OK, what started, and ended, as a 5 page thread *a year ago*, has now grown to 17 pages, that's 11 pages containing nothing but upset emotions against the probability of MorphOS having more users than OS4. I actually find this hilarious, astonishing, and I guess you can learn something every day about the mindset of some people in this "community". What I have learned from this thread, is:
1. MorphOS registration statistics are utterly worthless as a base for user number estimations (estimations != facts), since everyone knows that MorphOS users has piles of old Macs with registered copies of MorphOS lying around their houses.
2. Timberwolf download statistics are utterly worthless as a base for OS4 user number estimations (estimations != facts), since so few active OS4 users would bother downloading it for free to try out the Frieden's take on Firefox for OS4 (a pretty insignificant piece of SW anyway, that *nobody* has been waiting for since 1995). New browsers aren't needed anyway, since "MUI OWB 1.9" satisfies every browser need an OS4 users would have.
3. A much better way of getting a picture of current amount of users, would be to look at forum activity on Amigaworld.net and Amigans.net vs. MorphZone.org, and to look at Aminet uploads. This will give you the *correct* picture of OS4 having a lot more users than MorphOS.
4. Things like threshold of entry can *not* affect amount of users over long periods of time. A few years of
$20 (twenty dollars) systems (plus €111 MorphOS registration) systems available will *not* attract more users than a $1,000+ system, especially not since the former runs circles around the latter. Not to mention the $3,000 option, performing at about the same level as the former. And "it is far more likely that the OS4 user base is bigger than MOS IMHO considering the fact that ACube and AEon have both also invested in its future."
5. And things like one OS being here half a decade before the other, always having had the upper hand when it comes to qualities and features, etc, can't play a part in the total amount of users either. And who needs drivers for their HW?
6. Pointing out the possibility of MorphOS (in respect to the above discarded points) could actually have more users than OS4, would only be "wishful thinking", an "extraordinary claim" needing extraordinary evidence, since "the general opinion" says otherwise (and there is no need to prove "the general opinion's" view, especially not when "the general opinion's" view is based on how much fun it is doing IRC style chatting at Amigaworld.net). And...
7. ...anyone *daring* to point out this possibility of MorphOS could having more users than OS4, as a result of the differences between OS4's and MorphOS's approaches to the world, is "a dog barking" that "insult the original Amiga creators and users with a saying like this", simply put an evil troll who should collectively be beaten into submission and blamed and branded as being the one responsible for the shrinking of the Amiga community, because...
8. ...everyone knows that it's the online posts from a single user in a community forum that determines the usefulness and desirability of a computer system, and not the technical merits and threshold of entry, and people leaving the community is not doing so because the complete absence of any kind of credible future, and fresh users not entering the community is not because Amiga can't offer anything whatsoever to the desktop market it tries to serve. So the correct online behavior is to stand in straight lines, cheering "Yes", "Yes", "Yes" as soon as a new $3,000 system with 2007 level laptop performance is being introduced as the answer to humanity's collective prayers, because doing anything else, like calling this development insanity, would be "Negativity". And the only thing that will revitalize and bring Amiga to world domination, is "Positivism", which makes perfect sense, since it's the online posts in web forums in a forgotten corner of the Internet that matters, and not stupid things like characteristics, features and a credible future of *the products*.
By the way, the entire post above (except the initial paragraph) is written in a style called sarcasm (Wikipedia:
Sarcasm). I am explicitly pointing this out, since it has become obvious to me that the reading comprehension (Wikipedia:
Reading Comprehension) is very low in the remaining community, since nobody seems to understand the concept of words and terms like "probable", "possible", "plausible", "could be", "reasonable", "estimations", "assumptions", "not facts", "user" and "discussion". (I can't be bothered to link an explanation to each of these words, you can look it up yourselves:
Wikipedia.org)
It's obvious that the Amiga community isn't ready to deal with things like realistic estimations of current active user base, it probably contradicts its deeply rooted image of itself as being counted in several thousands, especially the OS4 side. I'm OK with that, but the discussion in this thread is going in circles, it leads nowhere. So maybe it's time to close the thread now? Maybe reality may sink in in time, and this subject can be discussed again in the future, but "we" are obviously not ready for this yet...
Over and out!
