Amiga dev folks and softwares and stuff

[weirdami]

I remember McEwen saying that there were loads of people calling and asking about Amiga and developing stuff for it, etc. Do we know who all is developing for Amiga and if that loads-of list is still long as it ever was? Are the developers now in contact with KMOS? Will there be loads of softwares released to coincide with AOS4's release?

I ask because I want to know what softwares to expect when AOS4 comes out and AmigaOne's have a proper OS because I stopped in a computer store and fiddled with the Macintoshes and looked at the prices and such. I'm still a little afraid to go with a Macintosh. I don't really know what the deal with them is. I'd rather have a new Amiga.

On a side note, there was a guy in there talking to the dealer and he was one of those smug Mac users who acted like he was superior because of it. He kept butting in when I was asking the dealer questions. Yes, please tell me about the bus speed of the new G5's again. :-( The dealer seemed to know what an Amiga was, which was kinda cool. I didn't get any "you still use that?" from him, which was also cool.

Anyhoo, help me out. Should I Mac it up or should I wait on Amiga?

[kd7ota]

Its really what you could afford or what you can handle. I personally dislike macs. I remember one year going into CompUSA and went on a dual CPU mac, and purposely opened up Amiga.org on the web browser and walked away from it.  :-D

But the thing about mac is that there isnt the freedom of doing what you want to your OS.... Like you are limited to do what a MAC user can, and cant go beyond modifying the OS as much. I may be wrong, but I just get that effect from it.

But you can decide what you want though.  Personally why not pick up a PC and get Linux for it? If you have and already tried it, then not sure what to tell you.  :-)

But if you think its a computer that you would like and have the money in hand, then go for it....

[BIG-IRON]

Ill talk ya down man...take it easy, The mac although slick in its interface is a piece of shiat. They need cooling like the new g5 does when they are at 2 GHZ? heat pipes and liquid cooling??? for what my Athlon 64 does in its sleep and at those prices?. The mac os is nice I wont lie, but it treats its users like morons (common a 1 button mouse?) I love the way osX looks granted its a thing of beauty but 100 bucks to go from 2.1 to 2.2 to 2.3? hmmmm? is that odd or what. And oh gawd dont get me started on the birkenstock wearing self righteous bleeding heart 60s rejects you will be dealing when you go to the users group meetings. And think of how much fun you will have telling mac users about the Amiga when Apple gos belly up because they are down to less than 2% of the market and can only sell ipods and "lifestyle" computers. Besides do you really use quark express and photoshop?(macs claim to fame) Hang tight the A1 is here bro!

Flame away mac fanboys I am immune to the steve Jobs reality warp.

[Pyromania]

Hi weirdami

I have several things in the works for OS 4.0 and MorphOS

Best regards

Bill Panagouleas

Founder/CEO
DiscreetFX
www.discreetfx.com

[smithy]

I remember McEwen saying that there were loads of people calling and asking about Amiga and developing stuff for it, etc. Do we know who all is developing for Amiga and if that loads-of list is still long as it ever was?

I think you are referring to McEwen's famous "we have 3000 developers" claim.  This was based on the fact that he'd sold 3000 copies of his AmigaDE developer CD.  Unfortunately (for him), based on the non-output of his 3000 developers, it seems that most people that bought it were ordinary users or people after a money-off voucher for an AmigaOne.

I think the "3000 developers" claim is an infamous as the "on schedule and rocking", or "I have seen OS4 running" (in May 2001 - when development had been secretly suspended before it had been started), or "Amiga Inc owns AmigaOS" (6 months after they'd "sold" it to KMOS), etc, etc...

McEwen, "Fleecy" and co have already gone down in history as the worst thing ever to happen to the Amiga... good riddence to the lot of 'em.

[Doobrey]

I dunno if they sold 3,000 SDK`s for DE, but I remember HMetal quoting a similar figure for the number of signups on the amigadevnet site.

[Chunder]

smithy wrote:
I think you are referring to McEwen's famous "we have 3000 developers" claim.  This was based on the fact that he'd sold 3000 copies of his AmigaDE developer CD.  Unfortunately (for him), based on the non-output of his 3000 developers, it seems that most people that bought it were ordinary users or people after a money-off voucher for an AmigaOne.

Well, I don't know about any of the others, but I had every intention (no pun intended, honest) of learning to develop stuff - but there was little/no documentation readily available for the casual, inexperienced "bedroom" coder... so my copy is still sitting in it's box, all but unused. *sigh*

[PhatBoiCollier]

I wrote a couple of apps/tools for the DE.  A notepad style editor (PhatEdit), clipboard tools, memory tracker, locale tools, file requester wrapper.  

I also did a couple of ports too.  Cocoon (source doc generator) and quake.  Next on the list was the HUUUUGE task of a GUI framework, with the final aim of an IDE.  The problem was that the documentation was quite limited.  Most of the OS was still missing (which is why I had to write my own clipboard implementation).  Debugging was a nightmare and the API changed on each version, causing some apps to stop working.

Eventually, I lost the faith (and to be honest the time!).  Given that the Amigadev sit hasnt been updated since Feb last year, it still doesnt look too active so I have no urge to go back to it at all.

Amigadev Developer News

[bhoggett]

Doobrey wrote:
I dunno if they sold 3,000 SDK`s for DE, but I remember HMetal quoting a similar figure for the number of signups on the amigadevnet site.

You had to sign up to activate the darned things, as the activation keys were generated and supplied on-line only.

The 3000 number (if correct - they may simply have counted activations) is the number of copies sold, not the number of buyers (I bought two, as in Linux and Windows versions), and certainly not the number of active developers.

Frankly, if there were ever 100 active AmigaDE developers, I'd be impressed.

Most of the mailing lists Amiga Inc set up now only get sex spam messages. There may be one or two of the NDA/SDA forums still sctive, but I wouldn't hold my breath. AmigaDE is as dead as Commodore 64 Basic as a programming environment.

[drwho]

A while back I purchased a Mac hoping that it would "feel like" a natural progression from the Amiga. Honestly, nothing could be furthur from the truth.

Firstly, the Mac without OSX, is a single-process box (you heard that right, OS9.1 and all previous releases of the Mac OS are NOT multitasking in any way, your Amiga has always been better ... ) :-D

... Enter OSX. I am not sure what people may or may not know about OSX, but, essentially, this is a BSD kernel, with some Mac code and a Window Manager called Aqua slapped on top. Is this a bad thing? Essentially, no. But, I would rather save $2000, buy a super fast PC and run the *nix clone of my choice, instead of OSX. Granted, you can still run all the old OS9.1 and previous applications, but, then we have the whole non-multitasking issue again. Slow and sloppy...

Second, I always got the impression that the Mac was very poorly supported. The amount of software available for it was pretty pathetic, again, this is an area where the PC really shines. Basically, don't plan on running Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 on your new Mac any time soon, if ever. Your Amiga has more games than the Mac has ever seen, and most of them are free now!

Third, OS control. One of the reasons that I love the Amiga so much is that I have control over everything. I know where everything is, I know what everything does, there are no surprises like "where did all my HD space go?" that I get from Windows. The CLI is actually important, and coming from a Unix background, this is important to me. The Mac has no shell or CLI, and on the PC it's essentially meaningless now . The Mac is also a complete whore (can I use the word whore here?) to develop software for. There are ROMs but they are no where nearly as robust as the kickstart ROMs and there is nothing that even resembles the power and flexibility of Intuition.

Personally, as a previous Mac user, for about 2 years, I was very disappointed in the machines. I had respect for Apple back in the 80's, but, they pretty much suck now.

In my very humble opinion, I would stick with the Amiga, if you like the Amiga. OS4 is coming, systems are a little bit pricey, but, they are honestly worth every dime and you still will pay a fraction of what the Mac costs. In comparison, being a classic Amiga fanatic, I would rather have an Amiga 3000T than a brand new Mac any day.

So, hope this helps you out. By the way, You only met one smug Mac user, I never met one who wasn't smug. You certainly won't find a community like the one that the Amiga has in the Mac space.

Thanks,
Mike

[leirbag28]

kd7ota wrote:
I remember one year going into CompUSA and went on a dual CPU mac, and purposely opened up Amiga.org on the web browser and walked away from it.  

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Hahaha, thats funny Because Me and a couple of family members of mine go to the Mall where they have a Special MAC store..................we all like soldiers go to as many MACS as we can and make www.amiga.com the Home page on every browser on as many machines as we can.  We do this every time we go there Haha. Even my brother who is a Mac lover does it for me since he knows how I like to do that and he enjoys it himself.
The employees must hate us by now!

[itix]

The employees must hate us by now!

Let's hope they dont hate Amiga too :-D

[weirdami]

In comparison, being a classic Amiga fanatic, I would rather have an Amiga 3000T than a brand new Mac any day.

That's prettymuch my feeling. I'd rather have an Amiga. I will never buy a windows box, and I really don't want to fiddle with Linux. I'd be happy with a Unix box, but one at work, where there's someone whose job it is to fiddle with the settings. :-) I like command lines. I started considering Macs recently because of OS10+ was getting big reviews from the guys on TechTV (Leo Laporte, etc.) and I'm wanting to do produce some DV movies eventually and it was looking like Macs were the way to go in that regard. If I can expect good VE software and all the things that go with that line, and DVD authoring capbility, then I can wait for Amiga. Still gotta save up some more money first. I'm just getting ahead of the game right now, working out the direction to go, so this is all on my mind right now.

Are we expecting the AmigaOne+AOS4 combination to have super speed enough for VE and that sort of high demand task?

...a question i just thought of: Does Newtek have it's eye on the Amiga situation and is it developing A1/AOS4 software/hardware?  I'm thinking maybe that this new Toaster they made is already compatible with A1 since it goes in an IBM-type box and the A1 also needs an IBM-type box, but I don't know for sure.

[weirdami]

@big iron

Besides do you really use quark express and photoshop?(macs claim to fame) Hang tight the A1 is here bro!

Is Photoshop being developed for AOS4? If it is, then it's not too much a jump to expectthat so is Premiere, which is the sort of software I'm wondering about. I'm wondering about all the software types, actually, but I'm most concerned with VE, etc.

 

[kd7ota]

@leirbag28


Heheheehe, might bug them just a bit though.  :-D

But yea, if I end up going to more computer stores anytime soon I will definately open up an Amiga website just to piss them off and throw the customers that go to their stores.  :-)  :-D