not like Pcs at all. A PC has SSE software, but a g4 has an actual altivec FPU, A PC runs little endian, PPC runs big-endian AND little endian. A mac has OF, Pcs have BIOS. The differences go on.
Truth be told, a mac nowadays is a custom PC with EFI on a cheap FOXCONN Mobo.

And to date, the most populous Big-Endian archittecture is PPC, the 68k is VERY similar to a PPC. And as far as OCS/ECS/AGA goes, their relatives are the GPU, SPU and North/South Bridge chips in Macs and PCs, i wasn't focusibng on them.

@Paolone

AROS has promise, if you can get WARPOS/PUP support working I'd DL it for PPC, you won't rely on UAE to do it, will you? I like the three Amigoids Oses out there, tehy all have promise.

I have to say that PPC macs have more lifetime than any PC to a consumer. when SJ switched them to Intel, that went teh way of horse and buggy. I am neighbors with a couple who use a PowerMac G3 w/ one of those 450mhz ZIF G4s, it runs Tiger like new, a Core Duo Macbook at stock spec struggles with SL. My iBook g4 runs circles around my brother's Phenom 3Gb laptop, at 768mb and 1.33 Ghz at that, because it runs Micro$haft 7.

I use my G4 for:

DVD encoding
E-mail and web browsing, youtube, facebook
Gaming, the newest game I use is DOOM 3
iTunes music and 720p video (my  P4 HT couldn't do 480p without slowdown)
ALL else I do on internet


My point is, I don't mind waiting two hours for 720p dvd5 video to be encoded, because I can browse, play Ut2004 and do whatever while I wait, if I encoded on my HT, it locked up the RAM so much i couldn't play even Half Life. I don't need 1080p video, 3GB/s transfers or UT3, because I don't care to be in the rat race to keep up. I'm happy with what i have, thank you