Slashdot Mirror
Amino Got More Than the Amiga Name
vigi writes "Despite early announcements, it seems Gateway sold pretty much anything Amiga to Amino. As this executive update points out, Amino (soon to be renamed Amiga Corporation) acquired all trademarks, inventory, licenses, domain names and the Amiga OS."
At this rate the amiga OS will be out of *copyright* by the time the make another amiga.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Maybe it's because the Amiga does certain things "right" that no one has gotten right since?
Yeah, that's it: the total package. It's not stapled together. No disconcerting shifts between text and graphics screens, no 50-foot barrier wall between apps with a GUI and apps without. The GUI is integrated, but lightweight enough that it isn't at all like having a 12MB X server running all the time. The interface looks and works consistent, MENUS ARE ALL GENERATED IN THE SAME PLACE, there's drag-n-drop, the system is configurable, and so on. There's cross-application scripting. There's interrupt trickery and display hacks to make things FEEL faster than they are (hence the illusion so many Amiga lunatics quote as gospel, that an A500 is faster than a Pentium). It boots QUICKLY; indeed, loading applications, opening and closing windows, and switching workspaces are all trivial and don't involve lots of swapping to disk.
It seems like nostalgia, even to us. But it's actually a thinly disguised disappointment that we are, in 2000, NOT fifteen years more advanced than what the Amiga was in 1985. In an age with machines with 10 times the pixels, 100 times the memory, 1000 times the MIPs, and 10000 times the disk space, to the Amiga user's eye, modern software has yet to CATCH UP with the combination of integration, simplicity, power, and efficiency we had two decades back. Therein lies the nostalgia: they literally don't make 'em like they used to.
Rant: we continue to look to Amiga-derived startups for The Way Forward, because no one else particularly cares. The Linux crowd is SUPPOSED (according to the hype) to be providing some grand unified theory of computing, but for every Linux shortcoming someone points out, we get either "write it yourself" or an explanation of why we don't want it. I thought it was the Microsoft way to give excuses instead of Products People Want.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
I think this means that Amiga has officially had more incarnations than Doctor Who.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
After opening up the shring wrap on my new BeOS I couldn't believe how fast and responsive the machine was. Made my humble AMD K6-2 350 run like a champ.
:)
I have never done audio/video production, but to me it is a very solid OS that has proven to be quiet stable.
I believe that if Amiga was to make a come back, it would have a hard time matching what BeOS has, and further more not only having to compete with BeOS, but deal with the loss of there cult following to other more interesting Hobby OS's. (I have the privilige of working on a Linux box at work all day, so I can't really refer to it as a hobby box anymore
$.02
http://www.amino1.net/
Not much there, tho'.
Look, I know we're all getting fed up with the problems at Amiga, the missed promises, the bad feeling. So am I.
BUT...
Gateway bought Amiga to strip the patents, then got a lot of people asking what they planned to do with regard to new Amigas. Hence the delays, the confusion and the rather half-hearted approach. It wasn't what they really wanted to do, and it showed.
I don't know Bill McEwen, but I DO know Fleecy Moss reasonably well and I'd trust him. I can think of almost no-one with more drive, more ideas, more enthusiasm. He loves the Amiga and wants to do something with it. And I'd say he's got as much chance as anyone of pulling this one off.
Maybe nothing will happen, just like before. Maybe I'm a dreamer. But this gives the Amiga the best chance it's had for years, as it's controlled by people who know and love it.
Give this one a chance please, guys. Don't be cynical until this bunch have proved themselves worthy of only cynicism. If they fail, I'll join you in the moaning. But they don't deserve that yet.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
As exciting as the idea that yet another handsome stranger will come and sweep the poor destitute Amiga (which means girlfriend in Spanish, I think) and save her, I think that it is really time for all of us Amigans to realise that she is well and truly dead.
The crucial upgrade that Commodore missed was the upgrade to PowerPC. Some companies came up with PowerPC cards, but they were all horrendously late, poorly constructed, had non existant support and always had underpowered chips compared with what was currently available on the market.
The Amiga has basically seen no development at all since Commodore went belly up. From the hardware standpoint, absolutely nothing, from software, well, OS 3.5 could have been thrown together by a group of open source people (who would have done a better job). Trying to make anything new from circa 1992 parts would be completely unworkable, even if you had lots of money (like say, Gateway).
Gateway was a huge disappointment. With huge amounts of funds available, they did basically nothing with the Amiga. Every week you would hear something completely new and different. New PPC Amigas, Amigas on a card in your PC, new Amigas with the Magical Mystery Chip (transmeta was the best rumor), new console type systems, then no new hardware, but a new AmigaOS, then no AmigaOS, but Amiga environment running on top of Linux. It made you think that Amiga, the company, consisted of five guys that went to lunch each week and came up with a new crazy idea to throw out to us hopefulls they drew up on paper napkins. Hell, I have even seen some of those paper napkin drawings on websites heralded as "the New Amiga".
What I really wish would happen is that the AmigaOS would be released to Open Source so that if there is anything still usefull or interesting in the code, it can be used for things such as window managers, etc.
Even though part of me wants to hope that something could come of this, I have to admit to myself that the Amiga is gone forever.
This is quite sad because, as much as I love Linux, I realise that it is not suited to be a home users OS. The Amiga was great for this, with it's GUI and standardised install program (which I loved, gave you 3 levels to choose from: expert, intermediate, beginner. I wish Linux had such a standardised way to install.) What the world desparetely needs now is a good home system, that does multimedia as well as the Amiga did (Windows will always suck at this, no matter how hard they try, as I found out with one of those Gateways that are designed to be multimedia), has as straightforward and simple interface as the Amiga, and as kick ass graphics as the Amiga.
But unfortunately we live in a world in which only one OS matters and we have to live with mediocracy.