Interview with Trevor Dickinson

[ffastback]

@persia

LOL, did you quote like that on purpose?  You imply I said something there I did not.

[the_leander]

If you want to twist my quote thats your business.  If you want to get into a debate over the word "many" thats not going to happen.

No twisting necessary. You have made a blanket accusation that you are now refusing to withdraw or provide evidence to back it up.

You might view that bent over pig talk as "keeping it real" or something.

Again, still awaiting that citation. I find it amusing that you demand proof of something that Dammy says, but when held to the same level of evidence you try linguistic gymnastics and logical fallacies.

Some folk might see that as being somewhat hypocritical.

I talking about my impression and opinion that is formed after reading posts like that.  

Given the level of reading comprehension you've displayed in this thread, the obvious strawman arguments you've lobbed at anyone daring to call you out on your accusations and your unwillingness to back them up, your impressions and opinion are utterly worthless.

[ffastback]

No twisting necessary.

Too bad the quote does not say what you say it does.  I'm not here to impress anyone.  And trying for jabs about English as a second language for me and my opinion being worthless, well you have fun with that I guess.  Its more mild than the pig talk at the Moo.  What is your handle there BTW?

[the_leander]

  I'm not here to impress anyone.

Something that you have singularly succeeded in achieving.

Its more mild than the pig talk at the Moo.  

Repeating a lie does not make it truth.

What is your handle there BTW?

No.

[AmigaHeretic]

Too bad the quote does not say what you say it does.  I'm not here to impress anyone.  And trying for jabs about English as a second language for me and my opinion being worthless, well you have fun with that I guess.  Its more mild than the pig talk at the Moo.  What is your handle there BTW?

I feel like the posts between us are me usually saying how I feel about A-Eon and why personally feel it is madness.  Such as this topic "Interview  with T.D."   I have stated my opnions on spending $200,000 on building X1000.  Why I think it is a bad idea for the community as a whole and only hurts us, how I think the road map is short sighted, etc.

I feel like you never really state your feelings and opinions.  I sort of feel you mostly just post that I shouldn't think those things or that I am whining for discussing these things.


Would you mind telling us your opinions?   Could you explain the benefits to the Amiga community that you see in the creation of the X1000?   Give your take on how this plays out as far as the future of OS4?   Can you tell us how successful you think the X1000 will be in terms of sales, ROI for Trev, and how this benefits Hyperion financially?   What do you think the long term road map should be?

Thanks in advance.

[AmigaHeretic]

I'll just state again with regard to the interview,the X1000, the amount invested my thoughts.

There is nothing wrong with having short term goals.  Hope to invest something to make enough to invest in your long term goals is a valid business solution.

I fail to see how the X1000 is good short term or long term investment.


In the short term:
You are talking about Hyperion investing a years time minimum (they've already been porting for 6 months?) for very few sales.  20-50 boards?

As a short term solution I don't see how Hyperion make their money back, let alone the wasted potential of not investing their time in something more viable and that offer more short term returns.  
And as a short term solution what happens to the 20-50 X1000 users?  Will it be worth supporting them in future updates of AmigaOS4?  Or will they be thrown to the side like Classic OS4 users with the excuse that there are just too few users to support?


As a long term solution:
X1000 doesn't makes sense either.  For many of the same reasons.  Can you suggest that a $2000 board will give you long term sales?  If in 2012 the price drops dramatically you are left with a very outdated piece of hardware.   If it costs $2000 per board to make a customer PPC board today, is there reason to suggest that in a year or two that it will become much cheaper to make a more modern custom PPC X2000?

No I just can't see this as a long term solution either.

[persia]

£200K divided by 350 machines = £571.43 per machine.  Now let's say you want a 20% ROI, £40K divided by 350 machines = £114.29 per machine.  So you are already at £685.72 without building a single machine.  The case costs ~£100, so you are now up to close to 800 quid.  The other parts, memory, hard disk, video card probably cost another £200.  Somebody has to put it all together, give them maybe £50 per machine, plus another £50 at least for storage and other costs, so you are up to £1100 or so.  The overhead may be far more than that, so you are likely talking about a £300 to 400 motherboard.  Pricey, but within reason for such a dinky quantity...

[ffastback]

Something that you have singularly succeeded in achieving.

Unoriginal, but expected.

[ffastback]

Would you mind telling us your opinions?   Could you explain the benefits to the Amiga community that you see in the creation of the X1000?

If we are going to say that "Amiga community" equates to MorphOS users, AOS users, and AROS users I suppose it could benefit us to a degree in that it made at least one mainstreamish (geek mainstream anyway) site as news.  I suppose that could clue some former Amiga users into the fact that there are these current options and that a community even exists in 2010.

Give your take on how this plays out as far as the future of OS4?  

I personally don't see continuing on PPC as an overall benefit to the AOS segment of the community.  And hence I don't see the X-1000 as an overall benefit.  In a very shortsighted way (IMO) its a benefit in the sense that since Hyperion is adamant on staying PPC and since they are a commercial enterprise the X-1000 provides the "benefit" that now Hyperion can program for 64 bit and multi-core.  But again, I see that as tremendously short-sighted.

Give your take on how this plays out as far as the future of OS4?

As far as the future of OS4, I see it as dying a slow death.  I see the X-1000 as not making much of any difference in that because Hyperion has been very happy staying PPC and porting to Acube hardware.  The existence of the X-1000 does not seem to have had any impact on Hyperion wanting to offer a PPC based OS.

Can you tell us how successful you think the X1000 will be in terms of sales, ROI for Trev, and how this benefits Hyperion financially?

My guess would be somewhere between 100 and 1000 depending on final price of course.  Since Trevor says they are in for 200,000 Euro so far I see his ROI as very poor, assuming for a second he is the source of most of the money.

What do you think the long term road map should be?

If we are talking about what I think the road map should be to have what I think would be the highest chance of success I'd say go x86.  But Hyperion has been very clear about the fact that they don't care how much they hear that from folks, that they are sure PPC is the way to go and that they will not be convinced otherwise.  The same valid arguments have been presented to them thousands of times at this point, maybe tens of thousands of times.     Who they want to service is the folks who agree with them that PPC is the way to go.  Some may believe as Hyperion does that PPC can succeed (i.e. "its in Xbox!, why not a PC"), others may just enjoy non-mainstream hardware.  And yes some sadly like the exclusivity.  How Hyperion survives on servicing only those folks is a damn mystery.  But they have done it for years, while I might add fighting a lawsuit which also costs money.  Its not up to us to dictate to them how to make their money or who their customer base should be.

[ffastback]

As a short term solution I don't see how Hyperion make their money back, let alone the wasted potential of not investing their time in something more viable and that offer more short term returns.  

We don't know if A-Eon has paid a porting fee or not.  There has been talk in the past that there was one at least at one time.  That could be part of the 200,000 Euro perhaps that A-EON has spent?

And as a short term solution what happens to the 20-50 X1000 users? Will it be worth supporting them in future updates of AmigaOS4? Or will they be thrown to the side like Classic OS4 users with the excuse that there are just too few users to support?

Well I think if they abandoned X-1000 users that would be a major goodwill killer with your most loyal users of the brand.  They have kept up on Peg II and that can not be such a big amount of users.  I think Classic support is not something progressing as much because of the hardware at least.

If in 2012 the price drops dramatically you are left with a very outdated piece of hardware.

That depends on how you view it.  If they still make new model SAMs at Acube at the same rate as they do today whatever the latest SAM is in 2012 very likely would still be below the specs of an X-1000.  And the OS is in no position to support the latest hardware anyway.

[redrumloa]

Lets see, I said:

I have asked koafter (koft) to clarify his criminality comment.  Hell I don't even know your nick on Moo.

My comment is straightfoward, does Trevor really deserve what is said there about his venture and the inferences made about its motivations, where things are said like A-Eon is treating its customers like pigs that need to be bent over etc.  You don't find that sort of thing crass and unnecessary?  You don't wonder at someone's motivations to speak about something as mundane as A-Eon in such a manner, so often?  Maybe you are desensitized from being at Moo for years or something.

Excuse me, but that comment was made here and MODERATED here, not on Moobunny.

Additionally, you seem to have a major negative infatuation about Moobunny and made accusations that Moob regulars, not proxy trolls, have leveled personal attacks against Trevor Dickinson. You are purposely making vague accusations and refuse to back it up with links. Are you trolling?

[Iggy]

I, myself, am baffled as to what AmigaOS users think they would bring to the X86 market.

1) an OS w/o memory protection
2) that doesn't support more than one processor core
3) with no outstanding legacy software that can't be matched or superseded by applications in other X86 OS'
4) a 32 bit OS in a market that is rapidly moving to 64 bit (and eventually to  128 bit)
5) an OS which in its multiple variations does not support modern GPU hardware like shaders

Given time, I could come up with many more flaws to this argument.

Right now, Amiga users are basically hobbyists that use an alternate OS out of personal interest. AmigaOS is not a viable competitor for Windows, OSX, and maybe not even Linux.

Personally, I hope we stay with PPC architecture. It differentiates us from the rest of the market and RISC code is easier to work with than CISC code.

I use MorphOS. I don't see the MorphOS development team supporting any other type of processors for the time being. AmigaOS is welcome competition and I hope Hyperion manages to keep it viable.

If you are so interested in an X86 alternative, use and support AROS. While the current release contains some flaws, the eventual roadmap for this AmigaOS offfshoot could make it quite an impressive system.

[Terminills]

I thought Gallium3d supported shaders.    which would mean hopefully so does Aros. :-D

[Iggy]

I thought Gallium3d supported shaders.    which would mean hopefully so does Aros. :-D

When that part of AROS is bug free, we will see a neat step forward in Amiga like OS development. Which is why I didn't totally discount AROS. But the current releases are way too buggy.

I have one PC with an Nvidia 7600GT video card that I have Multiple variants of AROS on.

But I use an Apple with MorphOS on it because it is stable.

And I have multiple PCs with various versions of Windows because there is software I just can't get in the Amiga community.

Right now, with OpenGL support, both AROS and MorphOS seem to offer superior 2d and 3d functions (compared to AOS3.x and AOS4.x).

But, since GPU manufactures are very tight lipped about there architectures, we have a long way to go to match Windows graphics power (which, btw, so does OSX).

[AmigaHeretic]

I, myself, am baffled as to what AmigaOS users think they would bring to the X86 market.

1) an OS w/o memory protection
2) that doesn't support more than one processor core
3) with no outstanding legacy software that can't be matched or superseded by applications in other X86 OS'
4) a 32 bit OS in a market that is rapidly moving to 64 bit (and eventually to  128 bit)
5) an OS which in its multiple variations does not support modern GPU hardware like shaders

Given time, I could come up with many more flaws to this argument.

Bring to the x86 market?  What are you talking about?  x86 is a piece of commodity hardware that we "use".  Toilet paper is a commodity item.  X1000 is like a pine cone.  x86 is like Charmin.   I don't bring anything "to" toilet paper, but there are many reason for me to "use" it over alternatives.

(Yeah yeah I know I technically bring something to toilet paper ;-) )

Oil is a commodity.  So you are saying OS4 is like a Yugo.  You list a huge list a deficiencies.  I can lubricate it's engine with 4 bottles of Dom Perignon at $150 a bottle or I can use 4 $1.50 cans of oil which will work 100X better.  I don't bring anything to "oil" by using it in my Yugo.  Though my Yugo runs better with the oil and I save hundreds of dollars.

Right now, Amiga users are basically hobbyists that use an alternate OS out of personal interest. AmigaOS is not a viable competitor for Windows, OSX, and maybe not even Linux.

Again I don't follow.  Amiga is an OS.  Windows is an OS.  Mac OSX is an OS.  Linux is an OS.    You are saying if we pay $800 - $2000 for a piece of hardware OS4 is no longer is an OS?   If we only run on old Macs MorphOS is no longer an OS?

Personally, I hope we stay with PPC architecture. It differentiates us from the rest of the market and RISC code is easier to work with than CISC code.

How does it differentiate us?  That we pay more for slower CPUs?   I mean PPC hasn't been RISC for a long time, it has more instructions at this point than x86 CISC.

The Term RISC and CISC has not been used by chip designers for a long time. The chips are now classified by their architecture, rather than the "design Philosiphy". Most CPU's are now "Load-Store". The x86 has a less complex instruction set than some RISCs, and the PPC has the most complex RISC instruction set ever seen.  Both CPU's share RISC/CISC features, as it's more efficient to use both concepts.

[Terminills]

When that part of AROS is bug free, we will see a neat step forward in Amiga like OS development. Which is why I didn't totally discount AROS. But the current releases are way too buggy.

I have one PC with an Nvidia 7600GT video card that I have Multiple variants of AROS on.

But I use an Apple with MorphOS on it because it is stable.

And I have multiple PCs with various versions of Windows because there is software I just can't get in the Amiga community.

Right now, with OpenGL support, both AROS and MorphOS seem to offer superior 2d and 3d functions (compared to AOS3.x and AOS4.x).

But, since GPU manufactures are very tight lipped about there architectures, we have a long way to go to match Windows graphics power (which, btw, so does OSX).

I wouldn't say it's bug free but it is very stable on my box. :-D