Discussing strategy of parties involved in the amiga-market (Hardware/OS)

[cha05e90]

OMG, another useless thread. Olaf, really, who cares that you disagree with A-Eon's strategy? They (A-Eon, ACube, Hyperion, MorphOS-Team, AROS-Devs) do whatever they want* to do. I assume the time when those people/teams cared about you (or "customers") are long ago. Heck, even Commodore gave mostly a "sh*t" about "customers".

*: ...makes some money, fulfills personal dreams, is the most easy to code, is at least not completely boring, has an available coder at hand, makes most fun...whatever.

[mikrucio]

I dont usually get involved in this mumbo jumbo, But I feel as though the only
real way forward is the Natami project.
I mean im not really into going forwards, only backwards.(hahaha get it!)
but all you winners who want new hardware,
Natami is the only real LOGICAL choice.

[Duce]

Natami is dead in the water and that wacky next gen AGA stuff they were planning was silly, at best.  Would never have been enough of the boards in users hands to support much of a scene or codebase around it.

[antikk]

Holy crap olaf. You sound like a broken record. Grow up. and let those wanting to buy an x1000 buy one. And let them have fun with it.
Oh, and since all you talk about is price... why is there still life in aos4 and mos camps? Shouldn't all people have joined the superior aros, since its free?

[nicholas]

Holy crap olaf. You sound like a broken record. Grow up. and let those wanting to buy an x1000 buy one. And let them have fun with it.
Oh, and since all you talk about is price... why is there still life in aos4 and mos camps? Shouldn't all people have joined the superior aros, since its free?

AROS is not superior to MorphOS yet...../

When is AmiWest?

[kamelito]

I disagree with the strategy of a-eon at the moment. As I said I do not think that two high-prized and for most users unaffordable new computers are priority at the moment. When I understand Trevor correctly it would have been possible to produce something cheaper but that would have been competition to Acube (what he wants to avoid). Cooperation is ok but cooperation against the needs and wishes of the customers (and expecially potential customers)?. I hope that they rethink the plans and offer something more affordable.

 Well Morphos and Aros do have cheap HW and still they're not getting a lot of new users so why is OS4 any different? At least Trevor do something, something really awesome if you think about it for 1sec, he is a really impressive guy.  Kamelito

[OlafS3]

Holy crap olaf. You sound like a broken record. Grow up. and let those wanting to buy an x1000 buy one. And let them have fun with it.
Oh, and since all you talk about is price... why is there still life in aos4 and mos camps? Shouldn't all people have joined the superior aros, since its free?

I am not in the "about buying X1000" thread so I can disagree or not. Regarding price... I talked to a number of former known developers (mostly AmigaOS) who left because of price. And besides I do not believe that the existing users will change their minds (whatever one of the OS offers and how superior it might be). There was no mass movement after MorphOS 3.2, there will be no new users after the next big update of AmigaOS (whenever it will be). Noone outside cares for "Amiga" anymore (it is only about number of users that means potential buyers). I am grown up, thanx, how about you? How do you think people will look at you when you try to sell your "Super"-"AmigaOS", the "true Amiga-successor" how some call it and the "only Amiga"

[agami]

Last time I checked this is a user forum where personal opinions can be freely expressed, as long as it's not libel and/or using language and demeanor that is malicious in intent.

If you feel this latest thread is yet another in a long line of "waste of time" discussions about something that cannot be changed; it is your prerogative to think that way but you should not really be upset because no one is forcing you to read them.

Also, so far no one in this thread has advised against or stopped anyone from purchasing a x1000. By all means, everyone buy as many x1000's as you can afford, have one at home and one at the holiday house. No one is questioning how you choose to spend your money.

I agree with OlafS3 in having this discussion in this forum. It's not like there's much else to talk about. You want to block your ears and go LA LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING, again that's your prerogative.

[James2002]

I do agree that Arm is the way forward for technology companies. I don't know how long it would take them to develop a motherboard, case, keyboard, mouse, and software development.  On Software part I believe that  things need to work. Games to keep one happy. For the business users software that  they can get their work done fast and simple.

[spirantho]

You'd have a heck of a job getting an ARM as powerful an SOC as the ones on the PowerPC boards we have now. It's a fantastic embedded processor but it's not designed for the same systems as PowerPC.

Re the thread:
I think Olaf has every right to argue about the X1000 and OS4 in this thread. This is where it should be.
Contrary to popular belief, most OS4 users are willing to discuss OS4, their NG Amigas in a constructive way. We're not just sheep going for the brand name, we just happen to prefer OS 4 (and what's so wrong with that?). If Olaf thinks that AmigaOS is going the wrong way, then as this is a discussion forum about Amigas, what better place for it?

What OS4 users are sick of is incorrect information being thrown about the place (like incomplete drivers. For goodness' sake - so you have to use an ethernet card for now? So what? It's hardly a show-stopper! And as for the 3D graphics, you can happily use a non HD Radeon for now. It's really not an issue - ask anyone who actually owns one). We're also sick of being lumped into one group of people who apparently don't know what they're talking about, and who are obviously stupid because they didn't choose whatever flavour someone else did.

Maybe - just maybe - this can be a thread where things start to change for the better, where AmigaOS4 users can respect and be respected by the people who believe for whatever reason that AmigaOS 4 isn't for them.

Use this thread to discuss the pro's and con's of the NG Amigas, NOT threads announcing the arrival of more stock (which is emphatically not the place for such discussion).

If we can get people to respect each other's choices on this forum, more people will come back and maybe it'll stop being such a hostile place for people who happen to use AmigaOS 4.

End of preaching

(I count myself an AmigaOS 4 user for the purpose of simplifying this thread, though I use others too)

[Mrs Beanbag]

I don't know why nobody made AmigaOS for Xbox 360, it is PowerPC afterall! And very common hardware.

[Boot_WB]

Maybe - just maybe - this can be a thread where things start to change for the better, where AmigaOS4 users can respect and be respected by the people who believe for whatever reason that AmigaOS 4 isn't for them.

OK, here goes:

a) The stated development direction of AmigaOS (Gallium, SM... er multicore support, etc) will require a huge amount of work, ie money, to accomplish.
b) The current strategy of producing custom hardware also requires huge amounts of money to accomplish.

To buy one of the top-end AmigaOS systems costs ~£2200 (iirc). Of this large investment, most of it is going into hardware development (paying back development costs for current generation, providing development funds for future ones). Only the AmigaOS license fee (amount unknown) goes to Hyperion for OS development, plus any further amounts that A-Eon chooses to invest seperately into Hyperion/3rd party development.

If A-Eon sells 500 boards at £2200, of that £1,100,000 spent by the community only around £50,000 (at £100 per OEM copy) goes to Hyperion for software development.

That's not enough to pay for Gallium, multiprocessing, etc.
It doesn't increase the user base.
It taxes out a lot of money from those Amigans willing to pay, but only diverts a small amount of it to developing the OS.

Of the £2200 spent, only a very small portion is invested into advance the OS - the rest is spent in hardware development costs.
Once the current generation of hardware is done, that 'investment' is without any value, and the whole spending cycle starts again.

I have all the respect in the world for Trevor and a great deal of sympathy (having been in a similar situation this year where the hard work offered voluntarily was met with suspicion, agression and constant hectoring), and support A-Eon's business aspirations for hardware development.

I just don't think Hyperion/AmigaOS have any realistic strategy to keep up without finding a way to further milk the community in advance of any of the promised advanced features. Not to mention failing to learn the lessons of the past wrt bull****ting about timescales and features.

Sadly, this seems to be quietly not mentioned when any new blood attracted to the X1000.

An example of this is the recent thread on Amigaworld.

A user asked "what is the current status of AOS4 SMP?"

I replied "It (AmigaOS 4.1 update 6 + Amiupdates to date) doesn't have any support for using multiple cores."

SSolie states that "That is incorrect"

wtf?

I reiterate my claim: If AmigaOS 4.2 is released before the end orf 2014 (including Gallium, OpenGL and SMP as stated for many years now) then I'll eat my socks (or possibly a suitably shaped and decorated fruitcake), acknowledge my error, wave a boing-ball flag, and post the vid on Youtube. Hell, I'll even post some dancing bananas.

If we can get people to respect each other's choices on this forum, more people will come back and maybe it'll stop being such a hostile place for people who happen to use AmigaOS 4.

+1

[ElPolloDiabl]

The suspicion might come from (one) hoax system, disappointing projects that ended up with bugs, several abandoned projects (most of those because the company had no money).

  I personally never thought they wouldn't deliver, but I was sure they wouldn't keep even close to the planned release (hardware and software). It might be different with the next release.

[spirantho]

@Boot_WB

Thank you. That's exactly the sort of thing we need. Healthy discussion - not bitter sniping and carping.

I completely understand what you mean about the price of the X1000, but I think you misunderstand the reason for its existence.

Yes, it exists to help AmigaOS develop by feeding it cash via sales, but that's not the real issue. The real issue is simply one of market forces.

There is a market for the X1000. This has been proven by its success, and the repeated production runs. That's what it's sold.
It also has the benefit that because it's a very powerful (for an Amiga) machine, productivity of users developing on it will go up slightly. Not a lot, but when you're recompiling MAME for the 10th time, believe me it helps!

It's unfortunate that there's not more money from sales of the X1000 going into the OS4 development, but that wasn't really the purpose.

As concerns multi-processing, there are the foundations of multi-processor code in 4.1.6, but no - not really multi-processing yet. I think there may be beta testing going on, but that's really a 4.2 thing I think.

If AmigaOS 4.2 does get released by the end of 2014, I'll quote you on this.

And again - thanks for the post.  It's good to have healthy discussions, and criticism.

[OlafS3]

You'd have a heck of a job getting an ARM as powerful an SOC as the ones on the PowerPC boards we have now. It's a fantastic embedded processor but it's not designed for the same systems as PowerPC.

Re the thread:
I think Olaf has every right to argue about the X1000 and OS4 in this thread. This is where it should be.
Contrary to popular belief, most OS4 users are willing to discuss OS4, their NG Amigas in a constructive way. We're not just sheep going for the brand name, we just happen to prefer OS 4 (and what's so wrong with that?). If Olaf thinks that AmigaOS is going the wrong way, then as this is a discussion forum about Amigas, what better place for it?

What OS4 users are sick of is incorrect information being thrown about the place (like incomplete drivers. For goodness' sake - so you have to use an ethernet card for now? So what? It's hardly a show-stopper! And as for the 3D graphics, you can happily use a non HD Radeon for now. It's really not an issue - ask anyone who actually owns one). We're also sick of being lumped into one group of people who apparently don't know what they're talking about, and who are obviously stupid because they didn't choose whatever flavour someone else did.

Maybe - just maybe - this can be a thread where things start to change for the better, where AmigaOS4 users can respect and be respected by the people who believe for whatever reason that AmigaOS 4 isn't for them.

Use this thread to discuss the pro's and con's of the NG Amigas, NOT threads announcing the arrival of more stock (which is emphatically not the place for such discussion).

If we can get people to respect each other's choices on this forum, more people will come back and maybe it'll stop being such a hostile place for people who happen to use AmigaOS 4.

End of preaching

(I count myself an AmigaOS 4 user for the purpose of simplifying this thread, though I use others too)

+1

it should be possible for "grown ups" to discuss (and even disagree) without all the time using "stereotypes" and start to bash each other when you talk about facts and not insult others and their choices.

@Mrs_Beanbag

I think I read a discussion about that already (here or on amigaworld I cannot remember). I think there are legal problems and (how always) who will pay it? Hyperion wants every port be financed by the hardware producer, so no pay no port (in opposite to f.e. MorphOS who do a update and then request money after being done).

@Boot_WB

"SMP" is a wide area with lots of definitions and concepts. I read a discussion on aros-exec on it (I think it was called AMP or ASMP I cannot remember) that could be used without breaking compatibility (I think it is similar to PowerUP). The disadvantage is that only special adapted software benefits from it. Other concepts would create lots of problems with existing software. So if Hyperion really implements "SMP" with a concept that every software benefits of (without adaption) then I will make a deep bow to them. But I do not believe that.

[spirantho]

@ElPolloDiablo

Not sure what you mean by "hoax system"...? Do you mean the netbook? That wasn't their fault, they were caught between a rock and a hard place there (the price went up massively so if they delivered, they got yelled at and nobody would buy it because of the price - if they didn't deliver, they got yelled at and nobody could buy it, but at least they wouldn't go bankrupt).

I know what you mean about due dates - they're never accurate. That's not a Hyperion thing, that's a general industry thing. That's why these days they just say "When it's done" (sensible).